In course of time, however, Indian temples became more and more magnificent; and a Chinese traveller in the year 400 A.D. describes one in Gaudhava as four hundred and seventy feet high, decorated with every sort of precious substance. Its dome, as it appears in a bas-relief, must have rivalled that of St. Peter's at Rome; but no trace of it now remains. The topes of India, which were numerous, indicate that the Hindus were acquainted with the arch, both pointed and circular, which was not known to the Egyptians or the Greeks. The most important of these buildings, in which are preserved valuable relics, are found in the Punjab. They were erected about twenty years before Christ. In size, they are about one hundred and twenty-seven feet in diameter. Connected with the circular topes are found what are called rails, surrounding the topes, built in the form of rectangles, with heavy pillars. One of the most interesting of these was found to be two hundred and seventy-five feet long, having square pillars twenty-two feet in height, profusely carved with scenes from the life of Buddha, topped by capitals in the shape of elephants supporting a succession of horizontal stone beams, all decorated with a richness of carving unknown in any other country. The Amravati rail, one of the finest of the ancient monuments of India, is found to be one hundred and ninety-five by one hundred and sixty-five feet, having octagonal pillars ornamented with the most elaborate carvings.
From an architectural point of view, the rails were surpassed by the chaityas, or temple-caves, in western India. These were cut in the solid rock. Some one thousand different specimens are to be found. The facades of these caves are perfect, generally in the form of an arch, executed in the rock with every variety of detail, and therefore imperishable without violence. The process of excavation extended through ten centuries from the time of Asoka; and the interiors as well as the façades were highly ornamented with sculptures. The temple-caves are seldom more than one hundred and fifty feet deep and fifty feet in width, and the roofs are supported by pillars like the interior of Gothic cathedrals, some of which are of beautiful proportions with elaborated capitals. Though these rock-hewn temples are no larger than ordinary Christian churches, they are very impressive from the richly decorated carvings; they were lighted from a single opening in the façade, sometimes in the shape of a horseshoe.
Besides these chaityas, or temples, there are still more numerous viharas, or monasteries, found in India, of different dates, but none older than the third century before Christ. They show a central hall, surrounded on three sides by cells for the monks. On the fourth side is an open verandah; facing this is generally a shrine with an image of Buddha. These edifices are not imposing unless surrounded by galleries, as some were, supported by highly decorated pillars. The halls are constructed in several stories with heavy masonry, in the shape of pyramids adorned with the figures of men and animals. One of these halls in southern India had fifteen hundred cells. The most celebrated was the Nalanda monastery, founded in the first century by Nagarjuna, which accommodated ten thousand priests, and was enclosed by a wall measuring sixteen hundred feet by four hundred. It was to Central India what Mount Casino was to Italy, and Cluny was to France, in the Middle Ages,--the seat of learning and art.
It was not until the Mohammedan conquest in India that architecture received a new impulse from the Saracenic influence. Then arose the mosques, minarets, and palaces which are a wonder for their magnificence, and in which are seen the influence of Greek art as well as that of India. There is an Oriental splendor in these palaces and mosques which has called out the admiration of critics, although it is different from those types of beauty which we are accustomed to praise. But these later edifices were erected in the Middle Ages, coeval with the cathedrals of Europe, and therefore do not properly come under the head of ancient art, in which the ancient Hindus, whether of Aryan or Turanian descent, did not particularly excel. It was in matters of religion and philosophy that the Hindus felt most interest, even as the ancient Jews thought more of theology than of art and science.
Architecture, however, as the expression of genius and high civilization, was carried to perfection only by the Greeks, who excelled in so many things. It was among the ancient Dorians, who descended from the mountains of northern Greece eighty years after the fall of Troy, that architectural art worthy of the name first appeared. The Pelasgi erected Cyclopean structures fifteen hundred years before Christ, as seen in the massive walls of the Acropolis at Athens, constructed of huge blocks of hewn stone, and in the palaces of the princes of the heroic times. The lintel of the doorway of the Mycenaean treasury is composed of a single stone twenty-seven feet long and sixteen broad. But these edifices, which aimed at splendor and richness merely, were deficient in that simplicity and harmony which have given immortality to the temples of the Dorians. In this style of architecture everything was suitable to its object, and was grand and noble. The great thickness of the columns, the beautiful entablature, the ample proportion of the capital, the great horizontal lines of the architrave and cornice predominating over the vertical lines of the columns, the severity of geometrical forms produced for the most part by straight lines, gave an imposing simplicity to the Doric temple.
How far the Greek architects were indebted to the Egyptian we cannot tell, for though columns are found amid the ruins of the Egyptian temples, they are of different shape from any made by the Greeks. In the structures of Thebes we find both the tumescent and the cylindrical columns, from which amalgamation might have been produced the Doric column. The Greeks seized on beauty wherever they found it, and improved upon it. The Doric column was not probably an entirely new creation, but shaped after models furnished by the most original of all the ancient nations, even the Egyptians. The Doric temples were uniform in plan. The columns were fluted, and were generally about six diameters in height; they diminished gradually upward from the base, with a slightly con vexed swelling; they were surmounted by capitals regularly proportioned according to their height. The entablature which the column supported was also of a certain number of diameters in height. So regular and perfect was the plan of the temple, that "if the dimensions of a single column and the proportion the entablature should bear to it were given to two individuals acquainted with the style, with directions to compose a temple, they would produce designs exactly similar in size, arrangement, and general proportions." The Doric order possessed a peculiar harmony, but taste and skill were nevertheless necessary in order to determine the number of diameters a column should have, and also the height of the entablature.
