Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/364

 3 i6 DRAVIDIAN STYLE. BOOK III. might be carried constructively without danger of weakness. The Indian domes seldom exceed 30 ft. in diameter, but this may have arisen more from the difficulty of getting architraves above 12 ft. or 13 ft. in length to support the sides, than from any inability to construct domes of larger diameter in them- selves. This last difficulty was to some extent got over by a system of bracketing, by which more than half the bearing of the architrave was thrown on the capital of the column, as shown in Woodcut No. 176. Of course this method might have been carried to any extent, so that a very short architrave would suffice for a large dome ; but whether this could be done with elegance is another matter. The Indians seem to have thought not ; at least, as far so I know, they never carried it to any extent. Instead of bracketing, however, they sometimes used struts, as shown in Woodcut No. 176, but it is questionable whether that could ever be made a really serviceable con- structive expedient in stone architecture. The great advantage to be derived from the mode ol constructing domes just described was the power it gave of placing them on pillars without having anything to fear from the lateral thrust of the vault. The Romans never even attempted this, but always, so to speak, brought their vaults down to the ground, or at least could only erect them on great cylinders, which confined the space on every side. The Byzantine architects cut away a great deal of the sub- structure, but nevertheless could never get rid of the great heavy piers they were forced to employ to support their domes ; and in all ages were forced to use either heavy abutments externally, or to crowd their interiors with masses of masonry, so as in a great measure to sacrifice either the external effect or the internal convenience of their buildings to the constructive exigencies of their domes. This in India never was the case ; all the pressure was vertical, and to ensure stability it only required sufficient strength in the support to bear the down- ward pressure of the mass an advantage the importance of which is not easily over-estimated. One of the consequences of this mode of construction was, that all the decoration of the Indian domes was horizontal, or, in other words, the ornaments were ranged in concentric rings, one above the other, instead of being disposed in vertical ribs, as in Roman or Gothic vaults. 1 This arrangement allows of far more variety without any offence to good taste, and practically has rendered some of the Indian domes the most 1 The tendency of the Indian con- struction, however, was to make the section of the dome nearly conical as each course or ring of stone, after the first two or three, had about the same amount of projection inwards.