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The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation c7: Chapter I. The Mauryan Dynasty and the Foundations of Indian Civilisation—Indian Village and Town Planning

The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation c7

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Chapter I. The Mauryan Dynasty and the Foundations of Indian Civilisation—Indian Village and Town Planning

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IT is almost as difficult now as it was when Fergusson wrote to carry the starting-point of Indian architectural history much farther back than the reign of Asoka, 263-226 b.c., the famous emperor, missionary, and saint,`who, after his conversion to Buddhism, then only one of many contending schools of Hindu thought, made it the state religion, and began that zealous propaganda of its doctrines which spread over Asia to the farthest east, and as far westwards as Alexandria. His grandfather Chandragupta, nearly sixty years earlier, had founded the Mauryan dynasty by consolidating the numerous republican confederations and petty kingdoms of Northern India, whose quarrels had made Alexander's opportunity, into an empire strong enough to bar further invasions from the north-west for many generations. Seleukos, Alexander's general, who seized the eastern portion of the Macedonian conquests after the death of the latter, made a vain attempt to repeat the glorious campaign in which he had assisted. Chandragupta Maurya not only drove him back across the Indus, but extended the north-western boundary of his own dominions so far as to include Kabûl, Herât, and Kandahâr, which formerly belonged to the empire Alexander had wrested from Darius. This disaster made Seleukos anxious to come to terms with his Indian antagonist, and after sending one of his officers, Megasthenes, as an envoy to the Mauryan Court, he turned his arms westwards.

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The account which Megasthenes has left of the splendour of Chandragupta’s imperial capital, Pâtaliputra, the modern Patna in Eastern Bengal, are of little practical value to the architectural student.

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The excavations recently undertaken, through Mr. Ratan Tata’s public-spirited liberality, on the site of Pâtaliputra will doubtless produce material of great archæological interest, but they will never establish any new theory or confirm any old one concerning the origins of Indian art. These are already so decisively indicated by the great mass of material accumulated in many other places in India that the question whether Asoka or Chandragupta Maurya planned their palaces on Persepolitan models, or built them with foreign craftsmen, becomes entirely a side-issue and a matter of local interest only. It will doubtless be used as an argument for British architects in India importing modern Western methods of building—though there is a difference between those which stimulate the craftsman’s ideas and those which sterilise them; but it is foolish to argue that Persepolitan fashions at Pâtaliputra prove that all the great art of India in early Buddhist times was inspired by foreigners—unless all Indians of Aryan race are to be classed as such.

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We learn from Megasthenes that the imperial palace was planned on a grand scale like those of Sûsa and Ekbatana, that it was gorgeously decorated with gold and silver and placed in the midst of a fine garden with numerous water-ponds—a description which might apply equally well to the palaces of the Great Moguls. It is highly probable that Chandragupta, like his grandson, made considerable use of craftsmen from Persepolis or from Mesopotamia. Indeed, the latest discoveries of Western scholars seem to make it necessary to abandon the theory that the early Aryan invaders of India were only nomads whose practice in the arts was chiefly confined to war and agriculture. If it be true—as the Russian scholar, Sheftelovich, asserts—that the Kassites, who took Babylon in 1746 B.C., and established a dynasty there which lasted 600 years, were Aryans speaking Vedic Sanskrit, whose chief god was Sûryas, Babylon must be regarded as a half-way house of the Aryan race in its march towards the Indus Valley, and some at least of the early Aryan tribes must have acquired, before they entered India, not only the high spiritual culture which is reached in the Rig Veda, but a prolonged experience of the civic arts, including architecture.

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Recent German excavations on the site of Babylon show that the science of building in Vedic times had advanced much farther than has hitherto been suspected. The Babylonians had apparently perfected the construction of radiating arches centuries before Rome was founded, and it is probable that both Roman and Indian builders derived their knowledge of it from the same source in Western Asia. When the seat of imperial power was transferred from Persia to Eastern India in the fourth century B.C., it must have been as natural an inclination for Chandragupta Maurya to supplement local architectural talent at Pâtaliputra by bringing experts from Persepolis as it is for Anglo-Indian rulers in the present day to supersede it by experts from London—for Western Asia was the great culture-centre of the Indo-Aryan race.

