Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 2.djvu/386

 332 INDIAN SARACENIC ARCHITECTURE. BOOK VII. fifty years, which exhibit more nearly than any others I am acquainted with the forms toward which the style was tending. This style is not vithout a certain amount of elegance in detail (Woodcut No. 442). 1 The tracery of the windows is frequently fascinating from its beauty, and all the carving is executed with precision and appropriateness but it is all wooden, or, in other words, every detail would be more appropriate for a sideboard or a bedstead, or any article of upholstery, than for a building in stone. The domes especially can hardly be traced back to their grand and solemn form as used by the Pathan architects. The pinnacles are fanciful, and the brackets designed more for ornament than work. It is a style, in fact, broken loose from the true principles of constructive design, and when this is the case, no amount of ornament, however elegant it may be, will redeem the want of propriety it inevitably exhibits. It is curious, however, and instructive, in concluding our history of architecture as practised within the limits of India properly so called, to observe how completely we have been walking in a circle. We began by tracing how, two hundred years before Christ, a wooden style was gradually assuming lithic forms, and by degrees being elaborated into a style where hardly a reminiscence of wood remained. We conclude with finding the style of Halebid and Bijapur, or Delhi, returning to forms as appropriate to carpentry but as unsuited to masonry as the rails or gateways at Bharaut or Sanchi. It might some time ago have been a question worth mooting whether it was likely it would perish by persevering in this wrong direction. That enquiry, however, seems idle now, as it is to be feared that the death-blow will be given, as at Lucknow and elsewhere, by the fatal imitation of a foreign style. 1 'Archaeological Survey of Western India,' vol. ii. pp. 176-177, and plates 37-39.