Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c8.s1.21

c8.s1.21

The huts within the village enclosure were of various shapes but it is fairly certain that at first those of a circular plan predominated. Students of constructional origins have remarked on primitive man's natural tendency towards rounded forms, and give as instances pots and baskets. Incidentally, as shown in the bas-reliefs, the earliest Indian seat resembled a round inverted basket. In the case of the building art the foundations of the old city of Rajgriha in Bihar which probably flourished about 800 B.C indicate that circular buildings were then common, and even at the present day village store-houses in parts of India are often round structures of bamboo. In the Vedic village huts were of the beehive pattern made of a circular wall of bamboos held together with bands of withes and covered either with a domical roof of leaves or thatched with grass. A remarkable illustration of this may be seen in the interior of the rock-cut Sudama cell in the Barabar hill group, where every detail of the timber construction is copied in the living rock. (Plate IX, Fig. 2) At a later date in the evolution of the Vedic hut the circular plan was elongated into an oval with a barrel roof formed on a frame of bent bamboos also covered with thatch Soon some of these huts were arranged in threes and fours around a square courtyard and the roofs covered with planks of wood or tiles. In the better class houses unbaked bricks were used for the walls, and the doorways were square-headed openings with double doors. One device to maintain the barrel shape of the roof was to stretch a thong or withe across the end of the arch like the cord of a bow, in a word an embryo tie-rod. (Plate I, Fig. 3.) This contrivance constricted the chord of the arch and produced a shape resembling a horseshoe, a type of archway commonly referred to as the *chaitya* or "sun-window," which became characteristic of the subsequent architecture of the Buddhists. It will be seen therefore, that a very ancient usage underlies many of these village forms, which is significant in view of the ensuing structural developments. Such primitive shapes and expedients as the railing and the gateway, the rounded hut with the heavy cave of the thatch, the barrel-roof with its framework of bent bamboos, all in a greater or lesser degree influenced the style which followed. As to the decorative character of these forest dwellings there is little doubt that this was obtained by means of colour applied on the mud walls. Huts in the remoter villages of India, notably in Orissa, are still almost invariably whitewashed and patterns of archaic designs in red pigment (*haematite*) painted on this white ground The symbolism in such patterns suggests a very early origin which may go back to Vedic times.