Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c14.19

c14.19

Although monasteries were the most representative buildings of the Gandharan style, the excavations at the ancient and historical city of Taxila, near Rawalpindi, have thrown considerable light on various other forms of architecture of this period. One structure at Jandial (Taxila), presumed to date as early as the second century B.C., provides an excellent illustration of the penetration of the Greek building art into such a distant field. It takes the form of a distyle-in-antis type of Hellenic temple, adapted to suit the conditions of some local belief, probably Zoroastrian. Not a large edifice—no Greek temple is remarkable for its size—its entire length over all being only 158 feet, and its width 80 feet, it was surrounded by a peristyle, and its interior included a vestibule, a *pronaos* or porch, a *naos* or sanctuary, and, at the rear, an *opisthodomos*, or back porch. Where it differed from its prototype was that between the back porch and the sanctuary there was a solid mass of masonry with deep foundations, this part evidently being intended to carry a heavy superstructure or tower, probably 40 feet in height. But what is most significant is that the sandstone capitals of the portico were not of the Corinthian but of the Ionic order, and also the shafts were not monolithic, as is usual in Indian architecture, but built up in the Greek manner by means of separate drums fixed with dowels, while the rest of the structure is of plastered limestone and *kanjur*. In the design and execution of the frontal portion of the Jandial temple there is fairly clear proof that only Greek masons in close touch with the Attic school could have produced stone-work of this character (Plate XXXIV).