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But it is a great mistake of Anglo-Indian writers to assume that Indian building under the Mauryan dynasty was wholly, or even to a large extent, an importation of "styles" borrowed from Persepolis. Chandragupta and Asoka might set Persepolitan fashions in their palaces, just as Indian princes of to-day try to imitate the fashions of London and Paris; but Indo-Aryan culture had already for many centuries planted itself deep in Indian soil, and Indo-Aryan building had acquired an Indian character as distinctive as that of Indo-Aryan philosophy and religious teaching. Just as at the present day one must look for all that is truly typical of Indian life and character in the village rather than in the town, in the same way the essential derivations of Indian architecture, in construction and in decoration, will be found not in imperial palaces, but in the life of the village folk.

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The village in ancient India represented a highly organised social community, far removed from the decadent modern type. The Aryan, jealous of his tribal honour and proud of his social privileges, was, as the name implies, a born aristocrat; but his ideal of government was essentially democratic. Only the urgent necessity of national or racial preservation reconciled him to the life of great towns and a centralised form of government. The philosophy of the Vedas proclaimed the highest ideal of self-government, and Aryan philosophy was not an abstract speculative theory, but a practical formula of life. The teaching of Buddha, though it disputed the divine authority which the orthodox attributed to the Vedas, only gave to this formula a different interpretation and a wider application. It was a protest against sacrificial rites and the debasing practice of physical self-torture, through which certain Brahmanical sects sought to acquire spiritual wisdom and to inculcate habits of self-control; but it was in no way opposed to the esoteric teaching of Aryan philosophy. On the contrary, it laid the foundations of the latter on a wider footing and opened its doors to the whole world, instead of reserving it as the exclusive property of the Aryan race.

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The great bulk of the population in early Buddhist times, says Professor Rhys Davids, or at least 70-80 per cent., lived in villages, and the entire literature of early Buddhism mentions hardly a score of towns of any considerable size as existing in the whole vast territory, from Kandahâr nearly to Calcutta, and from the Himâlayas southwards to the Run of Kutch.¹ Buddhism did not succeed any more than Christianity has done in effacing social and racial distinctions. The four varnas, or colours, representing so many ranks of social precedence, were recognised distinctions in early Buddhist village communities,² though the rigid barriers of the caste system did not exist. In spite of the colour bar, however, India's melting-pot long before the third century B.C. had profoundly altered the social and political conditions which prevailed when the Aryans were disputing with Dravidians, Kolarians, and with wild aboriginals classed as Rakshasas, or demons, for possession of the soil. The former had adapted themselves perfectly to their Indian environment, and had intermarried to such an extent with the civilised tribes which had preceded their immigrations or invasions, that it only needed the moving of a common spiritual impulse to make India a nation. And this impulse came from Asoka's propaganda of the teaching of Buddha.

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¹ "Buddhist India," p. 50.

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² *Ibid.* chap. v.

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We must, however, guard ourselves from the error of supposing that "Buddhist art," as Westerners call it, was purely sectarian, or anything else than Indian art during the ascendancy of Buddhism. Fergusson's classification of Buddhist, Jain, and Hindu temples as representing different epochs of art or different schools of artistic expression is entirely fallacious. In a village or town where Buddhists were in the majority, Buddhist shrines would naturally be the most numerous. In other localities, at the same time, Jains or followers of other sects would build similar shrines dedicated to their special divinities. Whatever school of religious doctrine the buildings might represent, the craftsmanship and principle of construction remained the same, and even the symbolism was a common vernacular language employed by different sects to explain the special tenets of their respective cults. When a great ruler like Asoka exercised supreme political power over the greater part of India, the wealth of the state was naturally devoted to making the buildings of his especial sect of better and more expensive materials than those of others, and consequently the record of Buddhist building which survives to this day is more complete than that of the rival schools of religious thought which had to be content with less costly and less permanent building materials. But a town or village and the buildings therein, inhabited by Buddhists, Jains, or Brahmans, were never at any time in Indian history entirely differentiated by special characteristics of style. Buddhist art was at the same time and place also Jain art and Hindu or Brahmanical art. India has never known any style that can be called architectural but one—and that is Indo-Aryan.

