DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.2371#0164
142 EASTERN CAVES.
Mahavallipur, that the monolithic style was forgotten, and the
artists had reverted to a style more appropriate to less monumental
erections. These Mahavallipur caves were consequently either the
earliest or the latest among the Brahmanical caves of India, and it
was at first sight very difficult to determine to which of these two
categories they may have belonged. Just as in Europe it is fre-
quently very difficult to discriminate between the details of a
building belonging to the fifth or sixth century and one of tie
fifteenth or sixteenth; so in India, without some external evidence,
it is very easy to confound details belonging to the sixth or seventh
century with those of the thirteenth or fourteenth. In both cases it
was either the beginning or the end of a particular phase of art,
which had only a limited duration, and it is one whose history in
this instance has only lately been ascertained from external sources.
Forty years ago so little was known of the history of architecture
in the Madras Presidency that the more modern hypothesis seemed by
far the most probable. JSTo one then suspected that the introduction
of the art was so very recent, and it seemed most improbable that
these rock-cut monuments at Mahavallipur should really be the earliest
specimens of architecture known to exist in the South. Every
one knew that in the north of India men had dug caves and carved
stone ornamentally for at least eight or nine centuries before the
date of these monuments—assuming them to belong to the seventh
or eighth century of our era—and it seemed so much more likely that
their very wooden forms were signs of a decadence rather than of a
renaissance, that I, with most other inquirers adopted the idea that
they belonged to a comparatively modern age. It was besides the
one that seemed best to accord with such local traditions as existed
on the spot. It now turns out, however, that the difference in style
between the northern and the southern rock-cut temples is due not
to chronological but to geographical causes. It is not that the
inferiority of the latter is due to decay in the art of monolithic
architecture, but to difference of locality. Those who carved the
raths and excavated the caves at Mahavallipur had no previous
experience in the art, but under some strange and overpowering
religious impulse set to work at once to copy literally and ignorant!}*
in the rock, a form of architecture only suited to buildings of a
Blighter and more ephemeral nature.
If there had been a difference discernible in the style of the various
Mahavallipur, that the monolithic style was forgotten, and the
artists had reverted to a style more appropriate to less monumental
erections. These Mahavallipur caves were consequently either the
earliest or the latest among the Brahmanical caves of India, and it
was at first sight very difficult to determine to which of these two
categories they may have belonged. Just as in Europe it is fre-
quently very difficult to discriminate between the details of a
building belonging to the fifth or sixth century and one of tie
fifteenth or sixteenth; so in India, without some external evidence,
it is very easy to confound details belonging to the sixth or seventh
century with those of the thirteenth or fourteenth. In both cases it
was either the beginning or the end of a particular phase of art,
which had only a limited duration, and it is one whose history in
this instance has only lately been ascertained from external sources.
Forty years ago so little was known of the history of architecture
in the Madras Presidency that the more modern hypothesis seemed by
far the most probable. JSTo one then suspected that the introduction
of the art was so very recent, and it seemed most improbable that
these rock-cut monuments at Mahavallipur should really be the earliest
specimens of architecture known to exist in the South. Every
one knew that in the north of India men had dug caves and carved
stone ornamentally for at least eight or nine centuries before the
date of these monuments—assuming them to belong to the seventh
or eighth century of our era—and it seemed so much more likely that
their very wooden forms were signs of a decadence rather than of a
renaissance, that I, with most other inquirers adopted the idea that
they belonged to a comparatively modern age. It was besides the
one that seemed best to accord with such local traditions as existed
on the spot. It now turns out, however, that the difference in style
between the northern and the southern rock-cut temples is due not
to chronological but to geographical causes. It is not that the
inferiority of the latter is due to decay in the art of monolithic
architecture, but to difference of locality. Those who carved the
raths and excavated the caves at Mahavallipur had no previous
experience in the art, but under some strange and overpowering
religious impulse set to work at once to copy literally and ignorant!}*
in the rock, a form of architecture only suited to buildings of a
Blighter and more ephemeral nature.
If there had been a difference discernible in the style of the various