A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c8.4

c8.4

Notwithstanding the superiority of timber in certain respects, Chandragupta's grandson, Asoka Maurya, evidently influenced by foreign example, preferred masonry. It is on record that during his reign of about forty-one years (273 to 232 B.C.) he replaced the wooden walls and buildings of his capital by permanent works in masonry, and caused hundreds of fine edifices in both brick and stone to be erected throughout the empire. So astonishing was his activity as a builder that people in after ages could not believe his constructions to be the work of human agency, and felt constrained to regard them as wrought by familiar spirits forced to obey the behests of the imperial magician. No building in India or Ceylon with any pretensions to be considered an example of architecture can be assigned certainly to a time earlier than that of Asoka, with whom the history of Indian architecture, as of the other arts, begins.