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Asoka's religious propaganda was no violent disturbance of the established customs and beliefs of his subjects: it was a policy of peaceful penetration in strict accordance with the spirit of Aryan philosophy, which proclaimed Truth to be a temple open on all sides to devout worshippers, who might choose the approach most accessible to them. Whatever Buddhism might have been as a school of philosophic speculation, Indian art of Asoka's time shows that as a popular religion it was a synthesis of contemporary Hinduism, as complete for the age to which it belonged as medieval Hinduism was for its own time. But as religion has always been essentially a part of Indian daily life, we must begin an account of the great religious architecture of India by trying to reconstruct, out of the meagre architectural records of the third century B.C., the practical planning and building of a typical Indian village. This can be done to some extent by making use of the clues given in the Hindu Silpa-sâstras, and in the sculptured representations of Indian buildings on the monuments of Asoka’s time, and by comparing them with descriptions in Pâli records which Professor Rhys Davids has collected.¹

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¹ “Buddhist India,” chaps. iii. and iv.

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We may take it for granted that just as the types of houses represented in the sculptures of Bharhut and Sânchî resemble in many respects the domestic buildings of modern India, so the planning of Indian villages laid down in the Mânasâra, the Silpa-sâstra² of which Râm Râz has given too brief a summary in his valuable essay on the architecture of the Hindus, does not differ in essential points from that which was followed in the third century B.C.

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² The Silpa-sâstras were possibly compiled about the fifth or sixth century A.D., but the traditions they embody are of far greater antiquity.

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The Mânasâra Silpa-sâstra, anticipating Vitruvius, first insists upon the high intellectual and moral culture necessary for a master-builder (*stapathi*). “He should be conversant with all the sciences; always attentive to his work; of an unblemished character; generous, sincere, and devoid of enmity or jealousy.” His first assistant, who might be his son or an apprentice, was the surveyor, or *sûtragrahi*, who must be particularly skilled in mathematics and obedient to his master. The next was the *vurdhaci*, or joiner, dexterous in joining wood and in combining other constructive materials with it. “He should be of a calm disposition, and acquainted with drawing and perspective.”

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It will probably be a revelation to modern architects to know how scientifically the problems of town planning are treated in these ancient Indian architectural treatises. Beneath a great deal of mysticism, which may be scoffed at as pure superstition, there is a foundation of sound common sense and scientific knowledge which should appeal to the mind of the European expert. The most advanced science of Europe has not yet improved upon the principles of the planning of the garden cities of India based upon the Indian village plan as a unit.

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For choosing the site of a village, the Mânasâra declares that a careful examination of its position and soil is first necessary. The best site is that which slopes towards the east, so as to get the full benefit of the first rays of the morning sun: those who have cultivated an Indian garden will appreciate the truth of this axiom. It should be near a stream running from left to right—the auspicious direction in which the sun moves across the sky—and the well-digger should be able to find water at a depth of about seven feet.¹

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¹ It may be presumed that the time of the year would be during the monsoon or in the cold season.

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The soil must be tested by its colour, smell, taste, appearance, and feel. Four different qualities were recognised—the first would be firm, of an agreeable odour, suitable for growing various kinds of shade and fruit trees, vegetables and flowers. Sites to be avoided were those inclined to the intermediate points, as N.E., N.W.; stony ground; that in which human graves, disused wells, caves, or refuse of any kind were found.

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A rough practical means of testing the soil for the foundations was to dig a pit one *hasta* in depth, and then return the excavated soil into it. A stable foundation would be indicated by the soil at the top being higher than it was before; an indifferent one, if it were of the same level; a bad one, which must on no account be used, if the surface were lower.

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When the site had been determined, the ground was ploughed over. A pair of oxen, of equal size and of the same colour, strong and without blemish, was chosen for the purpose. If they were to be found, oxen with white spots on the head and knees were particularly auspicious. They were decorated with gay trappings, and gold or silver rings were placed on the horns and hoofs. Then the master-builder himself, garlanded and dressed in clean garments, turned the first furrow. The rest of the work was done by labourers, or *sûdras*, hired for the purpose.¹ The oxen and the plough to which they were attached were the *stapathi' cosmic cross were broad avenues, probably planted with umbrageous trees. The long one, running east and west, was called *Râjapatha*—King's Street; the short one, which pointed north and south, was *Mahâkala*—Broad Street, or otherwise *Vamana*—South Street—from the name of the mythical ele-

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FIG. 1.—Village Plan called *Dandâka* (corrected from Ram Raz, Pl. XLIII).

