James Fergusson

CONTENTS.

Arches—Domes—Plans—Sikras.

Arches.

Before proceeding to describe the arrangements of Jaina or Hindu temples, it may add to the clearness of what follows if we first explain the peculiar modes of constructing arches and domes which they invariably employed.

As remarked above, although we cannot assert with absolute certainty that the Buddhists never employed a true arch, this at least is certain—that no structural example has yet been found in India, and that all the arched or circular forms found in the caves are without one single exception copies of wooden forms, and nowhere even simulate stone construction. With the Hindus and Jains the case is different: they use stone arches and stone domes which are not copied from wooden forms at all; but these are invariably horizontal arches, never formed or intended to be formed with radiating voussoirs.

It has already been explained, in speaking of Pelasgic art,[251] how prevalent these forms were in ancient Greece and Asia Minor, and how long they continued to be employed even after the principles of the true arch were perfectly understood. In India, however, the adherence to this form of construction is even more remarkable. As the Hindus quaintly express it, “an arch never sleeps;” and it is true that a radiating arch does contain in itself a vis viva which is always tending to thrust its haunches outwards, and goes far to ensure the ultimate destruction of every building where it is employed: while the horizontal forms employed by the Hindus are in stable equilibrium, and, unless disturbed by violence, might remain so for ever.

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.)

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.

It is to be regretted that, while so much has been written on the history of the pointed arch, so little should have been said regarding the history of domes: the one being a mere constructive peculiarity that might very well have been dispensed with; the other being the noblest feature in the styles in which it prevails, and perhaps the most important acquisition with which science has enriched the art of architecture.

The so-called Treasuries of MycenÆ and Orchomenos, as well as the chambers in Etruscan tombs, prove that as early as ten or twelve centuries before Christ the Pelasgic races had learned the art of roofing circular chambers with stone vaults, not constructed, as we construct them, with radiating vaults, on the principle of the common arch, but by successive layers of stones converging to a point, and closed by one large stone at the apex.

Whoever invented the true or radiating arch, the Romans were the first who applied it as a regular and essential architectural feature, and who at the same time introduced its complement, the radiating dome, into architectural construction; at what period it is not now known. The earliest example, the Pantheon, is also the finest and largest; but we have lost entirely the innumerable steps by which the architects must have slowly progressed to so daring an experiment.

There is, however, a vast difference between these two classes of domes, which it is necessary to bear in mind in order to understand what follows.

The Roman arch and Roman dome are always constructed (Woodcut No. 110) on the principle of voussoirs, or truncated wedges, radiating from a centre. This enabled the Romans to cover much larger spaces with their domes than perhaps was possible on the horizontal principle; but it involved the inconvenience of great lateral thrusts, continually tending to split the dome and tear the building in pieces, and requiring immense and massive abutments to counteract their destructive energy.

The Indian or horizontal dome never can be made circular in section, except when used on the smallest scale, but almost always takes a form more or less pointed (Woodcut No. 111). From the time of the building of the Treasury of MycenÆ[252] to the birth of Christ we have a tolerably complete series of arches and vaults constructed on this principle, but few domes properly so called. After the Christian Era the first example is found in a singular tomb at Mylassa,[253] near Halicarnassus,[254] where the dome exhibits all the peculiarities of construction found in the Jaina temples of India. After this we lose the thread of its history till the form reappears in porches like those of the 11th century on Mount Abu, where it is a perfectly established architectural feature, that must have been practised long before it could be used as we find it in that building. Whether we shall ever be able to recover the lost links in this chain is more than doubtful, but it would be deeply interesting to the history of art if it could be done. In the meantime, there is no difficulty in explaining the constructive steps by which the object is now attained in India. These may also throw some light on the history of the invention, though this is not, of course, capable of direct proof.

