The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation c13: Chapter VII. The Vihâra, or Monastery—The Gautamî-putra Monastery, Nâsik—Monastery at Bedsâ—Models of Monasteries at Mâmallapuram
The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation c13
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Chapter VII. The Vihâra, or Monastery—The Gautamî-putra Monastery, Nâsik—Monastery at Bedsâ—Models of Monasteries at Mâmallapuram
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WE must now pass on to the *vihâras*, or monasteries adjoining, or sometimes included in, the chaitya-houses and other shrines to which the religious devotees of ancient India attached themselves. It is wrong to assume that either the chaitya-houses or the monasteries which belonged to them were exclusively Buddhist institutions, although the oldest materials for their architectural history are practically all Buddhist. The life of religious recluses dwelling together in forest âsramas is often described in ancient Sanskrit literature. The Silpa-sâstras give particular directions for the planning of villages intended for those who lived a monastic life; and just as the builders of Buddhist chaityas and chaitya-houses followed very closely, as we have seen, the ancient Indian tradition of structure and symbolism, so there cannot be much doubt that the dwellings of the Buddhist bhikkus in Asoka's time differed very little from those which had been used by devotees of other sects before the tenets of the great Kshatriya reformer were propagated by his zealous royal disciple.
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An ordinary âsrama occupied by Buddhist bhikkus is quaintly shown in one of the Bharhut reliefs (Pl. XXI), which represents the Jetavana monastery of Srâvastî, which in Fa Hian's time, or the fifth century A.D., had grown into a great establishment with splendid buildings seven stories in height.
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Here it is only the usual collection of simple shrines and primitive hermits’ huts which had existed in India from time immemorial, but some pious benefactor is superintending the paving of the ground with bricks, a cartload of which is being unloaded in the foreground. One of the monks is bringing water to pour on the sacred tree, planted on a mound surrounded by the Vedic rail, which grows beside one of the shrines. The bhikku’s water-vessel is the same as that used by a Brahman sannyâsin in the present day, and the bullock-cart is an exact rendering of the country vehicle for which modern invention has not yet found a practical substitute.
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FIG. 32.—A Modern Indian Sâdhu.
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This persistence of ancient types need not always be taken as a proof of the immobility of the Indian mind, but rather to indicate that certain fundamental problems of life were fully resolved in very early times by the pioneers of Indian civilisation, and cannot be radically altered without uprooting the whole foundation upon which that civilisation rests.
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The two-storied monastic dwelling shown in the same plate is also from the Bharhut reliefs. It resembles in general arrangement some Buddhist monasteries in Sikkim, which have a large prayer-wheel fixed in a verandah on the ground floor so that passers-by can turn it; the upper floor combining a shrine and living-accommodation for the monks who attend it.
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An ordinary wandering friar in ancient India carried his hut with him in the shape of a palm-leaf umbrella (*chhattra*), as the sâdhu of the present day does (fig. 32). The umbrella placed over a Buddhist chaitya was a mark of royalty in a double sense, as belonging both to the insignia of the Kshatriya Prince Siddhartha of Kapilavastu, and to that of the spiritual Lord, the Monk of Bodh-Gayâ.
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A fixed *chhattri*, or shelter, for a yogi or bhikku in the absence of a tree, would be simply
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FAÇADE OF THE GAUTAMĪ-PUTRA MONASTERY (SECOND CENTURY A.D.)
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Nâgârjuna. The simple ritual of the Hînayâna school only demanded a stone bench which ran round three sides of the hall (41 feet broad by 46 deep) in front of the cells, upon which the monks sat to listen to the word of the Blessed One. The position of the chaitya, sculptured in low relief, is shown in the plan by the projection on the walls of the cells which face the central doorway.
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The entrance to the hall was through a verandah (Pl. XXII) fronted by six pillars of the Sangha with capitals almost identical in their sculpture with those at Kârlê, except that some of the Devas on the Vedic altars ride upon bulls and lions instead of elephants. The bull was the sacrificial animal, the symbol of procreation, the *vâhan*, or vehicle of Siva, and thus the guardian of the western quarter, or the gate of the setting sun. The lion stood for the blazing heat of the sun high in the heavens which dried up the deadly mists of the plains : it was thus the vehicle of Dûrgâ, the Inaccessible, Destroyer of demons—who was Siva's bride and represented Nature-force, the counterpart of the Great Spirit who is the Lord of Death. The lion as a sun-emblem was the guardian of all four quarters, and became the *vâhan*, or throne symbol, of the Buddha to signify his world-wide dominion and the glory of his spiritual conquests. The elephant was Indra's rain-cloud and guardian of the south, whence came the rushing monsoon winds carrying Lakshmî's nectar-jar upon their wings. The horse, guarding the northern quarter, was the noble steed upon which the Aryan warriors rode to victory in India from their ancient home in the north. This early Buddhist sculpture is purely and intensely Indo-Aryan: it is the joyous nature-symbolism of the Vedas carved in wood and stone.
