Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c8.s1.19

c8.s1.19

The exploration of origins reveals the motive power which gives an art its initial impetus. And it is in the primitive culture of a people that these origins are to be found. Primitive art is the matrix of the higher, and is the source from which more advanced forms are derived. The Vedic culture of India provides the material for a study of the first efforts at building construction, when man's efforts were made in response to a need, and before any ideas of architectural effect were conceived This culture, which produced the elementary type of forest dwelling referred to above, appeared probably towards the end of the second millennium B.C. ; it was the outcome of the great Indo-Aryan migration from the north-west, and which in the course of time laid the foundations of the Vedic Age. That those responsible for this culture were unrelated to the people of the Indus civilization seems fairly clear, as there was a wide difference in the conditions under which each of these populations existed, in their mode of life, and notably in the type of building produced by this method of living. On the one hand the inhabitants of the Indus region, as already shown, were mainly traders and town-dwellers, while on the other hand the Vedic people were of the country, wresting their living from the fields and forests. As far as is known the latter were originally nomads, an offshoot of an immense and obscure migration, who, on settling down in the plains of India, became partly pastoral and partly agricultural, having as their habitations rudimentary structures of reeds and bamboo thatched with leaves It was not therefore from the fine houses forming the towns of the Indus civilization, but from such temporary erections as these, and the various simple expedients devised to meet the needs of the forest dwellers that Indian architecture had its beginnings. Its foundations were in the soil itself and from these aboriginal conditions it took its development.