ANCIENT INDIA AN INTRODUCTION

The meaning of Architecture and its relation to human experience can

briefly be expressed as: ARCHITECTURE IS THE MATRIX OF CIVILIZATION

Viewed historically, architecture remains as the principal visible and

material record, through the ages of mans intellectual evolution. Each great cultural movement had made its own particular contribution to the art of building so that the aspirations of the people and even their way of life stand revealed in substantial form for all to see. And in India, mans ideals have found expression in numerous noble monuments showing that few countries possess a richer Architectural Heritage.

In each of the major historical developments of architecture there is one basic principle underlying its conception, and one which is supremely distinctive.

GREEK BUILDINGS
ROMAN BUILDINGS

REFINED PERFECTION
SCIENTIFIC CONSTRUCTION

FRENCH GOTHIC
ITALIAN RENAISSANCE

PASSIONATE ENERGY
SCHOLARSHIP OF ITS TIME

INDIA

SPIRITUAL CONTENT

The fundamental purpose of the building art in India was to represent in concrete form the prevailing religious consciousness of the people.

This characteristics of indian architecture is emphasized by the treatment of

wall surfaces. The scheme of sculpture which often covers the whole of the exterior the building is notable not only for the richness of its decorative

effect, but for the deep significance of its subject matter.

Here is not only the relation of architecture to life, but transcendent life itself

plastically represented.

Carved on high or low relief are depicted all the glorious gods of the age-old

mythology of the country, engaged in their well known ceremonials. An

unending array of imagery steeped in symbolism, thus producing an Ocean of Story of absorbing interest.

THE INDUS CIVILIZATION

( B.C.3000 2000 )

It is very strange to find that the earliest phase of building art in India, recently excavated, disclose a style of structure which has been described

as AESTHETICALLY BARREN.
This development in the dawn age of the country has been designated as

the INDUS CIVILIZATION in the regions bordering on the river Indus.

Compared to other countries of which, the chronology is known, Indus Civilization was in a fairly matured state as early as 3000B.C. Two separate sites have so far been excavated, but there are mounds and other evidences which imply that it extended over a considerable portion of

North-West India and even beyond, thus embracing an area immensely

larger than either Egypt or Sumer.

The two sites explored are at:

1.

MOHENJO-DARO in Sind

2.

HARAPPA in Southern
Punjab.
The excavated site at HARAPPA

These

sites

disclose

the

foundations of two cities in numerous well defined strata,

denoting that they flourished

over a long period.
The excavated site at MOHENJO-DARO

The investigations have revealed a culture in which the buildings of its people had no great artistic value, but the finished quality of the materials employed, the high standard of their manipulation, and the stability of the construction as a whole is astonishing.

The architecture of INDUS VALLEY can be clearly understood by analysing

the following:

1. Settlement Pattern
2. Town Planning 3. Built forms 4. Materials and Construction 5. Water Management system

1. SETTLEMENT PLANNING
The twin cities of Mohenjodaro and Harappa formed the hub of the civilization. They are representative in

the sense that planning

principles employed here are followed practically without change at all other sites and the clusters or the settlements are located on the mounds.
Settlement ruins Computer generated image showing settlement pattern

2. TOWN PLANNING

The builders of these cities had acquired no little experience of town planning, and the cities have shown the following features in its planning.

1. Both cities were a mile

square, with defensive outer walls. 2. The straight streets were laid at right angles

3. The

main

thoroughfares
Entrance gateway to the city of Harappa

running north and south, east and west.

4. The principal buildings were oriented

having their sides towards the cardinal

points 5. The bricks were laid in mud-mortar in English bond. 6. Each city was divided into wards for
The streets in ancient Harappa

protective purposes
7. A well planned water management and drainage system was in use. 8. The buildings were composed completely of burnt brick, which is larger than the

ones used in present day.

3. BUILT FORMS

Dwelling houses both large and small predominate the different types of buildings of these cities in addition to which, there were certain number of more important structures built for various purposes. They are: 1. Large structures probably used as market halls, store rooms or offices.

2. Rooms arranged around two spacious courtyards which may

have been a palace. 3. Several 4. A halls complete possibly for

religious usage. bathing establishment at Mohenjo-daro.

INDIVIDUAL HOUSES

The houses of these cities were solidly built of bricks and many were

multi-storied

and

equipped

with

bathrooms and lavatories. The Harappan house is an amazing example of a native people, without the benefit of technology, adapting to local conditions and intuitively producing an architecture eminently suited to the climate. The house was planned as a series of rooms opening on to a central courtyard.

