Kutagara Or From Mens House To Mansion In Eastern India And South East Asia

SR No.: 269707
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: W B Bollee
Publisher: W B Bollee
Total Pages: 25
Language: English
Classification: Article
File Size: 5 MB

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plot of land in the northern or eastern part of the village the patient should have a kuţâgāra built pointed towards these same directions. It should stand on the south or east side of a pond some 3,5 metres from the edge, hemispherical, 7,30 metres high and in diameter. All along the wall a bench should be placed, and in the centre a round clay stove as tall as a man and of 1,80 metre diameter with many holes.' It remains unclear why Caraka called the sudatorium kūțâgāra.
Incidentally, saunas already existed in Buddhist monasteries in pre-christian times. The Vinaya pali does not inform us either about their shape or about an oven. The text, however, speaks about a half-timber wall and a door with a bolt as well as about a probably open fire-place for one was allowed to protect oneself against the heat by means of water. Perhaps. the structure carved out of the rock at Bangala Motta Paramba, taken by Jouveau Dubreuil to be an Agnidhriya-hut, in fact is a sauna which would equally well have needed the kind of chimney visible but I have not seen it myself.
The kutagara is found not only as an ornament on buildings, but also on palanquins as is shown on a parapet relief at Amaravati, whereas the chassis looks like a covered waggon framework. Here we apparently have to do with a luxury object of a later period, probably after Christ, for the Canons of Jains and Buddhists only mention sibika-type palanquins for the use of sick bhikkhus only.
We first learn of kutagara palanquins in the commentaries Buddhaghosa wrote in Ceylon about 470 A.D. By that time the old Vinaya ban on means of transport had fallen into disuse and a contemporaneous or even invented state of things was projected back into the past. Thus e.g. we read of Sakka, i.e. Indra, the