1000 Monuments of Genius. Christopher E.M. Pearson

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      India and Southeast Asia

      Little is known of the cultures that produced such prehistoric Indian cities as Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, which flourished along the banks of the Indus from the 3rd millennium BCE. Laid out on a grid oriented to the cardinal directions, these settlements’ advanced refinements – raised citadels on stepped terraces, sewers, running water for domestic use and large ritual baths – rival those of Sumerian cities of the time, though they are oddly lacking in large royal tombs or religious buildings. In general however, the architectural traditions of the Indian subcontinent – and indeed its surviving monuments – are largely religious in nature, focused on great temple complexes. Architectural style varied according to successive ruling regimes, who dictated the favoured religious system. Four major epochs can be discerned. The most ancient Indian culture, the forerunner of modern Hinduism, is sometimes termed Indo-Aryan, and lasted from about 1500 BCE until about 120 °CE. In the 3rd century BCE the great ruler Asoka imported skilled artisans from Persia to initiate a tradition of skilled stone carving. This period also saw the creation of the first Buddhist monuments, a religion that arose in the 6th century. Substantial Buddhist stupas (gated and domed mounds, serving as centres of pilgrimage), chatiyas (temples) and viharas (monasteries) can be found in southern India, and – as at Ajanta – often utilise natural caves or are cut into rock hillsides. The Kailasa Temple at Ellora (75 °CE), devoted to Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, is part of a great complex of rock-cut architecture at the site. Excavated out of a 2-km stretch of basalt cliff, it was begun by vertical excavation: carvers cut down through the living rock, removing some 200,000 tons of material to create a complex monolithic structure featuring tall monuments and multi-storied buildings with highly ornate wall carvings.

      From the 7th century the Brahman culture erected monumental, free-standing temples, many of which still survive. Though varying by region, Hindu temples generally take the form of a walled compound enclosing a tall vimana (shrine), a hall of columns and lesser buildings. They are notable for their very rich, indeed overwhelming, profusion of decorative and representational carving, sometimes exhibiting erotic forms. (This relates largely to a Tantric belief that sexual activity can represent an ecstatic union of the human and the divine realms.) The Kandariya Mahadeva temple at the royal city of Khajuraho (c. 1050), for example, was lavishly funded and ornamented. Set on a tall plinth, it features a mountain-like arrangement of multiple towers positioned in successive order of height. Its upper levels are encrusted with densely-packed relief carvings.

      India’s second major period of architecture, which lasted from the 12th through the 18th centuries, was precipitated by the arrival of Islamic invaders from Afghanistan, who established a new capital at Delhi. While politically turbulent, this era witnessed a boom in monumental construction, especially with the rise of the Mughal dynasty from the 16th century. The Muslims introduced several new building types to India from the Middle East, notably the mosque with its vast prayer hall and minarets. Indian mosques consequently betray strong influence from Persian prototypes, and are notable for the increasing refinement of their masonry and decorative stone carving. This trend is most famously represented by the funerary complex known as the Taj Mahal at Agra (c. 1630–1653), though technically this is not a mosque. At the same time, the Muslims launched an extensive and long-lived campaign to convert or destroy all Hindu temples, with the result that the north of India is largely devoid of such structures, except in the remotest regions. The third and fourth major periods of Indian architecture, as discussed below, began with the British Raj, and saw widespread importation of Western styles and typologies into the subcontinent.

      Moving further east, we see that Hinduism and Buddhism soon reached more southerly parts of Asia, including Burma, Indonesia and Indo-China, producing extraordinary temple complexes of unprecedented form and scale. The great 9th-century shrine at Borobodur, Indonesia, for example, is the largest Buddhist temple in the world. Its huge, symmetrical plan is oriented to the cardinal directions, while its profile consists of a series of superimposed terraces that symbolically represents the successive stages of enlightenment of a Buddhist pilgrim. Another great temple, the 12th-century complex of Angkor Wat in Cambodia, again manifests a seemingly endless sequence of platforms, galleries, porches and towers, and is representative of the achievements of the Khmer civilisation.

      China

      Chinese civilisation arose along the valley of the Yellow River in the 2nd millennium BCE. Monumental architecture first began to appear in the 3rd century BCE under the Ch’ing dynasty, which united the country for the first time. Its greatest built legacy of this period is, of course, the Great Wall, which guards the northern border of the kingdom, though in the centuries since it has been rebuilt many times. In later periods Chinese cities were among the most advanced in the world. Yet little Chinese architecture dating from before the Ming period (1368–1644) survives. This is largely because most honorific buildings above the level of the stone foundations were constructed of pine or cedar wood, which has since decomposed. Stone vaulting was generally reserved for tomb structures or, later, city walls and gateways. Pagodas provide occasional exceptions: the Great Wild Goose Pagoda, for example, a very tall building erected during the Tang Dynasty (in the 7th century) as part of a monastery, was first built of rammed earth with a stone facing and later rebuilt in brick.

      It was nevertheless China’s innovations in timber construction that proved most influential throughout Asia, and its traditions changed little over the centuries. Simple trabeated constructions in wood can be found as early as prehistoric times in China, and it might be said that the column (rather than the solid wall) remained the basic unit of building over the centuries. Timber was nevertheless scarce in the central part of the country, and early wooden structures made use of relatively thin columns, wide bays and walls of light infill. Most Chinese utilitarian structures – houses, fortifications and military structures – were built of rammed earth or brick, while wood was used largely for honorific buildings. The repetitive bays of this framed wooden architecture necessarily relied on a simple modular grid system, and a set of standard proportions came to be codified for Imperial use in Li Chieh’s Sung-era treatise Methods and Designs in Architecture (1103). The characteristic curving roof of the Chinese temple, with its wide eaves, terracotta СКАЧАТЬ