This courtyard served the multiple functions of

Lighting the rooms, Acting as a heat absorber in summer and radiator in winter,
Excavated Street layout

Providing an open space inside for community activities.

There were no openings toward the main street, thus ensuring privacy and security for the residents. the only openings in the houses are rather small this prevented the hot summer sun heating the insides of the houses.

4. MATERIALS AND CONSTRUCTION TECHNIQUES

Although all the buildings were constructed of materials and in a manner far in advance of their time, their style is one of such stark utilitarian that they cannot aspire to be works of architecture; in effect they represent a very practical form of building construction.

The Indus builders were thoroughly experienced in the technique of the

bricklayers craft.

The buildings which are two or more storey high. Walls and the foundations Upper stories Roofs Brick Masonry Wood flat and built of stout beams covered with planking finished

with a top dressing of beaten

earth. Openings Spanned by wooden lintels and brick corbelling ( as the construction of arches were not known to them).

EMBELISHMENTS

There is a possibility that on these structures, some kind of mural decoration may have been applied, such as carved wood or colour, but if

so, this has completely disappeared. The impression therefore conveyed by

these remains is that,

the country was once populated by a busy community of traders, efficient and precise in their manners And customs, but devoted to a life of materialism, thus lacking in that aesthetic intuition which demands and naturally creates an artistic environment.

5. WATER MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

A well protected water management system

was existing in the Indus Valley cities.

Water collected from wells, stored in storage

tanks and distributed to individual housed through conduits. An advanced drainage system is also in evidence. Drains started from the bathrooms of the houses and joined the main sewer in the street, which was covered by brick slabs or corbelled brick arches, depending on its width.

A third site CHANHU-DARO 80 miles SW of MOHENJO-DARO was explored to get more information to the beginnings of this civilization, and also on the dark period between the disappearance of the Indus Culture and the entry of Aryan speaking people into India, presumed to be about 1500 B.C.

But this did not give any specific information and the strata of this site goes

little back than other sites, but it was deserted about 2000 B.C.

This part of the country must at that time have had its attractions, but it appears to have had the great disadvantage of persistent floods which eventually forced its population to move.

In comparison with the rich remains revealed by excavations in other fields of research of relatively the same early age, the discoveries at MOHENJODARO, HARAPPA, and CHANHU-DARO, in the Indus Valley, have produced a disappointingly small amount of material of an artistic nature.

And also the people seemed to have had no marked religious convictions,
as the absence of temples, shrines or tombs on which they might have expressed themselves architecturally or artistically by means of paintings or sculpture, etc,.

The Indus civilization declined some time early in the 2nd millennium B.C., for the excavations reveal that its cities were then falling into a state of decay. At a later date, the deserted appearance of this part of India was remarked on by a Greek writer who relates that here were,

the remains of over a thousand towns and villages once full of men.

In spite of its virile character and the experienced method of construction that were achieved at this early age in India this powerful and well founded culture died out without appearing to influence in the slightest degree, the nature of the building art that followed.

It is possible only when a great disaster cut across the current events

making an entirely fresh beginning necessary.

VEDIC VILLAGE
( B.C.1500 800 )

INTRODUCTION After the decay of the Indus Civilization when the art of building again comes into view, this no longer consists of well laid out cities of finished masonry, but takes a much more rudimentary form of humble village huts constructed of reeds and leaves and hidden in the depths of the forest. The culture of the people was beginning again.

The exploration of origins reveals the motive power which gives an art its
initial impetus. And it is the primitive culture of the people that these origins are to be found. Primitive art is the matrix of the higher, and is the source from which more advanced forms are derived.

The Vedic culture of India produced the elementary type of forest dwelling in the end of the 2nd millennium B.C.

It was the outcome of the Indo-Aryan migration from the north-west, and
which in turn laid the foundations for the Vedic Age.

The people of Indus Civilization and those of Vedic Culture are totally unrelated as there was a clear difference in The conditions under which each of these populations existed,

Their mode of life and

The type of building produced by this method of living.

On the one hand the inhabitants of the Indus region, were mainly traders and town dwellers, while on the other hand, the Vedic people were of the

country, wresting their living from the fields and forests.

1. SETTLEMENT PATTERN

The people of this Vedic Age living in clearings cut out of the primeval forest, just as some of the small cultivators at the present time in India, in

parts of Bengal, still carve their homesteads out of bamboo jungles.

