The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c7.285.3

v1.c7.285.3

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.