Indian Architecture Research Articles

The Early Development of the Cave 26-Complex at Ajanta

Ajanta's Cave 26-complex seems to hold a special position in the history of Indian rock-cut architecture for many reasons. It was the largest and most elaborate caityagṛha-complex in its time. It transformed Ajanta from just another saṅghārāma of Buddhist India to a catalytic force that engineered the rejuvenation of Indian rock-cut architecture in general and the renaissance of Ajanta in particular. Contrary to the long cherished and still officially held view that it was a late Vākāṭaka phase caityagṛha, fresh facts are presented here that support Walter M. Spink's proposition that in terms of chronology it was only the second excavation of the Vākāṭaka period after Cave 8. It was the first caityagṛha to be built after a gap of two and a half centuries, but it had a rare arrangement of four flanking wings. In due course, further adjuncts were added in the form of large leṇas (Caves 21, 23, and 24) – all probably patronised by a single monk named Buddhabhadra. The donor's taste is visible in the introduction of many unique features, some unprecedented, that heralded the era of individualism in Buddhist art and architecture. It dispels the notion that all saṅghārāmas were the handiwork of the saṅgha and that individuals had no role to play in the construction of edifices. The study documents some fresh evidence, and interprets this together with other known data, shedding a new light, in a new context, on the development of the site in general, and the caityagṛha-complex in particular. In the process, some caves that were largely neglected by existing scholarly studies have also been fruitfully analysed. Since artistic, iconographic, and architectural descriptions have long governed the core of Ajanta studies, an attempt is made here to look at the circumstances and factors that initiated and shaped specific initiatives, the practical problems which were encountered at specific stages of excavations, and the solutions which were implemented. In the end, two individuals are brought into focus, Dharmadatta and Bhadrabandhu, who were thanked by the donor in his inscription for ‘seeing to the execution of the work’ on his behalf. They must have been the architects (sthapatis or sutradhāras who masterminded the grandest rock-cut project known until then. The value of their accomplishment is properly realised when we come to know about the trying circumstances under which they performed. They may be considered the first known Master Architects of Indian art.

The Anglo-Indian Architect Walter Sykes George (1881–1962): a Modernist Follower of Lutyens

[Lutyens’s system of proportion] began the link between us, by a chance action of mine, within the first year of my meeting him. He would never discuss it. It was intensely personal to him. [… He once] spoke to a group of students. One asked ‘What is proportion?’ and he answered ‘God’.(Walter Sykes George to Hope Bagenal, January 1959)Walter Sykes George (1881–1962) (Fig. 1) was a remarkable Anglo-Indian architect. Obituaries in Indian and British journals cast him as a ‘Renaissance’ man: an artist, Byzantine archaeologist, architect, town planner, philosopher, historian, public intellectual, humanist, Modernist, even an Indian nationalist. He features prominently in one recent history of modern architecture in India, a rare accolade for an ‘Anglo-Indian’ architect — an architect born in Britain who practised and lived for much of his life in India.

The expression of movement in architecture

‘Movement’ in Architecture can mean different things, and the idea of ‘expressed movement’ has, alone, been variously conceived. This article attempts to distinguish between these notions and propose a taxonomy. Two general categories are defined: ‘contained movement’, where it is not the architecture that is thought of as moving, but the eye, mind, imagined body or forces; and ‘represented movement’, where there is an implication or illusion that the architecture is in motion. It is argued that different kinds of movement often work together. These ideas are illustrated and situated through a brief historiographical survey, first outlining the tradition of discussing expressed movement in western architecture, then extending to writings on the arts and architecture of India. An analysis of movement in Indian temple architecture is put forward in order to demonstrate how an interpretation of a particular kind of architecture in terms of specific movement patterns can be substantiated, primarily by communicating these patterns unambiguously through visual means. Finally, current thinking about architectural movement is touched upon. It is suggested that openness to the diversity of conceptions of how movement is expressed may both sharpen the analysis of architecture and extend the possibilities for its creation.

