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viii

PEE FACE.

investigations lias enabled me to correct, modify, and enlarge my
views, yet the classification I adopted, and the historical sequences
I pointed out thirty years since, have in their essential outlines been
confirmed, and will continue, I trust, to stand good. Many sub-
sidiary questions remain unsettled, but my impression is, that not a
few of the discordant opinions that may be observed arise prin-
cipally from the different courses which inquirers have pursued
in their investigations. Some men of great eminence and learning,
more conversant with books than buildings, have naturally drawn
their knowledge and inferences from written authorities, none of
which are contemporaneous with the events they relate, and all
of which have been avowedly altered and falsified in later times. My
authorities, on the contrary, have been mainly the imperishable
records in the rocks, or on sculptures and carvings, which necessarily
represented at the time the faith and feelings of those who executed
them, and which retain their original impress to this day. In such
a country as India, the chisels of bur sculptors are, so far as I can
judge, immeasurably more to be trusted than the pens of her
authors. These secondary points, however, may well await the
solution which time and further study will doubtless supply. In
the meanwhile, I shall have realised a long-cherished dream if I
have succeeded in popularising the subject by rendering its prin-
ciples generally intelligible, and can thus give an impulse to its
studj^, and assist in establishing Indian architecture on a stable
basis, so that it may take its true position among the other great
styles which have ennobled the arts of mankind.

The publication of this volume completes the history of the
' Architecture in all Countries, from the earliest times to the present
day, in four volumes,' and there it must at present rest. As originally
projected, it was intended to have added a fifth volume on 'Rude
.Stone Monuments,' which is still wanted to make the series quite
complete; but,, as explained in the preface to my work bearing that
title, the subject was not, when it was written, ripe for a historical
treatment, and the materials collected were consequently used in an
argumentative essay. Since that work was published, in 1872, no
serious examination of its arguments has been undertaken by any
competent authority, while every new fact that has come to light—
 
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