# A Handbook of Indian Art/Section 1/Chapter 8

CHAPTER VIII
THE MONASTERY, MANDAPAM, AND PALACE
Plate XXXIa
GAUTAMA PUTRA MONASTERY, NĀSIK
Plate XXXIb
MONASTERY AT AURANGABAD
None of the early Buddhist structural monasteries now exist, no doubt because they were generally built of wood and thatch; but the splendid rock-cut monastery at Nāsik, dating about the second century a.d., has exactly the same plan as the typical Indian house of to-day, when it is not planned after European models. Pl. XXXI, a, shows the verandah with its sculptured pillars of nearly the same design as those of the Kārlē chapter-house, and the entrance doorway richly carved, as is usual in all Indian homes of the better class.
Inside the courtyard stone benches running round the three sides in front of the cells take the place of the inner verandahs, which are superfluous in a rock-cut monastery. The same plan is followed at Ajantā, Ellora, and elsewhere, only in the Mahāyāna monasteries a shrine for the sacred image is added on the side facing the entrance. When the size of the courtyard, or assembly-hall, was increased, it became necessary to leave massive piers to support the rock above, and these were then as lavishly sculptured as the verandah pillars outside. The noble hall of the rock-cut monasteries at Aurangabad which is shown in Pl. XXXI, b, though it lacks the fresco paintings on the ceilings and walls which have made the Ajantā monasteries famous, in the exquisite design of its sculptured decoration it is unsurpassed by other work of the Ajantā school to which it belongs. It is dated about the seventh century a.d.
Plate XXXIIa
MONASTERY, UNDAVALLI
Plate XXXIIb
MODEL OF MONASTERY, MĀMALLAPURAM
A sixth-century sculptured monastery of a similar type is shown in Pl. XXXII, a. It is at Undavalli, on the right bank of the Krishnā river, not far from Guntur. Structural edifices of the same kind are found in Ceylon and Cambodia. Fergusson suggests a connection between them and the seven-storied temples of Assyria, a conjecture to which much weight has been added by the recently discovered evidences of Aryan rule in the Euphrates valley.
Akbar, the Great Mogul, who revived many Indo-Aryan court traditions in the sixteenth century, built a five-storied pavilion, the Panch Mahall, at Fatehpur Sikri, which is still intact. It was probably intended as a meeting-place for the Dīn Ilāhī, the imperial Order he instituted, which, like the Buddhist Sangha, had four grades or degrees. Akbar, as Grand Master of the Order, would have taken his seat in the "upper room" under the canopy.
Of Nālanda's lofty walled enclosure, 1,600 feet long, divided into eight courts, one may find the modern counterpart in the walls and gopurams and quadrangles of South Indian temples. The dragon-pillared pavilions, "painted red and richly chiselled," where the scholars exercised their wits in philosophical disputations, one can see in many temple mandapams, the durbar-halls ​of the gods, and in Indian palaces. Discussions on philosophical and religious questions have been from the earliest times so much a part of Indian social and religious life that every village had its debating-hall, if only a temporary pandal of bambu and matting or a venerable "tree of wisdom"—a banyan or a pipal—under whose branches the elders gathered in the evening to listen to wandering sādhus defending their theories of the universe, or to disciples of a great teacher travelling from toll to toll, and from court to court, to win converts for their master's cause—for even the common people took an intelligent interest in the great problems of life which occupied all the thoughts of the monk and scholar. In the towns and at the royal courts a contest between philosophical champions was as much an entertainment for a great wedding feast or for a state ceremonial as it was a recreation for the scholars of a Sanskrit toll or university. And the quinquennial parliament of religions, when under royal auspices thousands of representatives of different schools from all the universities of the land met with high solemnity to adjust disputes or to listen to the thesis of some famous master of philosophy—a Sankarāchārya or Rāmanūja, who had already won his spurs in a hundred fights—was an event in Indian public life like the grandest tournaments of European chivalry, which roused the greatest excitement and became a landmark in history. Such great combats might last for days or weeks, and when finally the end came, and "letters of victory" were given to the successful disputant as a record of his triumph, his opponents would often be beside themselves with grief and rage, and the exultant victor sometimes so far forgot his philosophic dignity as to throw dust upon them in token of his contempt.