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phant which represented the south quarter.¹ The road or wide path running round the village inside the wall or stockade was called *Mangala-vîthî*—the Way of Auspiciousness, or Good Fortune; this being the path by which the village priests went daily in performance of the rite of *pradakshinâ*, or circumambulation. *Mangala* has also a secondary meaning as an epithet of Karttikeya, the god of war. In this sense the name refers to the use made of the road by the village or town sentinels whose watchfulness ensured the safety of its inhabitants from hostile attacks.

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¹ The elephant was the rain-cloud which came with the south-west monsoon. Vamana was also the short arm of the cosmic cross—otherwise Vishnu's dwarf incarnation—the apparent distance between the sun at its zenith and its nadir being less than that between sunrise and sunset, or the long arm of the cross. This street could, therefore, also be anglicised as "Short Street."

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The centre of the village, at the intersection of the two main streets (fig. 2), was the recognised meeting-place for the Council of Elders which regulated local affairs. A banyan or a pîpal tree planted on a mound sufficed for the mote-house or assembly-hall, except when the village was a large one, and could afford a pillared *mandapam*, or a pavilion of wood, brick, or stone.

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In this ancient Aryan village custom one can trace the root of the idea of the Bodhi tree, or Tree of Knowledge; for the tree of the village elders must have been associated with the wisdom of sages long before the forest tree became the place of meditation for the yogi who sought spiritual enlightenment. A symbolic or mystic meaning also attached itself to the Council tree; for, planted at the centre of the cosmic cross, it was the Tree of Vishnu—the sun at noon and the all-pervading cosmic force. It stood for the mystic tree of which the sun and moon and stars were fruits and the blue vault of heaven the foliage.

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In a small village the Council tree, or Tree of Justice, would give sufficient shelter for the general meeting of the householders, who formed the Parliament of the Indo-Aryan village. They had the power of nominating all the Ministers—the Council of Five—except the headman, whose office was hereditary, but who could be deposed by the Râja, the head of the clan, in case of any grievous offence against the laws of the Aryan community. In larger villages and towns the meetingplace of this general assembly would be in the parks or groves of sacred trees planted near the gates.

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The Mânasâra gives the maximum width of the main village streets as 5 *dandas*.¹ The others varied in width from 1 to 5 *dandas*. The size of a single cottage was reckoned as from 24 feet by 16 feet to 40 feet by 32 feet. They were generally grouped together by fours, so as to form an inner square or quadrangle: the "magic" of the square depending on the fact that it afforded the best protection for the cattle of the joint household when they were driven in from the pastures every evening.

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¹ A *danda*, rod or pole = 8 feet.

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Four cottages combined into a single habitation, with its own inner courtyard, was the next step in the evolution of the Indian house-plan. Such a house might belong to the chief herdsman, who was an important personage in the Aryan village communities, or to the headman of the village, both of which positions were hereditary. This was the derivation of a house-plan, eminently practical and suitable for a tropical climate, which is still universal in India for all classes, from the well-to-do ryot to the Maharajah, except when Indians prefer to make their surroundings uncomfortable and insanitary by adopting building fashions appropriate only for European climatic and social conditions.

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Just as the single cottage, or village hut, formed the unit of house-planning, so the village plan was the unit used to form the *mahalla*, or ward, in town planning.² The Mânasâra recognises forty different classes of villages and towns, according to the extent of the lands owned by them; commencing with a village-unit which was 500 *dandas*, or 4,000 feet square, so that the extent of the largest cities would be 20,000 dandas, or about 30 English miles square. Of this area about one-third was devoted to building space, and the rest to the agricultural lands owned by the community, It should be observed that neither a village nor a town was usually square in plan, but a rectangle, with the long sides running east and west, so as to secure a proper circulation of air even in the largest cities. In the description of Ayodhya given in the Râmâyana, the proportion between its breadth and length is as one is to four. Pâtaliputra was about 9 miles in length and 1½ miles in breadth. Hindu Gaur was also a long rectangle. One of the long sides generally faced a lake or river, an arrangement which provided bathing facilities for all the inhabitants, and obviated the necessity of building defensive works all round.

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² The city of Jaipur, laid out by a Bengali architect in the eighteenth century, is the best known example of a modern Indian city planned in accordance with the ancient Hindu traditions. See "Indian Architecture: its Psychology, Structure, and History," p. 216, fig. 49.

