Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c16.33

c16.33

The last group of buildings in brick is to be found not in the region of the Ganges but represented by a number of ancient sites near the lower Indus in Sindh, Buddhism, and the form its monuments assumed, having no doubt been conveyed by means of that great water-way from the country of Gandhara to this western territory. For the Sindh buildings appear to be a rather later development, in brick, of the "Graeco-Buddhist" stone structures of the northern frontier, the change in constructional method being due to the difference in the building material available in an alluvial plain, and that of a mountainous country. Yet in some respects the Sindh brick architecture, notably in its technical and decorative aspects, shows a certain affinity to that of the Gangetic plain previously described, and was no doubt indirectly influenced by the forceful nature of that style The monuments so far investigated in Sindh are all stupas, and date from about the fifth or sixth centuries A.D. Around these stupas were grouped monasteries, and the usual assembly of buildings associated with sanctuaries of this kind, of which however only the barest traces remain. Indeed the stupas themselves are in every instance in a very ruinous condition, but from two examples out of their number enough has been preserved to enable their general appearance to be conjectured. Like the Gandhara type they were raised on high square terraces, the domical portion mounting up in series of superimposed tiers its walls decorated with an ornamental arcade of quasi-Corinthian pilasters, much in the manner of similar structures in the frontier tract of the Upper Swat. This treatment of the dome may be seen in the remains of the stupa at Thul Mir Rukan, a fine dignified monument, one of the least ruined of the group, where it is apparent that the series of diminishing stages were disposed in agreeable relation to one another, each stage being defined by a cornice and plinth with a prominent roll-moulding as the chief member.