Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c21.21

c21.21

The exterior treatment of this building is of much the same nature, but more readily explained. Over the outer walls is a heavy cornice above which is a parapet of ornamental shrines, while below is a substantial basement formed of bold string-courses carried round the structure, like powerful bands binding the whole composition together. It is however in the broad space between these upper and lower members, in a word, the "filling," of the outside wall surface that the most instructive architectonic sculpture has been applied. This consists of a repetition of a feature derived from a particular type of shrine, originally in three dimensions, but now translated for decorative purposes into a bas-relief. Each niche is composed of two pillars, a cornice, and a traceried canopy, the last being essentially of Indo-Aryan extraction. Although all these details, especially the mural shrine motif, are pleasing features in themselves, their disposition on the building shows no special knowledge of architectural design; the fact that the decorative shrines are regimentated over thirty times round the building, is evidence of a poverty of ideas and an ignorance of spacing and correct distribution which can only be attributed to inexperience. How these inconsistencies were corrected will be explained in the next example (Plate LIII, Fig. 1).