History of Indian and Eastern Architecture v2.c25.7

v2.c25.7

If it were allowable to adopt the loose phraseology of philological ethnography, the term Aryan might be employed, as it is the name by which the people practising this style are usually known in India, and it would be particularly convenient here, as it is the correct and direct antithesis of Dravidian. It is evident, however, that any such term, if applied to architecture, ought to be descriptive of some style practised by that people, wherever they settled, all across Europe and Asia, between the shores of the Atlantic and the Bay of Bengal;¹ and it need hardly be said that no such style exists. If used in conjunction with the adjective Indian or Indo-Aryan, it becomes much less objectionable, and has the advantage of limiting its use to the people who are generally known as Aryans in India—in other words, to all those parts of the country where Sanskrit was spoken, or where the people now speak tongues so far derived from Sanskrit as to be distinguishable as offsets of that great family of languages. Its use, in this respect, has the great convenience that any ordinary ethnographical or linguistic map of India is sufficient to describe the boundaries of the style. It extends, like the so-called Aryan tongues, from the Himâlayas to the south of the Vindhya mountains. On the east, it is found prevalent in Orissa; and on the west in Mahârâshtra. Its southern boundary between these two provinces will only be known when the Nizam's territory is architecturally surveyed.