The East: Buddhists, Hindus and the Sons of Heaven 0415407524, 9780415407526

Table of contents :
Cover
Dedication
Title
Copyright
CONTENTS
PART 1 BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL
1.1 THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT
Prologue: progenitors
Vedic creators
Kingship and caste
Brahmanism
Transmigration and liberation
The Mahavira and the Buddha
Settlement
1 The Mauryas and their successors
India’s earliest imperial work
Mauryan sanctuaries and shrines
Stupa and monastery under the Mauryas’ successors
2 Helenistic intruders and the Mahayana
The transformation of Buddhism: veneration to worship
The ‘Great Transformation’: manifestation
Transformation in the north: town and monastery
Mahayana in the south
3 The pantheon of the gods
The advent of Hinduism
Tantrism
Worship
4 Hindu empire and the fruits of dynastic rivalry
Gupta foundations
Excavation
Classic structure
Chalukyan experiments in structure
5 The south and the great Dravidian vimana
Pallavan experiments
Structures of the restored Chalukyas
The culmination of excavation
Chola inheritance
Chola legacy
Vijayanagaran empire and its successors
6 The north and the ‘Nagara’ temple mountain
Bengal
Kashmir
The Pratiharas and the early northern temple
After the Pratiharas
The Solankis and Jaina patronage in western India
The Chandellas and their neighbours
The Paramaras and their neighbours
Orissa
7 Central synthesis
Cross-fertilization
The Later Chalukyas
The Hoysalas
8 Forts
9 Sri Lanka
Orthodox and heterodox
The Anuradhapura era: the monastic complex
The Anuradapura dagoba
The palace and Sigiriya
The Tooth, the Tamils and the temple
From Anuradhapura to Polonnaruwa
Polonnaruwa monuments
Interior realms and Kandy
10 Nepal
Lichchhavis
Kingdom and city-states
Vernacular building
Court and square
The vihara
The temple
1.2 SOUTH-EAST ASIA
11 Java and its neighbours
Religions and central dynasties
Monuments of syncretic faith
The Great Stupa Mountain
The great Hindu candi
Eastern supremacy
East Javan monuments
From Java to Bali
12 The Advent of the Khmer
Funan
Zhenla
Elevation of the Khmer
13 Angkor
Suryavarman ii
14 The Cham and the late ascent of the Mahayana at Angkor
The Chams
Cham reversal at Angkor
15 Mons and Myenmar
The land of the Irrawaddi and the Chao Phraya
Pyu legacy
From Sriksetra to Bagan
Bagan and its monuments
After Bagan
The stupa
The temple
The monastery
The palace
16 Thais and their eastern neighbours
Thai vernacular and monumental types
Sukhothai monuments
From Sukhothai to Ayutthaya
Ayutthayan monuments
The Ayutthayan legacy
Early Bangkok
Lanna
Luang Prabang
Phnom Penh
PART 2 HEAVEN’S EMPIRES
2.1 CHINA AND ITS ORBIT
1 The generation of conservative traditions
Opening history
Zhou
Confucianism and Daoism
Town and country planning
The Qin and the Han
Han burial
Palaces and houses
Conclusion
2 Interregnum and the impact of Buddhism
Three Kingdoms: moving capitals
The origin of the temple
3 Middle age, Sui,Tang and Song
Tombs
Temples and monasteries
Elementary structure
Early northern works
Elements
Colour
From Tang to Song
Tombs
Religious buildings and their distribution
Northern survivals
Southern variants
4 The Yuan interregnum and Tibet
Tibet and the emergence of Lamaism
A new generation of lamaseries
Lamaism at Dadu
5 Ming and the Qing: longevity and sclerosis
From Ming to Qing
Tombs
Temples
Southern style abroad
Town houses
Private gardens, their houses and retreats
Imperial garden retreats
6 Himalayan theocracy and imperial Lamaism
Tibet after the Yuan
Tibetan building
Bhutan
Bhutanese building
Imperial Lamaism
7 Korea
Architecture: introduction
Temples
The secular tradition: early palaces
Building standards and Confucian colleges
The Yi palace
2.2 JAPAN
8 Origins
Introduction
Early buildings
Burial practices
The spirit house
Local variations
9 From Asuka to Heian
The advent of Buddhism
Asukadera and the advent of the Buddhist temple
The Buddhist temple and its parts
Construction
Materials
Conservative tradition
Experimental planning
The Fujiwara
Heijo-kyo
Monastery and state
Imperial temples
Heian-kyo (Kyoto) and the advent of feudalism
Esoteric retreat
Developments in temple building
Temple and jinja
The court and the Western Paradise
House and palace in Heian-kyo
The garden
10 Kamakura and Muromachi
Military dictatorship and Zen
Muromachi
Materials and the manipulation of form
Temple styles
Wayo
Daibutsu
Zenshuyo
Zen foundations
The Zen garden: wilderness, abstraction and tea
Muromachi palaces
11 From Momoyama to Edo
The Tokugawa period
Castles and their towns
Mansions and palaces
The garden
Temples and shrines
Imperial restoration
GLOSSARY
FURTHER READING
MAPS
South-east Asia
Empires of the Indian subcontinent
China: States
China: Dynasties
Cambodia
Korea
Japan
INDEX

