Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 2.djvu/415

 CHAP. I. SQUARE TEMPLES. 353 methods is due to the material employed, brick, which being of small dimensions necessitated a system of construction entirely different from that which obtained in India 1 and other countries where stone was in abundance. It would be a curious speculation to try and find out what the Hindus and Jains in western India would have done had they been forced to use brick instead of stone during the nth and 1 2th centuries, which was the great building epoch on the Ir^wadi and in Gujarat. Possibly they would have arrived at the same conclusion, in which case we can only congratulate ourselves that the westerns were not tempted with the fatal facility of bricks and mortar. It is, however, remarkable, considering the close connection between India and Burma, so far as architectural style is con- cerned, to find the arch and vault employed systematically throughout the latter country in buildings many of which are said to have been built by Indian workmen (though this term may have been generally employed to signify a foreign origin), and further to note that those features appear only when they became an actual necessity, as in doorways requiring wide openings, or the covering over of corridors and small internal chambers with a permanent incombustible material to carry these roofs. It should here also be pointed out that those roofs were, as a rule, in the square temples, not flat terraces but assumed an ogee section following the rise of the vault. This is clearly shown in the Ananda (Plate XLL), the Kyauktaugyi (Plate XXXVIII.), and in the Abhayadana, south of Pagan (Plate XXXVL). In the latter illustration is shown on the left the side entrance doorway to the vestibule ; in this case there is only one ring of voussoirs, but there are other examples in which two concentric rings of voussoirs were employed. In the temple of Nathlaung-gyaung, built by Taungthugyi in the loth century, the upper ring is carried over the centre portion only of the lower ring, the haunches of the arch up to two-thirds of the height being filled with brickwork laid in horizontal courses. As a rule the span of these arches is only about 6 ft, but in the temple of Payataung, in Old Prome, there is an arch of apparently about 16 ft. span in which there are three concentric rings of voussoirs. Although the Burmese architects fully recognised the constructive value of the arch, it does not appear to have been held in high esteem by them as a decorative feature, and in consequence they masked it by a coat of stucco as in the Abhayadana pagoda (Plate XXXVL), or by some applied decoration which in many cases has now fallen off, 1 Of course excepting the arches in the tower at Bodh-Gayzi, which, in Fergusson's opinion, were introduced by these very Burmese in 1305. See ante, vol i. pp. 77-79. VOL. 11, Z