THE ARCHITECTURES OF INDIA.*
No one who takes even an amateur's interest in Indian art can fail to know that Mr. Hal-ell is a disinterested, an enthusiastic advocate of indigenous methods, a firm believer in the originality and charm of Indian tradition. Most of us, too, know that he is the leader in the movement for building the new Delhi in accordance with Indian designs and by the bands of Indian artificers. It must be admitted at starting that this book owes its origin to Mr. Havell's dread lest the new capital should prove a whited "City of Palaces" like Calcutta or Madras rather than a truly Indian rdjci dhish- Mint after the model of Benares or Mathura. It is the penalty of even the most disinterested enthusiasm to create prejudice in the minds of more cautious people, and Mr. Havell unblushingly admits that his interesting and suggestive work is (among other things) a piece of con- troversial pamphleteering. We need not repeat here what we have already said on the vexed question of the right way to build the new Delhi. Let us merely admit in passing that one who bolds Mr. Haven's views as to the origin and nature of Indian architectural art could hardly fail to be in favour of a capital designed by Indian artists and built by Indian craftsmen. That is not to say that his views may not, in part at least, be shared by those who hold with Lord Curzon that the capital of British India might fitly symbolize Western intervention in Eastern affairs, might well be an improvement, if possible, on the "colonial" architecture of, say, Calcutta or Pondicherry. We may admit the beauty and originality of Indian art without wishing to adopt it for the use of English or Anglicised rulers of India. Nor is that point quite sufficiently answered, as Mr. Haven seems to suppose, by asserting that buildings designed by Europeans will probably be as heavy and uninspired as most recent official erections in Europe. What concerns us now, how- ever, is the merit of Mr. Haven's book as an exposition of the continuous historical tradition of Indian architecture as shown in the buildings of Hindu, Buddhist, and Moham- medan times. Here his long residence in India, his intimate and friendly contact with Indian artists and. artisans, his intuitive sympathy with their methods and aims, have stood him in good stead. If we may risk the comparison, Mr. Havell is to Ferguson, hitherto the standard authority, very much what the late Sir Alfred Lyall is to Macaulay as a critic, of Hindu literature and religion. The difference is largely in the point of view. Macaulay and Ferguson were alike foreigners, observing an exotic civilization which had for them an element of grotesqueness. It was natural that Ferguson should endeavour to classify Indian architecture by its most salient features, should grasp eagerly at Greek influences in Gandhara sculpture, should compare• Mohammedan shrines with the mosques of Central Asia and Egypt, should overlook the feat that foreign elements were wholly and quickly assi- milated by the living and vigorous art of India, and were in truth an insufficient, because temporary and comparatively unimportant, basis for classification. We do not say that Mr. Haven, with his masterly command of Indian traditions, runs into the opposite extreme. It is, however, his business to show that Indian architecture has undergone a continuous process of development from the earliest examples known to us, and that even the manifest differences between Hindu and Alussulman buildings are superficial rather than structural, that both are .essentially Indian in design and inspiration, that such differences as do exist are due much less to foreign • Indian Architecture, By E. B. Havell. London: John Murray. E3ti.net.]
influences than to an intelligent and truly artistic adaptation of ancient conventions to new needs, social, ritual, and other.
Mr. Haven makes the required exposition with all his wonted vigour and courage. He begins his difficult task—
difficult chiefly because of the weight of accepted authority against him—by showing that the Taj Mahal itself, that miracle of seemingly pure Moslem art (touched, as some would say, by Italian influence), owes its most characteristic and
beautiful features to easily recognized Buddhist and Hindu conventions of ground-plan, elevation, and ornament. The famous " bulbous " dome, with its basal wreath and culminat- ing finial of lotuses, is, he proves, a quite natural develop- ment of Hindu domes which had their origin in the stupas
of early Buddhism, adapted with exquisite sympathy to the immortal grief of an eclectic Mohammedan emperor for his lovely empress. Once this cardinal point is established, Mr. Havell has little difficulty in demonstrating that the shrines and tombs of Mohammedan India differ more widely from those of other Mussulman countries than English cathedrals differ from those of France and Germany.
Mohammedan invaders were warriors, not artists. They entered a land famous for the then unequalled skill of its builders. They gladly utilised the talent of Indian designers and artificers, who were delighted to show their ingenuity in facing new necessities of construction. A mosque is a place of meeting, of public prayer, and requires large chambers under an ample span of roof. Hindus showed that they could adapt the narrow vaults of their temples to new conditions.