The simplest mode of roofing a small square space supported by four pillars is merely to run an architrave or stone beam from each pillar, and cover the intermediate opening by a plain stone slab. Unless, however, slabs of great dimensions are available, this mode of construction has a limit very soon arrived at. The next step therefore is to reduce the extent of the central space to be covered by cutting off its corners; this is done by triangular stones placed in each angle of the square, as in Woodcut No. 112, thus employing five stones instead of one. By this means, the size of the central stone remaining the same, the side of the square space so roofed is increased in the ratio of ten to seven, the actual area being doubled. The next step in the process (Woodcut No. 113) is by employing three tiers and nine stones instead of two tiers and five stones, which quadruples the area roofed. Thus, if the central stone is 4 ft., by the second process the space roofed will be about 5 ft. 8 in.; by the third 8 ft. square; by a fourth process (Woodcut No. 114)—with four tiers and thirteen stones—the extent roofed may be 9 ft. or 10 ft., always assuming the central stone to remain 4 ft. square. All these forms are still currently used in India, but with four pillars the process is seldom carried further than this; with another tier, however, and eight pillars (as shown in Woodcut No. 115), it may be carried a step further—exactly the extent to which it is carried in the tomb at Mylassa above referred to. In this, however, as in all instances of octagonal domes in this style, instead of the octagonal form being left as such, there are always four external pillars at the angles, so that the square shape is retained, with twelve pillars, of which the eight internal pillars may be taken as mere insertions to support the long architrave between the four angular pillars.

It is evident that here again we come to a limit beyond which we cannot progress without using large and long stones. This was sometimes met by cutting off the angles of the octagon, and making the lower course of sixteen sides. When this has been done an awkwardness arises in getting back to the square form. This was escaped from, in all the instances I am acquainted with, by adopting circular courses for all above that with sixteen sides. In many instances the lower course with sixteen sides is altogether omitted, and the circles placed immediately on the octagon, as in the temple at Vimala Sah (Woodcut No. 130, p. 236). It is difficult to say how far this system might be carried constructively without danger of weakness. The Indian domes seldom exceed 30 ft. in diameter, but this may have arisen more from the difficulty of getting architraves above 12 ft. or 13 ft. in length to support the sides, than from any inability to construct domes of larger diameter in themselves. This last difficulty was to some extent got over by a system of bracketing, by which more than half the bearing of the architrave was thrown on the capital of the column, as shown in Woodcut No. 116. Of course this method might have been carried to any extent, so that a very short architrave would suffice for a large dome; but whether this could be done with elegance is another matter. The Indians seem to have thought not; at least, so far as I know, they never carried it to any extent. Instead of bracketing, however, they sometimes used struts, as shown in Woodcut No. 116, but it is questionable whether that could ever be made a really serviceable constructive expedient in stone architecture.

The great advantage to be derived from the mode of constructing domes just described was the power it gave of placing them on pillars without having anything to fear from the lateral thrust of the vault. The Romans never even attempted this, but always, so to speak, brought their vaults down to the ground, or at least could only erect them on great cylinders, which confined the space on every side. The Byzantine architects, as we have seen, cut away a great deal of the substructure, but nevertheless could never get rid of the great heavy piers they were forced to employ to support their domes, and in all ages were forced to use either heavy abutments externally, or to crowd their interiors with masses of masonry, so as in a great measure to sacrifice either the external effect or the internal convenience of their buildings to the constructive exigencies of their domes. This in India never was the case; all the pressure was vertical, and to ensure stability it only required sufficient strength in the support to bear the downward pressure of the mass—an advantage the importance of which is not easily over-estimated.

One of the consequences of this mode of construction was, that all the decoration of the Indian domes was horizontal, or, in other words, the ornaments were ranged in concentric rings, one above the other, instead of being disposed in vertical ribs, as in Roman or Gothic vaults. This arrangement allows of far more variety without any offence to good taste, and practically has rendered some of the Indian domes the most exquisite specimens of elaborate roofing that can anywhere be seen. Another consequence of this mode of construction was the employment of pendants from the centres of the domes, which are used to an extent that would have surprised even the Tudor architects of our own country. With them, however, the pendant was an architectural tour de force, requiring great constructive ingenuity and large masses to counterbalance it, and is always tending to destroy the building it ornaments; while the Indian pendant, on the contrary, only adds its own weight to that of the dome, and has no other prejudicial tendency. Its forms, too, generally have a lightness and elegance never even imagined in Gothic art; it hangs from the centre of a dome more like a lustre of crystal drops than a solid mass of marble or of stone.

