Ernest Binfield Havell

“ The architecture of India will not then appear as a bewildering museum of marvels belonging to a bygone age, but as a still living tradition of practical craftsmanship constantly readapting itself to the spiritual and material needs of the age, and bearing witness to the wonderful constructive work of our Aryan predecessors, who three thousand years ago, occupying the same position in the East as their successors do to-day, laid the whole foundation of Indian civilisation upon which we are attempting to build. ”

“ It is always easy to distinguish the native Indian tradition from that of the Muhammadan artist-penman, for the Hindu knew how to combine the art of line and form as the great masters of Ajantā had done, and there is a subtle vein of idealism in his conceptions which reveals his introspective bent of mind. The Musalman painter of the Persian school rarely shook off the technique of the calligraphist: very often, in the Mogul miniatures, the brush outline is the work of one artist and the colouring of another. This artificial division of labour was foreign to the indigenous Indian school. ”

“ And it is not among the débris of ruined cities, or by the methods of the archæologist and philologist, that we shall ever penetrate to the roots of its inspiration. For it grew first and lived for untold generations in the Himālayan forests, where the tree of the Devas, the deodar, still lifts its lordly crown, in those grand forest-cathedrals where the ancient Aryans first sang the hymns of the Rig-Veda—as they are still sung in the "thousand-pillared" halls of Hindu temples—their sonorous chants reverberating from tree to tree like the drone of a mighty organ. ”

“ A shrine in which a god had deigned to dwell for centuries might fall into decay from natural causes, but the temple architect who was priest as well as builder would never profane it by rebuilding it on a larger scale. Another site might be chosen upon which to raise a more stately abode, or the deity might be honoured by building a series of enclosures, each one grander and more sumptuous than the last, whereby the builder could demonstrate the manifold aspects in which the divinity declared itself, and provide accommodation for the priests and pilgrims who worshipped there. ”

“ Just as the Indian mosque is always Indian, so is the tomb of the great Pathān: it is the fifteenth-century development of the Indo-Aryan hero's tomb, the Buddhist stūpa. We have already seen how in the seventh century a.d., at Ajantā, the original idea of the stūpa as it was at Sānchī and Bharhut is altered. The dome, instead of being a solid mass enclosing a small relic chamber, has become a structural dome [8] of lotus-leaf form serving as the roof of an image shrine. The Lord Buddha has arisen from the dead and his tomb has become his throne-chamber. ”

“ Bijāpūr after Ibrāhīm's death could not hold its own politically against the Mogul power, and lost its prestige as a great building centre, while the magnificence of Shah Jahān's building projects lured the best craftsmen towards Agra and Delhi. The Tāj Mahall is, in fact, exactly such a building as one would expect to be created in India of the seventeenth century by a group of master-builders inheriting the traditions of Buddhist and Hindu building, but adapting them to the taste of a cultured orthodox Muhammadan monarch who had all the wealth of India at his disposal. ”

“ The site chosen is a lofty scarp of rock in a secluded glen, crescent-shaped and overlooking a mountain torrent which pours over the high rocks at the northern end of the ravine in a great cascade. Truly a fit place for meditation, and one which every Indian poet would associate with the birth of the holy Ganges in the wilds of Himālaya. ”

“ It is known that Indian pandits and physicians were employed at the Baghdad court; and it must be inferred that the demand for Indian builders was not less great, for long afterwards the war-lords of Islam, who butchered Brahman and Buddhist monks wholesale, made a point of sparing the lives of the skilled Indian craftsman. Mahmūd of Ghaznī, amazed at the magnificence of the Indian temples he looted, carried off thousands of their craftsmen to build for him at Ghaznī, and set up there a slave market of Indian women and craftsmen to supply the harems and workshops of Muhammadan Asia. ”

“ The difference between the Indian and Greek ideal lies in the metaphysical outlook. The Indian idea was that Yoga, through which divine wisdom was attained, not only gave the body eternal youth and superhuman strength, but purified it of its physical dross and gave it a finer texture than the common mortal clay. The Buddha sitting under the Bodhi tree at Gāyā, reduced to a living skeleton by mental agony and prolonged fasting, was at once supernaturally transformed when the Great Truth of the cause of human suffering flashed upon his mind. ”

