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.c41.s24.8

v6.c41.s24.8

Thus the Buddhist monuments of India supplied the inspiration, but in Japan, as in China, although the composition was of the Indian type, the style was entirely different. So far as the civil architecture is concerned, the Japanese palaces were originally simple and unostentatious buildings. Since the sixteenth century, when the country came under military domination, palaces have been built within fortified enclosures surrounded by moats. ‘The walls, 20 to 25 feet high, are built with a concave batter, the masonry of the quoins dipping down in order apparently to run less risk of being overthrown by earthquakes (as, in the event of an upheaval, the stones would fall back by their own weight into their original position).’² Like temples, palaces are all of one storey only. The floor is raised from 4 to 8 feet above the ground. In their design they belong to the Ting type of China, with Irimoya gables like those in the temples. ‘In plan they consist of a number of blocks put in communication, one with the other, by covered corridors, not arranged symmetrically like those in the Forbidden City of Pekin, but disposed so as to overlook gardens and small lakes. The principal difference externally, when compared with the temples, lies in the less height and much flatter pitch given to the roof, so much so that they are not concave in section, the roofs having generally one uniform slope. Although externally the blocks have the appearance of constituting a single hall, they are usually subdivided by sliding screens into several rooms. Thus the residential block of the Imperial Palace at Kioto, measuring about 100 feet by 60 feet, is divided by partitions into fourteen rooms, the centre one of which, lighted only through the outer rooms, constituted the Mikado’s sleeping apartment. The three rooms on one