178. Temples at Kiragrama, near Kote Kangra. (From a Photograph.)
they are designed is diametrically opposed to those of the classical order of the same name. The object of both—as is well-known—is to convert a circular shaft into a square architrave-bearing capital in a graceful and pleasing manner. We all know the manner in which the Ionic and Corinthian capitals effect this; pleasingly, it is true, but not without effort and some little clumsiness, which it required all the skill and taste of classical architects to conquer. To effect this object, the Hindus placed a vase on the top of their column, the bowl of which was about the same diameter as that of the pillar on which it was placed, or rather larger; but such an arrangement was weak, because the neck and base of the vase were necessarily smaller than the shaft of the pillar, and both were still circular. To remedy these defects, they designed a very beautiful class of foliaged ornament, which appears to grow out of the vase, on each of its four faces, and, falling downwards, strengthens the hollows of the neck and leg of the vase, so as to give them all the strength they require, and at the same time to convert the circular form of the shaft into the required square for the abacus of the capital. The Hindus, of course, never had sufficient ability or constructive skill to enable them to produce so perfect a form as the Corinthian or Ionic capitals of the Greeks or Romans; but it is probable that if this form were taken up at the present day, a capital as beautiful as either of these might even now be produced. It is, indeed, almost the only suggestion that Indian architecture seems to offer for European use.
| 179. Pillar at Erun of the Gupta age. | 180. Capital of Half Column from a temple in Orissa. (From a Lithograph.) |
It is by no means clear when this form of capital was first introduced. It first appears, but timidly it must be confessed, in such late Buddhist caves as were excavated after the beginning of the 5th century:—as, for instance, in the Yadnya Sri cave at Nassick ([Woodcut No. 81]); in the courtyard of the Viswakarma, at Ellora ([Woodcut No. 63]); and in some of the later caves at Ajunta—the twenty-fourth for instance. It is found at Erun ([Woodcut No. 179]), among some fragments that I believe to be of the age of the Guptas, about A.D. 400, and it is currently employed in the middle group of Hindu caves at Ellora, such as the Ashes of Ravana, and other caves of that age, say about A.D. 600. It afterwards became frequent, almost universal, with the Jains, down to the time of the Mahomedan conquest. The preceding representation of one ([Woodcut No. 180]), from a half column of a temple in Orissa, shows it in a skeleton form, and therefore more suited to explain its construction than a fuller capital would do. On its introduction, the bell-shaped or Persepolitan capital seems to have gone out of fashion, and does not again appear in Indian art.
To return from this digression: there can be no doubt that the temple of Baijnath is dedicated to Siva, not only from the presence of the bulls in front of it, in pavilions of the same architecture as the porch, but also because Ganesa appears among its integral sculptures; yet, strange to say, the back niche, is occupied by a statue of Mahavira, the last Jaina Tirthankar, with a perfectly legible inscription, dated in A.D. 1240.[346] It looks as if the age of toleration had not passed even them.
BOOK IV.
DRAVIDIAN STYLE.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
The limits within which the Dravidian style of architecture prevailed in India are not difficult to define or understand. Practically they are those of the Madras Presidency, or, to speak more correctly, they are identical with the spread of the people speaking Tamil, or any of the cognate tongues. Dr. Caldwell, in his ‘Grammar,’ estimates these at forty-five or forty-six millions,[347] but he includes among them a number of tribes, such as the Tudas and Gonds, who, it is true, speak dialects closely allied to the Tamil tongues, but who may have learnt them from the superior races, in the same manner that all the nations of the south-west of Europe learnt to speak Latin from the Romans; or as the Cornish men have adopted English, and the Irish and northern Scots are substituting that tongue for their native Gaelic dialects. Unless we know their history, language is only a poor test of race, and in this instance architecture does not come to our aid. It may do so hereafter, but in so far as we at present know, these tribes are in too rude a state to have any architecture of their own in a sufficiently advanced state for our purposes. Putting them aside, therefore, for the present, we still have, according to the last census, some thirty millions of people speaking Tamil, Telugu, Canarese, and Malayalam, whom we have no reason for doubting are practically of the same race, and who, in so far as they are Hindus—not Jains, but followers of Siva and Vishnu—practise one style of architecture, and that known as the Dravidian. On the east coast the boundaries of the style extend as far north as the mouth of the Kistnah, and it penetrates sporadically and irregularly into the Nizam’s territories, but we cannot yet say to what extent, nor within what limits.