nother form of worship
associated with temples and the veneration of images. This must have
become the dominant form of Hindu cultus in the first few centuries of
our era and probably earlier. It is one of the ironies of fate that
the Buddha and his followers should be responsible for the growth of
image worship, but it seems to be true. He laughed at sacrifices and
left to his disciples only two forms of religious exercise, sermons
and meditation. For Indian monks, this was perhaps sufficient, but the
laity craved for some outward form of worship. This was soon found in
the respect shown to the memory of the Buddha and the relics of his
body, although Hinduism never took kindly to relic worship. We hear
too of Cetiyas. In the Pitakas this word means a popular shrine
unconnected with either Buddhist or Brahmanic ceremonial, sometimes
perhaps merely a sacred tree or stone, probably honoured by such
simple rites as decorating it with paint or flowers. A little later,
in Buddhist times, the Cetiya became a cenotaph or reliquary,
generally located near a monastery and surrounded by a passage for
reverential circumambulation.

Allusions in the Pitakas also indicate that then as now there were
fairs. The early Buddhists thought that though such gatherings were
not edifying they might be made so. They erected sacred buildings near
a monastery, and held festivals so that people might collect together,
visit a holy place, and hear sermons. In the earliest known
sanctuaries, the funeral monument (for we can scarcely doubt that this
is the origin of the stupa)[409] has already assumed the conventional
form known as Dagoba, consisting of a dome and chest of relics, with a
spire at the top, the whole surrounded by railings or a colonnade, but
though the carving is lavish, no figure of the Buddha himself is to be
seen. He is represented by a symbol such as a footprint, wheel, or
tree. But in the later school of sculpture known as Gandhara or
Graeco-Buddhist he is frequently shown in a full length portrait. This
difference is remarkable. It is easy to say that in the older school
the Buddha was not depicted out of reverence, but less easy to see why
such delineation should have shocked an Indian. But at any rate there
is no difficulty in understanding that Greeks or artists influenced by
Greeks would think it obvious and proper to make an effigy of their
principal hero.

In these shrines we have if not the origin of the Hindu temple