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FIG. 33.—Plan of Gautamî-putra Monastery, Nâsik.
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There is a slight difference between the Vedic altars of the Gautamî-putra capitals and those at Kârlê: in most of them the four legs of the altar which enclose the water-lily fruit, or *amalaka*, are carved into dwarf figures, the *pisâchas*—little demons or trolls of the nether-world who are the servants of the Shining Ones, the Devas of the higher spheres. The pillars have no bases, but stand upon another stone bench provided for the monks in the verandah. In front of the pillars is a Vedic rail, supported by pisâchas on a colossal scale. Another sculptured rail forms the entablature supported by the capitals.
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No sun-windows, either as decorative symbols or for giving light, appear on the front of this monastery. The hall is lighted through two doorways and two oblong windows. The head of the central doorway is sculptured with a toran like those at Bharhut and Sânchî, and two guardian deities (*dwâra-pâlas*) on either side protect it. Over the door are placed the three symbols of the Illumination (the bodhi tree), the Preaching of the Law (the wheel), and of Pari-Nirvâna (the stûpa).
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Fergusson’s critical judgment upon the sculpture of the Gautamî-putra Monastery is very wide of the mark. He compares it with that of the adjoining Nahapâna monastery, which may be somewhat earlier in date, and praises the “graceful bell-shaped Persian capitals” of the latter to the disparagement of the “pudding-forms” of the other. Here he was betrayed into the misconception which with other modern writers has become an obsession, that all that was finest in Indian art always came straight from western Asia, and that the history of Hindu sculpture is "written in decay." None of the sculpture at Kârlê and very little that belongs to the Mauryan epoch in India had any connection with Persia in the sense intended by Fergusson and other archæologists. These capitals are Vedic-Indian, or Indo-Aryan, and only Persian so far as Persian art was in early Vedic times itself inspired by Aryan culture. The superficial similarity between these and Persepolitan capitals was the result of the common origin of their symbolism, not to the presence of foreign craftsmen in the India of Asoka's time. The splendour of the Mauryan court may have attracted
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FIG. 34.—Section of Rock-cut Vihara at Bedsâ (from a drawing by the Archæological Survey of India).
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skilled craftsmen from Persepolis, but they worked in India under Indian inspiration just as the Gandharan craftsmen did some centuries later. They were but craftsmen learning the art language of India, not artists enriching it with their own creative ideas. The symbolism of this Hînayâna Buddhist art proves this to be the case, as Fergusson himself would have admitted if he had understood it.
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An exceptional form of rock-cut vihâra is the early Buddhist one at Bedsâ, ascribed to the second century B.C., which has its cells placed round a chaitya-house having the usual barrel-vaulted roof and an apse round the chaitya. The plan and section are shown in figs. 34 and 35.
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The Gandhara monasteries, described by M. Foucher, were generally rows of cells ranged in a square, the centre of which was occupied by the chaitya; but occasionally the cells were placed in a circle round the sacred symbol. The panch-ratna, or "five-jewelled" temple, from which the plan of the Taj Mahall was derived, was probably a small monastery with a verandah all round the cell containing the chaitya or image and a yogi's seat at each of the four corners—the nava-ratna or nine-jewelled temple being a similar one with two stories.
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FIG. 35.—Plan of Vihara at Bedsâ (half to scale of Fig. 34).
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The most characteristic of ancient Indian monasteries, often described in Indian Buddhist literature and by the Chinese pilgrims, Fa Hian and Hiuen Tsang, were the many-storied pyramidal ones. Perhaps there was in these lofty structures some reminiscence of the pyramidal ziggarats of Babylon, used for astronomical observations; but the use to which they were generally applied was of purely Indian origin. They were both monasteries and colleges, their arrangement being adapted for the graduation of the courses of study followed in these institutions, both Buddhist and Brahmanical. The Pâli books record that the spiritual training of members of the order was divided into six graduated courses. As soon as the first section of the prescribed texts was mastered, the monks were exempted from the common drudgery of their ordinary daily life. When they could expound two sections perfectly they were permitted to reside in an "upper furnished room." Those who were expert in three sections This page is completely blank. There is no text, headings, figures, or page furniture to transcribe.
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MONOLITHIC MODEL OF A FOUR-STORIED MONASTERY, MÂMALLAPURAM (*circa* A.D. 670)
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were allowed a lower class of servants to wait upon them. Proficiency in four sections entitled the monks to the services of lay disciples, called "pure men" (*upasakas*). The reward for passing the fifth stage was an elephant-carriage. Finally, the monk who had complete knowledge of all six sections was qualified as an abbot and was allowed the dignity of an escort. No doubt the idea of this graduated curriculum was not exclusively Buddhist, but based upon the scholastic tradition of Vedic learning.