Plate XXXIIIa
VITTALASWĀMI TEMPLE, VIJAYANAGAR
Plate XXXIIIb
DIWĀN-I-KHĀS, DELHI
(Photo by Johnston & Hoffman)
Sometimes the temple mandapams, designed as meeting-places for crowds of pilgrims, were like forest groves, halls of a thousand pillars. Whatever might have been the use to which the mandapam was applied—a debating or royal audience hall, a town hall or parliament house, a pilgrim's hostel or place for religious ceremonies—the mystery of the primeval forest, in whose depths the Vedic Rishi, regardless of its fearsome demons and wild beasts, built his quiet retreat, seems to hang over it. The Indian craftsman's inexhaustible invention and boundless patience ​revelled in the task of giving artistic expression to the exuberant beauty of the tropical forest. The magnificent mandapam of the sixteenth century (Pl. XXXIII, a), built by the Kings of Vijayanagar for their royal chapel dedicated to Vishnu, perhaps indicates the highest point to which Indian genius attained in that direction.
This wonderful mandapam may give an idea of the earlier wooden pavilions of Nālanda, with their "pillars ornamented with dragons, beams resplendent with all the colours of the rainbow—rafters richly carved—columns ornamented with jade painted red and richly chiselled," as Hiuen Tsang described it. The later work of the same school in Southern India, however astonishing it may be technically, begins to run wild and often loses all artistic coherence. But in Northern India the reaction caused by the Muhammadan conquest and the restriction of sculptured ornamentation imposed by the law of Islam created a new school of Indian craftsmen—the so-called Indo-Saracenic—based upon Hindu technical traditions but more rationalistic and worldly in its ideals, though the mysticism of the East still clung to them.
The typical works of this school are the pillared pavilions of Fatehpur Sikri (Pl. XLIX, a) built for Akbar, and the famous private audience hall of Shah Jahān at Delhi (Pl. XXXIII, b), his Elysium on earth of white marble and precious inlay, the exquisite elegance of which is no less remarkable than the gorgeous sculptured beauty of the Vijayanagar temple mandapam built about a century earlier.
Plate XXXIVa
"THE PALACE OF THE GODS," BHARHUT SCULPTURE
Plate XXXIVb
MODERN MANSION, BIKANIR
The Nītisāra of Sakrāchārya, however, in the first chapter dealing with the duties of princes, gives general directions for the planning of a royal palace. It was to be placed in the midst of the council buildings, to have sides of equal length, "be well adorned with spacious tanks, wells, and water-pumps," and surrounded by fortified walls with four beautiful gates at the cardinal points. The dining-rooms, chapels, baths, kitchens, and wash-houses were to be on the eastern side. Reception-rooms and sleeping ​apartments, "those for drinking and weeping," servants' rooms, rooms for keeping and grinding corn, and latrines were to be on the southern side. The armoury, guard-house, gymnasium, storeroom, and study were to be on the north. The court-house and record-room on the north, and the stables on the south.
The council-house should be built of two or three stories, with pavilions on the roof. It should be beautiful and accessible from all directions, with a central hall double the width of the side-rooms, be provided with fountains, musical instruments, clocks, ventilating apparatus, mirrors and pictures. Dwelling-houses for the Ministers, Members of Council, and officials were to be built separately on the north and east.
Plate XXXVa
PALACE OF BIR SINGH, DATIYĀ
Plate XXXVb
FRONT OF PALACE OF BIR SINGH, DATIYĀ
And just as the modern Indian mansion in Rajputana retains the principal features of the building described as the Palace of the Gods in the Bharhut sculptures, so it is clear that the sixteenth and seventeenth century palaces of the Rajput princes were built according to a traditional Hindu plan, and were not mere imitations of the fashions of their foreign rulers.
Perhaps the finest of them is the old palace at Datiyā with its noble exterior, an architectural masterpiece comparable with the Doge's Palace at Venice. It was built in the beginning of the seventeenth century by Rāja Bir Singh Deva of Urchā, who made himself infamous in the history of the time as the agent employed by Jahāngīr to waylay and kill his father's intimate friend and prime minister, Abul Fazl, when he passed through the Rāja's territories on his return to court from the Dekhan. The Rāja, when the plot succeeded too well, was hunted into the jungle by the imperial troops, but escaped capture, and on Jahāngīr's accession to the throne was richly rewarded by his employer. Jahāngīr's enmity to Abul Fazl was due to the fear that the latter might persuade his father to set aside his succession to the throne on account of his unruly temper and drunken habits.
