Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c10.28

c10.28

The efforts of the Asokan sculptors were not, however, directed entirely to the production of religious monuments, as these craftsmen were also employed in the preparation of some of the most important parts of the Mauryan emperor's palace. This appears to have been a very remarkable conception so much so that it had the legendary reputation of being not the work of man but having been magically raised by Yakshas or supernatural beings. As late as the visit of Fa-hien this traveller was so impressed that he states it was "made by spirits who piled up the stones, reared the walls and gates, and executed the elegant carving and inlaid sculpture work in a way which no human hands of this world could accomplish" Shortly after the pilgrim's visit, having been in existence for over six hundred years it seems to have been almost entirely destroyed by fire, so that the only material records of its design and character have been obtained by excavation, where in the silt of Kumrahar, a site to the south of the present city of Patna, its ashes have remained for fifteen hundred years From these investigations the palace appears to have been an aggregation of structures enclosed within a high brick wall, the most important of which was an immense pillared hall in three stories on a high stylobate and covering a square of two hundred and fifty feet side. The columns which supported the roof were probably in rows of fifteen with fifteen pillars in each row, set at distances of fifteen feet from each other, centre to centre, making a total of two hundred and twenty-five pillars in all. The ceiling of one of the stories may have been supported by colossal stone caryatid figures as traces of these have been discovered within the bays formed by the pillars. Little more than fragments remain of the stonework used in the palace but the polish on most of them indicates that a good deal of this was used in its construction, and for a variety of purposes It is fairly certain that all the pillars of the hypostyle hall were of stone as the numerous broken portions testify, while one example has been discovered almost complete, a highly polished cylindrical shaft tapering like a pine trunk some twenty inches in diameter at its base, and when entire about twenty feet in height without any signs of a base or capital. On this pillar was inscribed a mason's-mark similar in many respects to a symbol used in the rock-carving at Behistun in Persia. The wide intercolumniation of the pillars shows that they must have supported wooden beams and in fact much of the building appears to have consisted of wood, hence its destruction by fire