The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation c12: Chapter VI

The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation c12

Language: English

Chapter VI

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THE *CHAITYA-GRIHA*, OR BUDDHIST CHAPTER-HOUSE — THE *RAISON D'ÊTRE* OF ROCK-CUT TEMPLES AND MONASTERIES — THE KÂRLÊ ROCK-CUT CHAITYA-HOUSE — THE BIRTH OF GOTHIC ART IN EUROPE

Of all the buildings of the Mauryan epoch that which is most distinctly Buddhist is the *Chaitya-griha*, or House of the Chaitya, which was the assembly-hall or chapter-house of the Order.¹ The religious observances enjoined upon members of the Order are distinguished from those of the Jains and of orthodox Brahmans by being congregational instead of individualistic, and thus Buddhist builders had to provide shelter for a much larger number of worshippers than would ordinarily gather together at Jain or Brahman shrines, except when the latter attracted large crowds of pilgrims. Though the religious tenets of the Jains and Buddhists had much in common, the social organisation of Buddhism differed from that of the former in recognising a distinction between laymen who merely accepted the teaching of the Master and members of the Sangha who devoted themselves entirely to a religious life. The necessity of providing accommodation for both classes, meeting together at stated times, in Buddhist places of worship, dictated the structural arrangements of the chaitya-griha. The Jains in their temple-building usually followed the structural tradition of the Brahmanical sects.

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¹ Fergusson, rather loosely, uses the word *chaitya*, which was the symbol or altar worshipped there, for the house itself. There was probably some technical distinction between a chaitya and a stûpa, but etymologically the two words have the same meaning—*i.e.* a tumulus, or heap.

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The chapter-house was not a building taken over more or less complete, as were both the Christian church and the Muhammadan mosque, from an alien faith, nor was it "designed" in the modern architectural sense to meet the needs of Buddhist ritual. The elements of its structure grew together by a natural creative process. The chaitya itself, often enclosed in a simple circular shrine covered by a dome, as in Pl. IX, A, was both the object of adoration and the pivot of the design. The little Buddhist congregation of a Bengali village, when they met at the holy spot to listen to the dialogues of the Master and to walk round the chaitya-shrine, "turning the wheel of the Law," according to the ancient Vedic rite, needed some shelter. So they put over the shrine a simple bambu pavilion with a mat roof, like the covering of a Bengali boat-cabin (*chhai*) (Pl. II, fig. E), or bullock-cart; or sometimes a more substantial building of clay or brick, roofed like one of their own cottages. The plan of such a building (fig. 27) was that of a long room, generally semicircular or apsidal at the end occupied by the chaitya, with entrances at the opposite one. This allowed space for the congregation to sit in front of the chaitya shrine when listening to recitations of the word of the Law, and to walk in procession round it.

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FIG. 27.—Plan of a Village Chaitya-house.

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At Têr, the ancient Tagara, in the Waldrug district of Hyderabad, there is a building of a similar type, one of the oldest structural chaitya-houses now existing, which was discovered by Mr. H. Cousens in 1901. It is built of brick and plaster, with a roof exactly like that of the village huts sculptured at Bharhut (Pl. I). The entrance faces east: a single window over the doorway was intended to throw a strong concentrated light upon the chaitya at the farther end. The hall, or *mandapam*, shown in front of the chapter-house in the illustration (fig. 28), was most probably intended for the lay members who attended the service, or it may have been used as the assembly hall of the village.

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VISHNU PILLAR AT AIHOLE

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FIG. 28.—Ancient Buddhist Chaitya-house at Têr (from Fergusson's "History").

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Generally, we may assume, the lay members listened and circumambulated outside the chaitya-pavilion, or hall; but in the more important chapter-houses the devotions of the lay members were provided for by verandahs on the long sides of the hall. Plate IX, c, shows one of this type, in which, however, there is no stûpa-like altar, but a simple table or throne covered by an umbrella. The verandahs are covered by lean-to roofs or chhajas, which support balconies, intended for a music-gallery, with the usual wooden rail surrounding them.

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The finest of the very few structural chaitya-grihas yet discovered is one which Fergusson and his followers, to the confusion of their readers, put into his Dravidian compartment, though he points out its resemblance in plan to the ancient Buddhist chaitya-hall at Sânchî. This is a stone building, probably of the sixth or seventh century A.D., situated at Aihole in the Bijâpûr district of the Bombay Presidency. Although so many centuries later than the buildings of the Mauryan epoch, it may be taken parenthetically out of its chronological sequence to explain the arrangement of the great rock-cut chaitya-halls which are to be described next.

