Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c16.47

c16.47

The difficulty of bridging over spaces in brick buildings has been already referred to, as well as the fact that it was the Indian builder's practice to meet this difficulty by inserting lintels of wood or stone. Another method employed to span a void was by means of oversailing the courses of brick until they met, a serviceable but not particularly scientific form of arch found even as early as in the Indus civilization of 3000 B.C., (Plate XL, Fig 1). The next logical step of a people committed to brick construction would have been, in ordinary circumstances, some method of placing these brick units in juxtaposition, so that they would act as supports to one another, either on the principle of the true arch, or even in the form of the arch itself. This step, however, was never taken, the accepted explanation being that the Indian builder, from the first, mistrusted the stability of such a structural expedient, because, in his own words "the arch never sleeps." That he consistently adhered to this inhibition is proved by the fact that, with one or two relatively unimportant exceptions, the true arch is never found in any indigenous building in India, not appearing in the country until introduced by the invading Muhammadans in the thirteenth century. The few occasions in which the Indian builder experimented the arch, occur in the brick structures just described as for instance the temple of Bhitagaon, the stupa of Mirpur Khas, and the shrine of Budh Gaya. (Plate XL). At Bhitagaon there is a round arch in the porch composed of bricks in the form of radiating voussoirs, but placed edge to edge while the vault of the passage into the sanctum is a variation of the same system. In the three interior shrines at the entrance to the Mirpur Khas stupa, the vault of the central cella was corbelled, but those on each side were arched by means of a series of brick rings, the top and bottom edges of the bricks being curved to the contours of the vault, while the other edges radiate towards a centre.