Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c43.17

c43.17

In India the important art of rock architecture which is one of the main features of the country's technique, had produced its finest achievement in the Kailasa at Ellora in the eighth century, much earlier than the Cambodian apogee, which at this time was only at the beginning of its classical development. Slightly previous also to the culminating century of the Khmers, were the two large temples of the Cholas in Southern India, at Tanjore and Gangaïkondacholapuram, both erected in the first quarter of the eleventh century. Much further west, in Asia Minor, contemporaneously with the Cambodian movement but inspired by very different ideals, the rulers of the Seljuks were raising Islamic palaces, fortresses and mosques of a specialized character of which the Qutub Minar at Delhi dated A.D. 1200 is a distant Indianized interpretation. Turning to Europe the eventful era of cathedral building was being initiated, with the Gothic style in England assuming the form known as Early English (12th-13th centuries). And here one cannot fail to be struck by the manner in which destiny affected the two movements, the Gothic and the Cambodian, as the subsequent history of both conclusively reveals. Whereas the Gothic cathedrals gradually evolved eventually to become outstanding records of the spiritual life and to exist as permanent possessions of mankind, while these majestic monuments were rising in their rich beauty in all the important cities of the West, the immense temples and proud cities of the Khmers, deserted and forsaken were crumbling to ruin under the devastating encroachment of the tropical forest. Where the Gothic movement signifies a great and momentous episode, not only in the history of architecture but in the building of character, the vast structural schemes of the Cambodians remains only to display the ruined and empty splendour of their prime