Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c20.14

c20.14

Although emphasis has been laid on these distinctions in style, underlying the temple architecture of the country as a whole were certain fundamental principles which guided and controlled the art of building in all its phases. There is noticeable throughout the entire movement a standardization of procedure, artistic and structural, implying that the master masons were working not only with one general understanding, but also by means of some comprehensive and well-established technical code. This shows itself unmistakably in the uniformity of the style even where the buildings are situated widely apart, or in the most remote localities. For instance there is much the same character in a temple of Gujarat on the extreme west, as in another at Bhubaneswar on the eastern seaboard, or again in the valleys of the Himalayan foot-hills. Even more remarkable, however, is that a similar stylistic content reveals itself in the distant Indo-Buddhist monuments of Java and Cambodia, postulating that the Indonesian builders were motivated by the same system of aesthetic ideals. In all these structures there may be divergence in the less material forms, but in their broad aspect they express the same thought although in a different idiom.