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It is somewhat remarkable that this temple belonged apparently to the Jain sect: it was an exception to the rule that the Jains in their temple-building kept to the orthodox Brahmanical types, as their individualistic ritual demanded. Possibly, however, their ancient ritual differed from modern practice, and resembled that of the Buddhists more closely than it does now. But, in any case, in this temple a hall of the Sangha is provided, as if for an order of devotees distinct from the lay community.¹ The plan drawn by Dr. Burgess (fig. 29) shows the chaitya-cell placed in a pillared hall, with a pradakshinâ procession-path round the shrine for those who had admittance to the chapter-house. Outside is another one for lay worshippers, in a verandah—the roof of which is supported by stone piers—surrounding the whole building. As shown in the illustration of it (Pl. XIV), the latter, including the verandah, is raised upon a high plinth, and the entrance to the hall is through a porch the roof of which is supported by a massive Vishnu pillar (Pl. XV). The roof over the chaitya shrine has fallen, and the loose

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SCULPTURES AT AIHOLE

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plate, which shows the condition in which they were discovered, have since probably been destroyed; for the photographs taken by Dr. Burgess in 1874, and published in his Report of the Archæological Survey of Western India for that year, show them already in a shockingly mutilated state. Such is the treatment of great works of art which archæological historians contemptuously dismiss as "Puranic."

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Before proceeding to describe the great rock-cut chaitya-halls, some splendid examples of which belong to the first three centuries before the Christian era, a few preliminary observations regarding the practice which obtained in India, more than in any other country in the world, of excavating places in the living rock adapted both for religious and secular uses seem to be necessary. A cave temple or monastery suggests to the Western mind something essentially ascetic and barbaric, as our word "grotesque" implies. In India it represents a refinement of luxury for the users, an exceptional trial of skill for the craftsmen, and a special act of devotion and consecration on the part of the individual or the community for whom the work is performed. The reason why cave-dwellings remained in use in India long after the art of building had reached a high degree of perfection was partly climatic and partly geological; it was partly also due to the intuitive instinct that close to the bosom of Mother Earth, wherever the *genius loci* invited to prayer and meditation, was the best place for her children in adoring their Creator.

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In India, instead of building, as in temperate climates, so as to admit sunlight right into the interior of houses, man instinctively tries his utmost to diminish the glare and heat. A dwelling carved out of the living rock, when it is designed with due regard to lighting and ventilation, is not only an ideal retreat for the student and religious recluse, but it affords better protection from the torrential rains of the monsoon and from the exhausting heat of the dry season than any building which the utmost skill of the carpenter, bricklayer, and stonemason could construct. It was not, therefore, the ascetic side of Indian religion which finds expression in the wonderful cave temples and monasteries, but rather the same spirit of *bhakti*, or the feeling that God demanded the best man could offer Him, both in a spiritual and material sense, which ever moves the mind of India.

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The earliest rock-cut meeting-houses of the Buddhist order belonging to Asoka's time are generally small and, like the stûpas, of the plainest description, though some of them exhibit a high proficiency in technique. In the beginning the ritual of Buddhism was of the severest Puritan form, and did not countenance any elaboration either of structure or of symbolism, though all the

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ENTRANCE TO THE KÂRLÊ CHAITYA-HOUSE

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north of India was being transformed into the school of the Mahâyâna, or Greater Vehicle.

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The magnificent chaitya-house at Kârlê, carved in the rocks of the Western Ghats between Bombay and Poona, though not the most ancient, is typical of the best architectural work of the Hînayâna School in India. Fergusson dated it tentatively about the first century B.C. The main work of excavation may, however, have been begun even as early as Asoka's

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FIG. 30.—Interior of Hînayâna Chaitya-house at Ajantâ.

