The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c7.294.3

v1.c7.294.3

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”.⁴ In his *History of Architecture* he states : “The Indians first learnt this art from the Bactrian Greeks”.⁵ 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”.⁶ Mrs. Manning is of opinion that this teaching commenced a little earlier.