The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation c6.20

c6.20

Two years ago I made another offering at the shrine of Truth by calling public attention to the work of the living Indian master-builder, whose existence is ignored by the “Imperial Gazetteer.” Departmentalism became seriously alarmed. He was not on the file—the District Officer had not seen him. He must be extinct, for Sir Lepel Griffin, K.C.S.I., when Agent to the Governor-General for Central India, had written that “the love for and practice of noble and beautiful architecture seems to have died out of India previous to the advent of the English.”¹ Official experts said he was a to revise it. By the irony of fate, it seems quite probable that the *deus ex machinâ* who will secure this long-deferred reform for India will be the English craftsman who is now in revolt against a system which, as Ruskin said, makes him the most pitiful form of slave—a mere machine with its valves smoothed with heart's blood instead of oil, when he might be a living, progressive, and happy human being.¹