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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samadhi are compared to the converging rafters of a kūţågara he takes the latter to have "really a domed rather than a ridged or even a pointed roof."
In 1947 Coomaraswamy's remarks were provided with a parallel from Jain sources by J.C. Jain's useful cultural study Life in Ancient India as depicted in the Jain Canons whereas Moti Chandra only paraphrased both at the All India Oriental Conference in 1951.
For, in the Scriptures of the śvetâmba ra Jains kuţâgāra is also found, but the references are disappointing in technical details its form being compared e.g. to trees or to Mahavira's frontal bone, in the first case in a long list of architectural terms. Here, as in Pāli, the kūţâgāra's or kūțâgāra-sālā's being weatherproof (or rather, their not being so) seems occasionally to be mentioned. Sometimes, then, the adjective duhao-litta 'smeared on both sides' appears. This is important, because it supports Buddhaghosa's explanation of the ambiguous Pali compound ullittåvalitta by 'smeared inside and outside' against the Pali -English Dictionary's etymological translation by 'smeared up and down, i.e. all round' and proves the latter wrong.
As to this, the information from the texts nicely supplements data from architecture in which there no longer exist kuţâgaras as separate upper class accommodations (as opposed to houses for ordinary people) of the type offered already to the Buddha himself in the forest at Vesāli, and later to his monks as a dwelling during the rainy season. The only buildings of this kind that have come down to us are, in fact, sacred ones, and they are either hewn in the rock like the Lomas Rşi cave at Barabar (South of Rājgir; 3rd cent. B.C.), Ajanţā and Elūrā, Bhājā (between Bombay and Poona) etc., or else have a different function,
like the massive monuments in Mamallapuram. The original ones,