The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation c8.29

c8.29

Besides domestic and religious buildings, the Indian village, as before mentioned, had sometimes its Assembly-hall or Mote-house, where the village council met, as well as school buildings and rest-houses for travellers and pilgrims. These were generally pillared pavilions, which were the prototypes of the Dîwân-i-Âm, or public audience-hall, of the Mogul Emperors. A double-storied pavilion of this kind from the Bharhut sculptures is shown in Pl. IV, A. In this case the building is a religious one, but it must be remembered that all Indian religious buildings had their secular or domestic prototypes. A royal audience-pavilion of about the seventh century A.D., from a fresco at Ajantâ (Pl. IV, B), with a chhaja¹ and flat roof, closely resembles the Mogul palace buildings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.