Étude sur les fortifications de l'Inde. I. Les fortifications de l'Inde ancienne

Abstract

English summary Based on the study of 20 sites (8 from the Harappan period, 22 from Early Historical India), the present paper seeks to analyse the main features of ancient Indian fortifications. Our documentation on the fortified cities of the Harappan period, entirely founded on the results of archaeological excavations, shows that their thick ramparts or bunds, built up of mud and mud-brick, sometimes reinforced by rectangular towers or salients with elaborately designed gateways, were not only meant to be defence walls or protective embankments against floods , but probably also had a social function to perform. For the study of defence architecture in Early Historical India, the most reliable source of information is also archaeological evidence (though, in many cases, detailed excavation- reports are not available), to which may be added literary and iconographie data. In North- West India is found a type of fortification having curtain walls pierced with loopholes, semi-circular hollow towers, corresponding to the representations of the Gandha- ran carvings which depict ramparts provided with merlons topped by a hip-roof and gateways capped with a rectangular cabin projected out on corbels, a kind of oriel. In the rest of the Indian peninsula, excavations broadly corroborate the information furnished by the literary sources and show that the most persistent features of the early fortifications are massive and compact earthen walls, provided with a burnt-brick or stone facing, surrounded with wide and deep ditches. These ramparts are, in some cases, reinforced, at regular intervals, with solid quadrangular towers. Gateways are very elaborate and are probably the strongest part of the defence : in certain places, the wall turns inwards so as to form two quadrangular structures ; in others, it turns outwards and at both ends joins the heel of a massive L-shaped gateway flank, or the opening is strengthened by two powerful towers with an open courtyard. Regarding the crenelation of the curtain walls, the narrative reliefs of the great buddhist stupa show that the merlons were triangular or rectangular. In this system the defence is not through the loopholes of the ramparts, like in the strongholds built-up on the Central Asian pattern, but it is from the top, from the battlements, a high position which enables the defenders to dominate the besiegers. As proved by excavations, this concept of fortification was already defined from the middle of the first millenium and it is manifest that defence architecture in the Indian subcontinent has retained its distinctive features for more than one thousand years, except in the North-West, more sensitive to foreign influences during the Greek and Kusâna periods.