The ancient and medieval architecture of India: a study of Indo-Aryan civilisation

loo HINDU

ARCHES

built in the reign of

the Kushan

King Huvishka, or in the

firstcenturyB.C.,mayafterall

provetobe

nearerthemarkthan

anyotherconjectures.

Moreover,

thereneedbe

nohesitationin

believing that the

arches in the interior

(PI. XXV)

belonged

totheoriginalstructure

andwere not,as

Fergusson

supposed,

placed there by the Burmese

restorers in

the thirteenth and

fourteenth centuries.

When further progress is

made in the study

of Indian

craftsmanship, it will, I am sure,

be proved

conclusivelynot

only that Fergusson was again in error

in laying down the

axiom that Hindu builders never used the

arch structurally

before Muhammadan times, but that

the Muhammadans in

India werethemselves the borrowers and

derived the Indian

forms ofthe pointed arch from thebrick

buildingsof Hindu

Gaur.^

I have mentioned above that pairs of temples

with an

antithetical or complementary significance, like the

dhwaja-

stambhasatthe gatewaysof stilpas, were often built side by

side in India, as theywerenearSennacherib'spalaceatNine-

veh. Mamallapuram furnishes one instance (PI. XXVI),

whichisinteresting as it givesaclue tothederivation ofthe

most

usual

method of constructing a sikhara,i.e. with stone

ribs built up

in short sections and tied together at regular

intervalsby

throughhorizontalcourses ofmasonry.

Thesetwoshrines

are, like theother Raths at Mamalla-

puram, monolithic

models. The popular traditional names

given to them, Arjtlna's

and Draupadi's Raths, should be

verysignificant to Indians

who study their own history, but

convey nothing to

Europeans who are misled by arbitrary

archaeologicaltermsof

Westernorigin. Arjtlnawasthehero

of the Mahabh^ratawho

wonvictoryforthePandavas bythe

1

This question

is discussed in greater detail in my previous

work on Indian

Architecture.