Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 2.djvu/551

 CHAP. II. TEMPLES AND OTHER STRUCTURES. 451 CHAPTER II. CONTENTS. The origin and development of the Chinese temple and other structures The materials employed in their buildings. AT one time it was thought that it might be possible with further information on the subject to describe the buildings appertaining to each of the religions, Confucian, Taoist, and Buddhist, to which they belonged, but externally the temples are nearly all of the same type, and it is only from their interior decoration and by the statues placed in them that any distinction can be made. The Muhammadan mosques, which in other countries have always developed a type of their own, are in China all in general form identical with the Buddhist and other temples, and can only be distinguished by their external decoration with texts from the Qoran, and are not even to be recognised by the minaret which in other countries has been their chief characteristic feature. The same similarity in design and style of all the religious buildings obtains equally in their civil structures, there being no essential distinction between sacred and secular work, and the further we go back the closer the affinity they have to one another the temple, the tomb and the dwelling being sym- bolically repetitions of each other. The general effect, in fact, of a Chinese city, as seen in a bird's-eye view is one of extreme monotony in which every building seems to be covered with the same kind of roof, differing only in dimensions, and in some cases with a more elaborate decoration and this applies not only to the Forbidden City in Pekin, where the buildings are mainly palaces or public monuments, but to any other city of importance : this arises from the circumstance that the pre- vailing ordinary type of Chinese architecture is that known as the T'ing, which consists of a roof of concave section carried on short columns. If the roof is of great dimensions and elabor- ately decorated, it covers either a temple, an Imperial hall of audience, or the official residence of a mandarin, if of small size and light construction, it is that of a house ; this almost universal