INDIA, Art and Architecture of. Al though considerable light has been thrown on Indian art and architecture, a great part of the knowledge that exists at present is vitiated by the fact of the subject having been approached from a very unsympathetic point of view. The fundamental of Indian art is symbolism and foreign students and critics have ignored this fact altogether. As a matter of fact, efforts have been almost altogether directed toward disproving the fabulous antiquity claimed for Indian art by tradition. It is only in very recent times that sympathetic critics have attempted to treat the subject from the right point of view. There is no doubt that the oral traditions in India have built up an absurd halo about the age of the temples; but, to a student of art, age must be a secondary consideration.
Twenty centuries of internecine warfare, the sweeping of the country by foreign hordes, and the several conquests, have naturally contributed to reduce all vestige of art to buildings that cannot be easily destroyed. We have very few examples of the development attained in com paratively ancient periods in the country. Of ancient paintings, we have only a few frescoes in the cave temples of Ajanta, Karli and Ellora. The literature abounds with descrip tions of magnificent paintings, carved works in wood and ivory and all the paraphernalia of artistic expression. Ancient Indian history shows that there were cities which could well vie with the magnificence of modern cities, and possessing all the expressions of artistic luxury.
We must judge of ancient Indian art by the temples — the mammoth structures that have existed for centuries. Whether these temples existed before the Christian era, or whether they owe anything at all to ancient Greek, Per sian or Roman, are, points not worth discussing. All that we know is that the inspiration is not foreign, and that the principles upon which they have been constructed were unknown to any other people. As a matter of fact, some of these structures that exist to-day are mar velous from an engineering point of view. The art of construction of some structures is not only lost, but baffles the engineering science of Europe and America.
There is general agreement on the point that Indian art owes its existence to Buddhism (q.v.). Ancient Brahminism had no temples, and the idea of any worship, but that of God in the form of nature was contrary to the in terpretation then put on the Vedic texts. Bud dhism was the religion preached by Buddha, hence there arose the necessity for deifying Buddha and worshipping him. The Brahmins fought such deification, and the erection of temples as being unholy. When the country turned away from Brahminism, and when more than 75 per cent of the people be came Buddhists, under the powerful pro selytizing influence of Asoka, the Brahmins retained their positions by practically incor porating the latter religion into their own.
In that process, they took also the temples and developed them. Within a few centuries, they made sure that no Buddha was left in the tem ples and the images were renamed. In that manner, the worship of the countless Hindu deities became the vogue. To-day, there are at least a thousand mammoth temples in the country, while there are hundreds of thousands of small temples.
It would take too much space to detail the evolution of the temple. The Buddhists began with the construction of topes, in order to com memorate some event or to show that the spot was sacred. Most of these topes were con structed in the form of towers. The most not able of them being the Sanchi diameter of which is 106 feet. In the ancient Buddhistic period, there were besides topes, temples and monasteries. We have very few examples of monasteries at present, because with the down fall of Buddhism in India, the monastic order died out, and the buildings allowed to go to destruction. The earliest extant temples are the rock-cut cave temples — the date of whose construction is variously put from the 2d cen tury B.c. to the 8th century A.D. There are three notable examples of these, at Karli, at Ellora and at Ajanta. The most wonderful of these are at Ellora. They are a series of caves sunken in the solid rock, extending a distance of three to four miles. The most notable caves are simply halls supported on massive piers, with level epistyles. The piers are richly carved with figures and friezes, and have a sort of cushion capitals and square abaci, and stand round forming a kind of atrium. The Indra court, the court dedicated to that deity, is open to the sky; within the court is a small shrine or temple in the solid rock are two halls one larger than the other. The Visvakarma cave is a quadrangle open to the sky and sur rounded by pillars. It leads into the atrium with three aisles and an apse. The most mag nificent of all existing structures and significant as a purely Hindu work, is that part called the Kailas, which means literally, Heaven. The Kailas chambers and halls are sunk into the rock, and occupy a space 270 feet deep and 150 feet wide. The roofs are solid rock, supported by pillars, or rest on the walls or on the divi sions of the assemblage of chambers. There is a porch, on each side of which, are two col umns. This leads into the hall supported on 16 such columns, leading into a sort of adytum, around which is passage space and five cham bers. The whole forms a temple with its usual appendages, exactly like one built on the ground, and around this is a wide open space with a colonnade or cloister encircling the whole. A great part of it is open to the sky for the sake of light and air but the work is entirely cut out of solid rock.