Citation preview

a rchitecture in context Architecture in Context is a series of five books by Christopher Tadgell describing and illustrating all the seminal architectural traditions from man’s early settle-ments in the Euphrates and Jordan valleys to the technologically complex and stylistically sophisticated buildings of the second half of the twentieth century. In a synthesis of extraordinary range, it brings together the fruits of a lifetime of teaching and travelling the world, seeing and photographing buildings. Each stand-alone volume sets the buildings described and illustrated within their political, technological, social and cultural contexts, exploring architecture not only as the development of form but as an expression of the civilization within which it evolved. The series focuses on the story of the Classical tradition from its origins in Mesopotamia and Egypt, through its realization in ancient Greece and Rome, to the Renaissance, Neo-classicism, Eclecticism and Modernism. This thread is supplemented with excursions to cover the development of architecture in Central America, India, South-East Asia and the Islamic world. For students of architecture and art history, for travellers and for readers who want to understand the genesis of the buildings they see around them, each volume provides a complete, readable and superbly illustrated reference.

architecture in context is dedicated to my wife Juliet,without whose support – spiritual and material – it would never have been realized. ct

the author Christopher Tadgell taught architectural history for almost thirty years before devoting himself full-time to writing and research, travelling the world to see and photograph buildings from every tradition and period.

Born in Sydney, he studied art history at the Courtauld Institute in

London. In 1974 he was awarded his PhD for a thesis on the Neo-classical architectural theorist, Ange-Jacques Gabriel. He subsequently taught in London and at the Kent Institute of Art and Design in Canterbury, with interludes as F.L. Morgan Professor of Architectural Design at the University of Louisville and as a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. He has lectured at universities and other learned institutions around the world, including the universities of Princeton, Harvard, Columbia, Brown, Cornell and Virginia, IIT and the Graham Foundation in Chicago, and Cambridge University and the RIBA in the UK. He is a Trustee of the World Monuments Fund, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and the Royal Asiatic Society, and a Member of both the British and American Societies of Architectural Historians. Tadgell’s The History of Architecture in India (1990, several reprints, Phaidon) is the definitive one-volume account of the architecture of the subcontinent, while many publications on French architecture include the standard account in Baroque and Rococo Architecture and Decoration (ed. Blunt, 1978, Elek) and the definitive English-language monograph on A.J. Gabriel. He has contributed many articles on Indian and French architecture to The Grove Dictionary of Art and other major reference books.