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The design of these pyramidal monasteries was eminently adapted for the practical working of such a system. Indeed, if the prestige of the British Raj is not compromised by the borrowing of Indian ideas, it might be adapted (with the help of lifts, telephones, and imagination) to the uses of modern secular administration. It certainly would lend itself to the administrative principle that the highest official ranks should have the coolest places; and possibly it could be used as an architectural expedient for ensuring that full mental vigour in departmental heads which, in these degenerate days, can only be expected in Indian hill-stations.
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Hiuen Tsang gives the following descriptions of the appearance of such structures at the celebrated Bengali University of Nâlanda, the modern Barâgâon, seven miles north of Râjagriha and not far from Pâtaliputra, Asoka's imperial city—the modern Patna. "The houses of the monks," he says, "were each four storeys in height. The pavilions [halls of the Sangha?] had pillars ornamented with dragons, and had beams resplendent with all the colours of the rainbow—rafters richly carved, columns ornamented with jade, painted red and richly chiselled, and balustrades [Vedic rails?] of carved openwork. The lintels of the doors were decorated with elegance and the roofs with glazed tiles of brilliant colours, which multiplied themselves by reflection and varied the effect at every moment in a thousand manners."
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All those which the Chinese pilgrim described, and also those which Kanishka built in the Gandhara country, are now only heaps of ruins. Their upper stories were, no doubt, often built entirely of wood; and even more substantial ones of brick were pulled down as soon as they were deserted, to provide building material for neighbouring towns and villages. Fortunately, however, there exists a very fine model of such a building, one of the so-called Raths at Mâmallapuram, near Madras, carved out of a large granite boulder (Pl. XXIII). There is every reason to believe that it closely resembles the pyramidal monasteries of ancient India in the north as well as in the south.
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The date of this Dharmarâja Rath,¹ as it is now called, has been ascertained with tolerable certainty as *circa* 670-700 a.d. It is a reproduction in miniature of a Saivaite monastery of four storeys; it is, in fact, an amplification of the plan of the Bharhut Bodhi tree shrine shown in Pl. IX, d, by the provision of accommodation for devotees permanently attaching themselves to it. The nine-spired temple at Buxar, in the Hughli district, and similar twenty-five-spired ones at Lâlgi and other places in Bengal, are designed on the same principle; only the Bengali roofs have a convex curvature, on account of the heavy rainfall of the locality, and the square cells are crowned with Vishnu sikharas instead of by Siva domes.
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¹ Rath means, literally, the chariot of a warrior, or processional car of a sacred image.
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Though the interior of the Dharmarâja Rath is not shown in the model, it is easy by analogy to realise the plan of it. Making allowance for the difference of climate and material—the Bengali temples being built of brick—the ground plan of the Mâmallapuram model follows closely the northern prototype from which it was derived.² There was a square shrine (or, hall of the Sangha, if the building was occupied by Buddhists), surrounded on all sides by a verandah roofed with the curved Bengali chhaja. On the side of the entrance of the shrine the verandah breaks forward slightly, so as to form a porch. At each corner of the verandah there was a square cell, either for a living yogi or for a sculptured symbol of a deity. But one of the corners might have been used, as in a storied Bengali temple, for the staircase leading to the first floor; or this might have been placed in the thickness of the walls of the shrine, or hall of the Sangha.
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² The particular Bengali temples mentioned are, of course, quite modern, but the type is a very ancient one, which the builders of Muhammadan Gaur adapted to their mosques.
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The miniature sun-windows, with which Kârlê and Nâsik have made us familiar, are sculptured as ornaments at close
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FIG. 36.—Gargoyles of the Dharmarâja Râth.
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intervals along the whole length of the chhaja, and carved "Gothic" gargoyles throw off the rain from the pradakshinâ, or procession-path, on the next storey (fig. 36).
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The half-finished sculptured pillars and pilasters in front of the verandah and porch present the ancient motif of Vishnu's pillar, with the amalaka capital, the architectural use of which we have already traced back to the time of Asoka. For the bases, instead of Lakshmi's nectar-jar, the sculptors have used the symbolic lion-guardians—Dûrgâ's emblems—which usually stand detached in front of the entrances, as they do at Elephanta. The reason for this innovation was that the dimensions of the rock were not sufficient for carving them in their traditional places on each side of the steps.
