Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/16

 PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION THE late Mr. Fergusson's ' History of Indian and Eastern Architecture' has now been before the public for more than thirty years, and was reprinted (without his consent) in America, before his death in 1886, and the publishers issued a reprint in 1891. His method of treating the subject he has thus described : " What I have attempted to do during the last forty years has been to apply to Indian Architecture the same principles of archaeological science which are universally adopted not only in England, but in every country in Europe. Since the publication of Rickman's ' Attempt to discriminate the Styles of Architecture in England' in 1817, style has been allowed to supersede all other evidences for the age of any building, not only in Mediaeval, but in Byzantine, Classical, and, in fact, all other true styles. Any accomplished antiquary, looking at any archway or any moulding, can say at once, this is Norman, or Early English, or Decorated, or Tudor ; and if familiar with the style, tell the date within a few years, whether it belongs to a cathedral or a parish church, a dwelling house or a grange, ... is not of the smallest consequence, nor whether it belongs to the marvellously elaborate quasi- Byzantine style of the age of the Conqueror, or to the prosaic tameness of that of the age of Elizabeth. Owing to its perfect originality and freedom from all foreign admixture or influence, I believe these principles, so universally adopted in this country, are even more applicable to the Indian styles than to the European." The successful application of these principles to Indian architecture was entirely his own : no one had dreamed of it xii