Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/12

 viii PREFACE. These new aids, added to our previous stock of knowledge, are probably sufficient to justify us in treating the architecture of India Proper in the quasi-exhaustive manner in which it is attempted, in the first 600 pages of this work. Its description might, of course, be easily extended even beyond these limits, but without plans and more accurate architectural details than we at present possess, any such additions would practically contribute very little that was valuable to the information the work already contains. The case is different when we turn to Further India. Instead of only 100 pages and 50 illustrations, both these figures ought at least to be doubled to bring that branch of the subject up to the same stage of completeness as that describing the archi- tecture of India Proper. For this, however, the materials do not at present exist. Of Japan we know almost nothing except from photographs, without plans, dimensions, or dates ; and, except as regards Pekin and the Treaty Ports, we know almost as little of China. We know a great deal about one or two buildings in Cambodia and Java, but our information regarding all the rest is so fragmentary and incomplete, that it is hardly available for the purposes of a general history, and the same may be said of Burma and Sia'm. Ten years hence this deficiency may be supplied, and it may then be possible to bring the whole into harmony. At present a slight sketch indicating the relative position of each, and their relation to the styles of India Proper, is all that can be well accomplished. Although appearing as the third volume of the second edition of the ' General History of Architecture,' the present may be considered as an independent and original work. In the last edition the Indian chapters extended only to about 300 pages, with zoo illustrations, 1 and though most of the woodcuts reappear in the present volume, more than half the original text has been cancelled, and consequently at least 600 pages of the present work are original matter, and 200 illustrations ' History of Architecture ' (1867), vol. ii. pp. 445-756, Woodcuts 966-1163.