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In the original, wherever it might have been, it is probable that the ground-floor of the monastery, here simulated in sculpture, was built of stone—all the upper floors being of brick and plaster, or wood, or a combination of these materials. The monastic cells which surrounded the shrine or hall of the Sangha, on the first floor, are shown in both types—*i.e.* there are four yogi cells at the corners and twelve oblong sleeping-compartments (three on each side), connected with them by lower covered corridors which may have been provided with benches. The Vedic rail which forms a plinth outside the whole range of cells, though still recognisable as such, has lost its triple bars. The ancient sun-windows are repeated as dormers in the roofs, but instead of the screen or lattice which they contain at Kârlê and Nâsik, they have become miniature shrines. The dome of the yogi cells has also become bell-shaped by the addition of outward curving eaves for throwing off the rain (fig. 37).
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FIG. 37.—Diagram of Dome, showing Eaves added for throwing off Rain.
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In front of the cells was the usual procession-path round the shrine or chaitya-hall, which probably had a pillared verandah outside like the temple at Aihole (Pl. XIV), in which a staircase leading to the next storey might have been placed. Fig. 38 shows the plan as I assume it to have been. It differs considerably from that suggested by Mr. Chisholm, which Fergusson adopted.
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The plan of the second floor, or third storey, was similar, except that there was accommodation for eight monks only. The highest story provided for an equal number of yogi seats but only four sleeping-cells. The shrine here was octagonal, instead of square, and this slight difference from the usual northern plan (which Fergusson, curiously enough, overlooked) is the only distinction which justifies the name "Dravidian"
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MONOLITHIC MODEL OF A TWO-STORIED MONASTERY, MÂMALLAPURAM (*circa* A.D. 670)
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given to this kind of building. The Mânasâra, says Râm Râz, gives the technical name of a square shrine as *Nâgara*; an octagonal one as *Drâvidha*, and a circular one as *Vesara*.¹ But as the entire planning and every other structural and symbolic detail of these pyramidal monasteries were Indo-Aryan ideas, imported from the north, it would be entirely misleading to take a minor difference of this kind as a reason for classifying all Siva shrines as "Dravidian." The fact that Siva shrines are now mostly found in Southern India had nothing whatever to do with their architectural origin.
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¹ Râm Râz, p. 49.
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FIG. 38.—Conjectural Plan of First Floor of Dharmarâja Râth.
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Another splendid specimen of seventh-century craftsmanship is a great monolithic model at Mâmallapuram, called now Bhîma's Rath, which reproduces on a smaller scale a two-storied Saivaite monastery. The dimensions of it in the granite rock are 48 feet in length, 25 feet in breadth, and about 26 feet in height. Like most of the raths at Mâmallapuram, it remained unfinished, and owing to the sculptors having gone too far in imitating the details of a structural building, the upper part of the rock split right through the roof, probably while they were working at it.
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Plate XXIV will give a good idea of the noble design of the original building and of the extraordinary skill of the sculptors. The planning of it and general design were evidently the working out of a tradition which went back to the Buddhist two-storied halls of Asoka's time, as shown in the Bharhut reliefs (Pl. IV, A).
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In this particular the Saivaites of the seventh century were probably borrowers or adaptors of Buddhist structural ideas, though Saivaite and Buddhist art as a whole comes from a common Indo-Aryan source. The ground plan (fig. 39) shows the hall, or temple, measuring in the model about 10 feet by 30 feet, which was probably intended to be open on the sides, like the Bharhut prototype.
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FIG. 39.—Plan of Bhîma’s Rath (from Fergusson’s “Cave Temples”).
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Excepting the roof, all the details—the pillars and pilasters; the chhajas; the rows of cells surrounding the procession-path on the first floor, etc.—are the same as in the four-storied pyramidal monastery last described. At each end of the great hall or temple in the upper storey a Siva shrine is sculptured under a richly carved gable, which in Europe would be said to be a masterpiece of Gothic craftsmanship. The brackets which support the arches under the barge-boards are identical with those which afterwards appeared in Akbar’s buildings. Under the eaves, on each of the long sides of the building, are five other projecting shrines, three large and two small, placed opposite to the five monastic cells. They are flanked by pilasters of the same design as the pillars of the ground floor, and are covered by sun-window roofs in dormer fashion. The ridge of the roof was intended to be crowned by a row of eighteen *kalasas* (water-pot finials), but these were never finished, like many other details. In the original building most probably the whole of the upper storey, including the roof, would have been built of brick and plaster, like the fifteenth-century mosques of Gaur, the construction of which was derived from Bengali prototypes. In the Jahângîrî Mahall at Agra there is a similar vaulted roof built of stone slabs, and Indian builders were as capable in the seventh century as in the fifteenth of using stone for such a purpose. Even in Asoka's buildings the choice of the material depended upon the supply available in different localities. There were skilled carpenters where wood was plentiful, skilled bricklayers where bricks were used, and equally skilled masons where stone was most abundant.