Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c9.11

c9.11

Such was the structural system employed in the framework of these timber buildings, but how this was filled in and finished is purely conjectural. In all probability a filling of plaster (*chunam*) was added and painted white as there are frequent allusions in the ancient Pali texts to great edifices "gleaming white like a cloud", an effect evidently considered the height of achievement. As to the decorative treatment of this wooden architecture, the facades of both the vaulted hall and its attached monastery show that the early carpenter was able to manipulate his material so as to produce the most artistic results, although each effort at embelishment had its practical use. The great arched window admitted light into the vaulted hall through its tracery, while the balcony in front was a minstrels' gallery; the projecting casements on each side were priests' chambers, and below on the left was a room for the sacristan Similar decorative but purposeful structures from the frontage of the adjoining building, covered balconies being prominent features as they are in the architecture of the country at the present time. Some of these features are amplified in Plate IV, as for example the system of lighting the smaller rooms by means of bamboo lattices, and in certain instances the entire balcony was a mesh of plaited bamboo strips held together on a framework of wood. This device was the precursor by many centuries of the *pinjra* or "cage-work" so common in the later buildings of Upper India as well as the *meshrebiya* of Egypt and other Islamic countries These and many other technical and artistic expedients of this early phase of timber construction may be seen literally petrified and thus imperishably preserved in the later rock architecture of the Buddhist period.