DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9541#0011
PREFACE.
vii
nearly all that the materials at present available will admit of being-
utilised, in a general history of the style.
When I published my first work on Indian architecture thirty years
ago, I was reproached for making dogmatic assertions, and propounding
theories which I did not even attempt to sustain. The defect was, I am
afraid, inevitable. My conclusions were based upon the examination
of the actual buildings throughout the three Presidencies of India
and in China during ten 3-ears' residence in the East, and to have
placed before the world the multitudinous details which were the
ground of my generalisations, would have required an additional
amount of description and engravings which was not warranted by
the interest felt in the subject at that time. The numerous engravings
in the present volume, the extended letterpress, and the references
to works of later labourers in the wide domain of Indian architecture,
will greatly diminish, but cannot entirely remove, the old objection.
No man can direct his mind for fort}' years to the earnest investiga-
tion of any department of knowledge, and not become acquainted
with a host of particulars, and acquire a species of insight which
neither time, nor space, nor perhaps the resources of language will
permit him to reproduce in their fulness. I possess, to give a single
instance, more than 3000 photographs of Indian buildings, with
which constant use has made me as familiar as with any other object
that is perpetually before my eyes, and to recapitulate all the infor-
mation they convey to long-continued scrutiny, would be an endless,
if not indeed an impossible undertaking. The necessities of the
case demand tliat broad results should often be given when the
evidence for the statements must be merely indicated or greatly
abridged, and if the conclusions sometimes go be)'ond the appended
proofs, I can only ask my readers to believe that the assertions are not
speculative fancies, but deductions from facts. My endeavour from
the first has been to present a distinct view of the general principles
which have governed the historical development of Indian architecture,
and my hope is that those who pursue the subject beyond the pages of
the present work, will find that the principles I have enunciated will
reduce to order the multifarious details, and that the details in
turn will confirm the principles. Though the vast amount of fresh
knowledge which has gone on accumulating since I commenced my
vii
nearly all that the materials at present available will admit of being-
utilised, in a general history of the style.
When I published my first work on Indian architecture thirty years
ago, I was reproached for making dogmatic assertions, and propounding
theories which I did not even attempt to sustain. The defect was, I am
afraid, inevitable. My conclusions were based upon the examination
of the actual buildings throughout the three Presidencies of India
and in China during ten 3-ears' residence in the East, and to have
placed before the world the multitudinous details which were the
ground of my generalisations, would have required an additional
amount of description and engravings which was not warranted by
the interest felt in the subject at that time. The numerous engravings
in the present volume, the extended letterpress, and the references
to works of later labourers in the wide domain of Indian architecture,
will greatly diminish, but cannot entirely remove, the old objection.
No man can direct his mind for fort}' years to the earnest investiga-
tion of any department of knowledge, and not become acquainted
with a host of particulars, and acquire a species of insight which
neither time, nor space, nor perhaps the resources of language will
permit him to reproduce in their fulness. I possess, to give a single
instance, more than 3000 photographs of Indian buildings, with
which constant use has made me as familiar as with any other object
that is perpetually before my eyes, and to recapitulate all the infor-
mation they convey to long-continued scrutiny, would be an endless,
if not indeed an impossible undertaking. The necessities of the
case demand tliat broad results should often be given when the
evidence for the statements must be merely indicated or greatly
abridged, and if the conclusions sometimes go be)'ond the appended
proofs, I can only ask my readers to believe that the assertions are not
speculative fancies, but deductions from facts. My endeavour from
the first has been to present a distinct view of the general principles
which have governed the historical development of Indian architecture,
and my hope is that those who pursue the subject beyond the pages of
the present work, will find that the principles I have enunciated will
reduce to order the multifarious details, and that the details in
turn will confirm the principles. Though the vast amount of fresh
knowledge which has gone on accumulating since I commenced my