The same remarks apply to their civic buildings: palaces and porticos, and even dwelling-houses, are all as rich as carving and gilding, and painting, can make them; but, as in the pagodas, it is overdone, and fails to please, because it verges on vulgarity.
The typical design of all these halls and minor buildings will be understood from the preceding woodcut, representing the Hall of Audience at Bangkok. Like all the others, it has two roofs intersecting one another at right angles, and a spire of greater or less elevation on the intersection. Sometimes one, two, or three smaller gables are placed in front of the first, each lower than the one behind it, so as to give a pyramidal effect to the whole. Generally, the subordinate gables are of the same width as those in the centre; but sometimes the outer one is smaller, forming a porch. In the audience hall just quoted there are three gables each way. These may be seen on the right and left of the central spire in the view, but the first and second towards the front are hidden by the outer gable. The point of sight being taken exactly in front, it looks in the view as if there were only one in that direction.
The Burmese adopt the same arrangement in their civil buildings, and in Siam and Burmah the varieties are infinite, from the simple pavilion with four gables, supported on four pillars,[588] to those with twelve and sixteen gables, combined with a greater complication of walls and pillars for their support.
As the Siamese are certainly advancing in civilization, it may be asked, Will not their architecture be improved and purified by the process? The answer is, unfortunately, too easy. The new civilization is not indigenous, but an importation. The men of progress wear hats, the ladies crinolines, and they build palaces with Corinthian porticos and sash-windows. It is the sort of civilization that is found in the Bazar in Calcutta, and it is not desirable, in an architectural point of view, at all events, if, indeed, it is so in any other respect.
CHAPTER III.
JAVA.
CONTENTS.
History—Boro Buddor—Temples at Mendoet and Brambanam—Tree and Serpent Temples—Temples at Djeing and Suku.
There is no chapter in the whole history of Eastern art so full of apparent anomalies, or which so completely upsets our preconceived ideas of things as they ought to be, as that which treats of the architectural history of the island of Java. In the Introduction, it was stated that the leading phenomenon in the history of India was the continued influx of race after race across the Indus into her fertile plain, but that no reflex wave had ever returned to redress the balance.[589] This seems absolutely true as regards the west, and practically so in reference to the north, or the neighbouring countries on the east. Thibet and Burmah received their religion from India, not, however, either by conquest or colonisation, but by missionaries sent to instruct and convert. This also is true of Ceylon, and partially so at least of Cambodia. These countries being all easily accessible by land, or a very short sea passage, it is there that we might look for migrations, if any ever took place, but it is not so. The one country to which they overflowed was Java, and there they colonised to such an extent as for nearly 1000 years to obliterate the native arts and civilization, and supplant it by their own. What is still more singular is, that it was not from the nearest shores of India that these emigrants departed, but from the western coast. We have always been led to believe that the Indians hated the sea, and dreaded long sea voyages, yet it seems almost certain that the colonists of Java came not from the valley of the Ganges, but from that of the Indus, and passed round Ceylon in thousands and tens of thousands on their way to their distant sea-girt home. The solution of this difficulty may perhaps be found in the suggestion that the colonists were not Indians after all, in the sense in which we usually understand the term, but nations from the north-west—the inhabitants in fact of Gandhara and Cambodia, who, finding no room for new settlements in India Proper, turning to their right, passed down the Indus, and sought a distant home on this Pearl of Islands.
Whoever they were, they carried with them the bad habit of all their cognate races, of writing nothing, so that we have practically no authentic written record of the settlement and of its subsequent history, and were it not that they made up for this deficiency to a great extent by their innate love of building, we should hardly know of their existence in the island. They did, however, build and carve, with an energy and to an extent nowhere surpassed in their native lands, and have dignified their new home with imperishable records of their art and civilization—records that will be easily read and understood, so soon as any one will take the trouble to devote to them the attention with which they deserve to be studied.
It has been said, and not without reason, that the English did more for the elucidation of the arts and history of Java during the five years they held the island (1811 to 1816) than the Dutch had done during the previous two centuries they had practically been in possession. The work of the governor, Sir Stamford Raffles, is a model of zealous energy and critical acumen, such as is rarely to be found of its class in the English language, and is the storehouse from which the bulk of our knowledge of the subject must still be derived. His efforts in this direction were well seconded by two Scotchmen, who took up the cause with almost equal zeal. One of these, John Crawfurd, noted down everything he came across with patient industry, and accumulated vast stores of information—but he could not draw, and knew nothing of architecture or the other arts, with which he had no sympathy. The other, Colin Mackenzie—afterwards Surveyor-General of India—drew everything he found of any architectural importance, and was the most industrious and successful collector of drawings and manuscripts that India has ever known; but he could not write. The few essays he attempted are meagre in the extreme, and nine-tenths of his knowledge perished with him. Had these two men been able to work together to the end, they would have left little for future investigation. There was, however, still a fourth labourer in the field—Dr. John Leyden—who, had his life been spared, could have easily assimilated the work of his colleagues, and with his own marvellous genius for acquiring languages and knowledge of all sorts, would certainly have lifted the veil that now shrouds so much of Javan history in darkness, and left very little to be desired in this respect. He died, however, almost before his work was begun, and the time was too short, and the task too new, for the others to do all that with more leisure and better preparation they might have accomplished.