Hindu architecture

“ Hindu architecture, or that of those who hold the Brahmanic faith, differs very greatly from Buddhist, its chief characteristic being a lofty pyramidal tower of several stories, as a general rule covered with ornament, that reached its fullest development in the so-called pagodas, of which there are fine specimens at Jaggernaut, Mahavellipore, and Palitana. ”

“ But the wonderful eye for colour, and the inborn taste of architecture that belongs to every Indian, makes them marvellously picturesque and interesting. There are the carved gateways, which generally lead into the chowk, or narrow street, where no carriage can enter; the curiously wrought overhanging balconies with scarlet striped blinds, from behind which peep out dark-eyed nautch girls. There is the minaret of a mosque in one corner, and the carved remains of a Hindu temple in the other. Here a group of men and women squatting over a hole in the earth, where they are pounding millet ”

“ At present we know only that they have been a people not given to change; and if their ancient architecture be the same with their modern, it bears no resemblance whatever to these unknown ruins.
The monuments of India have been made familiar to us. The remains of Hindu architecture exhibit immense excavations in the rock, either entirely artificial or made by enlarging natural caverns, supported in front by large columns cut out of the rock, with a dark and gloomy interior. ”

“ This probably influenced their architecture and led to that largeness of scale and grandeur which characterized the style, differing markedly from that of the buildings of Agra and Delhi, but scarcely, if at all, inferior in originality of design and boldness of execution. There is no trace of Hindu forms or details; the style was their own, and was worked out with striking boldness and marked success. ”

“ Many of the most beautiful examples of ancient Hindu architecture have already been destroyed by government authority, and the material of which they were built has been utilized in the construction of barracks and fortresses. You may not perhaps believe it, but there are still living in India men who call themselves servants of the Lord, who would erase every other monument that is in any way associated with pagan worship or traditions. ”

“ HINDU architecture is not only unfamiliar but uncongenial to Western tastes; and as it has exercised no direct influence upon the later styles of Europe, it will be noticed in far less detail than the magnitude and importance of many Indian buildings which have been examined and measured during the last few years would otherwise claim, although the exuberant wealth of ornament exhibited in these buildings denotes an artistic genius of very high order, if somewhat uncultured and barbaric. ”

“ As the oldest Hindu architecture of which we have any remains shows clear traces of Greek influence, and as the longer predominance of the Muhammadan power has still more thoroughly subdued the indigenous art of medieval India, so it must be expected that English fashions will be largely represented in the artistic development of the immediate future, The change is inevitable, and, in so far as it is a witness to historical facts, its avoidance would not be absolutely desirable, even if it were possible; for all ultra purism is unnatural, unhealthy, and bad. ”

“ No other form is so essentially Indian, and no one tells its tale with the same unmistakable distinctness.” Under the Mahommedan rule the Hindu architects employed introduced forms and ornaments into the works they constructed for their rulers, superior in elegance to any the latter knew or could have invented. Hence there arose a style combining all the beauty and finish of the previous native art with a certain magnificence of conception which is deficient in their own works. ”

“ The center building, of white marble, is surrounded by villas and cottages erected for the accommodation of the members of the princely families who are sent there. The villas are all of pure Hindu architecture, and there has been considerable rivalry among the different families to see which should house its cadets in the most elegant and convenient style. Hence, nowhere else in India can be found so many fine examples of modern native residence architecture. The young princes live in great style, each having a little court around him and a number of servants to gratify his wants. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Whether this were so or not, it is one of the most distinguishing features of northern Hindu architecture.
In the very centre of India, near a place marked Adjmîrghur on the map, is a sacred tank, from which it is said that the Soane flows to the north, the Mahanuddi to Cuttack in the Bay of Bengal, and the Nerbudda to the Indian Ocean. All these rivers certainly have their sources in the hill. The spot has always been held sacred, and is surrounded by temples—as far as can be gathered from the imperfect accounts available—of great age. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The aim of architects in the Middle Ages was to design halls which should at the same time be vast, but stable, and suited for the accommodation of great multitudes to witness a lofty ritual. In their struggle to accomplish this they developed intellectual powers which impress us still through their works. No such lofty aims exercised the intellectual faculties of the Hindu. His altar and the statue of his god were placed in a dark cubical cell wholly without ornament, and the porch that preceded that was not necessarily either lofty or spacious. ”

“ As an illustration of one of the three great temples will be given further on, a view of one of the smaller Jaina temples, that of Parswanatha (Woodcut No. 137) , will suffice to illustrate the style of art here employed. Its porch either never was added or has been removed and replaced in modern times by a brick abomination with pointed arches. This, however, hardly interferes with the temple itself. There is nothing probably in Hindu architecture that surpasses the richness of its three-storeyed base combined with the extreme elegance of outline and delicate detail of the upper part. ”

“ It is by watching the methods still followed in designing buildings in that remote locality that we become aware how it is that the uncultivated Hindu can rise in architecture to a degree of originality and perfection which has not been attained in Europe since the Middle Ages, but which might easily be recovered by following the same processes. ”

