Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 2.djvu/297

 CHAP. VII. BENGAL. 253 CHAPTER VII. BENGAL. CONTENTS. Bengali roofing Qadam-i-Rasiil Mosque, Gaur Sona, Adinah and Eklakhi Mosques, Malda Minar Gateways. CAPITAL GAUR. IT is not very easy to understand why the architects of Malwa should have adopted a style so essentially arcuate as that which we find in the capital, while their brethren, on either hand, at Jaunpur and Ahmadabad, clung so fondly to a trabeate form wherever they had an opportunity of employing it. The Mandu architects had the same initiation to the Hindu forms in the mosque at Dhar ; and there must have been innumerable Hindu and Jaina temples to furnish materials to a far greater extent than we find them utilised, but we neither find them borrowing nor imitating, but adhering steadily to the pointed-arch style, which is the essential characteristic of their art in foreign countries. It is easy to understand, on the other hand, why in Bengal the trabeate style never was in vogue. The country is practically without stone, or any suitable material for forming either pillars or beams. Having nothing but brick, it was almost of necessity that they employed arches everywhere, and in every building that had any pretensions to permanency. The Bengal style being, however, the only one wholly of brick in India Proper, has a local individuality of its own, which is curious and interesting, though, from the nature of the material, deficient in many of the higher qualities of art which characterise the buildings constructed with larger and better materials. Besides elaborating a pointed-arched brick style of their own, the Bengalis introduced a new form of roof, which has had a most important influence on both the Muhammadan and Hindu styles in more modern times. As already mentioned in describing the Chhatri at Alwar (ante, p. 169), the Bengalis, taking advantage of the elasticity of the bambu, universally