The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c7.303

v1.c7.303

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 therefore 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. The Aryans who came to India had the same intellectual capacity and it remains yet to be seen how far they utilised it in the country of their adoption. They had, it is true, no Egyptian or Pelasgic monuments at hand to excite their ambition, and their religious and funeral ceremonies were not favourable to any great efforts at architecture; but they were not altogether without some Turanian models close by them to imitate; they had some intercourse with the people of the west as far as Egypt, who were all great builders; and as a civilized race, living in a climate where the periodical rains rendered indoor life for a portion of the year, even for professed houseless hermits, an unavoidable condition of existence,⁹ needed houses and palaces, and it is not to be supposed that they always contented themselves with the most primitive dwellings of wood. "Is it at all likely", asks Mr. Sherring, "that the Aryan race existed in India for between one and two thousand years, that they conquered a large portion of the country, that they attained to greatness and glory, and made wonderful [15] progress in civilization, equalling, if not surpassing, their contemporaries in other parts of Asia, and yet, that, during all this time, they were satisfied with only transitory symbols of greatness, and never conceived the idea of leaving behind them durable monuments of their power, which should hand down their name to many generations? They must have heard of the vast structures erected in Egypt, and of the splendid palaces, and stairs, and pillars, and other edifices, with which the Assyrian monarchs adorned their cities. They were not lacking in genius, or in the desire for knowledge; on the contrary, their minds investigated the highest subjects, and whatever was of interest to humanity in general, they regarded as of importance to themselves."¹⁰