Is all this accidental? It seems strange that so many coincidences should be fortuitous, but, so far as history affords us any information, or as any direct communication can be traced, we must for the present answer that it is so. The interval of time is so great, and the mode in which we fancy we can trace the native growth of most of the features in India seem to negative the idea of an importation; but there certainly was intercourse between Egypt and India in remote ages, and seed may then have been sown which fructified long afterwards.
If we were to trust, however, to either tradition or to mythological or ethnological coincidences, it is rather to Babylonia than to Egypt that we should look for the incunabula of what are found in southern India. But here the architectural argument is far from having the same distinctness; and, in fact, whichever way we turn, we are forced to confess that these problems are not yet ripe for solution, though enough is known to encourage the hope that the time is not distant when materials will be gathered that will make all clear.
CHAPTER IV.
CIVIL ARCHITECTURE.
CONTENTS.
Palaces at Mádura and Tanjore—Garden Pavilion at Vijayanagar.
Although, like all nations of Turanian race, the Dravidians were extensive and enthusiastic builders, it is somewhat singular that till they came in contact with the Mahomedans all their efforts in this direction should have been devoted to the service of religion. No trace of any civil or municipal building is to be found anywhere, though from the stage of civilization that they had attained it might be expected that such must have existed. What is, however, even more remarkable is, that kingdoms always at war with one another, and contending for supremacy within a limited area, might have been expected to develop some sort of military architecture. So far, however, as is now known, no castle or fortification of any sort dates from the Pandya, Chera, or Chola days. What is still more singular in a people of Turanian blood is, that they have no tombs. They seem always to have burnt their dead, and never to have collected their ashes or raised any mounds or memorials to their departed friends or great men. There are, it is true, numberless “Rude stone monuments” all over the south of India, but, till they are more thoroughly investigated, it is impossible to say whether they belong to the Dravidians when in a lower stage of civilization than when they became temple builders, or whether they belong to other underlying races who still exist, in scattered fragments, all over the south of India, in a state bordering on that of savages.[398] Whoever these Dolmens or stone circles may have belonged to, we know, at least, that they never were developed into architectural objects, such as would bring them within the scope of this work. No Dravidian tomb or cenotaph is known to exist anywhere.
When, however, the Dravidians came in contact with the Mussulmans this state of affairs was entirely altered, in so far, at least, as civil buildings were concerned. The palaces, the kutcherries, the elephant-stables, and the dependencies of the abodes of the rajas at Vijayanagar and Mádura, rival in extent and in splendour the temples themselves, and are not surpassed in magnificence by the Mahomedan palaces of Bijapur or Bidar.
One of the most interesting peculiarities of these civil buildings is, that they are all in a new and different style of architecture from that employed in the temples, and the distinction between the civil and religious art is kept up to the present day. The civil buildings are all in what we would call a pointed-arched Moorish style—picturesque in effect, if not always in the best taste, and using the arch everywhere and for every purpose. In the temples the arch is never used as an architectural feature. In some places, in modern times, when they wanted a larger internal space than could be obtained by bracketing without great expense, a brick vault was introduced,—it may be said surreptitiously—for it is always concealed. Even now, in building gopuras, they employ wooden beams, supported by pillars, as lintels, to cover the central openings in the upper pyramidal part, and this having decayed, many of the most modern exhibit symptoms of decay which are not observable in the older examples, where a stone lintel always was employed. But it is not only in construction that the Dravidians adhere to their old forms in temples. There are, especially, some gopuras erected within the limits of this century, and erecting even now, which it requires a practised eye to distinguish from older examples; but with the civil buildings the case is quite different. It is not, indeed, clear how a convenient palace could be erected in the trabeate style of the temples, unless, indeed, wood was very extensively employed, both in the supports and the roofs. My conviction is, that this really was the case, and its being so, to a great extent, at least, accounts for their disappearance.
The principal apartments in the palace at Mádura are situated round a courtyard which measures 244 ft. east and west by 142 ft. north and south, surrounded on all sides by arcades of very great beauty. The pillars which support the arches are of stone, 40 ft. in height, and are joined by foliated brick arcades of great elegance of design. The whole of the ornamentation is worked out in the exquisitely fine stucco called “chunan,” or shell lime, which is a characteristic of the Madras Presidency.[399] On one side of the court stands the Swerga Vilasam, or Celestial Pavilion, formerly the throne-room of the palace, now used by the High Court of