DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9541#0058
36
HISTORY OF INDIAN ARCHITECTURE.
they are of a much less tangible or satisfactory nature, and have
become so entangled, that it is extremely difficult to obtain any clear
ideas regarding them ; and it is to be feared they must remain so,
until those who investigate the subject will condescend to study the
architecture and the sculpture of the country a.s well as its books.
The latter contain a good deal, but they do not contain all the infor-
mation available on the subject, and they require to be steadied and
confirmed by what is built or carved, which alone can give precision
and substance to what is written.
.Much of the confusion of ideas that prevails on this subject no
doubt arises from the exaggerated importance it has of late years been
the fashion to ascribe to the Vedas, as explaining everything connected
with the mythology of the Hindus. It would, indeed, be impossible
to over-estimate the value of these writings from a philological or
ethnological point of view. Their discovery and elaboration have
revolutionised our ideas as to the migrations of races in the remote
ages of antiquity, and established the affiliation of the Aryan races on
a basis that seems absolutely unassailable ; but it cannot be too
strongly insisted upon that the Aryans are a race of strangers in
India, distinct from the Indian people themselves. The}' may, as
hinted above, have come into India some three thousand years before
Christ, and may have retained their purity of blood and faith for two
thousand years : but with the beginning of the political Kali Yug
or, to speak more correctly, at the time of the events detailed in the
' Mahabharata,' say 1200 years B.C.—they had lost much of both;
while every successive wave of immigration that has crossed the Indus
during the last three thousand years has impaired the purity of their
race. From this cause, and from their admixture witli the aborigines,
it may probably be with confidence asserted that there is not now five
per cent.—perhaps not one—of pure Aryan blood in the present popula-
tion of India, nor, consequently, does the religion of the Vedas constitute
one-twentieth part of the present religion of the people.
Though this may be absolutely so, it must not be overlooked that
there are few things more remarkable, as bearing on this subject, than
the extraordinary intellectual superiority of the Aryans over the Dasyus,
or whatever we may call the people they found in India when they
entered it. This superiority was sufficient to enable them to subdue
the country, though they were probably infinitely inferior in numbers
to the conquered people, and to retain them in subjection through
long ages of time. Even now, when their jmrity of blood has become
so diluted that they are almost lost among the people, their intellect,
as embalmed in their writings, has left its impress on every corner
of the land, and is still appealed to as a revelation of the will of God
to man.
With the Vedas, however, we have very little to do in the present
HISTORY OF INDIAN ARCHITECTURE.
they are of a much less tangible or satisfactory nature, and have
become so entangled, that it is extremely difficult to obtain any clear
ideas regarding them ; and it is to be feared they must remain so,
until those who investigate the subject will condescend to study the
architecture and the sculpture of the country a.s well as its books.
The latter contain a good deal, but they do not contain all the infor-
mation available on the subject, and they require to be steadied and
confirmed by what is built or carved, which alone can give precision
and substance to what is written.
.Much of the confusion of ideas that prevails on this subject no
doubt arises from the exaggerated importance it has of late years been
the fashion to ascribe to the Vedas, as explaining everything connected
with the mythology of the Hindus. It would, indeed, be impossible
to over-estimate the value of these writings from a philological or
ethnological point of view. Their discovery and elaboration have
revolutionised our ideas as to the migrations of races in the remote
ages of antiquity, and established the affiliation of the Aryan races on
a basis that seems absolutely unassailable ; but it cannot be too
strongly insisted upon that the Aryans are a race of strangers in
India, distinct from the Indian people themselves. The}' may, as
hinted above, have come into India some three thousand years before
Christ, and may have retained their purity of blood and faith for two
thousand years : but with the beginning of the political Kali Yug
or, to speak more correctly, at the time of the events detailed in the
' Mahabharata,' say 1200 years B.C.—they had lost much of both;
while every successive wave of immigration that has crossed the Indus
during the last three thousand years has impaired the purity of their
race. From this cause, and from their admixture witli the aborigines,
it may probably be with confidence asserted that there is not now five
per cent.—perhaps not one—of pure Aryan blood in the present popula-
tion of India, nor, consequently, does the religion of the Vedas constitute
one-twentieth part of the present religion of the people.
Though this may be absolutely so, it must not be overlooked that
there are few things more remarkable, as bearing on this subject, than
the extraordinary intellectual superiority of the Aryans over the Dasyus,
or whatever we may call the people they found in India when they
entered it. This superiority was sufficient to enable them to subdue
the country, though they were probably infinitely inferior in numbers
to the conquered people, and to retain them in subjection through
long ages of time. Even now, when their jmrity of blood has become
so diluted that they are almost lost among the people, their intellect,
as embalmed in their writings, has left its impress on every corner
of the land, and is still appealed to as a revelation of the will of God
to man.
With the Vedas, however, we have very little to do in the present