The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c33.34

v1.c33.34

Wherever important *stūpas* like those described above were erected, monasteries were also provided for the accommodation of the monks or nuns residing on the spot, and chapels or *chaitya* halls in which they could assemble for their devotions. The monasteries, as might be expected, were designed on the same plan as private houses: that is, with an open square courtyard in the centre surrounded on the four sides by a range of cells. Perhaps the earliest existing example of such a monastery is one by the side of the Piprahwa *stūpa* (p. 623), which is said to be built of bricks of much the same size and fabric as those employed in the *stūpa* itself. As a rule, however, the early architects built their structural monasteries and *chaitya* halls either wholly of wood or with a superstructure of wood set on a stylobate of stone, like the more primitive temples of Greece; and it was not until about the first century B.C. that more durable materials came into vogue for pillars and walls, and not until a still later period that they came to be used for entablature and roofs. The *chaitya* halls were remarkably similar in plan to the early Christian *basilicas*, being divided by two rows of columns into a nave and two narrow side aisles, which were continued round the apse. The only remains of such structural halls prior to the Christian era are those at Sānchī and Sonārī in the Bhopāl State of Central India. In both cases the superstructure seems to have been of wood, and what now survives of the original hall consists only of a lofty stone plinth approached by flights of steps, but the form of the plinth and the plan of the interior foundations leave no doubt that the superstructure must have been similar in design to the rock-hewn *chaitya* halls of Western India.