There can be no doubt that the Hindus carried their horror of an arch to an excess which frequently led them to worse faults on the other side. In city walls for instance, where there is a superabundant abutment on either hand to counteract any thrust, the horizontal principle is entirely misplaced. If we take, for instance, one of the city gates at Bijanagur ([Woodcut No. 108]), we cannot help perceiving that with much smaller stones and less trouble a far more stable construction could have been obtained, so long as the wall on either hand remained entire. What the Hindu feared was that if the wall were shattered, as we now find it, the arch would have fallen, though the horizontal layers still remain in their places.
108. View of City Gateway, Bijanagur. (From a Photograph.)
109. Gateway, Jinjûwarra. (From Kinloch Forbes’ ‘Ras Mala.’)
Instead of a continuous bracket like that shown in the last example, a more usual form, in modern times at least, is that of several detached brackets placed a little distance apart the one from the other. When used in moderation this is the more pleasing form of the two, and in southern India it is generally used with great success. In the north they are liable to exaggerate it, as in the gateway from Jinjûwarra in Gujerat ([Woodcut No. 109], p. 211), when it becomes unpleasing, though singularly characteristic of the style.
It is this horizontal or bracket mode of construction that is the formative principle of the Dravidian or Southern style of Hindu architecture, every form and every ornament depending almost wholly upon it. In the north, however, another development of the same principle is found in the horizontal dome, which is unknown in the south, but which has given a new character to the style, and, as one of its most beautiful features, demands a somewhat detailed explanation.
Domes.