Ethiopia and India

IntroductionThe relationship between Ethiopia and India is characterised by close cultural affinity, economic complimentarity and cordial political ties. Ethiopia is home to a mosaic of nations, nationalities and people with more than 80 different spoken languages. The vast majority of the languages are the Semitic, Cushitic and Omotic. Semitic language speakers live predominantly in the highlands and lowlands of the south-central region as well as in the north-central area. Omotic language speakers live predominantly in the south. The Nilo-Saharan super languages family accounts for about 2 percent of the population, and these languages are spoken near the Sudanese border. Amharic is used as a working language for the last 150 years and English is used as medium of instruction in secondary schools and universities (Embassy of Ethiopia, New Delhi, 2011).Ethiopia has some of the earliest hominid populations and possibly the region where Homo erectus evolved and expanded out of Africa. The most notable pale anthropological find in the country was 'Lucky' a female Australopithecus aphaeresis discovered in 1974 and referred to as Dinqnesh (you are marvelous) by Ethiopians. The Country is one of the oldest civilizations with a rich diversity of its people and culture which includes the unique letter of the alphabet, calendar and clock. Ethiopia was ruled by successive kings, emperors until 1974 where the military took over. In 1991, the military rule was ousted by the struggle of the Ethiopian people; hence in 1994 Ethiopia ratified a new constitution and declared a Federal Democratic Republic (Pankhurst, 1997).The Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia is composed of nine Regional States that are; Tigray, Afar, Amhara, Oromia, Somali, Southern Nation Nationalities and Peoples Region (SNNPR), Benishangul-Gumuz, Gambella and Harari; and two City Administration council of Dire Dawa and Addis Ababa. The regional states and city administrations are subdivided into 817 administrative Woredas (districts). A Woreda/District is the basic decentralised administrative unit and has an administrative council composed of elected members. Following a democratic system, election is held every 5 years thus, the fourth election was held in May 2011. There are more than 50 National and Regional Political Parties as well as private media that enhances the democratisation process that is under way.As both Ethiopia and India are old civilizations with 3,000 and 5,000 years of history respectively, their relations go back to thousands of years. During the Aksumite Kingdom of Ethiopia, Indian traders used to bring to Abesenia (the former name of Ethiopia) spices and silk and take back gold and ivory (Ethiopian Embassy, UK, 2011). The present Ethiopia has embraced upon a development effort to eradicate poverty and democratise its society. In so doing it has recorded tremendous achievements in economic and social development as witnessed by the 2010 human development index.According to the 2010 Human Development Report (HDR), Ethiopia is rated among the 'top movers' at rank 11 out of the 135 which registered improvement in Human Development Index that stretched between 1970 and 2010. The achievement status of Ethiopia indicates that life expectancy at birth increased by almost 5 years, GNI per capita increased by 75 percent, expected years of schooling increased by 4 years. This progress would have been difficult if not impossible without the assistance and cooperation of friendly countries like India.RELATIONS BETWEEN ETHIOPIA AND INDIA - TODAYAccording to some historians, Indians came into direct contact with Ethiopia and exchange commodities between the two countries in ancient times. In 16th century, Indian technicians came to Ethiopia from Goa with Portuguese missionaries and contributed much in the fields of construction and craft. The influence of Indian Architecture is visible in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia (Rashidi, 2007). …

Recording South Indian Architecture: Linnaeus Tripe and Edmund David Lyon

When the invention of photography was publicly announced in 1839, the new medium was soon perceived as an essential tool for surveying new territories. From the early 1850s the Government of India made official the recording of architecture and antiquities and sponsored several photographic expeditions. This article presents the development of official photography in India from its inception in the mid-1850s to the late 1860s, focusing primarily on the work of two important practitioners, Linnaeus Tripe and Edmund David Lyon, who were both employed by the Government of Madras. Separated by ten years, Tripe and Lyon travelled throughout South India during their employment with the Madras Presidency and frequently recorded the same sites. A comparison of their work reveals the changes that arose in the concept of delineating architecture and antiquities between the 1850s and the 1860s and the alterations which the recorded monuments underwent in that time, as well as enabling the compositional styles adopted by both practitioners to be studied for the first time.