THE EAST Buddhists, Hindus and the Sons of Heaven Christopher Tadgell

A R C H I TE C T U R E I N CO N TE X T I I

First published 2008 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, ox14 4rn Published in the usa and Canada by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, ny10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2008 Christopher Tadgell pictures 1.78c, 1.78d, 1.78e, 1.84b, 1.93f, 1.96a, 1.96e, 1.96g, 1.101a and 1.102b reproduced by kind permission of Adam Hardy pictures 1.173f, 1.74c, 1.74d and 1.86b reproduced by kind permission of Helen Ibbitsun Jessup pictures 1.195a and 1.195b reproduced by kind permission of Helena Rees-Mogg pictures 2.119b, 2.119c, 2.121a, 2.121b, 2.122b, 2.122c, 2.125, 2.126a, 2.126b, 2.128a, 2.128c, 2.129a, 2.129b, 2.130g and 2.131d reproduced by kind permission of Professor Kang Up Lee pictures 2.118a and 2.118b reproduced by kind permission of Daisy Neville asi = Archaeological Survey of India Series design by Claudia Schenk Image processing and drawings by Mark Wilson All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book has been requested isbn10 0–415–40752–4 (hbk) isbn13 978–0–415–40752–6 (hbk)

CONTENTS

PA RT I B U D D H I S T A N D B R A H M A N I C A L

2

1 . 1 T H E I N D I A N S U B CO N T I N E N T Prologue: progenitors Vedic creators Kingship and caste Brahmanism Transmigration and liberation The Mahavira and the Buddha Settlement

4 5 6 9 9 11 12 17

1

The Mauryas and their successors India’s earliest imperial work Mauryan sanctuaries and shrines Stupa and monastery under the Mauryas’ successors

20 24 25

Helenistic intruders and the Mahayana The transformation of Buddhism: veneration to worship The ‘Great Transformation’: manifestation Transformation in the north: town and monastery Mahayana in the south

38

The pantheon of the gods The advent of Hinduism Tantrism Worship

57 58 63 66

Hindu empire and the fruits of dynastic rivalry Gupta foundations Excavation Classic structure Chalukyan experiments in structure

74 76 77 85 90

2

3

4

V

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT

5

The south and the great Dravidian vimana Pallavan experiments Structures of the restored Chalukyas The culmination of excavation Chola inheritance Chola legacy Vijayanagaran empire and its successors

98 98 110 115 121 124 135

6

The north and the ‘Nagara’ temple mountain Bengal Kashmir The Pratiharas and the early northern temple After the Pratiharas The Solankis and Jaina patronage in western India The Chandellas and their neighbours The Paramaras and their neighbours Orissa

145 146 148 149 158

7

Central synthesis Cross-fertilization The Later Chalukyas The Hoysalas

190 190 191 203

8

Forts

210

9

Sri Lanka Orthodox and heterodox The Anuradhapura era: the monastic complex The Anuradapura dagoba The palace and Sigiriya The Tooth, the Tamils and the temple From Anuradhapura to Polonnaruwa Polonnaruwa monuments Interior realms and Kandy

218 220 225 229 234 236 237 238 246

27

41 46 50 54

159 168 175 180

10 Nepal Lichchhavis Kingdom and city-states Vernacular building Court and square The vihara The temple

252 253 255 263 267 274 277

1.2 SOUTH-EAST ASIA 11 Java and its neighbours Religions and central dynasties Monuments of syncretic faith The Great Stupa Mountain The great Hindu candi Eastern supremacy East Javan monuments From Java to Bali

288 289 290 296 300 309 316 320 333

12 The Advent of the Khmer Funan Zhenla Elevation of the Khmer

344 345 347 349

13 Angkor Suryavarman ii

351 375

14 The Cham and the late ascent of the Mahayana at Angkor The Chams Cham reversal at Angkor

388 388 401

15 Mons and Myenmar 417 The land of the Irrawaddi and the Chao Phraya 417 Pyu legacy 420 From Sriksetra to Bagan 422 Bagan and its monuments 422 After Bagan 444 The stupa 445 The temple 450 The monastery 452 The palace 455 VI

