Page:A history of architecture on the comparative method for the student, craftsman, and amateur.djvu/688

 630 COMPARATIVE ARCHITECTURE. thrown on the shrine from behind the spectator, producing a favourable effect of hght and shade on the close-set columns of the interior (No. 267). (b.) Jaina. — Openings are normally square-headed. Domes, when employed, were formed of horizontal courses, as in early Greek architecture (No. 15 a). Such a system was necessary in the case of domes supported on slender columns, which could sustain no outward thrust. In their pillared porches, horizontal stone architraves rested on the bracket capitals, and a characteristic Eastern feeling was produced by the stone struts supporting them (No. 270), features which were evidently derived from a timber form (No. 266 b). An extension of the bracket capital is sometimes applied to walls, lintels being supported at intervals by detached brackets built out in horizontal courses. The struts, already mentioned, were occasionally filled in with ornament, thus forming a triangular-headed opening (No. 271). {c.) Hindti. — Flat-headed openings are the usual type, but variations are caused in roofs by the use of bracketing shafts supporting purlins of stone, on which inner brackets were placed, thus gradually reducing the span, till stone slabs could roof the apartment, as at the Dravidian temple at Chillambaram. The Chalukyan buildings have pierced window slabs, as at Baillur and Hullabid (No. 274). Such are formed in star-shaped patterns ornamented with foliaged bands or with mythological subjects. These slabs, filling in the whole opening, are a great contrast to other styles, being somewhat similar, however, to Byzantine and Saracenic buildings. D. Roofs. Buddhist. — In the early rock-cut chaityas. semi-circular roofs are excavated in the rock and ornamented with wooden ribs or stone imitations of them (Nos. 267 and 268). Jaina. — The sikra, or stone roof, which crowned the idol-cell had a high curved outline crowned with a melon ornament and finial (No. 271). Such a curved outline, Mr. Fergusson suggests, may have been produced by following the outline of an internal pointed dome, formed with slabs of stone in horizontal courses. Jaina porches are crowned with (i) roofs formed of flat slabs of stone, or (2) pointed domes formed in horizontal courses. (i,) The flat slab roofs were evolved from the simple square slab of stone resting on architraves supported on four columns. Larger spaces were roofed by using a succession of triangular slabs as a base for the original square slab to rest on (No. 266 c). Still larger spaces were roofed by the insertion of two extra columns on each face to support the long architrave, and making twelve columns in all to each compartment, the intermediate columns forming an octagon on plan. I