Indian Antiquary Vol 45

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 172

164
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
OCTOBER, 1916
always at war with one another and contending for supremacy within a limited area have left no monuments of military architecture, not a single castle or fortification. What is still snore singular in a people of Turanian blood is that they have no tombs. Owing to the practice of burning and other circumstances no Dravidian tomb or cenotaph is known to exist anywhere." This era of artistic barrenness vanishes with the advent of the Muhammadans. Then arose a mania, a universal fashion, for the construction of palaces, cutcheries, chatrams, elephant stables, etc. The Râyas of Vijayanagar were the first to effcct this Renaissance. The kings of Madura and Tanjore were their disciples. The Naik monarchy devoted as much attention to the construction of palaces and offices as of temples.. .
With the change in fashion there was also a change in style. The imitators of the Mussalman spirit, the Hindus imbibed the Mussalman method as well. They were not slavish imitators, however. While retaining the Saracenic model, they modified its architectural features so as to suit their own purpose and feeling. With scrupulous obstinacy, they excluded the style of the religious architecture from their new civil buildings and took with enthusiasm to the pointed arch and the vault systems of the Moors. Not caring very much for the taste, they used the arch everywhere and for every purpose, their minds solely bent on picturesqueness of effect, and they have succeeded. It should be acknowledged, with Fergusson, that the labour bestowed on these buildings is practically nothing when compared with that lavished on the religious edifices already described, but this does not mean that they are deadly prosaic. The fact is the charming combination of the Saracenic and Hindu styles makes, as all works of a transitional nature must do, the styles more attractive than the art, but the art is not inferior. The roof and pillar work are, unlike the roof and pillar work of sacped buildings, light and elegant, and display a fine taste, which has made some, moro joalous than just, attribute them to the influence of European artists. What a soa of contrast is there between the civil and religious styles! The one is light, elegant, fairy-liko; epicurcan, earthly; while the other is grave, spiritual, solemn and dignified. Beauty and sensuousness are the characteristics of one, while grandeur and solemnity are the characteristics of the other. The one is the work of enjoyment, of power : the other, of veneration and man's devotion. The one revols in the charms of earthly life, the other endeavours to make men forget it.
Of these characteristic features we have a fine example in Tirumal Naik's palaces at Macura, at Srivilliputtûr and Alagar-malai.91 In its original grandeur, the Madura palace consisted of a large number of detached buildings, but now, thanks to the vandalism of time and the larger vandalism of Chokkanatha Naik, a portion only remains. The ten lofty pillars which once formed part of the approaches to the extensive palace, are now detached from it and stand in a row in a narrow and dirty lane, in the midst of a dense mass of thickly populated Saurashtra houses. They are built of granite slabs and plastered with mortar, which is now slowly decaying. The situation has exposed them to vicious but unintentional acts of vandalism on the part of these people. By driving nails into the joints for drying clothes, by streaking the lower portion in red and white bands, and by allowing the free passage of the drains at the bottom and the growth of free vegetation at the top
See Vadura Gazr., 282-4. 92 See Mad. Arch. Rep. 1909-10, p. 19; 1907-08; The vegetation on top of the pillars was removed in 1907 by the Madras arenaeological department.