As before remarked, the eight pillars that support the dome are almost never left by themselves, the base being made square by the addition of four others at the angles. There are many small buildings so constructed with only twelve pillars, as shown in the annexed diagram (No. 117), but two more are oftener added on each face, making twenty altogether, as shown on the upper side of the annexed diagram (No. 118); or four on each face, making twenty-eight; or again, two in front of these four, or six on each face, so as to make thirty-six; and the same system of aggregation is carried on till the number of pillars reaches fifty-six (Woodcut No. 119), which is the largest number I ever saw surrounding one dome; but any number of these domes may surround one temple, or central dome, and the number consequently be multiplied ad infinitum. When so great a number of pillars is introduced as in the last instance, it is usual to make the outmost compartment on each face square, and surmount it with a smaller dome. This is occasionally though rarely done even with the smallest number.

The first result of this arrangement is, that the Hindus obtained singularly varied outline in plan, producing the happiest effects of light and shade with every change in the sun’s position. Another result was, that by the accentuation of the salient and re-entering angles, they produced those strongly-marked vertical lines which give such an appearance of height to Gothic designs. To accomplish this, however, the Western architects were obliged to employ buttresses, pinnacles, and other constructive expedients. The Hindus obtained it by a new disposition of the plan without anywhere interrupting the composition. This form of outline also expresses the internal arrangements of the porch better than could be done by the simpler outline of either a square or circle, such as is usually employed in Europe. Its greatest merit, however, is, that the length of the greater aisles is exactly proportioned to their relative width as compared with that of the subordinate aisles. The entrance being in the angle, the great aisle forms the diagonal, and is consequently in the ratio of 10 to 7, as compared to what it would be if the entrance were in the centre of the side, where we usually place it. From the introduction of the octagonal dome in the centre the same proportion (correctly 707 to 1000) prevails between the central and side aisles, and this again is perhaps the most pleasing that has yet been introduced anywhere. In Gothic churches the principal aisles are generally twice as wide as the side ones, but they are also twice as high, which restores the proportion. Here, where the height of all is the same, or nearly so, this gradation just suffices to give variety, and to mark the relative importance of the parts, without the one overpowering the other: and neither has the appearance of being too broad nor too narrow.

It is, of course, difficult for those who have never seen a building of the class just described to judge of the effect of these arrangements; and they have seldom been practised in Europe. There is, however, one building in which they have accidentally been employed to a considerable extent, and which owes its whole beauty to the manner in which it follows the arrangement above described. That building is Sir Christopher Wren’s church of St. Stephen’s, Walbrook. Internally its principal feature is a dome supported on eight pillars, with four more in the angles, and two principal aisles crossing the building at right angles, with smaller square compartments on each side. This church is the great architect’s masterpiece, but it would have been greatly improved had its resemblance to a Hindu porch been more complete. The necessity of confining the dome and aisles within four walls greatly injures the effect as compared with the Indian examples. Even the Indian plan of roofing, explained above, might be used in such a building with much less expense and less constructive danger than a Gothic vault of the same extent.

Plans.

Up to the present time only one temple has been discovered in India which gives us even a hint of how the plans of the Buddhist Chaitya Halls became converted into those of the Jaina and Hindu temples. Fortunately, however, its evidence is so distinct that there can be very little doubt about the matter. The temple in question is situated in the village of Aiwulli, in Dharwar, in western India, not far from the place where the original capital of the Chalukyan sovereigns is supposed to have been situated, and near the caves of Badami on the one hand and the temples of Pittadkul on the other. Its date is ascertained by an inscription on its outer gateway, containing the name of Vicramaditya Chalukya, whom we know from inscriptions certainly died in A.D. 680, and with less certainty that he commenced to reign A.D. 650.[255] The temple itself may possibly be a little older, but the latter may fairly be taken as a medium date representing its age. It is thus not only the oldest structural temple known to exist in western India, but in fact the only one yet discovered that can with certainty be said to have been erected before the great cataclysm of the beginning of the 8th century.

