Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/368

 320 DRAVIDIAN STYLE. BOOK III. quinquennial festival, at which he was present at Allahabad in A.D. 643, at which the great King Siladitya presided, and dis- tributed alms and honours, on alternate days, to Buddhists, Brahmans, and heretics of all classes, who were assembled there in tens of thousands, and seem to have felt no jealousy of each other, or rivalry that led, at least, to any disturbance. 1 It was on the eve of a disruption that led to the most violent contests, but up to that time we have no reason to believe that they did not all use similar edifices for their religious purposes, with only such slight modifications as their different formulae may have required (Woodcut No. 180). Be this as it may, any one who will compare the plan of the chaitya at Sancht (Woodcut No. 47), which is certainly Buddhist, with that of this temple at Aihole, which is Vaishnava, can hardly fail to perceive how nearly identical they must have been when complete. In both in- stances, it will be observed, the apse is solid, and it appears that this always was the case in structural free-standing chaityas. At least, in all the rock-cut examples, so far as is known, the pillars round the apse are different from those that separate the nave from the aisles ; they never have capitals or bases, and are mere plain makeshifts. From the nature of their situation in the rock, light could not be admitted to the aisle behind the apse from the outside, but must be borrowed from the front, and a solid apse was con- sequently inadmissible ; but in free-standing examples, as at Aihole, it was easy to introduce windows there or anywhere. Another change was necessary when, from an apse sheltering a relic-shrine, it became a cell containing an image of a god ; a door was then indispensable, and also a thickening of the wall when it was necessary it should bear a tower or .dkhara to mark the position of the cella on the outside. Omitting the verandah, the other changes introduced between the erection of these two examples are only such as were required to adapt the points of support in the temple to carry a heavy stone roof, instead of the light wooden superstructure of the primitive Buddhist chaitya (Woodcut No. 181). It may be a question, and one not easy to settle in the present state of our knowledge, whether the Buddhist chaityas had or had not verandahs, like the Aihole example. The rock- 180. OldTempleatAihole. (From a Plan by J. Burgess.) Scale 50 ft. to i in. 1 Hiouen Thsang, ' Memoires sur les Contrees Orientales,' tome i. pp. 253 et seqq, ; or Beal, ' Buddhist Records,' vol. i. pp. 214 et seqq.