HISTORY, MORPHOLOGY AND PERFECT PROPORTIONS OF MUGHAL TOMBS: THE SECRET TO CREATION OF TAJ MAHAL

This study investigates the language of architecture of the east. Traditional Islamic architecture, especially Mughal architecture and its influence on India is examined through developmental growth and linage of Mughal tombs. This paper basically presents research with emphasis on clarity of spatial characteristics on four Mughal tombs in India, two of which are world heritage sites including the world renowned Taj Mahal. A strong context of methodological approach in unfolding the codex of architecture at Taj and influences of its predecessors in creating this magnificent monument is examined. A key to some of the unknown mysteries of architecture in India, this paper can be of reference to historians, architects and the general reader alike in understanding what makes Taj the pinnacle of architecture in India. It lays emphasis on how western architectural students can get a better understanding of the paradigms of architecture in east. With methods like comparative understanding of ordering principles, proportional analysis and studies of composition and approach, this paper explains the process of systematically understanding the ground rules of architectural composition of non-western culture, especially Mughal architecture as developed through the renaissance phase in the east (AD 1508 to 1707).

Building for the Raj: Richard Roskell Bayne

En 1995, l’Université de Victoria a acheté une collection de 735 dessins, aquarelles, plans d’architecture et autres éléments qui document la vie et la carrière de Richard Roskell Bayne (1836–1901), un architecte anglais et employé de la East India Railway Company qui a exercé sa profession à Kolkata et dans d’autres villes de l’Inde entre 1866 et 1890. Au début de sa carrière, Bayne a fait entre 1864 et 1866 un grand voyage d’études en Europe, au cours duquel il a réalisé des dessins d’édifices historiques et d’ornementations architecturales pour le compte de Heaton, Butler and Bayne, l’entreprise de vitraux de son frère Robert. Richard a produit des centaines des dessins d’un style raffiné en France, en Espagne, aux Pays Bas, en Italie et en Turquie et il s’est toujours intéressé à l’architecture de l’Inde. Le fait que plusieurs de ses dessins aient été mesurés laisse supposer qu’il a eu l’intention de les publier. À titre d’ingénieur-architecte des chemins de fer, il a dessiné non seulement des ponts, des gares, et des maisons, mais aussi des édifices plus monumentaux (East India Railway Office, Kolkata; New Market dans la même ville; Thornhill and Mayne Memorial, Allahabad; Hussainabad Clock Tower, Lucknow; Oak Grove School, Mussoorie et le palais du maharaja de Durbunga). Après avoir quitté l’Inde en 1892, il s’est établi comme architecte à Victoria. L’année suivante, il a participé au concours international pour la construction du Parlement de la Colombie britannique, mais sans succès. Il est mort en 1901.

ON P.CONNER'S VIEWS ABOUT “INDIAN REVIVAL”

P. Conner pays attention some Indian architectures designed in England from the 1780's to the 1810's, and regards those works as the architectures in “Indian Revival”. In four Indian architectures designed in England from the 1780's to the 1810's, there are the trend which the British of those days went back to the prototype of architectures in the archaeological attitude. And, four works are the revival of the architectural style designed in the distant past, to the British of those days. His concept of “Indian Revival”, however, is based on a matter which the British of those days flung into Indian Architecture in the scholarly attitude.

An Indian logic-based knowledge-sharing architecture for virtual knowledge communities

This paper discusses autonomous Knowledge Sharing (KS) among a collection of KS volunteers, called the virtual knowledge community. The KS protocol determines the inclusion/exclusion of knowledge volunteers and regulates the discussion within the community. The entire autonomous discussion takes place with the initial predicates of world knowledge ontology represented in Indianised Logics. During discussion, the proponent refers to the invariable concomitance relation between the relating concepts to explain the inference to other opponents. The knowledge volunteers are grouped according to a degree of trust, based on which the proposed knowledge is either accepted or rejected. Therefore, by rationally exchanging questions and answers in a debate fashion, knowledge is explored and a definite conclusion is reached at the end of the discussion, irrespective of the winning/losing of the individual arguments. In this fashion, autonomous knowledge volunteers gain new and valid knowledge, using which they arrive at new conclusions in the future.

The Temple Architecture of India. By Adam Hardy. pp. 256. Chichester, Wiley, 2007.

The Temple Architecture of India. By Adam Hardy. pp. 256. Chichester, Wiley, 2007.

