Page:Bulandshahr- Or, Sketches of an Indian District- Social, Historical and Architectural.djvu/77



HAT architecture in India is still a living art, with unlimited capabilities of healthy expansion, is an axiom that ſew competent and unprejudiced critics would hesitate to accept. It is true that the fact of this vitality is often confidently denied, as by a recent writer in the Graphic, who, "after thirty years' experience of Indian life and character," declares that "all the indigenous art we have now to admire in Hindustan is ancient art, the art of people who lived hundreds and thousands of years ago." A similar opinion is still more deliberately expressed by a contributor to the Calcutta Review for January 1884, whose words are as follows: "If any one doubts the fallacy of an observation that has lately been made that 'architecture is still a living art in India,' we would only ask him to travel a little in the interior with his eyes open. He will find whole architectural provinces (if the term may be applied where the art does not exist) in which every rule of work, and every sense of the fitness of things has been lost sight of. He will see Hindu temples built in debased style of Muhammadan architecture, the debasements being so great that a further depth cannot be imagined. Or, where the proper Indo-Aryan forms have been adhered to, the superstructure will be found loaded with hideous ornamentation, in lieu of the chaste simplicity of the ancient types." Yet he goes on to say "even now a beautiful building occasionally rises up in a small district where foreign influence is away"; and this final admission virtually cancels the previous statement that the art is absolutely dead. Vitality is not extinct, but is only temporarily and accidentally suspended, and can be re-awakened. Both these critics and all who agree with them find an easy and a plausible argument for their despair of an Indian architectural revival in the undeniable hideousness of the vast majority of our modern buildings. But the induction is imperfect; it has not been sufficiently considered who are really responsible for these architectural enormities.

It is no matter for surprise that the people themselves, if questioned as to the existence and prospects of indigenous art, entirely fail to comprehend the purport of the enquiry; for, in any community, the masses are