Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/33

 HISTORY OF INDIAN ARCHITECTURE. INTRODUCTION. IT is in vain, perhaps, to expect that the literature or the Arts of any other people can be so interesting to even the best educated Europeans as those of their own country. Until it is forced on their attention, few are aware how much education does to concentrate attention within a very narrow field of observation. We become familiar in the nursery with the names of the heroes of Greek and Roman history. In every school their history and their arts are taught, memorials of their greatness meet us at every turn through life, and their thoughts and aspirations become, as it were, part of ourselves. So, too, with the Middle Ages : their religion is our religion ; their architecture our architecture ; and their history fades so insensibly into our own, that we can draw no line of demarca- tion that would separate us from them. How different is the state of feeling, when from this familiar home we turn to such a country as India ! Its geography is hardly taught in schools, and seldom mastered perfectly ; its history is a puzzle ; l its literature a mythic dream ; its arts a quaint perplexity. But, above all, the names of its heroes and great men are so unfamiliar that, except a few of those who go to India, scarcely any ever become so acquainted with them, that they call up any memories which are either pleasing or worth dwelling upon. Were it not for this, there is probably no country out of Europe at least that would so well repay attention as India: none, where all the problems of natural science or of art are presented to us in so distinct and so pleasing a form. Nowhere does nature show herself in such grand and such luxurious 1 The last thirty years have added greatly to the number and quality of the text-books on Indian history, and the general reader has no longer a valid excuse for ignorance of it.