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.s25.266

v6.c41.s25.266

The next source of information for the antiquity of Indian or Hindu architecture is entirely literary and is confined to the casual and scanty references found in the Vedic literature regarding the villages, towns, forts, and cities, hundred enclosures or fortifications figuratively expressed as the means for protection afforded by the gods, as well as stone-houses, carved stones, and brick edifices, and several articles of furniture.¹ In the *Ṛig-veda*, as quoted in Chapter II, mention is made of a sovereign ‘who sits down in his substantial and elegant hall built with a thousand pillars,’ and of residential houses with such pillars and said to be ‘vast, comprehensive and thousand-doored.’ Mitra and Varuṇa are represented² as occupying a ‘great palace with a thousand pillars and ‘a thousand gates.’ Again Atri is stated³ to have been ‘thrown into a machine room with a hundred doors, where he was roasted,’ and Vasiṣṭha desired⁴ to have a three-storeyed building.