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT

16 Thais and their eastern neighbours Thai vernacular and monumental types Sukhothai monuments From Sukhothai to Ayutthaya Ayutthayan monuments The Ayutthayan legacy Early Bangkok Lanna Luang Prabang Phnom Penh

456 458 459 467 469 477 481 492 501 506

PA RT 2 H E AV E N ’ S E M PI R E S

509

2 . 1 C H I N A A N D I TS O R B I T 1 The generation of conservative traditions Opening history Zhou Confucianism and Daoism Town and country planning The Qin and the Han Han burial Palaces and houses Conclusion

510 511 512 517 519 523 525 531 533 535

2

Interregnum and the impact of Buddhism Three Kingdoms: moving capitals The origin of the temple

537 541 543

3

Middle age, Sui, Tang and Song Tombs Temples and monasteries Elementary structure Early northern works Elements Colour From Tang to Song Tombs Religious buildings and their distribution Northern survivals Southern variants

549 555 557 559 562 566 566 567 570 571 577 588

4

The Yuan interregnum and Tibet Tibet and the emergence of Lamaism A new generation of lamaseries Lamaism at Dadu

591 592 598 600

5

Ming and the Qing: longevity and sclerosis From Ming to Qing Tombs Temples Southern style abroad Town houses Private gardens, their houses and retreats Imperial garden retreats

604 610 625 632 642 646 651 665

Himalayan theocracy and imperial Lamaism Tibet after the Yuan Tibetan building Bhutan Bhutanese building Imperial Lamaism

670 670 674 688 690 702

Korea Architecture: introduction Temples The secular tradition: early palaces Building standards and Confucian colleges The Yi palace

714 719 722 732 734 739

6

7

2 . 2 J A PA N

748

8

Origins Introduction Early buildings Burial practices The spirit house Local variations

749 749 752 753 754 756

From Asuka to Heian The advent of Buddhism Asukadera and the advent of the Buddhist temple

758 758

9

VII

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT

759

The Buddhist temple and its parts Construction Materials Conservative tradition Experimental planning The Fujiwara Heijo-kyo Monastery and state Imperial temples Heian-kyo (Kyoto) and the advent of feudalism Esoteric retreat Developments in temple building Temple and jinja The court and the Western Paradise House and palace in Heian-kyo The garden

760 763 764 764 766 771 772 774 777 781 783 785 790 794 800 805

10 Kamakura and Muromachi Military dictatorship and Zen Muromachi Materials and the manipulation of form Temple styles Wayo Daibutsu Zenshuyo Zen foundations The Zen garden: wilderness, abstraction and tea Muromachi palaces

808 808 811 812 814 816 819 821 823

11

843 847 848 860 870 877 884

From Momoyama to Edo The Tokugawa period Castles and their towns Mansions and palaces The garden Temples and shrines Imperial restoration

834 839

G LO S S A RY F U RT H E R R E A D I N G MAPS South-east Asia Empires of the Indian subcontinent China: States China: Dynasties Cambodia Korea Korea INDEX

VIII

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT

886 892 893 894 896 897 900 901 902 903

This page intentionally left blank

PART 1

BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.1 THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT

1.1b

4

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

P RO LO G U E : P RO G E N I TO R S The history of India opens about the middle of the 3rd millennium bce with a civilization centred on several cities on the banks of the great Indus and its tributaries (see Origins, aic1, pages 94–95). These were evidently in an advanced stage of protracted decline about the middle of the 2nd millennium bce when they were finally overwhelmed in one of the major upheavals of ancient Eurasia. Over succeeding centuries tribes of fair-skinned peoples, originating from the steppes of central Asia, entered India from Iran through the passes of the northwest. Related to the hordes which invaded the Aegean area at much the same time, they are known as ‘Indo-Aryans’, their language – Sanskrit – belonging to the Aryan group like the Classical languages of Europe. Prominent among them were the Bharatas who gave India its ancient name. Nomadic herdsmen, the invaders conferred divinity on a wide range of natural phenomena – particularly those of the sky which affected their pastoral activities. Their tradition, which was ultimately enshrined in a great series of compositions called Vedas, centred on propitiatory sacrifice at a fire altar of a potent mixture of milk and vegetable juice called soma. On the other hand, the native peoples were settled in relatively advanced agrarian communities not unrelated to those of the Indus Valley civilization. Their tradition, obsessed with fertility, was centred on the image-focused worship of the mothergoddess but embraced the popular devotion to the wateror tree-spirit (naga and yaksha) of a sacred locality (chaitya) at an altar (veyaddi) dedicated to the offering of flowers and food. In their slow infiltration of the subcontinent the Aryans subjected the natives, whom they despised for their dark skins, but gradually acquired settled ways with disturbing consequences for familiar tribal traditions. In the upheaval 5

