To persons not familiar with the East such an architectural object as a bowlee may seem a strange perversion of ingenuity, but the grateful coolness of all subterranean apartments, especially when accompanied by water, and the quiet gloom of these recesses, fully compensate, in the eyes of the Hindu, for the more attractive magnificence of the ghâts. Consequently, the descending flights of which we are now speaking, have often been made more elaborate and expensive pieces of architecture than any of the buildings above ground found in their vicinity.
Dams.
In the same manner the bunds or dams of the artificial lakes, or great tanks, which are so necessary for irrigation, are often made works of great architectural magnificence, first by covering them with flights of steps, like those of the ghâts, and then erecting temples or pavilions, and kiosks, interspersed with fountains and statues in breaks between these flights. Where all these are of marble, as is sometimes the case in Rajputana, the whole make up as perfect a piece of architectural combination as any the Hindus can boast of.
One of the most beautiful of these is that erected by Raj Sing, who ascended the throne of Oudeypore, in 1653, to form the lake of Rajsamundra ([Woodcut No. 274]), which is one of the most extensive in his dominions. This bund is 376 paces in length, and wholly covered with white marble steps; and with its beautiful kiosks projecting into the water, and the palaces which crown the hills at either end, it makes up a fairy scene of architectural beauty, with its waters and its woods, which is hardly surpassed by any in the East.
274. Bund of Lake Rajsamundra. (From a Sketch by the Author.)
It would be tedious, however, to enumerate, without illustrating them, which the limits of this work will not permit, all the modes of architectural magnificence of the Hindus. Like all people untrammelled by rules derived from incongruous objects, and gifted with a feeling for the beautiful, they adorn whatever they require, and convert every object, however utilitarian in its purposes, into an object of beauty. They long ago found out that it is not temples and palaces alone that are capable of such display, but that everything which man makes may become beautiful, provided the hand of taste be guided by sound judgment, and that the architect never forgets what the object is, and never conceals the constructive exigences of the building itself. It is simply this inherent taste and love of beauty, which the Indians seem always to have possessed, directed by unaffected honesty of purpose, which enables those who are destitute of political independence, or knowledge, or power, to erect, even at the present day, buildings that will bear comparison with the best of those erected in Europe during the Middle Ages. It must be confessed that it would require far more comprehensive illustration than the preceding slight sketch of so extensive a subject can pretend to be, to make this apparent to others. But no one who has personally visited the objects of interest with which India abounds can fail to be struck with the extraordinary elegance of detail and propriety of design which pervades all the architectural achievements of the Hindus; and this not only in buildings erected in former days, but in those now in course of construction in those parts of the country to which the bad taste of their European rulers has not yet penetrated.