His job was simply to analyse and classify; and the
History of Indian and Eastern Architecture
represents the first and by far the most important attempt to present a comprehensive survey of this truly monumental
subject. Starting with the Ashoka pillars, Fergusson displayed the whole dazzling panorama of Indian building through 2000 years. He did so with much erudition and ingenuity, yet managed to keep the subject well within the grasp of the general reader.
My endeavour from the first has been to present a distinct view of the general principles which have governed the historical development of Indian architecture & [and] I shall have realized a long cherished dream if I have succeeded in popularizing the subject by rendering its principles generally intelligible, and thus & assisted in establishing Indian architecture on a stable basis so that it may take its true position among the other great styles which have ennobled the arts of mankind.
Popularizing the subject meant making aesthetic
rankings: the tomb of Sher Shah at Sassaram was an outstanding example of ‘a royal tomb of the second class’ (whatever that meant). Likewise Indian architecture as a whole was not on a par with that of Greece or Rome. One of the principles to which he constantly returned was that ‘for an exuberance of fancy, a lavishness of labour and an elaboration of detail’ it was unrivalled. It was also still
a living art. Ernest Havell would find much to criticize in Fergusson’s pontifications but he could only approve when Fergusson compared ‘the perfect buildings which the ignorant, uneducated natives of India are now producing’ with ‘the failures the best educated and most talented architects in Europe are constantly perpetrating’.
But perhaps his most curious observation was that ‘there is no
country where the outlines of ethnology as applied to art can be so easily perceived’. Indeed, according to Fergusson, ethnology held the key to the understanding of the subject. His classifications would obviously depend to some extent on dates, locations and religious associations, but basically Fergusson proposed that the variations in Indian styles of building had something to do with the variety
of racial groups that constituted the Indian people. Hence there was Dravidian architecture, Indo-Aryan architecture, Pathan architecture, Moghul architecture and Rajput architecture. All these terms had to be racial-neither regional nor chronological. Even two further classifications, Buddhist and Jain architecture, were not to be regarded simply as religious definitions. For Fergusson contended
that Buddhism and Jainism had been adopted by a particular race or group of races, the Dasyus or aboriginal inhabitants. Indeed, it was one of the ‘principles of the scientific study of Indian architecture’ that these Dasyus, together with the Dravidian races of south India and latecomers like the Pathans and the Moghuls, had between them been responsible for all India’s monuments.
On the other
hand, the Aryan people, who with their wealth of Sanskrit literature were usually credited with being the cultural and religious trail-blazers of Indian civilization, had made no contribution at all. (The term Indo-Aryan as applied to one of his classifications was simply for convenience; he would have preferred ‘Dasyu’ but admitted that to most people that would be meaningless.) The oldest Aryan
writings, the Vedas, contained no mention of temples, and it had long been something of a mystery that the oldest and holiest cities of north India, Benares and Allahabad, had not a single building more than 500 years old. Cunningham, of course, believed that these places had once boasted temples aplenty, but that they had all been destroyed by the iconoclastic Mohammedans. This was certainly true
of Delhi where an inscription recorded that the Qutb mosque had been constructed out of the ruins of twenty-seven temples. But it was odd that in Benares, of all places, there was nothing to testify to an ancient building tradition. Fergusson preferred to assume that this meant that there had never been one. He was inclined to be less harsh on the Mohammedans: Europeans had been equally destructive,
and the Hindus, by their neglect and indifference, probably more so than either. But all these factors together could hardly account for there being not a single inscribed stone or mutilated statue of pre-Islamic provenance in the whole of Benares.
Given, then, the Aryan people’s lack of interest in any durable kind of architecture, it was not surprising that the great centres of Hindu building
were not in the Gangetic plain (where the Aryans had originally settled) but around its perimeter and in peninsular India. Allowing for a few maverick aberrations, and excluding the caves, Fergusson divided his photographs of temples into three main groups – Dravidian, Chalukyan and Indo-Aryan. In describing each of these he selected a simple prototype and traced its stylistic development towards
what he regarded as the noblest or best known example of the style.
The Dravidian temples of the extreme south posed the most difficult problem, because they were neither integral buildings nor had much in the way of history. Most had been built within the last 400 years, some within living memory. They were the largest and most imposing temples in India. Yet, ‘the fact is that, in nine cases
out of ten, Dravidian temples are a fortuitous aggregation of parts, arranged without plan, as accident dictated at the time of their erection’. They were not single buildings, but sprawling congeries in which the main shrine was lost amidst a warren of passages, pillared halls, courtyards, bazaars and bathing pools. Cities within cities, their distinctive architectural feature was not in the temple
itself but in the walls that surrounded it and, above all, in the gigantic
gopurams
or gateways.
If the
gopurams
of Madurai, Tanjore, Kanchipuram – Fergusson knew of more than thirty examples – had been a few centuries older they would have ranked with the pyramids as architectural curiosities. Towering hundreds of feet above the flat coastal plains, like the sacrificial towers of some Rider
Haggard kingdom, they had attracted the attention of all the early travellers and surveyors, and had been much painted by artists like the Daniells. But Fergusson was one of the first to suggest that, across a gap of perhaps 800 years, they were a development of a style first seen in the
raths
or boulder temples of Mahabalipuram. The rectangular pyramidal shape, the multi-storeyed construction,
now adorned with tier upon tier of sculpture, and the barrel-shaped roof, were all anticipated in the little Ganesa
rath
and the larger Arjuna.
Where such structures stood in the architectural hierarchy Fergusson was not sure. The French in the eighteenth century had used the temple walls as fortifications and, later, British surveyors had found th
e gopurams
convenient eminences on which to mount
their theodolites. But whether their original purpose amounted to any more than a labour-intensive endowment programme seemed doubtful. Fergusson considered that the people of south India, the Dravidians, were devoid of noble feelings: ‘their intellectual status is, and always has been, mediocre’.
