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

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CHAPTER 3
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THE EPIC PERIOD:
VEDIC AND PRE-MAURYA CIVILIZATIONS
that the accounts of crafts and technical procedures
are those of this conquering race. Mention
is made of metals, such as tin, lead, and
silver, as well as copper and iron, which are
specified in the later Vedic books, and there are
also references to woven stuffs and ritual vessels.
Considering the background of these agricultural
nomadic invaders, it is not surprising
that the architecture of the Vedic Period was
neither monumental nor permanent nor concentrated
in urban development. With the disappearance
of the Indus culture and its cities,
The period between the end of the Indus Valley
civilization and the rise of the first Indian empire
under the Mauryas includes the Vedic
Period (c. 1500-800 B.C.) and, from the name of
the first historical pre-Maurya dynasties, the
Saisunaga-Nanda Period (642-322 B.C.). After
the period of initial conquest, when the Aryans
were able to reduce the native population by the
superiority of their armament, there unfolds
a drama repeated many times in Indian history,
in which the conqueror has become the
conquered. Although they imposed their philosophical
and social
the new Indo-Aryan population was largely
ideals on India and penetrated
the entire fabric of Indian civilization
with such forms as the caste system, the Aryans
were inevitably absorbed into the Indian population
and the main stream of Indian civilization
Long before 500 B.C. the culture of India was a
mixture of Aryan and Dravidian elements. The
surviving archaeological fragments from this
remote period point to the predominance of
non-Aryan ritual such as the substitution of
pujd, the worship of a god represented in the
form of an image, in place of the Vedic yajna or
sacrifice with praise and prayer to nonanthropomorphic
deities. 1
Our knowledge of
this epoch of Indian history is based on a few
scattered remains, on literary evidence, and on
conjecture. The conjectural reconstruction of
its art is based on the many references to actual
techniques and works of sculpture and architecture
in the Vedic hymns, which were composed
sometime between 1500 and 800 B.C. These
hymns were the compositions of the Aryan
invaders from the uplands of northern Asia, so
distributed in small settlements located in the
plains and forests. Their building materials
were those most readily available for constructing
shelters : wood, bamboo, thatch, and, probably
only later, brick. This was the only kind of
building one would expect of a people without
any kind of tradition of monumental architecture.
Obviously, methods of construction in
bamboo and thatch must have been practised by
the Dravidians long before the intrusion of the
northern invaders. What little we know of architecture
in these remote times is the allusion to
huts of round and square shape, as well as towerlike
structures. The resemblance of these descriptions
to the conical huts of the primitive
Toda tribes in South India today suggests that
these forms were of Dravidian rather than
Aryan origin. Fire-altars and sacrificial halls
are mentioned in the Vedas; presumably the
dimensions and measurements of these and
other structures were determined at a very early
date, since the dimensions for buildings are