The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation c9.25

c9.25

"No one," says Fergusson, "can accuse the pure Aryans of building temples at all, or of worshipping images of Siva or Vishnu."¹ He ignores such passages in the Mahâbhârata as that in Bhishma Vadha Parva, sect. cxiii.²: "The idols of the Kuru King in his temples tremble and dance and weep." The Saivism and Vaishnavism which run through the whole of the Hindu epics Fergusson treats as modern corruptions of the "pure Aryan faith" as expounded in the Vedas, and explains away the evidence which conflicts with his statements as falsifications of the Hindu sacred texts made by the wily Brahman of medieval times. But the architectural theories which he brought forward as evidence break down at every point on close examination. I hold no brief for Hindu theologians. All schools of theology write history from a theological rather than a scientific standpoint; but when one considers how Hindu religious traditions were handed down from one generation to another, the probabilities of any extensive deliberate falsification seem to be very remote. It is easy to falsify a written statement of which only a few copies are made, but that a national oral tradition, the precision of which was scientifically maintained by a most elaborate mnemonic system in which every word and syllable was counted, could be deliberately falsified by a few unscrupulous priests is less credible than the assumption that amateur archæologists sometimes make fatal mistakes.