The Vedic people were originally nomads, an offshoot of an immense and

obscure migration, who, on settling down in the plains of India, became

partly pastoral and partly agricultural, having as their habitations rudimentary structures of reeds and bamboo thatched with leaves.

The Indian architecture had its beginning from these structures.

But these people had to protect themselves and their property from the

ravages of wild animals, and so they surrounded their little collection of huts
(Grama) with a special kind of Fence or Palisade.

This fence took a form of a bamboo railing, the upright posts called thaba

of which supported three horizontal bars called Suchi or needles, as they

were threaded through holes in the uprights.

In the course of time this peculiar type of railing became the emblem of
protection and universally used, not only to enclose the village, but as a paling around fields, and eventually to preserve anything of a special or sacred nature.

In the palisade encircling the village, entrances also of a particular kind were devised.

These were formed by a projecting a section of the bamboo fence at right angles and placing a gateway.

Through these gateways, cattles passed to and from their sheds.

The characteristic Buddhist gateways known as TORANA, a structure which

was carried with that religion to the Far East is derived from these

Gateways of Vedic Village.

2. BUILT FORMS - HOUSES

The huts within the village enclosures were of various shapes and at first

those of a circular plan predominated (It is the natural tendency of the

primitive man towards rounded forms).

In the Vedic village huts were of beehive pattern made of a circular wall of bamboos held together with bands of withes and covered either with a domical roof of leaves or thatched with grass.

At a later date in the evolution of Vedic hut, the circular plan was elongated into an oval with a barrel roof formed on a frame of bent bamboos also covered with thatch.

As a next stage of development, some of these huts are arranged in threes and fours around a square courtyard and the roofs covered with planks of

wood or tiles.

Stage 1

Stage 2

Stage 3

3. MATERIALS AND CONSTRUCTION TECHNIQUES

Generally for huts, the vedic people had used bent bamboos, Leaves and grass. In the better class houses, unbaked bricks were used for walls and the doorways were square headed openings with double doors.

The barrel shape of the roof was maintained by

using a thong or with across the end of the arch (like the cord of the bow), known as embryo tierod. This produced a shape resembling a horse shoe, a type of archway commonly referred to as the Chaitya or Sun-Window, which becomes the characteristics of the subsequent

architecture of the Buddhist.

The primitive shapes and the expedients as the railing and the gateway, the rounded hut with the heavy eave of the thatch the barrel roof with its framework of bent bamboos all in a greater or lesser degree influenced the style which followed.

The decorative aspects of these forest dwellings are not clearly known. The
people of these villages would have applied some colours on the mud walls

as a means of decoration. (Huts in remote villages of Orissa, are still whitewashed and
patterns of archaic designs in red pigment (haematite) painted on this white ground. The symbolism in such patterns suggests a very early origin which may go back to Vedic times).

Towards the middle of the 1st millennium B.C., the social system of the Vedic community so expanded that towns arose at certain important centres, where the traditional structural features of the village were reproduced on a larger scale and in a more substantial form. This resulted in,

Strongly fortified towns surrounded by a rampart and wooden

palisades Entirely wooden buildings within this enclosure.

The Vedic civilization enters into an era of timber construction. The very
reason was that the inhabitants lived in forests so that they became closely identified with their woody environment.

With the early inhabitants of India the timber age appears to have been a long one due to the vast extent of the Mahavana or Great wood in which they were cradled.

So closely connected with their existence were these forests that the early people developed a dexterity in wooden construction of a very high standard.

It is not remarkable therefore, in view of this timber tradition that its constructional features were freely and closely imitated in the rock and

stone architecture which eventuated and was the form of expression for
many centuries afterwards.

In principle, these cities were rectangular in plan and divided into four quarters by two main thoroughfares intersecting at right angles, each leading to a city gate.

One of these quarters contained the citadel

and royal apartments

Another quarter contained the residences

of the upper classes A third was for the buildings of the middle class and The fourth was for the accommodation of traders with their workshops open to view as in the modern bazaar.

The general arrangements of the royal residence in the well planned quarters have so much in common with the later medieval palace from that of the Moghals, both

Were built round an inner courtyard within the citadel

Had a large central central window for the dharshan or the salutation of the king. Had a wing reserved for the royal ladies with pleasure gardens, having fountains and ornamental water attached.

Had an official enclosure containing audience and assembly halls, a

court of justice, a music gallery , and near at hand an arena for wrestling displays and contests of wild beasts.