TOPE, a sepulchral, memorial monument, the st'hupa of the Buddhists ; mound-like buildings erected for the preservation of relics. Sucli mounds occur at Sanchi, Bharhut, Bhilsa, near Benares, Tirhut, Behar, in Afghanistan, Tibet, Nepal, and Western Asia ; also in various parts of S. India. On the demise of the Sakya Gautama Siddharta in B.C. January 643, his body was con sumed, and his bones, divided into eight portions, were distributed amongst applicants, who erected st'hupas or topes over them—at (1) Rajagriha, an ancient capital of Alagadha or Behar proper ; (2) Visali, at Bassalor, north of Patna ; (3) Kapila vastu, between Ayodhya and Gorakhpur ; (4) Alla kappo ; (5) at Ramagrama, in the neighbourhood of Gorakhpur, and most probably (Sri-Rampura) the Selampura of Ptolemy ; (6) Wetthadipo, most probably Bettiya ; (7) Pawa was to the west of Visali, on the high-road to Kusinara ; (8) Kusi nara, equidistant between Benares and Visali, or in the position of Kusia on the Little Ganda; and (9) another tope was erected at Pipphaliwano, or the place of the charcoal tope, between Kapila vastu and Kusinara. The topes of Kabul and Jalalabad were opened by Messrs. Honigberger and Masson in 1835, aud those between the Indus and the Jhelum by Generals Ventura aud Court in 1833 and 1834. The topes near Benares were opened by Major Cunningham in 1835, and those at Sanchi and other places around Bhilsa were also opened by him and Lieutenant Maisey in January and February of 1857. Of the largest of the Sanchi group near Bhilsa, a plan and sec tion of the building, with a short account of the various subjects represented in the sculptured bas-reliefs of the gateways, was published by Captain J. D. Cunningham in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. In the topes dedicated to the celestial Buddha, the invisible being who pervaded all space, no deposit was made, but the Divine Spirit, who is Light, was supposed to occupy the interior, and was typified on the out side by a pair of eyes, placed on each of the four sides, either of the base or of the crown of the edifice. Such is the great chaitya or tope near
Katmatidu, in Nepal, dedicated to Swayambhu nath, the Self-Existent, in which the eyes are placed on the upper portion of the building. A specimen of the regular chaitya is represented in the 3d compartment (inner face) of the left-hand pillar of the eastern gate at Sanchi, in which the two eyes are placed one above the other. Such also are the numerous ch'hod-ten in Tibet, which are dedicated to the celestial Buddha, in contra distinction to the dungten, which are built in honour of the mortal Buddhas, and which ought to contain some portion of their relics, either real or supposed. The first, ch'hod-ten, means simply an offering to the deity ; the latter, dungten, emphatically a bone or relic receptacle. The same distinction is preserved in the Sanskrit terms ellaitya and dhatugarba or dhagoba. The fortner is properly a religious edifice, dedicated to Adi Buddha, while tho latter is only a relic shrine or repository of ashes. The word chaitya, however, means any sacred object, as a tree, an altar, a temple, as well as any monutnent raised on tho site of a funeral pile, as a mound or a pillar. Chaitya may therefore perhaps be only a general term for both kinds of mound; while dhatugarba or dhagoba is particularly restricted to the relic shrine.
The word tope is the same as the Pali st'hupo, and the Sanskrit st'hupa, a mouud or tumulus, both of which terms are of constant use in the Bud dhist books. St'hupa or tope is therefore a name comtnon to each kind of tumulus, whether it be the solid temple dedicated to the Supreme Being, or the massive mound erected over the relics of Sakya or of one of his more eminent followers. Tuntufus, modo terra tumens, alias sepulchrum (Serv. ad Virg. En. ii. p. 713). In the Turkish word tepeh, which the Persians pronounce tappeh, signifying a hillock or small tumular mountain, we may fancy a resemblance to the Greek TUPO; (sepulchrum) or Tape (se.pultura), and it is applied (though not exactly in this sense) to some of the sepulchral heaps near Troy.