Thomas Metcalf. Imperial Connections: India in the Indian Ocean Arena, 1860–1920. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007. xv + 221 pp. ISBN 978-0-520-24946-2, $39.95 (cloth).

Here is an imperial connection: Sir Thomas Theophilus Metcalfe (with an “e”), 4th Baronet, served as agent of the Governor-General of British India at the court of the Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah. This was in the years immediately preceding the period of this book by the nearly eponymous Thomas Metcalf (no “e”), Professor of History Emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley. The similarity of names is a coincidence, but the two Toms share a complexity of interest and range of reference in their representations of mid-nineteenth-century India. In addition to his administrative and political work, Sir Thomas bequeathed the world a fabulous collection of over one hundred paintings by Indian artists, the Delhi Book, now in the British Library—a great treasure of images from a period when the British commercial presence in India intermingled with local cultures in ways that rapidly changed after the rebellion of 1857 and a substantial hardening of British political control. Similarly, Professor Thomas has used visual sources to explore the relationships and structures of influence that men like Sir Thomas helped to form in the mid-nineteenth century, by examining Indian architecture and Britain's Raj (An Imperial Vision, 2002). Now, the Professor has given the world a different view of imperial India that embraces several emerging trends in historiography and offers innovative perspectives on the economic history of the Indian Ocean region.

Adam Hardy. Essay on "Response to Michael Meister’s Review of <br> "The Temple Architecture of India"."

Adam Hardy. Essay on "Response to Michael Meister’s Review of <br> "The Temple Architecture of India"."

The Quest for Light in Indian Architectural Heritage

abstractDue to the effect of impinging solar radiation, high thermal loads can be predicted in buildings in many climates of South-East Asia and thus components devised to protect and ventilate the facades have been known for centuries. Features such as the ‘jalis’ or stone lattice work combined with deep overhangs and elements conceived to reflect excessive sunlight such as ritual ponds or even elaborate water tanks have adorned Indian-style palaces and temples since ancient times. These features have subsequently inspired modern architects like Le Corbusier, Antonin Raymond, Benjamin Polk and Geoffrey Bawa to cite just a few. Climatic control elements were well adapted to the craftsmanship of traditional architecture but their use as industrial products suitable for prefabrication is more controversial. Not only has the climate changed since the origin of Indian architecture, but also the use of glazing has increased in an alarming way and thus the need to protect openings is now even more demanding. In this paper, within the context of Indian civilization, the author will present the simulation of the radiative field generated by different types of solar protection and reflective surfaces, especially ponds and systems of louvres or brise-soleil. By virtue of this process it is intended to extrapolate the procedures used for ancient fabrics to their more modern counterparts found in internationally acclaimed buildings and to obtain useful design insights for future projects.

Measuring the body of god: Temple plan construction and proportional measurement in early texts on north Indian architecture

Vilnius UniversityBy reconsidering the fragments from early texts on north Indian temple architecture, namely the Purāṇas and their supposed sources, this paper sets out to explore the accounts of arrangement of the plans for temple ground plans and the modes of proportional measurement. It is contended that the general system of proportional measurement, called sāmānya or sarvasādhāraṇa and elaborated on in the texts under discussion, comprises temple garbha-shrines of various scales and forms, from which measurements for the entire temple structure are derived. The importance given to the garbha-shrine is attested by the method of classification of diverse temple types that are distinguished by the geometrical form of the ground plan of the garbha-shrine. It is consequently suggested that the arrangement of the ground plan of a garbha-shrine adapted by temple architects most probably reiterated the practices used for building Vedic altars, the layouts of which, as the Śulbasūtras state, might have served as models for structuring the ground plans of garbha-shrines.