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

the Earth Mother offered solace and the cult of yakshas and › 1 . 1 C O S M O L O G Y : (a, pages 2–3) the Water Cosmology reflected in the temple tank; (b) Meru; (c) the yakshinis,the male and female guardians of abundance,was Water Cosmology impressed on the tirtha sanctum poras relevant to the new settlers’ livelihood as it had been to tal (Ajanta, Temple IV, late-5th century). the old. As we shall see, the synthesis of the Vedic and native traditions, in particular the substitution of worship or devotion for sacrifice, is of prime importance in the evolution of India’s religious architecture.

V E D I C C R E ATO R S The earliest and most important of the Aryan compositions, the Rig Veda, was a collection of hymns dedicated to the power residing in the sacrificial ritual. In these are incorporated verses relating basic mythology. In one account, not purely Aryan, Varuna was ‘the unborn’ progenitor floating on the cosmic ocean which held the germ of all existence: and the germ sent forth the tree of life through his navel. Varuna was identified as the Great Yaksha, and this was the crucial step in the synthesis of the Vedic and native traditions: yakshas were to be accepted by Vedic writers as attendant on Varuna in the guardianship of the ‘vital essence’ of the waters and yakshinis as its guides through its course from ocean to heaven and back to ocean in the infusions of sap, semen, and soma – the life of plants, animals, men and the gods. Much of the embellishment of Indian buildings, religious and secular, incorporates fertility symbolism related to Varuna’s tree and the generative power of water.1.1a T h e Wa t e r C o s m o l o g y The lotus (padma) often stands as a symbol for Varuna’s tree and for the unfolding universe, born of water-borne earth. The cycle of the waters laden with ‘vital essence’ is symbolized by the goose (hamsa) and the ‘vital essence’ itself by the crocodile (makara), the vehicle (vahana) of Varuna. Water is represented by the water pot (kumbha), or bowl (kalasha) which sometimes turns into the bulbous fruit of fecundity (amalaka). The

6

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.1c

kalasha with lotus vines (padma-lata) trailing from its brim is the ‘bowl of plenty’ (purna-kalasha). The yaksha as armed defender (gandharva) represents guardianship of the ‘vital essence’. Guidance of the ‘vital essence’ is represented by the yakshini as voluptuous female stimulator (apsara). Mounted on tree or crocodile, festooned with pearls – the richest fruit of the sea – she is the river-goddess, consort of Varuna. The stimulation of the male deity into activity by his consort – essential to all strands of native Indian devotion – is represented by the ‘productive couple’ (mithuna), often in sexually explicit embrace. With these symbols and images of fecundity or generation embellishing its portal, the temple is established as a ‘fording place’ to new life (tirtha).1.1c