The Doric was the favorite order of European Greece for one thousand years, and also of her colonies in Sicily and Magna Graecia. It was used exclusively until after the Macedonian conquest, and was chiefly applied to temples. The massive temples of Paestum, the colossal magnificence of the Sicilian ruins, and the more elegant proportions of the Athenian structures, like the Parthenon and Temple of Theseus, show the perfection of the Doric architecture. Although the general style of all the Doric temples is so uniform, hardly two temples were alike. The earlier Doric was more massive; the later was more elegant, and its edifices were rich in sculptured decorations. Nothing could surpass the beauty of a Doric temple in the time of Pericles. The stylobate, or general base upon which the columnar story stood, from two thirds to a whole diameter of a column in height, was built in three equal courses, which gradually receded upward and formed steps, as it were, of a grand platform. The column, simply set upon the stylobate, without base or pedestal, was from four to six diameters in height, with twenty flutes, having a capital of half a diameter. On this rested the entablature, two column-diameters in height, which was divided into architrave (lower mouldings), frieze (broad middle space), and cornice (upper mouldings). The great beauty of the temple was the portico in front,--a forest of columns supporting the triangular pediment, about a diameter and a half to the apex, making an angle at the base of about fourteen degrees. From the pediment projects the cornice, while in the apex and at the base of the flat three-cornered gable are sculptured ornaments, generally the figures of men or animals. The whole outline of columns supporting the entablature is graceful, while the variety of light and shade arising from the arrangement of mouldings and capitals produces a grand effect.
The Parthenon, the most beautiful specimen of the Doric, has never been equalled, and it still stands august in its ruins, the glory of the old Acropolis and the pride of Athens. It was built of white Pentelic marble, and rested on a basement of limestone. It was two hundred and twenty-seven feet in length, one hundred and one in breadth, and sixty-five in height, surrounded with forty-eight fluted columns, six feet and two inches at the base and thirty-four feet in height, while within the peristyle, at either end, was an interior range of columns standing before the end of the cella. The frieze and the pediment were elaborately ornamented with reliefs and statues, and the cella, within and without, was adorned with the choicest sculptures of Phidias, The remains of the exquisite sculptures of the pediment and the frieze were in the early part of this century brought from Greece by Lord Elgin, purchased by the English government, and placed in the British Museum, where, preserved from further dilapidation, they stand as indisputable evidence of the perfection of Greek art. The grandest adornment of the temple was the colossal statue of Minerva in the eastern apartment of the cella, forty feet in height, composed of gold and ivory; the inner walls of the chamber were decorated with paintings, and the whole temple was a repository of countless treasure. But the Parthenon, so regular to the eye with its vertical, oblique, and horizontal lines, was curved in every line, with the exception of the gable,--with its entablature, architrave, frieze, and cornice, together with the basement, all arched upwards; and even the columns had a slight convexity of vertical line, amounting to 1/550 of the entire height of shaft, though so slightly as not to be perceptible. These curved lines gave to the structure a peculiar grace which cannot be imitated, as well as an effect of solidity.
Nearly coeval with the Doric was the Ionic order, invented by the Asiatic Greeks, still more graceful, though not so imposing. The Acropolis is a perfect example of this order. The column is nine diameters in height, with a base, while the capital is more ornamented than the Doric. The shaft is fluted with twenty-four flutes and alternate fillets (flat longitudinal ridges), and the fillet is about a quarter the width of the flute. The pediment is flatter than that of the Doric order, and more elaborate. The great distinction of the Ionic column is a base, and a capital formed with volutes (spiral scrolls), the shaft also being more slender. Vitruvius, the greatest authority among the ancients in architecture, says that "the Greeks, in inventing these two kinds of columns, imitated in the one the naked simplicity and dignity of man, and in the other the delicacy and ornaments of woman; the base of the Ionic was the imitation of sandals, and the volutes of ringlets." The discoveries of many of the Ionic ornamentations among the remains of Assyrian architecture indicate the Oriental source of the Ionic ideas, just as the Doric style seems to have originated in Egypt. The artistic Greeks, however, always simplified and refined upon their masters.
The Corinthian order exhibits a still greater refinement and elegance than the other two, and was introduced toward the end of the Peloponnesian War. Its peculiarity consists in columns with foliated capitals modelled after the acanthus leaf, and still greater height, about ten diameters, surmounted with a more ornamented entablature. Of this order the most famous temple in Greece was that of Minerva at Tegea, built by Scopas of Paros, but destroyed by fire four hundred years before Christ.