DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.2371#0062
40 EASTERN CAVES.
when the gateways at Sanchi were erected, in the first century of our
era, this good custom seems to have died out. All the rails there are
inscribed with the names of their donors, but they are earlier than
the gateways. They too, however, have also the names of their donors
engraved on them, but unfortunately nothing to help us to discri-
minate what the subjects are which are represented in the sculptures.
One characteristic which is constant both in the early caves in
the eastern and western sides of India is that all the doorways have
jambs sloping inwards. This could only have arisen from one of two
circumstances: either it was, as at Mycenae and in all the early Grecian
buildings in pre-Hellenic times, for the sake of shortening the bearing
on the lintel. The Pelasgi had no knowledge of the principle of
the radiating arch, and used only small stones in their architecture
generally. It consequently, though awkward, was a justifiable
expedient. In India it arose, as already pointed out, from a totally
different cause. It was because the earliest cave diggers were
copying wooden buildings, in which the main posts were placed
sloping inwards, in order to counteract the outward thrust of their
semicircular roofs. Though tolerable, however, while following the
main lines of the building, the sloping jambs of the doorways were
early felt to be inappropriate to stone constructions, and the prac-
tice in India died out entirely before the Christian era.1
Although so differently arranged that it is difficult to institute
1 General Cunningham and bis assistants, like too many others, call these doorways
" Egyptian," though such forms are not known in that style of architecture except in
the cockney example in Piccadilly. The truth is, even as early as the times of the
Pyramids (b.c. 3700) the Egyptians had learned to quarry blocks of any required
dimensions, and had no temptation to adopt this weak and unconstructive form of
opening, and as they never, so far as we know, used wooden architecture, they must
always have felt its incongruity. If we expect to find such forms in Egypt we must
go back some thousands of years before the time of the Pyramids, and I doubt much if
sloping jambs could have existed in that country even then.
In Greece, on the contrary, wherever the Pelasgic or Ionian race remained, they
retained these sloping jambs from that curious veneration for ancient forms which per-
vades all architectural history, and leads to the retention of the many awkward contri-
vances when once the eye is accustomed to them. The sloping jamb, it need hardly be
paid, is never found associated with the Doric order, but was retained with the
Ionic as late as the age of Pericles in the Erechtheum at Athens. See History of
Architecture, vol. i. pp. 234 to 240, and 286, et seq.
In niches, and as a merely decorative form, the sloping jambs were retained in the
monasteries of Gandhara to the west of the Indus, till long after the Christian era,
but never, so far as I know, in constructive openings.
when the gateways at Sanchi were erected, in the first century of our
era, this good custom seems to have died out. All the rails there are
inscribed with the names of their donors, but they are earlier than
the gateways. They too, however, have also the names of their donors
engraved on them, but unfortunately nothing to help us to discri-
minate what the subjects are which are represented in the sculptures.
One characteristic which is constant both in the early caves in
the eastern and western sides of India is that all the doorways have
jambs sloping inwards. This could only have arisen from one of two
circumstances: either it was, as at Mycenae and in all the early Grecian
buildings in pre-Hellenic times, for the sake of shortening the bearing
on the lintel. The Pelasgi had no knowledge of the principle of
the radiating arch, and used only small stones in their architecture
generally. It consequently, though awkward, was a justifiable
expedient. In India it arose, as already pointed out, from a totally
different cause. It was because the earliest cave diggers were
copying wooden buildings, in which the main posts were placed
sloping inwards, in order to counteract the outward thrust of their
semicircular roofs. Though tolerable, however, while following the
main lines of the building, the sloping jambs of the doorways were
early felt to be inappropriate to stone constructions, and the prac-
tice in India died out entirely before the Christian era.1
Although so differently arranged that it is difficult to institute
1 General Cunningham and bis assistants, like too many others, call these doorways
" Egyptian," though such forms are not known in that style of architecture except in
the cockney example in Piccadilly. The truth is, even as early as the times of the
Pyramids (b.c. 3700) the Egyptians had learned to quarry blocks of any required
dimensions, and had no temptation to adopt this weak and unconstructive form of
opening, and as they never, so far as we know, used wooden architecture, they must
always have felt its incongruity. If we expect to find such forms in Egypt we must
go back some thousands of years before the time of the Pyramids, and I doubt much if
sloping jambs could have existed in that country even then.
In Greece, on the contrary, wherever the Pelasgic or Ionian race remained, they
retained these sloping jambs from that curious veneration for ancient forms which per-
vades all architectural history, and leads to the retention of the many awkward contri-
vances when once the eye is accustomed to them. The sloping jamb, it need hardly be
paid, is never found associated with the Doric order, but was retained with the
Ionic as late as the age of Pericles in the Erechtheum at Athens. See History of
Architecture, vol. i. pp. 234 to 240, and 286, et seq.
In niches, and as a merely decorative form, the sloping jambs were retained in the
monasteries of Gandhara to the west of the Indus, till long after the Christian era,
but never, so far as I know, in constructive openings.