Indian Renaissance: British Romantic Art and the Prospect of India (review)

Reviewed by: Indian Renaissance: British Romantic Art and the Prospect of India Richard Cronin Hermione de Almeida and George H. Gilpin, Indian Renaissance: British Romantic Art and the Prospect of India (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), pp. xv + 336. £75 hardback. 0 7546 3681 X. This book tells three stories. The first traces the succession of English painters who worked in India between 1765 and 1825, lured there by the enticing prospect of a new landscape and of finding patrons amongst the super-rich English nabobs: Paul Sandby reported to a friend, Zoffany's 'departure for the East, where he anticipates to roll in gold-dust'. The second tells the story of how the British presence in India developed from a first stage characterized by intellectual curiosity, tolerance, and the cultivation of intimate social relationships with Indians, to a second stage in which the British withdrew into a racial cantonment from which they ruled a nation now conceived as barbarous and alien. The third argues that just as the recovery of the classical world produced the first European Renaissance, the recovery of the ancient culture of India produced another, and that it was this second Renaissance, the Indian Renaissance, 'that would, in time, become synonymous with the European movement called Romanticism'. James Forbes was a Company employee, who arrived in India in 1765 when he was sixteen and had no formal training as an artist, but it was Forbes who first sketched the banyan tree and the cave temple at Elephanta that Hermione de Almeida and George H. Gilpin persuasively identify as the two Indian images that were most deeply absorbed into the European Romantic tradition. In 1769 Tilly Kettle, who had established himself in London as a painter of theatrical portraits, sailed for India, to become the first important British painter of India. Kettle astutely recognized that in London portrait painting was a fiercely competitive profession, whereas in Warren Hastings' Calcutta he would have the whole field to himself. His affinity with the theatre alerted him to the splendour of Indian costume, and also, the authors suggest, allowed him in a painting such as The Ceremony of a Gentoo Woman Taking Leave of her Relations, in which a young widow prepares to join her husband on his funeral pyre, to register the action as heroic. In Kettle's hands the scene becomes operatic, an occasion for noble gesture, the young woman less a victim than an ideal of womanhood. For a brief period in the 1780s William Hodges, Thomas Daniell, and Johan Zoffany were all of them working in India. Hodges, who had sailed with Captain Cook, made visible Indian landscape, Daniell Indian architecture, and Zoffany left a record in paint of a short-lived and remarkable cultural moment. Zoffany's Colonel Mordaunt's Cock Match is perhaps the masterpieceof these years, but by 1786, when that painting was completed, the moment had ended. Even George Chinnery, 'the last Romantic artist of India', who arrived in 1802 and stayed until 1825, could only recall it nostalgically. Whereas Zoffany had paintedan India in which British and Indians came togetherto make an exuberant, unconstrained new society, Chinnery's India is fully present only in 'scenes of village life and marginal existence outside the towns and cities', in places, that is, which the British have not [End Page 295] reached. It is the function of the book's second storyto explain this sad outcome. The hero of the book is Warren Hastings. 'The Indian Renaissance in Romantic art was made possible' by his appointment in 1772 as Governorof Bengal. In 1785, when he was recalled to Britain, where he would face impeachment, and succeeded by Lord Cornwallis, the Renaissance came to an abrupt end. The huge granary that Hastings built at Patna, designed to resemble a Buddhist stupa, and represented in several paintings reproduced here, is the proper measure of his achievement, signalling both his benevolent determination to spare Bengalany repetition of the terrible famine of 1769, and his sensitive appreciation of Indian cultural traditions. The differences between him and his successors are clearly displayed in their portraits. Zoffany paints Hastings standing in front of a banyan tree, his Palladian country house in...

画家T・ダニエルにおける理想的な風景とインド建築 : 英国グロースターシャー州セジンコートのインド風庭園(1806(7)-17)

An artist Thomas Daniell converted the garden at Sezincote into that of Indian style on the authority of "The Oriental Scenery" in which many Indian landscape paintings were drawn in the style of Claud. There was a garden (named the "Indian garden") which was attached to the House in the style of Mughal. In front of the House, there was the pastoral scenery. And in the valley, there was a water garden (named the "thorny") which was the holy precinct for Hindu gods. Further, in the "thorny", some forms of Indian Architecture were simplified. They was the ideal scenery which was famed for classical literature and had drawn by Claude.