Mr. Burgess is of opinion that it was originally dedicated to Vishnu,[256] but this does not seem quite clear. There certainly are Jaina figures among those that once adorned it;[257] and it seems to be a fact that though the Jains admitted Siva, Vishnu, and all the gods of the Hindu Pantheon into their temples, there is no evidence of the reverse process. The Hindus never admitted the human Tirthankars of the Jains among their gods. Its original dedication is fortunately, however, of very little importance for our present purposes. The religions of the Jains and Vaishnavas, as pointed out above (p. 40), were, in those days and for long afterwards, so similar that it was impossible to distinguish between them.[258] Besides this, the age when this temple was erected was the age of toleration in India. The Chinese traveller Hiouen Thsang has left us a most vivid description of a great quinquennial festival, at which he was present at Allahabad in A.D. 643, at which the great King Siladitya presided, and distributed alms and honours, on alternate days, to Buddhists, Brahmans, and heretics of all classes, who were assembled there in tens of thousands, and seem to have felt no jealousy of each other, or rivalry that led, at least, to any disturbance.[259] It was on the eve of a disruption that led to the most violent contests, but up to that time we have no trace of dissension among the sects, nor any reason to believe that they did not all use similar edifices for their religious purposes, with only such slight modifications as their different formulÆ may have required (Woodcut No. 120).

Be this as it may, any one who will compare the plan of the chaitya at Sanchi (Woodcut No. 40), which is certainly Buddhist, with that of this temple at Aiwulli, which is either Jaina or Vaishnava, can hardly fail to perceive how nearly identical they must have been when complete. In both instances, it will be observed, the apse is solid, and it appears that this always was the case in structural free-standing chaityas. At least, in all the rock-cut examples, so far as is known, the pillars round the apse are different from those that separate the nave from the aisles; they never have capitals or bases, and are mere plain makeshifts. From the nature of their situation in the rock, light could not be admitted to the aisle behind the apse from the outside, but must be borrowed from the front, and a solid apse was consequently inadmissible; but in free-standing examples, as at Aiwulli, it was easy to introduce windows there or anywhere. Another change was necessary when, from an apse sheltering a relic-shrine, it became a cell containing an image of a god; a door was then indispensable, and also a thickening of the wall when it was necessary it should bear a tower or sikra to mark the position of the cella on the outside. Omitting the verandah, the other changes introduced between the erection of these two examples are only such as were required to adapt the points of support in the temple to carry a heavy stone roof, instead of the light wooden superstructure of the Buddhist chaitya. (Woodcut No. 121.)

It may be a question, and one not easy to settle in the present state of our knowledge, whether the Buddhist chaityas had or had not verandahs, like the Aiwulli example. The rock-cut examples naturally give us no information on this subject, but the presumption certainly is, looking at their extreme appropriateness in that climate, that they had this appendage, sometimes at least, if not always.

If from this temple at Aiwulli we pass to the neighbouring one at Pittadkul, built probably a couple of centuries later, we find that we have passed the boundary line that separates the ancient from the mediÆval architecture of India, in so far at least as plans are concerned (Woodcut No. 122). The circular forms of the Buddhists have entirely disappeared, and the cell has become the base of a square tower, as it remained ever afterwards. The nave of the chaitya has become a well defined mantapa or porch in front of, but distinct from, the cell, and these two features in an infinite variety of forms, and with various subordinate adjuncts, are the essential elements of the plans of the Jaina and Hindu temples of all the subsequent ages.

The procession-path round the cell—called Pradakshina—as that round the apse, remained for some centuries as a common but not a universal feature. The verandah disappeared. Round a windowless cell it was useless, and the pillared porches contained in themselves all the elements of shelter or of shadow that were required.

Sikras.

