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NOTICES ON BUDDHIST ARCHITECTURE
IN
WESTERN INDIAN VĀSTUSĀSTRAS
M. A. Dhanky
After the close of the seventh century, Buddhism progres sively dwindled in strength in Western Jodia. It speedily decayed in the subsequent century, and, by the ninth, died out even in the last pockets where it had lingered on for some time. Not only that; just before the medieval epoch, Buddhism's place was fully and decisively taken over by the resurgent Jainism The first three centuries after the tenth was the period of Jainism's highest expansion as well as the high water-mark of its glory and influence in Rājasthan and Gujarāt. The early Western Indian Vāstuśāstras copiously but also reverentially refer to the Jina image and Jaina secred architecture : For the Jainas accorded the major and continuous patronage to the Māru-Gurjara art and architecture. In those days of ascendency and glory of Jainism, and the total eclipse of the Buddhist creed, a notice apropos Buddhist architecture inside Western Indian Vastušāstras is hardly to be expected. And yet, sur prisingly enough, there at least are two brief but significant allusions to Buddhist structures, one to the vihāra and the other to a prāsāda, which, by the associated details, seenis in that context to imply stūpa.
The reference to the vilāra or Buddhist monastery is found in the Vastuividyā or Višvakarmā, a Māru-Gurjaru vastu manual of about the first quarter of the twelfth century. The second notice which concerns with stūpa was encountered in the Viksārņaya, a răstu work of a period as late as the mid fifteenth century
The Vāstī vidū sandwitches the vilāra description IN between the jagati-s allilated to Brahmanical shrine and the
