The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c7.285

Language: English

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The oldest architectural remains that have come to light in India are the pillars of Aśoka, and they are not of a greater age than the middle of the third century before Christ. Hence it is, that an opinion is gaining ground that the ancient Aryans were not proficient in the art of building substantial edifices with stones, or bricks, and that the primitive Hindus were dwellers in thatched huts and mud houses, or structures equally primitive. Mr. Wheeler, in his *History of India*, imagines that the wall round the palace of Daśaratha was nothing more substantial than a hedge. Following this idea he supposes the palaces and fortresses described in the *Mahābhārata* to have been thatched structures, constructed of mats, bamboos, and mud, but devoid of everything in the way of true masonry architecture. Depicting Hastināpur, the capital of the Kurus, he says: "A non-descript population, which may have comprised cultivators, herdsmen, mechanics, retainers, and petty shop-keepers seem to have dwelt in an assemblage of huts, or houses, constructed of mats, bamboos, mud, or bricks which was dignified by the name of city. The palace was very likely built after a similar fashion, though on a larger scale, and with some pretensions to strength. Probably it was a rude quadrangular building, having men's apartments on one side, and women's apartments on the other;

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whilst the third side was devoted to the kitchens and household servants." Elsewhere he fancies the central quadrangle of the palace of Daśaratha contained a thatched granary which formed the treasury.² Mr. Fergusson, the highest authority on Indian architecture, in his latest essay on the subject, says: "It cannot be too strongly insisted upon, or too often repeated, that stone architecture in India commences with the age of Aśoka, (B.C. 250). Not only have we as yet discovered no remains whatever of stone buildings anterior to his reign, but all the earliest caves, either in Behar, or in the western Ghats, show architecture in the first stage of transition from wood to stone." In his lecture on the study [14] of Indian architecture, the same author, adverting to a cave in Behar, observes: "It is a well-authenticated example of his (Daśaratha's) reign, and, though cut in the granite rock, every form, every detail, is copied from some wooden original, shewing that at the time it was executed, stone architure was unknown in India, and men were only beginning to think of a more durable material. From that time we have hundreds of examples, in which we see the wooden forms gradually being replaced by those more appropriate to stone". In his *History of Architecture* he states: "The Indians first learnt this art from the Bactrian Greeks".

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Elsewhere he says: "We are not surprised to find wooden forms copied in stone in the early caves of the Buddhists about the Christian era, because we know that no stone architecture existed in India till the Greeks taught them the use of the more durable material". Mrs. Manning is of opinion that this teaching commenced a little earlier. According to her, "Alexander the Great left Greek and other foreign artists in India, about the year B.C. 326; and sculptures found in Kashmere, and coins struck in mints established on the Indus, give undoubted signs of Greek influence at dates somewhat earlier than our own era; whilst no Buddhist monument clims to be earlier than about B.C. 247." These assertions and opinions have derived great support from the fact of the primitive Hindu religion having been purely domestic, requiring no lordely edifice for its observance. It is not to be denied that the greatest incentives to architecture in ancient times, were the rites of religion, and respect for the memory of the dead, and temples and tombs called forth the greatest efforts of the builder. It must follow that where the dead were disposed of on the funeral pyre, and the ceremonials of religion observed by the domestic hearth, or in the courtyard of a house under the canopy of heaven, or a cloth awning,⁸ sufficient attention was not likely to be directed to structures that should accommodate large numbers, or last for ages.

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It is also undeniable that the first attempt of man to build must have resulted in mud huts, or log cabines, retaining closely the character of the caves and excavations on the model of which they were executed, add designed principally, if not exclusively, for the purpose of protection from the inclemencies of the weather, and the attacks of wild beasts. Then would follow the era of domesticism, when men would build cottages and houses, less for purposes of defence, more for convenience, utility and comfort. Next in order, or perhaps simultaneously, would come sacred piles and monuments for the the dead, which would begin to separate architecture as a fine art from mere constructive ingenuity; and prepare the way for palaces, towers and sacred edifices, temples, sanctuaries and public buildings, structures combining the vastness, grandeur, utility, simplicity and beauty of previous stages and gradually leading to the perfection of the art.