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    An Illustrated Handbook of Buddhist Architecture - Including Architecture from, Ceylon, India, Burmah, Java and More
    An Illustrated Handbook of Buddhist Architecture - Including Architecture from, Ceylon, India, Burmah, Java and More
    An Illustrated Handbook of Buddhist Architecture - Including Architecture from, Ceylon, India, Burmah, Java and More
    Ebook162 pages1 hour

    An Illustrated Handbook of Buddhist Architecture - Including Architecture from, Ceylon, India, Burmah, Java and More

    By Anon Anon

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    About this ebook

    Buddhist temples are some of the most beautiful and awe inspiring examples of religious architecture ever created. This helpful handbook is a guide to the finest examples from around the world. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRead Books Ltd.
    Release dateSep 6, 2016
    ISBN9781473358973
    An Illustrated Handbook of Buddhist Architecture - Including Architecture from, Ceylon, India, Burmah, Java and More

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      An Illustrated Handbook of Buddhist Architecture - Including Architecture from, Ceylon, India, Burmah, Java and More - Anon Anon

      HANDBOOK OF ARCHITECTURE.

      INDIA.

      CHAPTER I.

      INTRODUCTORY.

      THE countries commonly described under the general name of India form in themselves a group completely detached from the other kingdoms of the ancient world, and differ entirely from them in all their most striking peculiarities. We may therefore consider them separately from the rest, and as a subject complete in itself. India was undoubtedly one of the earliest civilised countries on the face of the globe. This fact is proved by her sacred writings which still remain to us, the Vedas, which were arranged in their present form at a very early period of the world’s history. We also possess the laws of Menu, which are believed to have been compiled at about the same time as those of Lycurgus. These, together with such fragments of her history as can be extracted from the strangely falsified chronology of the Indian historians, testify that the plains of this great country were at a very early period covered with regular communities of civilised men. These actual records are strongly confirmed by the very fables and traditions of the West, which all point to India as the land of wealth and learning—the El Dorado of the ancient world. It was to India that the mythic heroes of ancient Greece, Hercules and Bacchus, bent their steps; and, from the time of the scarcely less fabulous Semiramis to that of Cyrus, it was the desire to reach her long-coveted treasures that called forth the mightiest efforts of the great central monarchies of Asia. Darius and Alexander followed the same path of ambition with better success, but even they could never penetrate beyond her boundaries, never saw her sacred streams, nor the fertile plains they watered.

      Persia and Parthia formed a barrier which prevented Rome from ever attempting to seize by conquest the wealth which, reaching her by the more peaceful channels of commerce, formed the staple of that till then unheard-of accumulation of luxury and riches which dazzled the ancient world, and still excites the incredulity of the present age. It was the memory of that Indian contribution to Rome’s magnificence that formed the dream of the dark ages, and sent Columbus to seek her fabled treasures in the distant west, and enabled Vasco da Gama to brave the terrors of the stormy Cape.

      But while the contemporary nations have left behind them architectural monuments, there are no such traces remaining of the ancient greatness of India. What we have are entirely the work of a later age than that of which we are now speaking. The existing remains of these later times are on the whole very complete, and in good preservation. Notwithstanding this, the investigation of them is attended with much difficulty, arising from the indifference with which the whole subject is regarded, almost universally, by the Anglo-Saxon sojourners in the country. In all the older British settlements all architectural remains have nearly disappeared; and very little has been done to elucidate those which remain.

      In any attempt to understand either the history or the arts of India, the first and most important point to bear in mind is, that the mass of the population consists, and always has consisted, in historical times at least, of two races of men differing from one another as widely as any two races on the face of the globe. The first, or Tamul race, still inhabits the whole of the southern part of the peninsula, and exists as a substratum to the intruding races up to the foot of the Himalaya. This race, so far as we know, is aboriginal. So imperfect is their literature, that we know nothing of their earlier history; and so little has it been studied, that we have not even now traced their affinities among the other races of mankind; while, either because they were not builders, or because the climate or the unsettled state of society has been unfavourable to the preservation of the monuments, we have now nothing from which we can judge how early they were settled, or to what extent they were civilised.

      The other race came into India from the West at a very remote epoch. Its first settlement was at Taneswar on the watershed between the Indus and the Ganges. In process of time they extended their settlements eastward. Hastinapoora became their next capital, to be supplanted by Delhi; then Ayodia (Oude), which in like manner was superseded by Canouge. Then Rajagriha on the hills near Gya became a capital city, till about three centuries before Christ they ventured down to Palibothra, the modern Patna, on the banks of the Ganges. Next came Gaur and Dacca; Nuddya; and lastly Calcutta, in which the wealth and power of that great valley is now centered.

