The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c7.294.1

v1.c7.294.1

But we take leave to doubt the accuracy of the conclusion that has been drawn from these general premises. The question at issue is not one of natural sequence, but of dates. Few will deny the order in which the architectural faculty of man has evolved itself, but considerable difference of opinion may exist as to the time when any one nation attained a particular stage in its course of progress. It wauld be foreign to the subject of this essay to discuss at length the history of architecture among the Aryans from the time they issued forth from the plateau of central Asia to people India, Persia, and diverse parts of Europe, but certain it is that one branch of them, the colonists in Greece, attained a higher pitch of excellence, if not in magnitude and thereforė in majesty, but certainly in exquisite perfection of artistic beauty, elegance and taste, than the Semites, or the Turanians, ever did in any part of the world, and the argument therefore of the Aryans never having been a building race, may be rejected as gratuitous. The Grecians may have borrowed the idea of large edifices from the Egyptians, or the Pelasgians, and the most successful building tribes among them may have had some Pelasgic blood in their veins as supposed by Mr. Fergusson, but as a nation they were Aryans, and, having once got the idea, they worked it out in their own way, independently of their teachers.