Sometimes they used the bracket, which was natural in places where long stone beams could readily be procured. Else- where, and especially where bricks were the principal building material, they put the pointed Hindu arch to new and more daring uses. All this Mr. Havell explains in profuse and unanswerable detail, enforced by an admirable series of about a hundred and thirty excellent photographic plates. For Mr. Haven such congenial enthusiasts as Growse of Bulandsbahr and others of his kind have not lived in vain.
For him the architecture of India shows an unbroken and beautiful tradition, as vigorous at the present day as it was two thousand years ago, the result of continuous evolution and experiment by men whose daring and skill go with a trained and hereditary taste for dignity and beauty of building. He proves his case not by mere assertion but by actually showing us in his illustrations that such fortress palaces as Datiya and Urcha furnish a combination of grandeur, strength, and beauty such as no other country can supply.
Of course, Mr. Haven has the defects of his qualities. A born controversialist, he is perpetually tempted to overstate a good case. His own intuitive comprehension of the Hindu temperament makes him excusably impatient of the prejudices cd minds trained to Western conventions of art. Here is a passage typical of Mr. Havell's faults and merits.
"It is a fact that soon after the Mohammedan conquests began, the Hindu temple-builders in Northern India began to treat the exterior of their domes in the same way as their craft-brethren the Mohammedan builders were doing. It would be quite wrong to take this as a proof that the Mohammedans were teaching a superior art to the Hindus; it was simply that the latter sheltered themselves from the fury of their oppressors by observing the same law of protective imitation by which nature provides for the protection of the weak against the strong. The Brahmins were trying to protect their temples and to make them less offensiva to Mohammedan susceptibility by making less conspicuous the anthropomorphic symbolism which Islam denounced as idolatry.' . . . Idolatry, in the Puritan acceptance of the word, had never been and is not now a part of Brahmanical religious teaching."
It would need long experience of Hinduism and its followers to say exactly how far this statement is accurate—whether, for instance, the plain semicircular domes on Kumbha Rana's temple near Jodhpur were really designed in an apologetic, a
protective spirit. But the suggestion is based on a sound intuition, namely, that it is easy to exaggerate the real differences between Hindu and Moslem in India, to attach too much importance to superficial differences in Hindu and Moslem art. It grasps the inner significance of the antinomy, puzzling to European minds, between pantheism and the exaggerated indulgence in a symbolism which, as in other religions, may degenerate in the minds of ignorant people into fetichism or some other form of what others besides Puritans -would call "idolatry." In short, Mr. Haven's theory of the growth of Indian architecture is sound in essentials, not only because he knows many Indian buildings, but because he knows, understands, and likes the men who built them. It enables him to see that the miraculous and unearthly beauty of the Taj is precisely due to its exquisite adjustment to its surroundings, and that result could hardly be achieved by foreigners accus- tomed to the conventions and experiments of an art adapted to different conditions of climate and scenery.
It is pleasant to find that Mr. Havell has an admiration for the Bengali architecture of Gaur and Pandtut, and that his book contains an excellent photograph of two of the three temples that stand by the great square tank of Sibsagar, in Upper Assam. Some day he may tell us of the wonderful ruins of Tezpur, and Singri, and Dimapur, surprising relics of a vanished civilization in a land where no man now can hew stone or mould bricks.
It may be that Mr. Havell's plea for an Indian rather than an Anglo-Indian Delhi will fall on deaf ears, and Mr. Lutyens will rather listen to the counsels of Lord Curzon and those who share his views. He may find consolation for his disappointment in the knowledge that his generous and dis- interested sympathy with Hindu art has been the germ of a book worthy to take its place by the side of Ferguson's classical history. The two books are complementary to one another, and together may supply a salutary hint to our own designers of great public buildings. An attentive study of Mr. Havell's beautiful plates will show what delight Hindu architects have taken, and still take, in surmounting the problems of construction with an ingenuity and instinctive good taste which give their work something of the irresistible charm or majesty of the natural objects with which they harmonize so delightfully. No one has recognized so clearly as Mr. Havell that this instinctive power of adaptation to surroundings can only belong to a truly indigenous art, vigorous enough to assimilate useful borrowings from alien sources, but wisely conservative in its retention of conventions born of long experience and sound (because gradual and cautious) advance to fresh beauties of design.
Previous page
