The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation c9.2

c9.2

BEFORE proceeding to analyse further the structure and symbolism of Indian temple-architecture, it is absolutely necessary for the student to make a clean sweep of all the labels and systems of classification by which Western archæologists have agreed to mystify the subject. The reasons for rejecting them will, I hope, become clear later on. The “styles” of Fergusson, whether they are labelled Buddhist, Jaina, or Hindu, or “Indo-Aryan,” “Chalukyan,” or “Dravidian,” are classifications all more or less false as history and misleading as indications of derivation. Fergusson’s great pioneer work was fatally biassed by the fundamental misconception that the history of Indian sculpture, which is the history of Indian temple-building, from the third century A.D. was “written in decay,”¹ and by his total failure to read the symbolic language of Indian art. His theory that the distribution of the Hindu temples with the typical *sikhara*, or curvilinear spire, may be taken to indicate the limits of “the Dasyu province”² is grotesque; and to treat Buddhism, Jainism, and Hinduism as separate religious factions indicating so many different epochs of Indian architecture is not less opposed to all historical evidence.