History of Indian and Eastern Architecture v2.c31.s8.18

v2.c31.s8.18

Of course no native of India can well understand either the origin or motive of the various parts of our Orders—why the entablature should be divided in architrave, frieze, and cornice—why the shafts should be a certain number of diameters in height, and so on. It is, in fact, like a man trying to copy an inscription in a language he does not understand, and of which he does not even know the alphabet. With the most correct eye and the greatest pains he cannot do it accurately. In India, besides this ignorance of the grammar of the art, the natives cannot help feeling that the projection of the cornices is too small if meant to produce a shadow, and too deep to be of easy construction in plaster in a climate subject to monsoons. They feel that brick pillars ought to be thicker than the Italian Orders generally are, and that wooden architraves are the worst possible mode of construction in a climate where wood decays so rapidly, even if spared by the white ants. The consequence is, that, between his ignorance of the principles of Classic Art on the one hand, and his knowledge of what is suited to his wants and his climate on the other, he makes a sad jumble of the Orders. But fashion supplies the Indian with those incentives to copying which we derive from association and education; and, in the vain attempt to imitate his superiors, he has abandoned his own beautiful art to produce the strange jumble of vulgarity and bad taste we find at Lucknow and elsewhere.