Space Syntax Analysis of Colonial Houses in India

The influence of colonial (British) rule on native (Indian) culture and vice versa has resulted in the development of ‘hybrid’ architectural styles, which are seen in the external ‘form’ of the buildings. The development of a hybrid style is an important phase in the evolution of domestic architecture in India. In this paper we explore whether such hybrid nature is also reflected in the spatial organizations of some colonial houses of eastern India. For this, a suitable methodology was evolved to analyze the spatial organizations. The compositional rules in the generation of spatial layout in these houses are analyzed through the use of space syntax analysis, with some modifications, in order to type them spatially. Typically, space syntax analysis deciphers the spatial organization by the formation of ‘inequality genotypes’, which describe only the integration (and segregation) of spaces as per the access relations. To understand more about the Indian social and cultural norms that might have influenced the spatial organizations of the houses, the accessibility, adjacency, and orientation of the spaces also need to be studied. In this paper we explain the methodology used to generate ‘genotype strings’, incorporate the aforementioned information, and help to understand and document the ingrained social and cultural factors in spatial organizations of the houses more explicitly.

Sources and origin of the tiered temples

The origin of the tiered temples, the so-called Pagoda, of Nepal has not been adequately explained. Different experts have proposed differing and conflicting hypotheses that Nepalese tiered temples are developed with (i) influences from Chinese pagodas, (ii) developed with influences from Indian architecture and (iii) influences from both of them. The paper makes a fresh investigation of the occurrences of buildings with architectural forms and expressions similar to the tiered temples of Nepal, in Nepal, China, Korea, Japan and Indonesia and analyses their relationships based on style and symbolism. Based on analysis of these aspects, chronological sequences and possibilities of cultural interactions, the origins and development of the pagodas as an architectural form has been deduced. It concludes that the origins of the form of the pagoda should be sought in the Indus-Saraswoti Civilization. Keywords: pagoda, stupa, tiered temple Nepalese Journal of Engineering Vol.1(1) 2005 pp.102-109

‘Inside’ the Tradition of the Śilpaśāstras: Introductory Remarks on the Historical Study of Indian Texts on Art

The article sets up to discuss the relevance of the tradition of art texts (śilpaśātras) to the understanding of Indian art. This tradition has been dealt with for almost two hundred years since the first translation of text fragments from the treatises on Indian architecture by Ram Raz. The recent researches in the field threw a new light upon the aspects of provenance and function of shilpashastric texts, as well as their relationship with the extant works of art. The context-based approach to Indian art, avoiding the mistakes made when the textual and art history studies were carried out simultaneously but very rarely coming into contact and enriching one another, enables us to explore anew the role of these texts within the tradition of Indian art. Nevertheless, the manner in which the conceptual systems of śilpaśātras and the artistic tradition actually interact - how thought and action affect one another - is not a question simple to answer. The main reason for lacking research on this interaction is a rather stylistic approach, which dominates art history and pays too little attention to understanding the idea and provenance of śilpaśātras. The present research does not look for an unambiguous answer to the question concerning the role of shastric tradition in the overall artistic culture; rather it attempts to frame a preliminary working hypothesis for further investigation with a more coherent gaze at one of most undeservedly neglected spheres of Indian intellectual culture, namely, shilpashastric tradition and the role it played in the intellectual history of India.

Uncovering India: Studies of nineteenth-century Indian photography

Over the past three years, academic interest in nineteenth-century photography from India has been growing at a rapid pace. Seven significant books, as well as numerous important articles, have been produced during this period. Of the seven volumes, three have been general surveys of the topic, each book presenting a broad history of photography in India and each book marking an important exhibition. These titles include: India through the Lens: Photography 1840-1911 (2000), India: Pioneering Photographers 1850-1900 (2001) and Reverie and Reality: Nineteenth-Century Photographs of India from the Ehrenfeld Collection (2003). Of the other four publications, Traces of India: Photography, Architecture and the Politics of Representation (2003), is the only one to employ a thematic approach and examines the photographic representation of Indian architecture. The remaining volumes address the work of individual practitioners such as the Greek photographer Felice Beato1 in Beato's Delhi 1857, 1997 (2000), the work of the British photographerSamuel Bourne in Samuel Bourne, Sieben Jahre Indien: Photographien und Reiseberichte 1863-1870 (2001) and the partnership of Baker and Burke in From Kashmir to Kabul, The Photographs of John Burke and William Baker 1860-1900 (2002).