“ There are certainly more than one hundred temples in Central and Northern India which are well worthy of being described in detail, and, if described and illustrated, would convey a wonderful impression of the fertility in invention of the Hindu mind and of the elegance with which it was capable of expressing itself. ”

“ From the erection of the temple of Parasurameswara, A.D. 500, to that of Juganât at Puri, A.D. 1174, the style steadily progresses without any interruption or admixture of foreign elements, while the examples are so numerous that one might be found for every fifty years of the period—probably for every twenty—and we might thus have a chronometric scale of Hindu art during these seven centuries that would be invaluable for application to other places or styles. ”

“ Hindu art has left memorials which extort the admiration and astonishment of our age. The Hindu palace architecture of Gwalior, the Indian Mahommedan mosques, the mausoleums of Agra and Delhi, with several of the older Hindu temples of Southern India, stand unrivalled for grace of outline and elaborate wealth of ornament. English decorative art in our day has borrowed largely from Indian forms and patterns. ”

“ In the Himālayas the architecture is still largely wooden, raised on stone basements and is often picturesque. In the Nepal valley we meet with hemispherical chaityas or stūpas on low bases with lofty brick spires, and some of them of great antiquity, along with temples having three or four storeys divided by sloping roofs, and others in the modern Hindu style of northern India. ”

“ Coming now to Northern India, we find the Hindu architectural style more widely spread and more varied than in the south, but wanting somewhat in individuality. Examples of the same order, however, are to be found also far to the south in the Chalukyan area. The characteristic that first appeals to our notice is the curvilinear spires of the temples, and the absence of that exuberance of sculpture seen in the great Chalukyan temples of the South ”

“ Besides this, however, from the happy accident of the Buddhists very early adopting the mode of excavating their temples in the living rock, their remains are imperishably preserved to us, while it is only too probable that those of the Hindu, being in less durable forms, may have disappeared. ”

“ The comparative table is distinctly interesting, for it shows that in our own history kings have succeeded each other as quickly as those of Delhi.
Domes are a very prominent feature in both Hindu and Mahomedan architecture ; it is at times doubtful whether they surmount a mosque, or a tomb, or even a Hindu temple. The two latter have each one dome, a pyramidal one in the case of the temple, but a mosque has (with very rare exceptions) three or more domes. A Hindu temple is also distinguishable by the fact that a small flag on a bamboo pole flies over it. ”

“ The Mandu architects had the same initiation to the Hindu forms in the mosques at Dhar; and there must have been innumerable Jaina temples to furnish materials to a far greater extent than we find them utilised, but we neither find them borrowing nor imitating, but adhering steadily to the pointed-arch style, which is the essential characteristic of their art in foreign countries. It is easy to understand, on the other hand, why in Bengal the trabeate style never was in vogue. The country is practically without stone, or any suitable material for forming either pillars or beams. ”

“ Buddhist architecture is found in Ceylon, Tibet, Java, &c., as well as in India. The most remarkable Hindu or Brahmanical temples are in Southern India. They are pyramidal in form, rising in a series of stories. ”

“ In India the mosques and palaces erected by the Mahommedan conquerors and their successors are even more beautiful and impressive than the Buddhist and Hindu buildings described in the section on Asiatic architecture. Their distinctive characteristics, as in Egypt, Persia, and Spain, are the skilful combination of the dome, the arch and the minaret, and the lavish surface decoration of the interior, with certain other peculiarities that were the outcome of local tradition. ”

“ In India the wealth of material is such that an almost unlimited series of fine buildings could be brought forward, were space and illustrations available. A large part of that vast country became Mohammedan, and in the [266] buildings erected for mosques and tombs a complete blending of the decorative forms in use among Hindu and Jaina sculptors with the main lines of Mohammedan art is generally to be found. The great open quadrangle, the pointed arch, the dome, the minaret, all appear, but they are all made out of Indian materials. ”

“ Although it may, consequently, be impossible to trace any influence that the people of the Himalayas could have exerted on the peoples of the north-west of Europe, it is by no means clear that in these wooden structures we may not find the germ of much that is now perplexing us with regard to the earlier forms of Hindu stone architecture. ”

“ Diagram Plan and Section of the Black Pagoda at Kanaruc, designed to explain the construction of Hindu Temples.
The great and at first sight puzzling question is, from what original is this curious combination of forms derived? It is like nothing found anywhere out of India, and like no utilitarian form in India that we now know of. It cannot be derived from the dome-like forms of the topes. They are circular both in plan and elevation. The sikras are straight-lined in plan, and their section is never a segment of a circle ”

“ It is star-shaped in plan, with sixteen points, and had a porch, now so entirely ruined and covered up with vegetation that it is difficult to make out its plan. Its roof is conical, and from the basement to the summit it is covered with sculptures of the very best class of Indian art, and these so arranged as not materially to interfere with the outlines of the building, while they impart to it an amount of richness only to be found among specimens of Hindu art. ”