All that millions of hands working through centuries could do, has been done, but with hardly any higher motive than to employ labour and to conquer difficulties, so as to astonish & and astonished we are; but without some higher motive, true architecture cannot exist—Much of the ornamentation, it is true, is very elegant, and evidences of power and labour do impress the human imagination, often even in defiance of our better judgement, and nowhere is this more apparent than in these Dravidian temples. It is in vain, however, that we look among them for any manifestation of those lofty aims and noble results which constitute the greatness of true architectural art, and which generally characterize the best works of the true styles of the Western World.
Similar criticisms applied to what Fergusson dubbed the Chalukyan style, although in this case the ornamentation was used to far
greater architectural effect. The three classic examples of the style were at Belur, Somnathpur and Halebid. All these places were tucked away in a remote tract of the native state of Mysore, which explained why the style was little known compared with the others. Fergusson did not discover this style, of course, but he deserves much credit for bringing these magnificent buildings to public attention.
As opposed to the rectangular ground plan of both Dravidian and Indo-Aryan temples, the Chalukyan was invariably star-shaped. But a still more distinctive feature of the style was its layered horizontality. Deep cornices line the several façades with strong bands of light and shade; innumerable friezes, steps and ledges continue this effect down to ground level; the whole structure is stretched
upon a dead flat expanse of stone terrace, itself lined with more friezes and cornices. The effect is further emphasized by the fact that the Halebid and Belur temples have flat roofs. Fergusson thought that they should have had low pyramidal towers, like those at Somnathpur, but that for some reason the temples had never been finished.
Maybe, but there was nothing unfinished about the ornamentation.
If the ancient Buddhists were inclined to treat sandstone like wood, the Chalukyans (Fergusson considered them a race rather than just a dynasty) treated their distinctive black schist, or potstone, like lace.
The amount of labour, indeed, which each face of this porch [at Belur] displays is such as, I believe, never was bestowed on any surface of equal extent in any building in the world; and though the design is not of the highest order of art, it is elegant and appropriate, and never offends against good taste.
From the brackets hidden beneath the great roof cornices to the toe-level elephant frieze, and including the elaborately fretted windows, every surface was alive with carving ‘of marvellous elaboration and detail’. Every deity in the Hindu pantheon is supposed to be represented
at Belur – and most of them many times over. There must be more than 500 elephants in the bottom frieze alone.
Moving to the double temple at Halebid, Fergusson’s dismissive attitude began to crumble. Here the elephant frieze was 710 feet in length and ‘containing not less than 2000 elephants, most of them with riders and trappings sculptured as only an oriental can represent the wisest of brutes’.
Above this was a frieze of lions, then a scroll ‘of infinite beauty and variety of design’, then a frieze of horsemen, another scroll, and a colossal relief, 700 feet long, of scenes from the
Ramayana.
Above this were beasts and birds, another frieze, an elaborate cornice, windows of pierced slabs of stone, and panels of sculpture. On one side, in place of the windows, there was a frieze of Hindu
deities, each five feet six inches high and extending to 400 feet. It included at least fourteen Siva and Parvati groups and considerably more Vishnus.
Some of these are carved with a minute elaboration of detail which can only be reproduced by photography, and may probably be considered as one of the most marvellous exhibitions of human labour to be found even in the patient East. It must not, however, be considered that it is only for patient industry that this building is remarkable&. The variety of outline, and the arrangement and subordination of the various facets in which it is disposed, must be considered as a masterpiece of design in its class. The artistic combination of horizontal with vertical lines, and the play of outline and of light and shade, far surpass anything in Gothic art. The effects are just what the medieval architects were often aiming at, but which they have never attained so perfectly as was done at Halebid.
Fergusson contrasted the Halebid temple with the Parthenon. The one was the absolute antithesis of the other, and all the world’s architecture fell somewhere between these two poles. The Parthenon was a product of the intellect, calculated
with mathematical precision to such a degree of exactness and complexity that it passed into artistic perfection. Halebid was the exact opposite.
All the pillars of the Parthenon are identical, while no two facets of the Indian temple are the same; every convolution of every scroll is different. No two canopies in the whole building are alike, and every part exhibits a joyous exuberance of fancy scorning every mechanical restraint. All that is wild in human faith and warm in human feeling is found portrayed on these walls, but of pure intellect there is little.
There was more intellect in the soaring outline of the third temple style, what Fergusson called Indo-Aryan although now more commonly known as the Northern or Nagara style. The distinctive feature of this style was
the sikhara,
the curvilinear tower or spire, and there lay Fergusson’s biggest problem. ‘I have looked longer, and perhaps thought more on this problem than on any other of its class connected with Indian architecture.’ But he had found no certain solution. Its forms varied from an almost straight-sided pyramid in some of the earliest examples, to a shape like a bishop’s mitre, to the soaring Gothic pinnacles
of Khajuraho, to something more like a full-blown pineapple at Bhuvaneswar. The curvilinear tower was as much the glory of Hindu architecture as the dome was of Mohammedan buildings. Yet where had the idea come from? Fergusson explored several possibilities in vain. He was convinced, though, that it was a purely Indian invention. Indeed, it could only be handled effectively by Indian craftsmen,
because only they could bestow on its blank faces the ingenuity in ornamentation needed to break them up and lighten the effect.
Khajuraho’s temples were a good example, but Fergusson had never been there and was loth to place too much confidence in Cunningham’s descriptions. Instead, he concentrated on the other major temple complexes of north India, at Puri and Bhuvaneswar in Orissa.