There is one other peculiarity common to both Jaina and Hindu architecture in the north of India that requires notice, before proceeding to describe particular examples. It is the form of the towers or spires called Sikras, or Vimanas, which invariably surmount the cells in which the images are placed. It is probably correct to assert that the images of the Tirthankars or of the Hindu deities are invariably placed in square, generally cubical cells, of no great dimension, and that these cells receive their light from the doorway only. It seems also an invariable rule that the presence and position of the cell should be indicated externally by a tower or spire, and that these towers, though square or nearly so in plan, should have a curvilinear outline in elevation. If the tower at Buddh Gaya (ante, p. 70) retains unaltered the original form given to it when erected in the 5th or 6th century, this dictum would not apply to Buddhist architecture. As it is, however, the only Buddhist sikra yet discovered it is hardly fair to draw any decided inference from one single example, while with Jaina or Hindu towers I know of no exception. Take for instance the tower represented in the following woodcut (No. 123), which purports to be an elevation of the celebrated Black Pagoda at Kanaruc in Orissa, and may be looked upon as a typical example of the style, and of which it may be considered as a fair medium example. The upper part of the tower, to some extent, overhangs its base. It bends inward towards the summit, and is surmounted by what is called an Amalaka from its supposed resemblance to a fruit of the name—Phyllanthus emblica. This, however, is certainly a mistake. Had it been said it was copied from a melon or any large gourd that was divided into pips externally—if there are any such—there are some early examples that might seem to countenance such an idea; but the Phyllanthus is so insignificant a berry that it could hardly ever have been adopted as an architectural model. Besides this its peculiar nicked form occurs frequently in old examples as a sort of blocking course dividing the sikras horizontally into numerous small compartments, and it seems as if what is used there in a straight-lined form, was employed as a circular ornament at the summit. It is a very beautiful architectural device, and was, as far as I can see, adopted only because it was so, and contrasted brilliantly with the flat ornaments with which it was employed. At present we do not seem to be in a position to explain its origin, or that of a great many other details that are frequently met with in Hindu architecture.

Whatever its origin, this amalaka is generally surmounted by a flat dome of reverse curvature, in the centre of which stands the kullus, or pinnacle, in the form of a vase, generally of very beautiful and graceful design.

The great and at first sight puzzling question is, from what original is this curious combination of forms derived? It is like nothing found anywhere out of India, and like no utilitarian form in India that we now know of. It cannot be derived from the dome-like forms of the topes. They are circular both in plan and elevation. The sikras are straight-lined in plan, and their section is never a segment of a circle; it is not derived from any many-storeyed buildings, as the sikras or vimanas of the Dravidian architecture of the south of India, which seem certainly to have been copied from the many-storeyed viharas of the Buddhists, and we cannot fancy any class of domestic building which could have formed a model out of which they could have been elaborated. One curious thing we do know, which is that all the ancients roofs in India, whether represented in the bas-reliefs or copied in the caves, were invariably curvilinear—generally circular or rather ogee—having a ridge added externally to throw off the rain from that weakest part; but nothing on any bas-relief or painting gives us a hint of any building like these sikras.

Another curious and perplexing circumstance regarding the sikras is that when we first meet them, at Bhuvaneswar for instance, or the Bay of Bengal, or at Pittadkul in the 7th century, on the west coast of India, the style is complete and settled in all its parts. There was no hesitation then, nor has there been any since. During the twelve or thirteen centuries that have elapsed since the erection of these earliest known examples, they have gone on becoming more and more attenuated, till they are almost as pointed as Gothic spires, and their degree of attenuation is no bad test of their age; but they never changed in any essential feature of the design. All the parts found in the oldest examples are retained in the most recent, and are easily recognisable in the buildings of the present century.

The one hypothesis that occurs to me as sufficient to account for this peculiarity is to assume that it was a constructive necessity. If we take for instance an assumed section of the diagram (Woodcut No. 124, p. 223), it will be seen how easily a very tall pointed horizontal arch, like that of the Treasury at MycenÆ (Woodcut No. 122, vol. i.), would fit its external form. In that case we might assume that the tower at Buddh Gaya took a straight-lined form like that represented in Woodcuts Nos. 128, 129, vol. i., while the Hindus took the more graceful curvilinear shape, which certainly was more common in remote classical antiquity,[260] and as it is found in Assyria may have reached India at a remote period.

This hypothesis does not account for the change from the square to the circular form in the upper part, nor for its peculiar ornamentation; but that may be owing to our having none of the earlier examples. When we first meet with the form, either in Dharwar or Orissa, it is complete in all its parts, and had evidently reached that state of perfection through long stages of tentative experience. The discovery of some earlier examples than we now know may one day tell us by what steps that degree of perfection was reached, but in the meanwhile I fear we must rest content with the theory just explained, which, on the whole, may be considered sufficient for present purposes at least.[261]