The art and architecture of India - Buddhist, Hindu, Jain (Art Ebook)

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GOLDEN AGE AND END OF BUDDHIST ART
tree rising from the foundations of the stupa and
here supporting a final parasol and kalasa finial.
On the Sambhunath stupa is a range of thirteen
parasols representing the heavens of the devas. 6
Around the drum of that monument are relief
sculptures representing the mystic Buddhas of
the Four Directions and Vairocana, executed in
a style ultimately derived from the Pala school
of sculpture in Bengal. 7
An even more characteristic form of Nepalese
architecture is to be seen in the many wooden
temples erected in the ancient capitals of the
realm. It is quite possible that some of these
structures preserve now lost styles of early
Indian construction. A typical example is the
Bahavani temple at Bhatgaon, which, although
in its present form dedicated only in 1703,
probably repeats the shape of earlier prototypes.
The sanctuary proper is raised on a stone
pyramid in five stages, and itself consists of a
five-storeyed wooden tower with sloping roofs
supported by wooden brackets. One is im-
mediately reminded of the pagodas of China and
Japan. The explanation for this resemblance
probably lies in the fact that the Nepalese
towers and their Far Eastern equivalents have
common prototypes in now lost wooden architectural
forms in India. We have already seen
pyramidal stone roofs of a similar type in Kashmir.
The skyscrapers of ancient Nalanda, as
described by Hsiian-tsang, or even the famous
wooden pagoda at Peshawar, may well have
furnished the inspiration for this and similar
Nepalese temples.
fc
The eighteenth-century temple at Patan in
our illustration [200] is typical of Nepalese
ecclesiastical architecture, not only in its
high
podium and in the form of the tiers of sloping
roofs supported by elaborately carved wooden
struts or brackets, but also in the combination of
an underlying brick fabric with an overlay of
intricately carved woodwork.
Another type of Nepalese building is the
Krishna temple which may be seen at the right
•/^oo. Patan, Nepal, Buddhist temple
201 (far right). Patan, Nepal, Durbar Square