Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c9.9

c9.9

Thus high appraisement of the Mauryan artizan's skill as a worker in wood is confirmed by other evidence of a unique character. Owing to the Indian craftsman's traditional genius for imitation every detail of this early form of timber construction has been most faithfully reproduced in the numerous and very complete examples of rock architecture which followed, so that although the wooden originals have perished their exact facsimiles remain preserved in the living rock. In no other country has the carpenters and joiners craft as practised over two thousand years ago been so fully and accurately recorded. With the material thus provided it is quite possible to extract in theory this timber-work from the rock-cut halls of the Buddhists and conjecturally reconstruct it in its original form. The drawing on Plate III illustrates this procedure as it represents a transcription in wood of an excavated example at Kondane of the first century B C., now buried in the forest of the Western Ghats. This early Buddhist production cut out of the cliff face consisted of a *chaitya* hall or temple and its attached monasteries, so that two characteristic types of structure are depicted, one arched over by means of a barrel-vault roof and the other having a flat roof.