The Antiquities of Orissa v2.c16.s2.136

Language: English

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That stone architecture was at that time also well-known and practised cannot for a moment be doubted. A complicated suit of rooms and verandahs wlth all their doors, openings, pillars, pilasters, mouldings, friezes and alto-rilievo figures like that of the Queen's Palace, could not have been cut into one mass of solid rock without the guidance of a master workman — an *architectona*, — who was familiar with buildings and their several details, ane who could conceive and develop his plan in his mind before commencing his work. Even as a novelist sketches in his mind the plot and denouement of his story before he puts pen on paper, so does a master-builder conceive his plan before he commences to put brick on morter even for an ordinary masonry building; and though, like the novelist, who diversifies his story by descriptions and episodes not originally contemplated, he can, and does, add, embellish and modify while his work is progressing, he is still bound to carry out the broad outlines of his preliminary plan. He can add new pillars, new mouldings, new ornaments, wherever he is disposed to do so, but he can scarcely alter the size of the rooms after the foundations have been laid. Should, however, such an alteration be absolutely necessary, it can be effected with very little trouble. But the case is entirely different with the cave-cutter, who has to develop the whole out of a single mass of stone.

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He must, like the sculptor making a statue, have the perfect model before him, and must provide for every prominence, every protuberance and every detail, before he commences to work; for the smallest mistake is apt to vitiate the whole. One single protuberance unprovided for will upset the entire scheme of ornamentation originally thought of ⁵⁷. Now, as all the pillars' pilasters, mouldings, bas-reliefs and statues of every cave at Udayagiri are cut out of one soiid mass without a single superimposition, it must follow that their architect did conceive the whole plan, and make models and drawings, before he employed his masons to cut the rock. And as no man can conceive anything absolutely new, and even the most imaginative can only develop new forms by new associations of those forms with which he is familiar, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the builders of the caves were familiar with masonry houses whose counterparts they attempted to produce in stone. Had the models been wooden houses or huts, their [ 46 ] peculiarities would for certain have been imitated in stone; but they are all entirely wanting. The ceilings, instead of being sloping as they should have been if copied from huts, are flat, or so slightly arched that they may be called flat. The beams and rafters which form such prominent features in huts, are entirely wanting in the caves. The walls of the interiors are perfectly smooth and perpendicular without any indication of posts.

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The pyramidal parapets represent the same number as built on masonry houses, with ashlars of different lengths placed one over another, and are unknown in wooden houses. The Buddhist rails are copies of stone originals, thick, heavy and clumsy, and not of wooden fences, which would have been much lighter. The pillars have capitals which were practicable only in masonry work; the pilasters with bases and capitals are such as could never have been required in huts; the brackets projecting forward from the tops of the pillars and carved into female figures, could never have been required as constructive or mechanical contrivances for wooden buildings; the projecting edges of the roofs have no indications of the ends of rafters such as cannot be avoided in wooden houses,—the only instance where they do occur under the arch over a door-frame in the Ananta Cave, being just where in a wooden building they would not be required (*Ante* II pp. [ 3 ], [ 32 ]). Pilasters are doubtless the reminiscences of posts; but they had so long survived their original design at the time of the Udayagiri caves that the fact had been quite forgotten, and they were employed as mere architectural ornaments rising only to the top of the door-frame, and not up the whole height of the wall to the ceiling as posts did and should.

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These facts clearly prove that the caves have been formed on the style of mansonry buildings and not after wooden models or in other words that the master-mason or architect had in his mind the masonry buildings which existed around him when he designed these caves, and took his patterns from them, and not from huts. Under this conviction we may very reasonably conclude that square pillars with chamfered angles were in common use in those days, but columns were unknown or not used, the columns of the Jain Cave being evidently of a later date, as they stand on a masonry basement and not on the solid rock, or forming a part of it; that the doors were usually oblong and not narrowed at the top as was formerly the case in Egypt⁵⁸; that they were framed with side pilasters surmounted with semicircular arches; that the mouldings in common use were flat bands with floral decorations; that the roofs were flat, as they always have been in India; that the parapets were of a pyramidal form; that in Buddhist buildings the peculiar Buddhist rail always found a prominent place; that the taste for splendour and art had sufficiently advanced to necessitate the employment of bas-reliefs in stone or terracotta, and most probably also of painting; that the houses were generally two-storeyed, and sometimes three storeyed as described in the *Ṛgveda* (*ante* I, p. [21]); that they had verandahs, and balconies attached to the upper storey;

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that the balconies were surmounted by horse shoe-shaped framings on the top; that dormer windows with similar tops were common; that the rooms were arranged in suites, but they were generally narrow, as they always have been since and still are; and that, on the whole, the houses were not the dwellings of rude, primitive people, but of men who had made considerable advance in the arts of civilized life.