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.s25.286

v6.c41.s25.286

It is this incongruity that has disfigured the residential buildings in the Lake area in Calcutta, decorated with ornaments and sculptures borrowed from Ajanta and Ellora caves. It is objectionable on this ground, more than anything else, to build residential houses with the figure of Gaṇeśa on the gateway or an elephant on the landing, a hospital building with a hawk on the front parapet or a school building with a monkey on the top, intending them to pass as productions of Hindu architecture in order to gratify the heart's craving of the enthusiastic builders for an Indian style. Self-deception is preferable to deliberate cheating, even if the latter is practised owing to ignorance. Some builders are natural architects, and they prefer their own design based entirely on the inspiration of an uneducated mind. Engineers and architects are not to blame for such architecture, which is very common in India. There can be no objection if a layman builder, though untrained, having studied or seen the objects of architecture in different countries, makes a choice or combination of styles in his own building in a place where there is no municipal board to sanction the plan. But it will be unfortunate if some innocent business magnate of Calcutta or Bombay finds, on completion of his house, that he was misled to believe by his advisers that his proposed residence will prove to be a fine piece of original architecture, though it may not follow any one method or principle and though it may consist of a porch from one country, a dome from another, office room and library from a third one, kitchen and dining-room from another country, and gardens and outhouses from a fifth place. Still more objectionable, even on moral grounds, would it be to cheat an enthusiastic builder that the Hindu style is nothing more or less than the monkey brand; or to give a misdirection to a profoundly nationalistic municipal corporation that the cause of the national architecture could be advanced only by discarding all that may look like English in the city plan, in laying out roads, and in sanctioning permission to independent private builders within their jurisdiction.