Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c8.s1.20

c8.s1.20

From a variety of sources it is possible to visualize the kind of building that the early settlers found suitable for their purpose. Considerable miscellaneous information is contained in the Vedas, those lyrical compositions which have been preserved through three millenniums, while ingenuous vignettes depicting the life of the times are carved in bas-relief on the stupa railings of Barhut and Sanchi. In addition there is the significant character of the subsequent architecture which reproduces in many of its aspects the type of structure from which it originated. Supplied with this material we see the people living in clearings cut out of the primeval forest, just as some of the small cultivators at the present time in India, notably in parts of Bengal, still carve their homesteads out of the bamboo jungle. But these early immigrants had to protect themselves and their property from the ravages of wild animals, and so they surrounded their little collection of huts (*groma*) with a special kind of fence or palisade. This fence took the form of a bamboo railing the upright posts (*thabha*) of which supported three horizontal bars called *suchi* or needles, as they were threaded through holes in the uprights. (Plate I, Figs. 1 and 4.) In the course of time this peculiar type of railing became the emblem of protection and universally used, not only to enclose the village, but as a paling around fields, and even-tually to preserve anything of a special or sacred nature. In the palisade encircling the village, entrances also of a particular kind were devised. These were formed by projecting a section of the bamboo fence at right angles and placing a gateway in advance of it after the fashion of a barbican, the actual gate resembling a primitive portcullis (*gamadvara*). (Plate I, Figs 1 and 2.) Through the *gamadvaras* the cattle passed to and from their pasturage, and in another form it still survives in the *gopuram* (cow-gate) or entrance pylon of the temple enclosures in the south of India. But, more important still, from the design of the bamboo gateways was derived that characteristic Buddhist archway known as the *torana* a structure which was carried with that religion to the Far East, where as the *torii* of Japan and the *piu-lu* of China it is even better known than in India, the land of its origin.