357. Monastery at Mandalé. (From a Photograph.)
These many-storeyed kioums, with the tall seven-storeyed spires (shown in Woodcuts Nos. 353 and 356), bring us back to the many-storeyed temples in Nepal, which are in all essential respects so nearly identical, that it can hardly be doubted they had a common origin. We are not yet in a position to point out the connecting links which will fuse the detached fragments of this style into a homogeneous whole, but it is probably in China that they must be looked for, only we know so little of the architectural history of the western portion of that great country, that we must wait for further information before even venturing on this subject.
The fact that all the buildings of Burmah are of wood, except the pagodas, may also explain how it is that India possesses no architectural remains anterior to the age of Asoka. Except the comparatively few masonry pagodas, none of which existed prior to his era, there is nothing in Burmah that a conflagration of a few hours would not destroy, or the desertion of a few years entirely obliterate. That the same was the practice of India is almost certain, from the essentially wooden forms still found prevailing in all the earlier cave temples; and, if so, this fully accounts for the disappearance of all earlier monuments.
We know that wooden architecture was the characteristic of Nineveh, where all the constructive parts were formed in this perishable material; and from the Bible we learn that Solomon’s edifices were chiefly so constructed. Persepolis presents us with the earliest instance in Asia of this wooden architecture being petrified, as it were—apparently in consequence of the intercourse its builders maintained with Egypt and with Greece.
In Burmah these wooden types still exist in more completeness than, perhaps, in any other country. Even if the student is not prepared to admit the direct ethnographic connexion between the buildings of Burmah and Babylon—which seems hardly to admit of doubt—he will at any rate best learn in this country to appreciate much in ancient architecture, which, without such a living illustration, it is hard to understand. Solomon’s House of the Cedars of Lebanon is, with mere difference of detail, reproduced at Ava or Amîrapura; and the palaces of Nineveh and Persepolis are rendered infinitely more intelligible by the study of these edifices. Burmah is almost equally important in enabling us to understand what an active, prosperous Buddhist community may have been in India at a time when that religion flourished there; and altogether, if means were available for its full elucidation, it would form one of the most interesting chapters in the History of Architecture in Asia.
CHAPTER II.
SIAM.
CONTENTS.
Pagodas at Ayuthia and Bangkok—Hall of Audience at Bangkok—General Remarks.
Although the architecture of Siam is very much less important than that of Burmah on the one hand, or Cambodia on the other, it is still sufficiently so to prevent its being passed over in a general summary of styles. Its worst feature, as we now know it, is, that it is so extremely modern. Up to the 14th century the capital of the country was Sokotay, a city on the Menam, 200 miles from the sea in a direct line, and situated close to the hills. This city has not been visited by any traveller in modern times, so we do not know what buildings it may contain. About the year 1350 the Siamese were successful in their wars with the Cambodians, and eventually succeeded in capturing their capital, Intha patha puri, or Indra prestha (Delhi), and practically annexing Cambodia to their kingdom.