Vastu-shastra (Vol. I: Hindu Science of Architecture; Vol. II: Hindu Canons of Iconography and Painting) v1.c53.57

v1.c53.57

Again it also cannot be said that the Śālā-architecture is completely absent from these works, but the śālā-buildings as described in works like Mānasāra, Mayamata and Kāmikāgama, etc., are at par with the lofty harmya or vimāna class of many-storeyed mansions and thus they represent a later phase of Indian architecture when the use of stone was not taboo in private residential houses. The Kāmikāgama is helpful in supporting this view-point, as will be presently shown. Religious buildings must not and could not be made in the same fashion as the civil ones. All ornaments, all profusion of decorative architectural motifs were reserved in the temple-architecture. The Viṣṇudharmottara clearly lays down that Sudhā and Śilās should be used in houses of gods: Sudhā and Śilā should not be given in gṛha (the residential house) (ibid 30). It is for this reason that ostentatious Prāsādas survive, while no specimens of civil-architecture in stone of the ancient Hindus have survived to our times. Indians did not care to build their residential houses in the ostentatious fashion. They lavished all energy and money in the building of temples, the high edifices, the crowning achievement of Indian architecture, both in the manuals and the monuments.