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time; but some of the figure sculpture which belongs to the Mahâyâna School must have been added several centuries later. The description given above of the structural chaitya-houses will make it easy to understand the planning of it (fig. 31). In front of the entrance were the traditional pair of Vishnu standards (*dhwaja-stambhas*), usually placed in front of stûpas of great sanctity or the temples of Buddhism, Jainism, and Brahmanism. Only the left one, a sixteen-sided pillar (Pl. XVII), is now standing, the place of the other one being covered by a later Dûrgâ shrine. It is interesting to notice that the symbolical tradition is still maintained in this comparatively modern Hindu building, for, as the Silpa-sâstras record,¹ the sixteensided pillar is technically known as *Rudra-kantha*—*i.e.* it is consecrated to Siva in Brahman hagiology, or *Dharma* in the equivalent Buddhist meaning; Dûrgâ being the *sakti* or female energy of Siva in his tâmasic aspect as Rudra. The modern shrine is therefore the correct symbol for the right-hand pillar,

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¹ See above, p. 58.

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FIG. 31.—Plan of Kârlê Chaitya-house (from Fergusson's “Cave Temples”).

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which has fallen. The Hindu mali uses the same symbolism when he plants a pair of trees, as male and female, beside the well of his orchard or garden, and celebrates their wedding with sacred rites.

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The capital of this Vishnu standard is not, as Fergusson supposed, a Persepolitan idea imported into India by the craftsmen of Asoka’s court, but the traditional *Indian* rendering of ancient Vedic symbolism. It is the *amalaka*, the fruit of Vishnu’s blue water-lily, and of the pure white flower of Siva, placed within the four legs of a Vedic altar of sacrifice; one part of the sixteen-petalled flower is turned down upon the shaft, as in the pillars of the Bharhut sculptures (fig. 21), and the other grows upwards to support the altar on which the four lion-guardians of the doors of the sky are placed. The entrance to the chaitya-house was through a porch with three entrances, over which was the *naubat-khâna*, or music-gallery, similar to that shown in the Bharhut relief (Pl. IX, c). This is now in a very ruinous condition,¹ and only the mortice-holes of wooden attachments to it now remain.

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¹ I do not know whether, like many ancient monuments, this has been lately restored by the Archæological Survey of India.

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LONGITUDINAL SECTION, KÂRLÊ CHAITYA-HOUSE

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FAÇADE OF THE KÂRLÊ CHAITYA-HOUSE

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The façade of the entrance, which was screened from outside view by this porch and gallery, is illustrated in Pl. XVIII. The central doorway, opening into the nave, or hall of the Sangha, was the entrance for members of the order; the left entrance was for the laymen, so that they might circumambulate the chaitya and pass out by the exit on the right-hand side without disturbing the congregation.

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This combination of three doorways in all the chaityahouses and in other sacred edifices where the bodhi tree was the object of adoration, was a purely practical arrangement for the convenience of worshippers.

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Plate IX, D, shows the Asokan prototype of the twelvepillared mandapam (*baradari*), used as a shrine for the sacred tree. The three doorways in each side of it could have been used in the same way, the inner circuit being reserved for the elect of the order and the outer one for laymen. Some Buddhist stûpas are provided with a double rail round the pradakshinâ path for the same purpose. In Brahmanical shrines, also, the impure low castes could thus be separated from the twice-born. The ritualistic significance which attached itself to this combination of doorways was, no doubt, the reason why it persisted with a symbolical meaning only, when the original practical purpose had ceased to exist, as it does in modern Bengali temples.

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The great lotus-leaf arch, or sun-window, over the main entrance served to light up the chaitya with the most impressive effect; but, like other constituents of the structural design of the chaitya-house, it was not merely placed there with the self-conscious motive of formal academic composition, which modern authorities declare to be the whole art of architecture; the light had to be focussed upon the chaitya, for the latter was the sacred object upon which the devoted labour of the craftsmen was concentrated. Incidentally the window which illuminated the altar was used to provide the best possible ventilation for the whole chaitya-house. The ends of the purlins which would have supported the wooden or bambu rafters of an Asokan house or cottage (Pl. I, B) roofed in this way, but here piously carved for decorative effect only, appear on the inner edge of the arched window; the outer edge is the pîpal leaf, as before explained. Part of the opening is filled with a frame-work of wood, resembling the torans of a village gateway. A framed lattice of this kind is almost invariably shown in the sculptured sun-windows used as symbolic decoration, except when they serve as shrines for deities. The whole façade above the entrances is decorated with these symbols, combined with the Vedic sacrificial rail. Most, if not all, of the figure sculpture was added in the later Buddhist or Mahâyâna period.

