1889.] 



on the Civilization of Ancient India. 



L09 



A brief discussion of the more prominent effects of the contact 

 between the Grjeco-Roman and Indian civilizations on other depart- 

 ments of human activity in India will follow, and will enable the reader 

 to form a conception as a whole of the impression made by the West 

 upon the East during a period of seven or eight centuries. That im- 

 pression was not sufficiently deep to stamp Indian art, literature and 

 science with an obviously European character, although it was much 

 deeper than is commonly supposed. 



Section II. Indo-Hellenic Architecture. 

 The style of architecture, appropriately named Indo-Persian by Sir 

 Alexander Cunningham, and obviously derived from that employed in 

 the Achasmenian palaces of Susa and Persepolis, was extensively used 

 throughout Northern and Western India for several centuries both 

 before and after the Christian era. With this style of western, though 

 not Hellenic, origin the history of Indian architecture begins. It would 

 be more strictly accurate to say that with this style the history of Indian 

 architectural decoration begins, for no buildings in it exist, and we know 

 its character only from pillars and miniature representations in sculp- 

 tured reliefs. 



The pillars are characterized by " a bell-shaped lower capital, sur- 

 mounted by an upper member formed of recumbent animals, back to 

 back."* The series of examples in Northern India, of pillars more or less 

 fully corresponding to this definition, begins with the monoliths of Asoka 

 (cirea B. C. 250), and ends with the pillar of Budha Gupta at Eran in the 

 Sagar District of the Central Provinces, which bears an inscription 

 dated in the year A. D. 485. f The caves of Western India offer examples 

 apparently rather later, and specimens of intermediate dates have been 

 found at Bharhut, Buddha Gaya, Sanchi, Bedsa, and Mathura, as well as 

 in the Gandhara or Tusufzai country. But there is no evidence as yet 

 forthcoming that Indo-Persian pillars were used structurally in Gandha- 

 ra. In miniature, as architectural decorations, they were a favourite 

 ornament in that region. 



The Indo-Persian pillar underwent gradual modifications in India 

 Proper, with which I am not at present concerned. On the north-wost 

 frontier of India, that is to say, in the western districts of the Panjab, 

 in the valley of the Kabul River, including Gandhara or the Tusufzai 

 country, and in Kashmir, it was supplanted by pillars imitated from 



* Cunningham, Archaiol. Rep., Vol. V, p. 185. [For a convenient synopsis of 

 specimen pillars of tho Persian, Indo-Persian, Indo-Hellenic (Corinthian) and Inclo- 

 Doric styles, see mi, Plates XXVII, and XLV to L. Ed.] 



t All the Gupta dates an .lei crmined in Mr. Fleet's work on the liupta in- 

 eriptions, Corpus Inscrip. liulieariim, Vol. III. 