7

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

With the ‘guardianship of the cosmic order’ and ‘dominion over the vital essence’ identified in him, Varuna was fount of justice and prosperity, and the soma sacrifice was seen as essential as much to restore his virility after the winter of his impotence as to obviate his anger at the failings of man, manifest in the withholding of the rains. He was the ‘ideal heavenly king’,ruling over the thirty-three deities who took up residence on the primordial mountain, Meru, as creation diversified.1.1b The cosmology of Meru In most variants, creation produced a universe hanging isolated in space and divided into twenty-one layers or zones, usually grouped into three: the lowest seven belonged to the demons of the damned in decreasing permutations of terror; the next seven constituted the nether world of the snake-like nagas and other subterrestrial spirits; the top six were heavens of increasing purity and the one immediately below the lowest heaven was earth. A permutation has the entire structure based on a giant tortoise, Kurma. Around the axis mundi rising from its shell the gods twined the divine snake Vasuki and, pulling on either end of the snake, churned the cosmic ocean (or Sea of Milk) as butter is churned. From the churned ocean emerged ambrosia (or butter) to feed the gods. Thought of as a circular disk, despite the discernment of astronomy, the realm of the world had seven continents and seven oceans in concentric rings around Jambudvipa (the ‘Rose-Apple-Tree Continent’), the central mass with the land of the Bharatas to the south of its central mountains, The apogee at the centre of those central mountains was Meru which penetrated the heavenly zones and provided the gods with a dwelling in their dealings with man (hence the inclusion of earth, the fifteenth zone, as the base of the celestial group in the tripartite scheme). Viewed in another way, however, the heavens are circular but the earth is square: quartered by the cardinal directions of space. Either way – both, indeed – the ideal of perfect geometry radiating from and sustaining the divine mountain/palace was to provide millennia of Indian architects with their fundamental directive.

8

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

› 1 . 2 I N D R A A N D H I S S TA N D A R D : Bharhut, stupa railing, 2nd century BCE (Calcutta, National Museum). Indra’s weapon is his thunderbolt (vajra) or pole (yashti), the standard of his imperium (dhvaja), the cosmic pillar (stambha) with which he established the law of the universe. It is the axis mundi, identified with the primordial mountain, Meru. Indra endowed the first earthly king, Vasu, with a pole as his standard. To ensure his potency in combat, each of Vasu’s successors carried a pole surmounted by his own personal device into battle, and annually re-erected it in a hole or pot filled with water at a sacred spot in re-enactment of Indra’s cosmic effort. It was similarly erected beside his burial mound in each case.

Varuna’s primacy was challenged by the purveyors of a more strictly Aryan cosmology which credited the stormgod Indra, wielder of the thunderbolt, with the principal role in creation: the great warrior slew the demon of evil and obstruction who held back the waters of life; the waters spilled forth, and Indra pegged earth to the floor of the ocean, propped up heaven with his staff, and released the sun to generate the cosmic cycle. In recognition of his deeds he was made king of the gods and subsequent kingship stemmed from his delegation of power to the first terrestrial ruler, Vasu.1.2

K I N G S H I P A N D C A S TE The early Vedic ruler, originally the patriarch of the extended family and leader of its warrior band, was seen to have the confidence of Indra so long as he fulfilled his obligations to protect the tribe from its enemies and foster its prosperity. Responsibility was to some extent shared by tribal councils, and the role of the priest was crucial, for victory and prosperity depended on his proper performance of sacrifice. With the expansion of agriculture throughout the rich Gangetic plain, the growth in population, the emergence of prosperous trading cities, the definition of citizenship,then nationhood,and the weakening of familial ties, the pragmatic relationship between chief and people was supplemented,if never entirely supplanted, by the mystical one of god-given kingship – except in the foothills of the Himalayas where the tribal assemblies gained ascendancy in republics. BRAHMANISM During the long period over which the vedas were composed, the Aryans groped towards the comprehension of ‘motive power’ and identified it as Brahman – a concept not unlike the Numen of the Romans. Brahman may orig9

