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hall formed an ordinary part of a king's palace, either separately or as part of a great reception hall. It was especially laid down in Apastamba, ii. 25, that it is the king's duty to provide such a place; and later law books disclose a custom by which

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a share of the winnings went to the treasury. The gambling was with dice on a board with thirty-six squares; and the best description of the game, the details of which are very obscure, is at Jātaka, vi. 281. There is a curious old bas-relief in which

1 Comp. 1. 290; 3. 91.

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such a gambling saloon in the open air is represented with a split in the rock on which the gamblers are playing. The point of the story is evidently the splitting of the rock, which is not accidental, but fully intended by the sculptor. But we can only conjecture what it means, as the story has not yet been found elsewhere. (Fig. 11.)

Another sort of building historically interesting were the hot-air baths, described in full in Vinaya Texts, iii. 105-110, 297. They were built on an elevated basement faced with brick or stone, with stone stairs up to it, and a railing round the verandah. The roof and walls were of wood, covered first with skins, and then with plaster; the lower part only of the wall being faced with bricks. There was an antechamber, and a hot room, and a pool to bathe in. Seats were arranged round a fireplace in the middle of the hot room; and to induce perspiration hot water was poured over the bathers, whose faces were covered with scented chunam (fine chalk). After the bath there was shampooing, and then a plunge into the pool. It is very curious to find at this very early date in the Ganges Valley a sort of bathing so closely resembling our modern so-called "Turkish Baths." Did the Turks derive this custom from India?

In another of our oldest documents, the Digha Nikaya, there is a description of another, sort of bath, an open-air bathing tank, with flights of steps leading down to it,' faced entirely of stone, and ornamented both with flowers and carvings. These bathing places must have been beautiful objects in the See the translation in my Buddhist Suttas, pp. 262, foll.

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75

FIG. 10.-THE THOUSAND PILLARS. RUINS OF THE FOUNDATION OF THE SEVEN-STORIED,
GREAT BRAZEN PALACE AT ANURADHAPURA.

[From Cave's Ruined Cities of Ceylon.]

private grounds of the rich. Several very ancient ones are still to be seen at Anurādhapura in a fair state of preservation in spite of the more than two thousand years that have elapsed since they were first constructed.

In the illustration of the first of these two bathing ponds, the platform, which appears as if built out into the pond, was, no doubt, the basement of a dressing pavilion supported on wooden pillars. It will be observed that it was cooled, in its turn, by a special little pond constructed to fill up one side of the platform. In the other illustration the pediments to support a canopy or awning over the steps leading down into the bath are still perceptible. (Fig. 7.)

One other detail of these ancient buildings, especially noticed by Buddhaghosa in his enumeration of the parts of a palace in olden times,' is the curious. scroll work or string course in common use as exterior decoration. The details differ; so also do the materials used; they are usually wood or plaster, but occasionally stone, as in the annexed examples from the Bharhut Tope. (Figs. 8, 11, 12.)

But the great houses must have been few in number. There was probably a tangle of narrow and evil-smelling streets of one-storied wattle and daub huts with thatched roofs, the meagre dwelling-places of the poor. And we must imagine long lines of bazaars, the shops (without windows, of course, and indeed with very little wall on that side) open to the streets, and mostly devoted, in the same street, to the sale of wares of a similar kind.

1 Attha Sālinī, p. 107.

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