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The extreme dimensions of the interior are about 124 feet by 43½ feet. The great nave, or hall of the Sangha, is shown in Pl. XIX. It is 25½ feet wide, and separated from the pradakshinâ path of the laymen by fifteen sculptured pillars on either side, with capitals similar to the two which flank the main entrance, but otherwise differing slightly in symbolism. Their shafts are octagonal, or, in the technical terms of the

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INTERIOR OF THE KÂRLÊ CHAITYA-HOUSE

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Silpa-sâstras, they are “Vishnu-necked.”¹ The bases are Lakshmi’s jars of plenty. Instead of the lions which crown the capitals of the pillars outside, each Vedic altar here is a throne for two pairs of Devas mounted upon kneeling elephants (Pl. XX). They are remarkable for proving what a high degree of excellence Indian sculpture had reached before the enervating Græco-Roman influence manifested itself in Indian Buddhist architecture. There is not much in the whole range of Gandhâran art to be placed in the same class with this and some of the Sânchî sculptures for spontaneity and freedom in design, fine expression, and bold technique.

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¹ Or “Sangha-necked,” as Buddhist craftsmen would have called them.

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The seven octagonal pillars behind the chaitya are plain, without caps or bases. The chaitya itself is also without any sculptured decoration, but it must be remembered that fresco painting on a ground of fine white plaster, together with painted banners hanging from the wooden ribs fitted in the roof, gave a rich glow of colour to the whole of the interior. The lower portion of the wooden tee, or pyramid of umbrellas (Vishnu’s tree), placed upon the Vedic altar on the top of the chaitya, still remains. The underside of each umbrella was carved with a lotus flower; the symbolism of the tee being analogous to that of Vishnu’s standard described above (pp. 62-3).

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Obviously the vaulted roof, nearly semicircular in section but stilted at the springing, with its wooden ribs, were derived from the bambu-and-mat chhai of the Bengali village chaitya-house. Though there are striking resemblances with regard to planning and general arrangements between these great Buddhist temples and the Gothic cathedrals of Europe, it is impossible to draw any useful comparisons between them. The technical problems which confronted the Indian craftsmen in carving these chaitya-houses out of the living rock were totally different from those with which the Gothic builders had to deal:

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the fairy shafting of Gothic vaults and their widely spaced supports would have crumbled into dust under the immense weight which these mighty, close-set pillars of the Sangha were designed to uphold.

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But the romantic spirit which informed the art of Indian Buddhist builders was the spirit of the Gothic cathedrals, and Gothic art was the gift of Indo-Aryans to their brother craftsmen in the West. In its pristine splendour the chapter-house of Kârlê must have been one of the grandest places of worship ever made by the hands of men.

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It is easy to follow the journey of the Lotus of the Good Law from India into China, and thence into Korea and Japan; but how the art of Kârlê and Ajantâ passed into western Asia, and thence into Europe, to blossom again in the glorious cathedrals of France, is a fascinating chapter in the world's romance which remains to be written.

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It must have been partly through the craftsmen who followed the Asiatic hordes which overran Europe continually for many centuries after the beginning of the Christian era, and partly through the contact of East and West in the long struggle of the Crusades. But this much is certain, that East met West very long ago in the fellowship of art, and when a great art impulse comes again in Europe and in Asia the meeting-ground will be the same.

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And when that romance of real life is written, one chapter of it may tell how, after Charles Martel hammered the Moors on the battlefield of Tours and drove them from the fair fields of France, many of Abdur Rahman's craftsmen remained as captives or deserters to the winning side—for craftsmen were non-combatants, often unwillingly pressed into military service; and how, settling down in their new adopted country and working side by side with their brother-craftsmen of the Latin race, they helped to build those splendid abbeys which were

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VISHNU PILLARS, KÂRLÊ CHAITYA-HOUSE

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the nurseries of Gothic art, bringing to the West the masonic secrets of the East, the traditions and the inspiration of the Indo-Aryan abbeys of Ajantâ and Ellora which were at that moment the grandest and most beautiful in the world. Thus the two branches of the Aryan race were joined together once more by spiritual and domestic ties for the advancement of the common cause of humanity.

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For other chaitya-houses of the Hînayâna school of Buddhism at Bhâjâ, Bedsâ, Nâsik, Ajantâ and elsewhere the reader must refer to the descriptions given by Fergusson and Dr. Burgess. They are all planned on the same principle, and it is quite easy to follow the symbolism of their structure and decoration by means of the description of the Kârlê chaitya-house given above. The later chaitya-houses of the Mahâyâna school will be taken in their chronological sequence.

The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation c12: Chapter VI

Chapter VI

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