A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c7.43

c7.43

The originality of Indian art is, perhaps, most conspicuous in architecture, a subject treated only cursorily in these pages. No evidence apparently exists to suggest the foreign origin of any of the main types of Indian buildings prior to the Muhammadan conquest. The effect of that conquest upon architecture was lasting because the Muhammadan government endured for centuries and set the fashion to its subjects. But all the old Hindu styles seem to be indigenous, evolved ultimately from wooden and bamboo structures, with brick as an intermediate stage. The forms of column and capital, borrowed from Persia freely, and from Greece to a more limited extent, were always used merely as decorative details of buildings, which continued to be essentially Indian in plan and elevation.