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

inally have been the magical power of the sacrificial formula – hence the priests, who laid exclusive claim to understanding the formula, were brahmins and their religion came to be called Brahmanism. If Brahman was the ‘motive power’ behind existence, the ‘essence of existence’ itself was identified as the Purusha.The Purusha was to be personified as Prajapati, the Progenitor, and was later to become Brahma. The Purusha was undefined before creation but in eventual self-consciousness was stirred by desire, the origin of which was the subject of much speculation but the nature of which is potently represented as fire. Yielding, the › 1 . 3 V A S T U P U R U S H A M A N D A L A A N D K I R Purusha sacrificed himself in division, the precondition for T I M U K H A . generation. When this is seen in terms of the differentia- The diagram is square because the earth, to which the Purusha is to be bound, is four-cornered in the tion of male and female, ‘existence’ (the descent of the supreme reality behind appearances where it is Purusha from undifferentiated principle to manifestation) clasped by heaven, the points of contact manifest in results from ‘cosmic intercourse’. When it is seen in terms the rising of the sun and moon, balanced by the poles. The figure defining man in perfect measure was also of the differentiation of good and evil or light and dark, it seen to be square (compare Vitruvius, Book iv.i). provokes the battle of gods and demons which issues in the The navel of Prajapati, in the centre of the square, is victory of the gods and ‘cosmic order’ – the embodiment or surrounded by the deified aspects of the sun and moon whose movement is symbolized by the swastika and residence (vastu) of the Purusha. This is the macrocosm – whose divergent courses are reconciled in the embrace defined variously as the Palace (Prasada) the City (Ayod- of Rahu (the eclipse), the recurrent cosmic sexual act hya) and the Mountain (Meru) of the Gods whose hierar- from which existence is reborn, symbolized by the gaping leonine monster kirtimukha. Varuna and Indra reapchy reflects the many facets of existence. It is also the pear with Kubera (productivity) and Yama (death) as microcosm, man. lokapalas (guardians of the four cardinal directions – Comprehension of the structure of the Purusha (vas- west, east, south and north respectively). tupurusha) through the dual study of man and the cosmos was expressed in the elaboration of mathematical and geometrical formulae for a diagram (mandala) binding the Purusha to a specific place (vastupurushamandala) for worship – when worship succeeded sacrifice. Prescribing the programme for any architectural exercise meant to accommodate that worship, Vedic literature provides the seminal corpus of Indian architectural theory, drawn upon by many compilers of professional treatises (shastras).1.3 10

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

T R A N S M I G R AT I O N A N D L I B E R AT I O N Under the impact of changing circumstances in the first half of the last millennium bce, particularly the disturbing, but enriching, impact of settlement and the ways of the native agriculturalists on their tribal traditions as pastoralists, the invaders saw a stark contrast between the order embodied in the Purusha and their own passage through this world of flux.This prompted enquiry into the nature of reality – especially the relationship between the motivating force of ultimate reality, thought of as ‘World Soul’(Brahman),and the inner reality of the individual soul (the immanence of Brahman, atman). As distinct from Brahman, the realm of the absolute and true, worldly existence was seen as change and delusion. The idea that it was cyclical – birth leading to death but death, itself illusory, leading to rebirth – derives from the Water Cosmology. The idea that all forms of life are unified through the transmigration of souls from life to life (samsara) followed and from this followed the conception of moral order and the belief that the deeds of each creature determine the level of its next existence (karma). Liberation (moksha) from the worldly realm of existence and release from the cycle of transmigration were to be obtained in the union of the individual soul with Brahman. However, in orthodox Brahmanism this was the sole preserve of the brahmins. In reaction, the unifying thread of the late-Vedic Upanishads is a profound humanity in concern for the lot of the ordinary individual soul locked into the infinite cycle of samsara: they culminate in a supreme statement of the salvation ideal, the sacred poem called Bhagavad-Gita. Here the ‘Divine Absolute’ behind all natural phenomena, long deified, emerges as a personal deity whose grace is invoked to effect man’s salvation through devotion. 11

