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The stupa, with all its primordial power, sits behind an ornate gateway, or torana, whose sculpted beams undulate, their playfulness culminating in whorled volutes, reminiscent of Ionic capitals.

At the tops of some of the memorial’s ionic columns, curlicues called volutes have been anchored with wire, because stone has fallen in years past, Tepper said.

A long pointer, emerging from the area of no light beside the screen, rests on the volutes and helices, indicating which is which.

Give the nautilus itself to a mathematician, and he will show you that one secret of its gracefulness lies in its following in its volute or whorl a particular geometrical curve with rigid precision.

Sometimes the term “volute” is given to the angle helix, which is incorrect, as it is of a different design and rises from the same stalk as the central helices.