The Antiquities of Orissa v2.c16.s2.136.1

v2.c16.s2.136.1

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.