The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c8.64

v1.c8.64

**Style of Building :** As in design, so in the art of building, Uriyā architects display a sad want of variety. If their temples are all of one plan, they are built in almost the same order everywhere. Possibly at an early stage of their progress, they did try other modes of arranging their materials, but by the middle of the seventh century, they seem to have discovered what appeared to them the cheapest, and at the same time the most convenient, style of masonry, and continued ever after to practise it without any variation. This was to arrange courses of oblong ashlars of the same height, which were held together by their weight, by their perfect adjustment, and by the frequent intervention of bonders long enough to extend to a considerable distance into, or entirely through, the wall. All the courses, however, were not of the same thickness, nor the stones always of the same size,²² and the result was a kind of work which in reference to Grecian buildings is denominated the *pseudoisodomum*. This plan, however, was not followed in the construction of walls of extraordinary thickness. It would have occasioned a great waste of labour and material to have filled up piers seven to ten feet thick with carefully dressed blocks of the same size throughout, and a different style was therefore deemed necessary. This was to build irregular horizontal courses with partially worked stones of various sizes and to face them on both sides with isodomic walls of well-dressed flags. Occasionally unhewn masses were rudely piled together with no further adjustment than the insertion of small blocks in the interstices, in the true cyclopean style, but their sides were always faced with cut stones of a [36] superior quality. It should be added, however, that I have not had many opportunities of examining masonry work of great thickness in a dilapidated state, to be able to say with certainty whether the cyclopean, or the irregular horizontal style was the most prevalent. The latter was met with in about half a dozen places, and the former only twice : they were in every instance covered with a layer of finely dressed stones, except of course in the foundations where such facings would have been thrown away.