“ It must be inconceivable to any art critic acquainted with the history of the Indian building craft that Shah Jahān, if he had so much faith in a European as an architect, would only have used him to instruct his Asiatic master-builders in designing a monument essentially Eastern in its whole conception, or that Veroneo himself would have submitted a design of this character and left no mark of his European mentality and craft experience upon the building itself. ”

“ The builders, also, who devoted their whole lives to the service of the deity, thereby acquired merit for themselves, just as the Brahmans did by the repetition of mantras, or the pilgrim by his constant pacing round the holy shrine. The magnificent royal chapels built in the course of many centuries by the Buddhist, Jain, and Hindu dynasties of Northern India are a proof that the restrictions thus imposed upon the master-builder's initiative did not deaden his creative powers—the decadence of Indian architecture was due to other causes. ”

“ In order to understand the history of the Mogul or of any Indo-Muhammadan school of building, one must first consider the effect of Islam's war-like propaganda upon the building traditions of India. Before the Muhammadan conquest the Indian hereditary builders, whose traditions of technique and design went back in an unbroken line to some of the most ancient cities of the world, had for many centuries borrowed no structural ideas from outside India, but kept strictly to the craft ritual laid down in their own sacred writings. ”

“ For just as the bull was regarded in ancient Babylonian ritual as a symbol of the sun ploughing his way across the heavens, so here we find the deadly earth reptile taken as a symbol of the heavenly serpent manifesting itself in various forms, either as the lightning—which is always represented in Indian pictures by serpentine lines of gold—or as the Milky Way, the great serpent or dragon of eternity which enfolds the earth in its coils. ”

“ VISHVAKARMA STŪPA-HOUSE, ELLORA
being a reliquary or a mere symbol, has become the shrine where the Blessed One Himself is worshipped as the Deity. On and above the capitals inside and outside the Chapter-houses and on the walls of the outer ambulatory, crowds of the mysterious Beings, the Bodhīsattvas, helping the progress of humanity towards the final goal, are absorbed in yoga, or teaching Divine wisdom. ”

“ Dance of Creation and Dissolution. And in like manner the calm serenity of those majestic peaks of the Himālayas in the still moonlit nights, when every sound is hushed and all nature lies asleep, gave to the northern artist his inspiration for the image of the Lord upon His exalted Lotus-throne, the Great Spirit "brooding over the face of the waters" who is the Cause everlasting of the cosmic rhythm. The Tanjore Nātārāja is distinguished by being the largest of South Indian images yet discovered, the figure being nearly four feet high, excluding the pedestal and the halo of fire. ”

“ Only when the craftsman's idea is realised will Indian architecture become a subject of living interest, an open book in which the thought and life of India are written from Vedic times down to the present day. ”

“ If the palaces of Muhammadan India, except for the extreme beauty of the decoration, can but rarely take the same rank in architecture as those of the Hindu princes of Rajputana, on the other hand its mosques and tombs are unsurpassed, and generally appeal more to the European critic than the earlier works of the Indian master-builder, to whom the entire credit of their creation is due ”

“ Akbar, in the beginning of his reign, ordered his imperial mosque at Fatehpur-Sikri to be built as a "duplicate of the Holy Place" (at Mecca or Baghdad) [2] ; but except in the general plan which conforms to the ritual of Islam the mosque is a perfectly original design in which the creative mind of the Indian builder is dominant. Even the orientation of the mosque is not orthodox Musalman, for it is like that of a Vishnu temple. ”

“ The first five of the Great Moguls were, like the monarchs and noblemen who imposed their ideas upon Renaissance building in Europe, men of wide culture keenly interested in architectural design. But while each of them gave a personal note to his palace, mosque, or tomb, there was no fixed formula, no "Mogul style"—or paper patterns to which the Indian master-builders were tied. Humāyūn's tastes were Persian; his builders designed him a Persianised version of the orthodox Indian Musalman's tomb. ”

