A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c8.21

c8.21

Curved roofs, as Fergusson observed, while very rare in the rest of the world, are common in India. We have not only the dome of the *stūpa*, but the barrel roof of the ‘chaitya-hall’ or church, the Bengal cornice, and the curvilinear steeple of the ‘Indo-Aryan’ or Āryāvarta style of temple. Every form of curved roof used in India can, I venture to think, be explained by assuming its derivation from a prototype constructed with elastic bamboos. The late Mr. William Simpson, who successfully applied this explanation to the Bengal cornice, the barrel roof of the ‘chaitya-hall’, and the ‘Indo-Aryan’ steeple, truly remarked that the claims of bamboo to supply a theory of origins for Indian architecture had been insufficiently considered, but did not proceed to apply his theory to the case of the *stūpa*.¹ Fergusson's belief in the sepulchral descent of the domed *stūpa* alone prevented him from definitely recognizing the true origin of the external form. ‘If one can fancy,’ he wrote, ‘a circular chamber with a domical roof—not in stone, of course—as the original receptacle of the relic, we may imagine that the form was derived from this’; and he proceeds to cite from the Bharhut sculptures an instance of ‘just such a domical roof’.² In the Sāñchī reliefs (*post* Chap. III) we actually find a shrine with a domical roof represented on one pillar along with a *stūpa* of the same form.