Plate XXXVIa
DATIYĀ PALACE, WATER FRONT
Plate XXXVIb
JAHĀNGĪRI MAHALL, AGRA
It will be noticed that the general scheme of the Indian palace, like that of the monastery, was based upon the traditional plan of the joint-family house described above. The Mogul palaces were planned on the same principle, combining the Indian dwelling-house with the garden pavilion, or pleasure-house, of which accounts are given in the oldest Buddhist literature. The nucleus of the great monastery at Nālanda was said to have been a garden-house where the Buddha himself had lived and taught for three months. Judging by the descriptions of Hiuen Tsang, it would seem that the monks of Nālanda, like those of Europe, were great gardeners. The administration of the Indian village community had its garden and ​park committee as well as its tank or water committee, and Bābur's complaint that Indians knew nothing about pleasure-gardens, and had neither baths nor colleges, must be ascribed to his extreme ignorance of the country, though doubtless many of the finest gardens of Northern India were devastated in the long series of marauding invasions which occurred before his time.
Bābur's gardens at Agra and elsewhere were after the Persian model, divided crosswise with paved terraces and water-channels, a platform—"the mount of Felicity"—in the centre providing a place for recreation and entertainment. The plan was therefore the same as that of the Indo-Aryan village plan, repeated in the planning of the temple court. The pleasure-gardens of the Muhammadan dynasties had the religious character which runs through all Indian art, for one of them was always chosen as the owner's last resting-place. He usually took great pains in ordering the building which should eventually cover his tomb, and the garden itself was a symbol of the Elysian fields in which he hoped to wander after death.
Plate XXXVIIa
PALACE OF SURĀJ MALL, DĪG, GARDEN FRONT
Plate XXXVIIb
PALACE OF SURĀJ MALL, DĪG, WATER FRONT
Of the double cornice (Pl. XXXVIII) which crowns the whole building with wonderful effect, the upper part provides an extension of the terraced roof, much used as a promenade or resting-place after sunset; the lower part, with its deep shadow, screens the outer walls from the heat and glare of the sun. The arched openings are spaced with a fine sense of rhythm and proportion: in construction they follow the Hindu bracket system, each arch being made of two slabs of red sandstone meeting at the crown.
Pl. XXXVIII, b, shows the front facing the garden, which is laid out in the formal Indian fashion with stone terraces, water-courses, and fountains. The combined scheme of palace and garden is co-ordinated with rare skill, and if the cunning of the Hindu gardener equalled that of the master-builder, this garden-palace in the days of Surāj-Mall must have been as enchanting as any of those in which that prince of gardeners, Bābur, held his jovial wine parties.
The Grand Canal of Venice can show nothing more festively harmonious than the water-front of the palace, facing the artificial lake, with its elegant balconies and arcaded verandahs and bathing pavilions. The stone roofs of the latter are borrowed from the thatched roofs of Bengal, which, with their pointed eaves, are scientifically adapted for throwing off the ​torrential monsoon rain. In Asoka's time the builders of Magadha were in demand all over India, and their traditions were incorporated with those of Rajputana, where the local red sandstone provided a building material almost as easily worked as wood and much more durable. In this excellent material slabs and beams of almost any dimensions can be obtained without difficulty, and wherever this was the case Indian stone construction naturally retained a good deal of the technique of timber-work; for only the modern paper architect, working pedantically according to an archæological "style," would design an arch of numerous small pieces jointed together when it could be constructed more easily and effectually with one or two.
* ↑ The modern Barāgāon, close to Rājagriha, which was the capital of Magadha in the days of the Buddha, and thirty-four miles from Pātaliputra, the modern Patna.
* ↑ According to an excellent Indian tradition a royal palace should have a special chamber—a grumbling or mourning room—to which the lady of the zanāna should retire when she had a grievance or was in distress of mind, so that the harmony of the rest of the household should not be disturbed. The king then, if he wished, could visit the lady in her retreat and redress her grievance or try to bring her consolation.