Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c14.9

c14.9

The architectural style employed in the monasteries, and their plastic and painted embellishment, as will have been gathered, was of a special character. While the intention of the buildings, as well as their surface treatment, was fundamentally Indian, for the religion they served was essentially the result of Indian thought, on the other hand there was much in their structure and mode that was appropriated from the art of the Greeks. In their design there are numerous motifs of purely Hellenic origin, as for instance the Corinthian capital, pediments, entablatures, medallions and mouldings, of a debased classical order, built into stupas, shrines, temples and other religious edifices of an entirely Buddhistic foundation To these Hellenistic adoptions were also added ornamental elements of Parthian extraction, such as the fire-altar, the addorsed animal capital and other forms identified with the art of that empire.