Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c14.22

c14.22

The method employed in the construction of the Gandhara buildings was of a rather commonplace order. They are of stone masonry, composed of a schist, which is readily available in these parts, and in the earlier structures the walls were built of ordinary rubble. An advance was made on this slightly primitive system about the first century A.D., when a form of masonry known as diaper-patterned rubble appears. It consisted of using larger irregular blocks of schist with their outer surfaces dressed before being laid in position, and the spaces between filled with stone snecks. Later, and in certain localities, an improvement on this method was effected, the larger blocks being more carefully prepared and dressed, while the stone snecks were replaced by courses of small bricks, fitted into the interstices with some precision and skill. The better type of masonry was that employed in the buildings raised during the reign of Kanishka, whose great "pagoda", of which the remains have been excavated near Peshawar, was of this kind. It is interesting to note that construction, of exactly the same order, is to be found in some of the larger houses of Rajputana and Central India built during the nineteenth century.