“ Neither is it possible, by mere technical analysis of this kind, to discover the deeper meaning of any art, or to relate the monuments of a past age to the life and times of the people who built them.
The stūpa, as is well known, was a relic shrine and a symbol of the passing of the Buddha into Pari-Nirvāna, the boundless Ocean of Eternity. In Buddhist history it was primarily the funeral monument of the royal monk, the Prince of the Sākyas, who taught the four Aryan truths, the Aryan Eightfold Path, and founded the Sangha, organised after the customs and traditions of an Aryan clan. ”

“ Beneath the transcendental conceptions of Indian religious art as we see them at Ajantā and elsewhere, there is, however, an undertone of intense realism. Nothing could be more real and alive than the figures with which Buddhist artists peopled what Europeans call the unseen world. ”

“ The reason why there are so many missing links in the chain connecting Indian sculpture and painting with pre-Buddhist times is no doubt the same as that which has prevented the explorer from tracing the evolution of the stūpa and the sikhara. As in ancient Egypt, the houses and palaces of Indo-Aryan nobility were of clay or sun-dried bricks. ”

“ In the Buddhist temple architecture the sikhara became the distinctive mark of the Bodhīsattva cult, associated with Mahāyānist doctrine, while the stūpa was the architectonic symbol of the Hīnayānists, for whom the Buddha was a yogi and a teacher rather than a king. Mahāyānists pursued the path of bhakti, or loyalty to their spiritual king; orthodox Hīnayānists sought salvation in the jnāna-marga, the way of knowledge of the Law. The distinction between the Buddha as a king and as a guru is very clearly marked in Indian painting and sculpture. ”

“ Though it is written in the Silpa-Sāstrās that the master-builder should be "conversant with all the sciences," it is probable that, as in the present day, every branch of the Indian building craft had become highly specialised, common traditions co-ordinating the different branches and preserving unity of structure and design.
Many centuries of practice within these lines had developed extraordinary technical skill without exhausting the immense fertility of invention possessed by the Indian craftsman, when the Muhammadan conquest made a revolutionary change in his hereditary craft practice. ”

“ The disappointed magicians next created a monstrous serpent, which the Great Yogi took and wreathed about his neck. Then he began to dance. At last an evil spirit in the form of a dwarf sprang out of the sacrificial flames and rushed upon him. But Siva trampled it under his feet, and as all the gods assembled he resumed his triumphal dance. ”

“ Seeing that before the time of the Buddha these Aryan royal craftsmen thus deliberately preferred wood as building material because it was the substance which produced the sacred fire, and also of set purpose used other impermanent materials in their improvised temples, rather than brick or stone, it is highly improbable that we shall ever discover evidence of the origins of Indo-Aryan art, especially of temple architecture, other than that which is disclosed in the existing early monuments and in the surviving traditions of Indian craftsmanship. ”

“ In this way the magnificent outer gateways, or gopurams, of South Indian temples became the dominant features of South Indian temple architecture instead of the tower of the holy of holies, for each additional enclosure required gopurams proportionate to its size, and many of these stately gopurams vie with the famous Rajput towers of victory in the beauty of their design. The Tanjore temple is one of the few which, like the Kailāsa at Ellora, is an architectural unity, built after a preconceived plan. ”

“ A point of much importance for the correct classification of Indian temples is the relation of the image to its shrine or temple, as every Buddhist or Hindu image has an architectural framework appropriate for it. The indications I have given may lead the way to a more systematic treatment of a subject hitherto neglected by archæologists; but this is only possible for those who have the advantage of living in India. ”

“ We have seen already in early Buddhist architecture that the craftsmanship of the village served the purposes of the monastery and temple, the forms consecrated by use in the religious ritual of Vedic times being perpetuated in brick and stone when Aryan religion was organised as a brotherhood, based upon the village community, and the garden cities of India—with their public orchards, bathing places, and assembly-halls—made the village the foundation of civic life and the unit of their planning. ”

“ It was natural that the lotus, the especial flower of the gods and the favourite of Indian poets, should have been adapted by Indian craftsmen as a motif for the decoration of pillars, as it was in Egypt. The Egyptians, however, used the bud or half-opened flower to form the capital of a pillar; the Indian craftsmen preferred the open flower with turned-down petals because it suggested to them the heavenly vault supported by the holy mountain, the pivot of the universe. ”