History of Indian and Eastern Architecture v1.c10.8

v1.c10.8

This being the case, it would be in vain to look for any earlier architecture of any importance in India before Asoka's time: such could be expected only in countries where stone had been in use from the very earliest times. The Aryans, who were dominant before the rise of Buddhism, wrote books and expressed their ideas in words, like their congeners all the world over, but they do not seem successfully to have cultivated the æsthetic arts, or to have sought for immortality through the splendour or durability of their buildings. That was the aspiration of the Turanian and other races, and we owe it to this circumstance that we are enabled to write with any certainty the history of their rise and fall as evidenced in their architectural productions.