If it were possible to illustrate the Hullabîd temple to such an extent as to render its peculiarities familiar, there would be few things more interesting or more instructive than to institute a comparison between it and the Parthenon at Athens. Not that the two buildings are at all like one another; on the contrary, they form the two opposite poles—the alpha and omega of architectural design; but they are the best examples of their class, and between these two extremes lies the whole range of the art. The Parthenon is the best example we know of pure refined intellectual power applied to the production of an architectural design. Every part and every effect is calculated with mathematical exactness, and executed with a mechanical precision that never was equalled. All the curves are hyperbolas, parabolas, or other developments of the highest mathematical forms—every optical defect is foreseen and provided for, and every part has a relation to every other part in so recondite a proportion that we feel inclined to call it fanciful, because we can hardly rise to its appreciation. The sculpture is exquisitely designed to aid the perfection of the masonry—severe and godlike, but with no condescension to the lower feelings of humanity.
The Hullabîd temple is the opposite of all this. It is regular, but with a studied variety of outline in plan, and even greater variety in detail. All the pillars of the Parthenon are identical, while no two facets of the Indian temple are the same; every convolution of every scroll is different. No two canopies in the whole building are alike, and every part exhibits a joyous exuberance of fancy scorning every mechanical restraint. All that is wild in human faith or warm in human feeling is found portrayed on these walls; but of pure intellect there is little—less than there is of human feeling in the Parthenon.
It would be possible to arrange all the buildings of the world between these two extremes, as they tended toward the severe intellectual purity of the one, or to the playful exuberant fancy of the other; but perfection, if it existed, would be somewhere near the mean. My own impression is, that if the so-called Gothic architects had been able to maintain for two or three hundred years more the rate of progress they achieved between the 11th and the 14th century, they might have hit upon that happy mean between severe constructive propriety and playful decorative imaginings which would have combined into something more perfect than the world has yet seen. The system, however, as I have endeavoured to point out elsewhere, broke down before it had acquired the requisite degree of refinement, and that hope was blighted never to be revived. If architecture ever again assumes an onward path, it will not be by leaning too strongly towards either of the extremes just named, but by grasping somewhere the happy mean between the two.
For our present purpose, the great value of the study of these Indian examples is that it widens so immensely our basis for architectural criticism. It is only by becoming familiar with forms so utterly dissimilar from those we have hitherto been conversant with, that we perceive how narrow is the purview that is content with one form or one passing fashion. By rising to this wider range we shall perceive that architecture is as many-sided as human nature itself, and learn how few feelings and how few aspirations of the human heart and brain there are that cannot be expressed by its means. On the other hand, it is only by taking this wide survey that we appreciate how worthless any product of architectural art becomes which does not honestly represent the thoughts and feelings of those who built it, or the height of their loftiest aspirations.
To return, however, from this digression. There are some eight or nine different temples in this style illustrated by photographs in the great work on the ‘Architecture of Dharwar and Mysore,’[409] which exhibit the peculiarities of this style in more or less detail; but none of these plates are accompanied by plans or details that throw new light on the subject, and none of the temples are either so large or so beautiful as those just described, so that the enumeration of their unfamiliar names would add very little to the interest of the subject.
It would be very interesting, however, if we could adduce some northern examples of the style from either the capital city of the Ballabhis, or some town in their kingdom. For about two centuries—A.D. 500 to 700—they were a leading power in India, and closely allied to the Chalukyas; and their style, if any examples could be found, would throw great light on that of their southern allies just at the period when it is most wanted. Unfortunately, however, even the site of their capital is unknown. If it were at Wulleh, near Gogo, on the shores of the Gulf of Cambay, as is generally supposed, it has perished root and branch. Not one vestige of its architecture now remains, and what antiquities have been found seem all to belong to a much more modern period, when a city bearing that name may have existed on the spot. If it were situated near Anhulwarra Puttun, which seems far more probable, it has been quarried to supply materials for the successive capitals which from that time forward have occupied that favoured neighbourhood, and it would require the keen eye of a practised archæologist to detect Chalukyan details in the temples and mosques that have been erected there during the last 800 years. Nothing of the sort has yet been attempted, and no materials consequently exist for the elucidation of one of the most interesting chapters in the history of Indian art.
BOOK VI.
NORTHERN OR INDO-ARYAN STYLE.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
CONTENTS.
Introductory—Dravidian and Indo-Aryan Temples at Badami—Modern Temple at Benares.