Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c16.25

c16.25

That great height was a feature of the architecture of these sanctuaries is proved by the frequent remarks of some of the Chinese pilgrims who saw them in their prime. Fa-Hien¹ at the beginning of the fifth century and Hiuen Tsiang² in the seventh, were both much impressed by their tall proportions, one referring to "a great vihara some two hundred feet high", and the other to a shrine containing "a copper image more than eighty feet high in a six storied building";³ moved to ecstasy the latter writes that at Nalanda "the soaring domes reached to the clouds, and the pinnacles of the temples seemed to be lost in the mists of the morning". Through the charmed eyes of these adventurous monks we may envisage the glittering metal roofs, the glazed tiles of brilliant colours, the pillars of the pavilions richly chiselled in the form of dragons, the beams painted red or ornamented with jade, the rafters resplendent with all the colours of the rainbow and the balustrades of carved open work, all of which are set down in the picturesque accounts of their pilgrimages. Now, to adapt the words of Prospero, these vast conceptions are "like the baseless fabric of a vision, the cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, yea, all which it inherits is dissolved and, like the insubstantial pageant faded, leaving not a rack behind."