      Modern researches have traced this intruding race to its origin; the Persians were of the same stock as they were; so were the races who supplanted the Pelasgi in Greece; so were the Romans; so also were all those races of barbarians now designated as the Indo-Germanic, or Arian tribes, who colonized Europe about or before the Christian era, and to whom we belong. None of the Arian races seem originally to have been builders; at least they certainly were not temple-builders. This was owing to the very spirit of their religion. They would have thought it impious to rear with human hands a house for the one Great Spirit of the universe, whose manifestations were nothing meaner than the sun and planets, and whose emblem on earth was fire, the purest and most subtle of visible things. Accordingly the Persians built no temples. Even when Darius had learnt from more western nations some notions of architectural magnificence, the buildings which were raised in Persia were palaces rather than temples. The Grecian temples were borrowed from Egypt; the Roman from Greece and Etruria; and our own from Rome. The Teutonic tribes, when first known to the Romans, thought that to confine the gods within walls, or to represent them in the image of man, was unworthy of the greatness of heavenly beings.¹

      Throughout the Vedas there is no allusion to temples nor to images, nor indeed to any public form of worship. Every man stood forth in the presence of his God, and without intercessors offered up his prayers with the prescribed forms, or gave utterance to those hymns of praise which he thought were acceptable; but always feeling himself to be in the immediate presence of the Deity, and appealing directly to His mercy or supplicating His favour.

      Among such a people it would of course be in vain to look for any monuments of importance;² and while these Arian races remained unmixed with the other inhabitants of India, and retained their pure Vedantic faith, they left, so far as we now know, not one single monument to tell of their existence.³

      In the seventh century before the Christian era, a prophet, Sakya Muni, was born in India, the result of whose teaching was the introduction of the Buddhist religion into that country; and consequent on this change was the elaboration of a style of architecture, the most ancient as well as the most interesting of those whose monuments are found scattered over the plains of India.

      Although much has lately been done to clear up the obscurity that has hitherto hung over the history of the introduction of Buddhism into India, much still remains to be done before the story of its founder can be said to be placed on a satisfactory basis. It is recorded of him that he was one of the last lineal descendants of that long line of kings called the Solar race, who for more than two thousand years had held supreme sway in the Valley of the Ganges, but who, at the time of the birth of Sakya Muni, had dwindled before the rising influence of the Lunar races, from the imperial glories of the kingdom of Oude, to the position of petty princes of a small and undistinguished state near the foot of the Himalaya. Here it was that Sakya was born in the year 623 B.C., and spent the earlier years of his life in the usual occupations and amusements of those of his rank. At the age of 35, he—to use the language of his followers—attained to Buddhahood, and spent the remaining 45 years of his life wandering through the various countries of India, promulgating those doctrines which subsequently obtained such universal acceptance in all the countries of Eastern Asia.

      One or two points in the doctrines of Buddhism will be necessary to be borne in mind. The present Buddha—Sakya Muni, or Sinha as he is generally called—is held to be only the fourth of the great Buddhas. His three predecessors, Kakusanda, Konagamma, and Kasyapa, are supposed to have existed in extremely remote ages. Their history, as might be expected, is a mere mass of fables and absurdities.

      The Buddhists expect a fifth manifestation of the Deity in the person of Maitri Buddha, who is supposed to be now going through the innumerable transmigrations necessary to the attainment of Buddhahood: these transmigrations being an essential part of the whole system. We shall find, in speaking of Thibet, a curious extension of the belief. There the divine soul is held to pass immediately from one Delai Lama to his successor, so that they are never without a living manifestation of the lower class of Buddhas, which they believe their great Lamas to be.

      It is still a disputed point among the learned whether Sakya Muni was the original inventor of this religion, or even its first introducer into India. There are many and strong reasons for supposing that he cannot even aspire to this last distinction, for there are certainly many traces of the existence of at least a similar faith, in that country, before his time; though he no doubt gave it that mode of worship, and fixed upon it those peculiar doctrines, which afterwards distinguished it from the other religions of the land. Traces exist of very similar institutions, long before the time of Buddha, in Ethiopia, and as far west as Cyrene. In Syria we have something very similar to

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