Courtesy :Progressive customs of architecture
600 BCE—250 CE
Further information: Ancient Indian architecture, Buddhist architecture, and Indian rock-cut architecture
Conjectural reconstruction of the main gate of Kushinagar circa 500 BCE adapted from a relief at Sanchi.
City of Kushinagar in the 5th century BCE according to a 1st century BCE frieze in Sanchi Stupa 1 Southern Gate.
After the Indus Valley Civilization, there are few traces of Indian architecture, which probably mostly used wood, or brick which has been recycled, until around the time of the Maurya Empire, from 322 to 185 BCE. From this period for several centuries onwards, much the best remains are of Indian rock-cut architecture, mostly Buddhist, and there are also a number of Buddhist images that give very useful information. # ISO certification in India
Buddhist construction of monastic buildings apparently begins before the death of Buddha, probably around 400 BCE. This first generation only survives in floor-plans, notably at the Jivakarama vihara in Bihar.
Walled and moated cities with large gates and multi-storied buildings which consistently used chaitya arches, no doubt in wood, for roofs and upper structures above more solid storeys are important features of the architecture during this period. The reliefs of Sanchi, dated to the 1st centuries BCE-CE, show cities such as Kushinagar or Rajagriha as splendid walled cities, as in the Royal cortege leaving Rajagriha or War over the Buddha’s relics. These views of ancient Indian cities have been relied on for the understanding of ancient Indian urban architecture.# ISO certification in India
In the case of the Mauryan capital Pataliputra (near Patna), we have Greek accounts, and that of Faxian; Megasthenes (a visitor around 300 BCE) mentions 564 towers and 64 gates in the city walls. Modern excavations have uncovered a “massive palisade of teak beams held together with iron dowels”. A huge apadana-like hall with eighty sandstone columns shows clear influence from contemporary Achaemenid Persia. The single massive sandstone Pataliputra capital shows clear Hellenistic features, reaching India via Persia. The famous Ashoka columns show great sophistication, and a variety of influences in their details. In both these cases a now-vanished Indian predecessor tradition in wood is likely.# ISO certification in India
Post-Maha-Janapadas Architecture
The Great Stupa at Sanchi (4th–1st century BCE). The dome-shaped stupa was used in India as a commemorative monument associated with storing sacred relics.
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The Mahabodhi Temple built by Asoka at Bodh Gaya. Relief from Sanchi, 1st century CE
Such a tradition is extremely clear in the case of the earliest-known examples of rock-cut architecture, the state-sponsored Barabar caves in Bihar, personally dedicated by Ashoka circa 250 BCE. The entrance of the Lomas Rishi Cave there has a sculpted doorway that clearly copies a wooden style in stone, which is a recurrent feature of rock-cut caves for some time. These artificial caves exhibit an amazing level of technical proficiency, the extremely hard granite rock being cut in geometrical fashion and given the Mauryan polish, also found on sculpture. Later rock-cut viharas, occupied by monastic communities, survive, mostly in Western India, and in Bengal the floor-plans of brick-built equivalents survive. The elaborately decorated facades and “chaitya halls” of many rock-cut sites are believed to reflect vanished free-standing buildings elsewhere.# ISO certification in India
The Buddhist stupa, a dome shaped monument, was used in India as a commemorative monument associated with storing sacred relics. The stupa architecture was adopted in Southeast and East Asia, where it became prominent as a Buddhist monument used for enshrining sacred relics. Guard rails—consisting of posts, crossbars, and a coping—became a feature of safety surrounding a stupa. Temples—build on elliptical, circular, quadrilateral, or apsidal plans—were constructed using brick and timber. The Indian gateway arches, the torana, reached East Asia with the spread of Buddhism. Some scholars hold that torii derives from the torana gates at the Buddhist historic site of Sanchi (3rd century BCE – 11th century CE).
Rock-cut stepwells in India date from 200 to 400 CE. Subsequently, the construction of wells at Dhank (550–625 CE) and stepped ponds at Bhinmal (850–950 CE) took place. Cave temples became prominent throughout western India, incorporating various unique features to give rise to cave architecture in places such as Ajanta and Ellora.# ISO certification in India
A very important development, the emergence of the shikara or temple tower, is today best evidenced by the Buddhist Mahabodhi Temple. This was already several centuries old when the first very vertical structure replaced an Ashokan original, apparently around 150–200 CE. The current brick-built tower, probably a good deal larger, dates to the Gupta period, in the 5th or 6th centuries.
Gupta architecture
Dashavatara Temple, Deogarh is a Vishnu Hindu temple built during the early 6th century, near the end of the Gupta period.
For reasons that are not entirely clear, for the most part the Gupta period represented a hiatus in Indian rock-cut architecture, with the first wave of construction finishing before the empire was assembled, and the second wave beginning in the late 5th century, after it ended. This is the case, for example, at the Ajanta Caves, with an early group made by 220 CE at the latest, and a later one probably all after about 460.Instead, the period has left almost the first surviving free-standing structures in India, in particular, the beginnings of Hindu temple architecture. As Milo Beach puts it: “Under the Guptas, India was quick to join the rest of the medieval world in a passion for housing precious objects in stylized architectural frameworks”, the “precious objects” being primarily the icons of gods.# ISO certification in India
The most famous remaining monuments in a broadly Gupta style, the caves at Ajanta, Elephanta, and Ellora (respectively Buddhist, Hindu, and mixed including Jain) were in fact produced under other dynasties in Central India, and in the case of Ellora after the Gupta period, but primarily reflect the monumentality and balance of Guptan style. Ajanta contains by far the most significant survivals of painting from this and the surrounding periods, showing a mature form which had probably had a long development, mainly in painting palaces. The Hindu Udayagiri Caves actually record connections with the dynasty and its ministers, and the Dashavatara Temple at Deogarh is a major temple, one of the earliest to survive, with important sculpture.# ISO certification in India
Examples of early North Indian Hindu temples that have survived after the Udayagiri Caves in Madhya Pradesh include those at Tigawa (early 5th century), Sanchi Temple 17 (similar, but respectively Hindu and Buddhist), Deogarh, Parvati Temple, Nachna (465), Bhitargaon, the largest Gupta brick temple to survive, and Lakshman Brick Temple, Sirpur (600–625 CE). Gop Temple in Gujarat (c. 550 or later) is an oddity, with no surviving close comparator.
There are a number of different broad models, which would continue to be the case for more than a century after the Gupta period, but temples such as Tigawa and Sanchi Temple 17, which are small but massively built stone prostyle buildings with a sanctuary and a columned porch, show the most common basic plan that continues today. Both of these have flat roofs over the sanctuary, which would become uncommon by about the 8th century. The Mahabodhi Temple, Bhitargaon, Deogarh and Gop already all show high superstructures of different shapes. The Chejarla Kapoteswara temple demonstrates that free-standing chaitya-hall temples with barrel roofs continued to be built, probably with many smaller examples in wood.
- A tetrastyle prostyle Gupta period temple at Sanchi besides the Apsidal hall with Maurya foundation, an example of Buddhist architecture. 5th century CE.
- The current structure of the Mahabodhi Temple dates to the Gupta era, 5th century CE. Marking the location where the Buddha is said to have attained enlightenment.
