Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/125

 of Sociology and Folklore. 1 1 5

heaven, into which his entry had hitherto been impeded by the roof over the shrine.^

The materials of the oldest Indo-European houses con- sisted of wood, basket-work, and clay.^ In the early period of Indian history brick was used for the foundations and plinths of houses, the upper structure being of wood, which possessed the advantage that wide spaces could be roofed which could not be spanned by masonry arches.^ The use of stone for architecture dates from the age of the great Emperor Asoka (b.c. 273-32), Even at the present day the hut roofed with straw or reeds is the normal type of house, and there is a remarkable taboo in some places against the use of bricks or tiles for building. In Bengal brick walls are supposed to attract the Evil Eye because such buildings indicate prosperity and naturally attract Nemesis ; but some well-to-do people defy the risk because they secure some protection from burglars.^ In Khandesh, up to recent times, tiled roofs were proscribed, and the failure of some rich merchants who violated the taboo was quoted as an example to sceptics.^ In the Panjab, in some

^ For hypaethral altars in Greece, see Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Konian Antiquities, 3rd ed. ii. 783 ; among the Hebrews, Hastings, Dictionary of the Bible, i. 75 et seq. ; in Europe, G. L. Gomme, Folklore Relics of Early Village Life, 69 ; for the Panjab, H. A. Rose, Glossary, Tribes and Castes, Punjab and North- West Frontier Province, vol. i. (still unpuljlished), p. 534, referring to his paper on hypaethral shrines in the Panjab {Punjab Historical Society Journal, 1914, 144 et sr'q.). Temples dedicated to the Sun in India often have no roofs, in order to allow the luminary to visit his shrine (Rose, op. cit. i. 193 note).

-O. Schrader, Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples, trans. F. B. Jevons, 342. The references to the construction and materials of the house in Vedic times have been collected by A. A. Macdonell and A. B. Keith, Vedic Index of Names and Subjects, i. 229 et seqq. ; P. T. Srinivas Iyengar, Lije in Aftcient India in the Age of the Mantras, 45 et seqq.

•'Vincent A. Smith, History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, 13.

^ Census Report, Bengal, 1 91 1, i. 46.

■'' Bombay Gazetteer, xii. 129, 443 note. Similar cases are quoted from the Panjat), Punjab Notes and Queries, i. 97.