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It will be interesting to examine in detail some of the village plans, of which eight standard types are given in the Mânasâra.¹

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¹ Râm Râz, “Essay on the Architecture of the Hindus,” p. 42.

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The simplest one (fig. 1), called *Dandâka*, after the staff carried by *sannyâsins*, was specially intended for a hermitage (*asrâm*) or other religious community. It consisted of from one to five long parallel streets running east and west, with three shorter ones intersecting them in the middle and at the two ends. There were two bathing-tanks near the N.E. and S.W. angles of the village, and various shrines appropriate for the particular sect to which the villagers belonged—the principal one being placed at the west end of the Râjapatha, with its entrance facing the rising sun. Minor deities had their temples on the outskirts of the village, outside or inside the wall or fence, which had four large gates facing the two main streets, and smaller ones at the angle of the village. It contained from twelve to over three hundred houses. In the given plan each of the eight inside blocks had two rows of houses ; the narrower outside blocks only one.

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The plan (fig. 2) called *Nandyâvarta* (the abode of happiness) was named after the mystic figure upon which it was based (fig. 3). It was intended to accommodate a mixed population of different social grades, or belonging to different religious

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FIG. 2.—Village Plan called *Nandyâvarta* (corrected from Râm Râz, Pl. XLIV).

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sects, *e.g.* Brahmans of four different schools, in which case the village had the affix *-mangalam*, or people of the four *varnas*, when the affix was *-puram*.¹ The arrangement of the different social grades is shown by the relative depth of shading in the plan; the highest class, in the centre of the village, occupying the four blocks which are left unshaded.

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¹ *Mangalam* means auspicious, and *puram* a fort. The implication seems to be that the Brahman village was protected by its own virtue, while the lay community defended itself by force of arms.

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The outer blocks of houses, to which Râm Râz makes no reference, were probably the baz reasons. First, that it was bad for purposes of defence, as it gave an enemy many opportunities of establishing himself in the centre of the village by a sudden raid. Secondly, that it tended to congestion of traffic, and an uncomfortable plan of house and

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[Figure: N. W. E. S. FIG. 4.—Village Plan called *Padmâka* (corrected from Râm Râz, Pl. XLIV).]

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garden, especially in the middle of the village. Thirdly, that the streets would mostly run in the wrong direction for the sun.

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Another interesting village plan was based upon the *Swastika*, the mystic sign derived from the "magic square," which, as stated above, represented the four quarters of the world and of the universe. The magic of the swastika lay in the fact that in the Aryan military camp it was a formation used for defending the four gateways; it was also the Indo-Aryan religious compass, indicating the apparent movement of the sun across the heavens, which movement still forms part of Hindu

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FIG. 5.—Village Plan called *Swastika* (corrected from Râm Râz, Pl. XLV).

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religious ritual in the performance of *pradakshinâ*, or the circumambulation of a shrine, keeping the right side towards it. Philosophically the sign represents the principle of evolution; the reverse sign, associated with black magic and representing involution, was adopted by certain schools of Hindu philosophy. In this plan the direction of the blocks of houses in each quarter of the village indicated the movement from left to right.

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A comparison of the planning of the Tâj gardens (fig. 6) with these ancient Indian village plans will make it clear that when Babar began to lay out his fourfold field-plot at Agra he was not, as he evidently thought (and as Anglo-Indians of the present day believe), bringing fresh ideas to revive the parched-up plains of India which his ancestors had devastated; he was only unconsciously repeating the traditional Indo-Aryan garden plan, which probably Indian Buddhists had been the first to teach the Moguls.

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FIG. 6.—Plan of the Tâj Gardens.

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The "Mount of Felicity" in the centre of his gardens, where he and his boon companions held their music and drinking parties, was nothing but the Muhammadan secular notion of the mystic holy mountain, Meru, the pivot of the universe, of which the Indian Vishnu shrine is the symbol. For untold centuries before the Prophet of Mecca was born it had been the high place upon which the Indian village council tree was planted. One may even admit the possibility that the irrigated garden plan might have been a more ancient idea than the other; that the Indo-Aryan village took the lay-out of the garden plot as the basis of its organisation. But more probably the village scheme was originally the plan of the military camp of the Aryan tribes when they first established themselves in the valley of the Indus.

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B

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[Figure: INDIAN COTTAGES (*circa* 250 B.C.) *(From the Bharhut reliefs)*]

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