The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation c22: Chapter XVI. The Muhammadan Invasions and After
The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation c22
- Language
- English
Chapter XVI. The Muhammadan Invasions and After
c22.2
MUHAMMADANISM is one of the principal elements which are combined in the Indian synthesis. The fierce struggle which took place before it was fused together with Hinduism was born of racial antipathies and material interests rather than of intellectual or spiritual differences. Ages before the time of Muhammad Hinduism had settled for itself by the peaceful arguments of philosophy all the problems which Islam set out to determine by the sword. The missionaries of Asoka were the first to prepare in Western Asia the soil in which Islam grew. Its iconoclastic madness was only the religious zeal of a primitive, warlike race inspired by the principles of Hînayâna Buddhism as they were re-stated by the prophet of Mecca. The monotheistic idea which Islam propounded was as old as the Vedas, and even Buddhism itself had accepted it long before the Hegira.
c22.3
Indian literature and science had been eagerly studied by the scholars of Baghdad for centuries before the Muhammadan conquest of Hindustan. The skill of Indian master-builders made Mahmûd of Ghaznî's capital one of the finest cities of the East. Hindu generals fought in the armies of the Muhammadan invaders of India, and when finally the old Hindu capitals, Delhi and Gaur, became the seats of Muhammadan power, Baghdad and Mecca nominally remained the spiritual centres of Muhammadan India, but the culture of Islamic India was farther removed from its birthplace than the Muhammadanism of Arabia and Turkey from Judaism and Christianity. The philosophical differences between Muhammadan and Hindu thought were no greater than those which existed between the different sects of Hinduism itself. The success of Islam in India from a proselytising point of view was always due to its material inducements and the attractions of a social system which freed the low-caste Hindu from Brahman tyranny, rather than from the spiritual appeal of its dogma.
c22.4
The "Indo-Saracenic" style of Indian architecture was purely a creation of Fergusson. The Muhammadan invasions made no decisive break in the building traditions of India, except that they brought about a reversion to the ideals of Hînayâna Buddhism. The Indian master-builder continued to build for his Muhammadan rulers according to the Indo-Aryan traditions, just as he had done for Buddhist, Jain, and Hindu. The Indian mosque was the Hindu temple adapted to Muhammadan ritual. Its most typical plan, oriented like a Vishnu shrine, was like that of a Hindu temple, a rectangle with gopurams on the north, south, and west sides, for both the temple and the mosque enshrined the tradition of the Indo-Aryan village. The so-called "Pathan dome," like all other Indo-Muhammadan domes, was the dome of a Hindu mandapam *minus* the external symbolism. The "Indo-Saracenic" arch was the arch of a Hindu vault technically adapted for the wider spans required by the different structural conditions which Muhammadan ritual imposed. No Indian mosque contains a single structural idea borrowed from the Saracenic architecture of Western Asia, Egypt, or Turkey. Muhammadan art in India from its very beginning was, and continued to be, wholly Indian in spirit and in craftsmanship. All the symbolism of its ornament was Indo-Aryan, except that texts from the Quran are used in places where the Hindu sculptor would have put symbolic figures or animals.
c22.5
MANDAPAM OF TEMPLE AT DĀRĀSURAM, TANJORE DISTRICT
c22.6
The story of the Muhammadan conquest, so far as it affected Indian architecture, has been told in another volume.¹ Every one of the local varieties of the so-called Indo-Saracenic style was derived from an adaptation of the local temple craftsmanship. Mosque and temple were both Hindu art, and under such wise and beloved rulers as Husain Shah and Akbar, orthodox Hindus would help to build a mosque in the same spirit as in Asoka’s time they would bring votive offerings to the stûpas of Buddhist saints.
c22.7
¹ “Indian Architecture: its Psychology, Structure, and History, from the First Muhammadan Invasion to the Present Day.”
c22.8
Not even in the question of the idolatry which was anathema to the Muhammadan was there any vital difference between the teaching of Hinduism and of Islam. The iconoclast vented his blind rage upon Hindu sculptured symbols without understanding their meaning to prove that he was a true believer. His own intangible idols were sacred things necessary for his soul’s salvation. The Muhammadan was no philosopher, and to his practical mind an image of wood or stone, set up for worship as a symbol of God Who is everywhere and in everything, seemed an impious attempt to substitute things of earth for thoughts of heaven. The Hînayâna school of Buddhism had forbidden image worship for a different reason, because the teaching of the Buddha was agnostic and did not recognise the idea of a personal God. But both before and after the time of Muhammad all Hindu teachers were iconoclasts in a spiritual sense, though they did not seek to propagate their culture by fire and sword, and at all times there were among them some who were puritans in the Muhammadan and Christian sense, objecting to any kind of figure symbolism in religious ritual.
c22.9
There are numerous temples to be found in different parts of India representative of this puritan phase of Hindu art. Pl. LXXXIII shows the wall sculpture of one such temple in the Dharwar district of the Bombay Presidency, which might belong to a Gothic cathedral. The canopies of the shrines remain as ornaments, but a Vishnu pillar, or a pair of them, used as pilasters take the place of the images.
