Manasara Series (I. A Dictionary of Hindu Architecture; II. Indian Architecture according to Manasara-Shilpashastra; III. Manasara on Architecture and Sculpture: Sanskrit Text; IV. Architecture of Manasara: Translation; V. Architecture of Manasara: Illustrations; VI. Hindu Architecture in India and Abroad; VII. An Encyclopaedia of Hindu Architecture) v6.c40.s7.44

v6.c40.s7.44

Atri is stated to have been 'thrown into a machine room with a hundred doors, where he was roasted.'¹ Vasishṭha desired to have 'a three-storeyed dwelling' (*tri-dhātu-śaraṇam*).² Mention is made of a sovereign 'who, exercising no oppression, sits down in this substantial and elegant hall built with a thousand pillars,'³ and of residential houses with such pillars and said to be 'vast, comprehensive, and thousand-doored.'⁴ Mitra and Varuṇa are represented as occupying a great palace with a thousand pillars and a thousand gates.⁵ Muir's comment that 'this is but an exaggerated description of a royal residence such as the poet had seen,'⁶ is no longer tenable. If the Indians of an earlier age could built cities, towns, and villages with splendid buildings like those of Mohenjo-daro, there can be no reason to believe that they merely *exaggerated*, even in a poetic description, what they had actually seen and probably practised. But it is true that these Vedic gods did not occupy such palaces as referred to in the hymns, although such palaces might have existed at that time.