Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/84

 52 BUDDHIST ARCHITECTURE. BOOK I. is ephemeral. It fails also in producing that impression of durability which is so essential to architectural effect ; while, at the same time, the facility with which it can be carved and adorned tends to produce a barbaric splendour far less satisfactory than the more sober forms necessitated by the employment of the less tractable material. Be this as it may, it will, if I mistake not, become quite clear when we examine the earliest " rock-cut temples " that, whether from ignorance or from choice, the Indians employed wood and that only, in the construction of their ornamental buildings, before A-roka's time. 1 From this the inference seems inevitable that it was in consequence of India being brought into contact with the western world, first by Alexander's raid, and then by the establishment of the Baktrian kingdom in its immediate proximity, that led to this change. We do not yet know pre- cisely how far the Baktrian kingdom extended towards the Indus, but we feel Greek influence on the coinage, on the sculpture, and generally on the arts of India, from an early date, and it seems as if we might be able to fix with precision not only the dates, but the forms in which the arts of the Western world exerted their influence on those of the East. Meanwhile it may be sufficient to state here that we know absolutely nothing of the temples or architecture of the various peoples or religions who occupied India before the rise of Buddhism, 2 and it is only by inference that we know anything of that of the Buddhists before the age of Asoka. From that time forward, however, all is clear and intelligible; we have a sufficient number of examples whose dates and forms are known to enable us to write a fairly consecutive history of the architectural style during the 1000 years Buddhism was prevalent in India, and thence to trace its various developments in the extra Indian countries to which it was carried, and where it is still practised at the present day. 3 1 These remarks must not be taken as applying to sculpture also. It is quite true that no stone sculptures have yet been found in India of an earlier date than the age of Aroka ; but, as will be seen in the sequel, the perfection the Indian artists had attained in stone sculpture when they executed the bas- reliefs at Bharaut (B.C. 200), shows a familiarity with the material that could only be attained by long practice. 2 No mention of temples, or, indeed, of buildings is, I believe, found in the Vedas, and though both are frequently alluded to, and described in the Epic Poems and the Puranas, this hardly helps us ; first because, like all verbal descriptions of buildings, they are too vague to be intelligible, and secondly, because there is no proof that the passages containing these descriptions may not have been interpolated after possibly long after the Christian Era. 3 I believe I was the first to ascertain these facts from a personal inspection of the monuments themselves. They were communicated to the Royal Asiatic Society in a paper I read on the ' Rock- cut Temples of India,' in 1842. Every subsequent research, and every increase of our knowledge, has tended to confirm those views to such an extent that they are not now disputed by any one acquainted with the literature of the subject.