c22.10
The whole synthesis of Indian life and thought from the time of Asoka down to the present day is thus written down in its craft traditions, forming a priceless record of a great civilisation to which the whole world is deeply indebted. No civilisation, ancient or modern, has produced a higher culture, no other has succeeded better in making religion the philosophy of life, and on the whole probably no other has contributed so much to human knowledge. All Indo-Aryan religion, deceptive and often degraded though it may be in ritualistic practice, is founded upon the greatest of all scientific truths—the reality of divine revelation or inspiration. That was the great secret of the Rishis which they so jealously guarded for posterity, seeking for humanity’s sake to find the way by which the pure in heart may come to drink at the divine well of knowledge the elixir of immortality—the all-pervading truth which must be the mainspring of every right human action. It was therefore that the yogi who believed himself to be in contact with that divine source was regarded as a man of God, and his cell a fit place for worship. And if the yogi often deceived both himself and others, and if human credulity often ascribed to the truly inspired powers equal to the Highest, the divine truth shines none the less brightly behind the clouds of man’s follies and weaknesses.
c22.11
Indo-Aryan sociology as regards the caste system was admirably conceived, under the peculiar conditions in which Aryan society found itself in India, for preserving its higher
c22.12
GREAT TEMPLE AT ITTAGI, FROM THE SOUTH-WEST (ELEVENTH CENTURY)
c22.14
INTERIOR OF MANDAPAM, RANGASWAMI TEMPLE, DHARWAR DISTRICT, BOMBAY
c22.15
culture from degradation by contact with the semi-civilised races which formed the substrata of the population. All systems have their abuses, but without the caste system Indo-Aryan civilisation would probably have been obliterated long ago. Whether the rigidity of the system, which became more intense as the forces which tended to disintegrate Indo-Aryan society grew stronger, should under modern conditions be relaxed, is quite another question.
c22.16
The best testimony to the wisdom of Hindu polity is that the organisation of the village community, which was the bed-rock of Aryan society, remained unshaken for at least five thousand years, until the middle of the last governments of modern times in the East or in the West, while it did not prevent the co-operation of national forces for purposes useful to the community at large.
c22.17
Though her ancient political constitution has been broken up, the heart and soul of India are still in her villages, and if her voiceless millions are ever to become articulate, it must be by restoring the communal life of the Indian village. Only when that is accomplished can it be said that the foundations of the British Raj are well and truly laid; for then it will rest upon the bed-rock of liberty and justice, which in India as in other countries has always been the safest foundation of Empire.
c22.18
India is loyal to the core; the canker of anarchy bred in the foul slums of cities only penetrates into her village life because the law-abiding instincts of the people are there denied the power of expression. India still has faith in British justice, but the complications of modern administrative methods sow the seeds of discontent and prevent European officials from keeping in touch with popular sentiment. Justice can only serve its purpose when it accords with popular sentiment. The village panchayat may have been crude in its ideas, but the justice it dispensed in its own community was based upon popular tradition and intimate knowledge of the life of each one of its members. Professional litigation, which is the curse of modern India, did not exist under the native system of administration, and perjury, which is rampant in Anglo-Indian courts of justice, was a vice which had little purpose to serve when every witness’s previous life and character were known to all the judges.
c22.19
India is awakening to a consciousness of her past history; it would be folly for British administrators to shut their eyes to the fact or to believe that bureaucratic methods out of all relation with India’s past can continue to work without ever-increasing friction. The difficulties and dangers can only be
c22.21
DETAILS OF TEMPLE AT DHAMBAL, DHARWAR DISTRICT, BOMBAY
c22.22
met by a thorough investigation of the means by which the Aryans of old succeeded in winning the undying affection and devotion of their fellow-men in the East.
c22.23
Europe is now witness to the demoralising effect upon a great nation of a perverted philosophy which glorifies brute force as a symbol of kingship and manhood, and does not disdain to propagate it by crimes which disgrace the name of civilisation. When the intellectuals of Germany are allowed to see a glimmering of truth they may begin to find the spiritual philosophy of the East of more service to humanity than their poisonous scientific "culture," and recognise in Asoka, Vikramâditya, and Akbar a nobler ideal of kingship than that which is now held up to them.
c22.24
And when it has shaken off this tyranny of militarism which has fooled and enslaved it, the democracy of Germany may find in the ancient Aryan constitution of India a practical solution of the problem of self-government which stood the test of five thousand years, and might be used still, as in the days of Chandragupta Maurya, "to check the power of kings," and to lay the foundations of a lasting peace in Europe.
c22.25
Rheims Cathedral, the glory of the Middle Ages, is shattered by twentieth-century savages; but the genius of the Latin race survives and the traditions of Gothic art are still alive in India, the land of its birth. Only a new spiritual stimulus is needed to revive their old creative force, and the comradeship-in-arms of East and West on the battlefields of France will surely be followed again by a closer spiritual fellowship in the arts of peace. So the spirit of Gothic art may be reborn, and East and West may join once more in raising a great monument to the glory of God, in memory of the heroes who have fallen in the fight and of the martyrs who have suffered for the cause of freedom.
c22.26
This image contains only a blank page with no printed text or figures.
Linked texts (1)
- Ṛgvedasaṃhitā — Sanskrit