My impression is that this question may fairly be answered in the affirmative. No one has a right to say that he understands the history of architecture who leaves out of his view the works of an immense portion of the human race, which has always shown itself so capable of artistic development. But, more than this, architecture in India is still a living art, practised on the principles which caused its wonderful development in Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries; and there, consequently, and there alone, the student of architecture has a chance of seeing the real principles of the art in action. In Europe, at the present day, architecture is practised in a manner so anomalous and abnormal that few, if any, have hitherto been able to shake off the influence of a false system, and to see that the art of ornamental building can be based on principles of common sense; and that, when so practised, the result not only is, but must be, satisfactory. Those who have an opportunity of seeing what perfect buildings the ignorant uneducated natives of India are now producing, will easily understand how success may be achieved, while those who observe what failures the best educated and most talented architects in Europe are constantly perpetrating, may, by a study of Indian models, easily see why this must inevitably be the result. It is only in India that the two systems can now be seen practised side by side—the educated and intellectual European always failing because his principles are wrong, the feeble and uneducated native as inevitably succeeding because his principles are right. The Indian builders think only of what they are doing, and how they can best produce the effect they desire. In the European system it is considered more essential that a building, especially in its details, should be a correct copy of something else, than good in itself or appropriate to its purpose; hence the difference in the result.
In one other respect India affords a singularly favourable field to the student of architecture. In no other country of the same extent are there so many distinct nationalities, each retaining its old faith and its old feelings, and impressing these on its art. There is consequently no country where the outlines of ethnology as applied to art can be so easily perceived, or their application to the elucidation of the various problems so pre-eminently important. The mode in which the art has been practised in Europe for the last three centuries has been very confusing. In India it is clear and intelligible. No one can look at the subject without seeing its importance, and no one can study the art as practised there without recognising what the principles of the science really are.
In addition, however, to these scientific advantages, it will undoubtedly be conceded by those who are familiar with the subject that for certain qualities the Indian buildings are unrivalled. They display an exuberance of fancy, a lavishness of labour, and an elaboration of detail to be found nowhere else. They may contain nothing so sublime as the hall at Karnac, nothing so intellectual as the Parthenon, nor so constructively grand as a mediæval cathedral; but for certain other qualities—not perhaps of the highest kind, yet very important in architectural art—the Indian buildings stand alone. They consequently fill up a great gap in our knowledge of the subject, which without them would remain a void.
History.
One of the greatest difficulties that exist—perhaps the greatest—in exciting an interest in Indian antiquities arises from the fact, that India has no history properly so called, before the Mahomedan invasion in the 13th century. Had India been a great united kingdom, like China, with a long line of dynasties and well-recorded dates attached to them, the task would have been comparatively easy; but nothing of the sort exists or ever existed within her boundaries. On the contrary, so far as our knowledge extends, India has always been occupied by three or four different races of mankind, who have never amalgamated so as to become one people, and each of these races have been again subdivided into numerous tribes or small nationalities nearly, sometimes wholly, independent of each other—and, what is worse than all, not one of them ever kept a chronicle or preserved a series of dates commencing from any well-known era.[4]
The absence of any historical record is the more striking, because India possesses a written literature equal to, if not surpassing in variety and extent, that possessed by any other nation, before the invention, or at least before the adoption and use, of printing. The Vedas themselves, with their Upanishads and Brahmanas, and the commentaries on them, form a literature in themselves of vast extent, and some parts of which are as old, possibly older, than any written works that are now known to exist; and the Puranas, though comparatively modern, make up a body of doctrine mixed with mythology and tradition such as few nations can boast of. Besides this, however, are two great epics, surpassing in extent, if not in merit, those of any ancient nation, and a drama of great beauty, written at periods extending through a long series of years. In addition to those we have treatises on law, on grammar, on astronomy, on metaphysics and mathematics, on almost every branch of mental science—a literature extending in fact to some 10,000 or 11,000 works, but in all this not one book that can be called historical. No man in India, so far as is known, ever thought of recording the events of his own life or of repeating the previous experience of others, and it was only at some time subsequent to the Christian Era that they ever thought of establishing eras from which to date deeds or events.
All this is the more curious because in Ceylon we have, in the ‘Mahawanso,’ and other books of a like nature, a consecutive history of that island, with dates which may be depended upon within very narrow limits of error, for periods extending from B.C. 250 to the present time. At the other extremity of India, we have also in the Raja Tarangini of Kashmir, a work which Professor Wilson characterised as “the only Sanscrit composition yet discovered to which the title of History can with any propriety be applied.”[5] As we at present, however, possess it, it hardly helps us to any historical data earlier than the Christian Era, and even after that its dates for some centuries are by no means fixed and certain.
In India Proper, however, we have no such guides as even these, but for written history are almost wholly dependent on the Puranas. They do furnish us with one list of kings’ names, with the length of their reigns, so apparently truthful that they may, within narrow limits, be depended upon. They are only, however, of one range of dynasties—probably, however, the paramount one—and extend only from the accession of Chandragupta—the Sandrocottus of the Greeks—B.C. 325, to the decline of the Andra dynasty, about A.D. 400 or 408. It seems probable we may find sufficient confirmation of these lists as far back as the Anjana era, B.C. 691, so as to include the period marked by the life and labours of Sakya Muni—the present Buddha—in our chronology, with tolerable certainty. All the chronology before that period is purposely and avowedly falsified by the introduction of the system of Yugs, in order to carry back the origin of the Brahmanical system into the regions of the most fabulous antiquity. From the 5th century onwards, when the Puranas began to be put into their present form, in consequence of the revival of the Brahmanical religion, instead of recording contemporary events, they purposely confused them so as to maintain their prophetic character, and prevent the detection of the falsehood of their claim to an antiquity equal to that of the Vedas. For Indian history after the 5th century we are consequently left mainly to inscriptions on monuments or on copper-plates, to coins, and to the works of foreigners for the necessary information with which the natives of the country itself have neglected to supply us. These probably will be found eventually to be at least sufficient for the purposes of chronology. Already such progress has been made in the decipherment of inscriptions and the arrangement of coins, that all the dynasties may be arranged consecutively, and even the date of the reigns of almost all the kings in the north of India have been already approximately ascertained. In the south of India so much has not been done, but this is more because there have been fewer labourers in the field than from want of materials. There are literally thousands of inscriptions in the south which have not been copied, and of the few that have been collected only a very small number have been translated; but they are such as to give us hope that, when the requisite amount of labour is bestowed upon them, we shall be able to fix the chronology of the kings of the south with a degree of certainty sufficient for all ordinary purposes.[6]
It is a far more difficult task to ascertain whether we shall ever recover the History of India before the time of the advent of Buddha, or before the Anjana epoch, B.C. 691. Here we certainly will find no coins or inscriptions to guide us, and no buildings to illustrate the arts, or to mark the position of cities, while all ethnographic traces have become so blurred, if not obliterated, that they serve us little as guides through the labyrinth. Yet on the other hand there is so large a mass of literature—such as it is—bearing on the subject, that we cannot but hope that, when a sufficient amount of learning is brought to bear upon it, the leading features of the history of even that period may be recovered. In order, however, to render it available, it will not require industry so much as a severe spirit of criticism to winnow the few grains of useful truth out of the mass of worthless chaff this literature contains. But it does not seem too much to expect even this, from the severely critical spirit of the age. Meanwhile, the main facts of the case seem to be nearly as follows, in so far as it is necessary to state them, in order to make what follows intelligible.
Aryans.