The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c9.2

v1.c9.2

“In architecture, as in all other operative arts, the end is to build well”, says Sir Henry Wotton; but this is a maxim which cannot be adopted in the present day without a multiplicity of qualifications. It implies a freedom from restrictions of orders and styles which even Gothic architects with their “disregard of precedent and untrammelled wildness of imaginations”,¹ could not command. To the Uriyās it was a license not to be thought of. The ordinances of the *Śilpa Śāstra*, which claimed a sanctity next to the Veda itself, hemmed them on every side, and left little room for the play of the imagination in the design of their temples.² The ground plans, the forms, the proportions, had all to be regulated by rigid rules and inviolable canons, and they had scrupulously to abide by them while yearning to produce something that would be at once grand, imposing, and lasting for ages. Ornamentation was the only branch of the art which was left entirely to their fancy, and they gave free vent to their constructive faculty and taste to the development of an endless variety of decorative designs. Hence it is that in the midst of one unbroken monotony of form in India, the observer is charmed by a profusion and richness of ornaments which has nowhere been surpassed. Indeed, ornamentation has always been, so to say, a passion with the Hindu. To quote the language of Mr. Fergusson: “Like all people untrammelled by rules and gifted with a feeling for the beautiful, they adorn whatever they require, and convert every object, however utilitarian in its purposes, into an object of beauty, knowing well that it is not temples and palaces alone that are capable of such display, but that every thing which man makes, may become beautiful, provided the hand of taste be guided by sound judgment that never forgets what the object is, and never conceals the constructive exigencies of the building itself. It is simply this inherent taste and love of beauty, which the Indians seem always to have possessed, directed by unaffected honesty of purpose, which enables those who are now without independence or knowledge, or power, to erect, even at the present day, buildings that will bear comparison with the best of those erected in Europe during the middle ages”.³ It is to be remarked, however, that even in this passion for ornament, and the diversity and profusion to which it has led, there is a marked unity of design. Whether in the North, or the South, in the peninsula of Guzerat, in the West, or the sea-shore at Orissa in the East, the same general principles of decoration prevail everywhere. It is not to be expected that in their quality and execution they should always be alike, but their general character is the same in all places. The corbels, the medallions, the panels, the mouldings, and the scrolls in the temples of northern India and Orissa, are all closely similar to those in the Tamulian structures of the South. The same forms, the same figures, the same proportions, however variously combined and elaborated, turn up wherever the observer directs his eyes, and they display a community of thought and inspiration on the part of the builders which could not have resulted unless the Tamulians and the Aryans had drawn from one common source. Hence it is that the *Śilpa Śāstras* as current in the North and South are alike, and the canons of the *Mānasāra* are reproduced unchanged in the works of Tamulian authors.