DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9541#0025
HISTORY
of
INDIAX ARCHITECTURE.
INTRODUCTION.
It is in vain, perhaps, to expect that the Literature or the Arts of any
other people can he so interesting to even the best educated Europeans
as those of their own country. Until it is forced on their attention,
few are aware how much education does to concentrate attention
within a very narrow field of observation. We become familiar in
the nursery with the names of the heroes of Greek and lloman
history. In every school their history and their arts are taught,
memorials of their greatness meet us at every turn through life, and
their thoughts and aspirations become, as it were, part of ourselves.
So, too, with the Middle Ages : their religion is our religion; their
architecture our architecture, and their history fades so insensibly
into our own, that we can draw no line of demarcation that would
separate us from them. How different is the state of feeling, when
from this familiar home we turn to such a country as India. Its
geography is hardly taught in schools, and seldom mastered perfectly;
its history is a puzzle ; its literature a mythic dream ; its arts a quaint
perplexity. But, above all, the names of its heroes and great men
are so unfamiliar and so unpronounceable, that, except a few of those
who go to India, scarcely any ever become so acquainted with them,
that they call up any memories which are either pleasing or worth
dwelling upon.
Were it not for this, there is probably no country—out of Europe
at least—that would so well repay attention as India. None, where
■ all the problems of natural science or of art are presented to us in so
distinct and so pleasing a form. Nowhere does nature show herself in
such grand and such luxurious features, and nowhere does humanity
exist in more varied and more pleasing conditions. Side by side
with the intellectual Brahman caste, and the chivalrous Rajput, are
found the wild Bull and the naked Gond, not antagonistic and warring
of
INDIAX ARCHITECTURE.
INTRODUCTION.
It is in vain, perhaps, to expect that the Literature or the Arts of any
other people can he so interesting to even the best educated Europeans
as those of their own country. Until it is forced on their attention,
few are aware how much education does to concentrate attention
within a very narrow field of observation. We become familiar in
the nursery with the names of the heroes of Greek and lloman
history. In every school their history and their arts are taught,
memorials of their greatness meet us at every turn through life, and
their thoughts and aspirations become, as it were, part of ourselves.
So, too, with the Middle Ages : their religion is our religion; their
architecture our architecture, and their history fades so insensibly
into our own, that we can draw no line of demarcation that would
separate us from them. How different is the state of feeling, when
from this familiar home we turn to such a country as India. Its
geography is hardly taught in schools, and seldom mastered perfectly;
its history is a puzzle ; its literature a mythic dream ; its arts a quaint
perplexity. But, above all, the names of its heroes and great men
are so unfamiliar and so unpronounceable, that, except a few of those
who go to India, scarcely any ever become so acquainted with them,
that they call up any memories which are either pleasing or worth
dwelling upon.
Were it not for this, there is probably no country—out of Europe
at least—that would so well repay attention as India. None, where
■ all the problems of natural science or of art are presented to us in so
distinct and so pleasing a form. Nowhere does nature show herself in
such grand and such luxurious features, and nowhere does humanity
exist in more varied and more pleasing conditions. Side by side
with the intellectual Brahman caste, and the chivalrous Rajput, are
found the wild Bull and the naked Gond, not antagonistic and warring