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

T H E M A H AV I R A A N D T H E B U D D H A By the beginning of the 6th century bce two great monarchical powers, Kosala and Maghda, had emerged as rivals for dominance over the Madhyadesha, the middle realm of the Gangetic plain, the centre of Indian civilization over the centuries of emerging nationhood. With their divinely ordained kings and powerful priests, the monarchies were the centres of Vedic orthodoxy.The republics, on the other hand, tended to favour the individualistic and unorthodox: they provided fertile ground for the growth of religious reform movements which responded to the aspirations of the newly rising mercantile sections of the growing urban communities in rejecting the exclusive pretensions of the brahmins.The most important were the compassionate,yet puritanical, teachings of the Mahavira and the Buddha – both of whom emerged from the families of clan chiefs and initially found their major support in republics. The revelation of the ‘Way of the Conquerors’– followed by the Jainas since the 6th century bce – is credited to Vardhamana, son of the chief of the Jnatrika clan. About 510, towards the age of 30, he left his family to wander as an ascetic (sannyasin). After thirteen years of privation, destitute even of clothing, he achieved enlightenment. The Mahavira (‘Great Hero’) to his converts, he spent the rest of his life in the Ganges valley proclaiming his doctrine concerned with the preservation of the intrinsically blissful soul through renunciation of violent action.1.4 The way of the Jina Soul, intrinsic in the inanimate as well as the animate, is naturally blissful. But polluting matter (karma) adheres to it as a result of action. The release of the soul from karma to the blissful inactivity of nirvana requires complete balance: this can be achieved through a rigorous yoga to which ‘nonviolence’ is essential. This was obviously the preserve of the monk but a special regimen was devised to attract lay followers though, naturally, it

12

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.4a

›1.4

J A I N A I C O N S : (a) Tirthankara (Solanki Shve-

tambara school, 11th century; New York, Metropolitan Museum); (b) Digambara (‘sky-clad’) hero (10th century, Shravanabelagola). The Mahavira left no scripture and attempts to define a Jaina canon long after his death led to schism between monks who insisted on nudity (digambaras = ‘sky clad’) and those who permitted minimal clothing (shvetambaras).

was practicable only for those whose livelihoods did not depend on violence of any kind – merchants rather than warriors or farmers, for example. Motivated by the interaction of souls, the universe passes through an infinite series of cycles in which progress and decline are marked by the appearance at regular intervals of ‘Righteous Conquerors of the Four Corners’ (chakravartins, of whom there have been twelve so far) and guides to their way (jinas). These are the ‘Ford Makers’ (tirthankaras) of whom the Mahavira was the twenty-fourth in our era.

The Buddha is identified with Siddhartha Gautama, born between 620 and 560 bce to Suddhodhana, a chief of the Shakya clan whose domain was in the Rumindei district of southern Nepal. Like Vardhamana, he renounced his birthright for an ascetic existence in quest for release from samsara. Rejecting the counsels of the priests or brahmins, on the one hand, and the extreme asceticism of the most radical heterodox sects, on the other, he achieved enlightenment – and attained Buddhahood – under the auspices of a renowned yaksha in a grove near Gaya.1.5 Buddhahood

1.4b

The key to the enlightenment of the Buddha and his discovery of the way to break samsara – or rediscovery, as he divined that others in other ages had been there too – was the recognition of ‘Four Noble Truths’: we are shackled to the cycle of existence in delusion and suffering; the cause is craving for worldly ‘goods’ in ignorance of the worthlessness of this world and in ›1.5

BODH

G H A YA : the tree of enlightenment

(Mahabodhi) and its precinct (7th century CE and later). A major end of Buddhist pilgrimage, a descendant of the pipal (bodhi) tree under which Prince Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha) achieved enlightenment, it is surrounded by many votive monuments. Beneath the tree, too, is the railing (vedika) protecting the seat of enlightenment (vajrasana) and the promenade (chankyama) over which the Buddha deliberated with himself on the possibility of communicating his enlightenment to others.

13

vain commitment to the individual ego; the solution is the elimination of ignorance and the extinction of craving in recognition that the ego is illusory; the way, effected through spiritual discipline (yoga), is the middle path between self-indulgence and self-mortification, the ‘Noble Eightfold Path’ of correct meditation, understanding, expression, and action – of reason and insight, wisdom and morality. The perfect follower of this path, the arhant, no longer distinguishing himself from an objective world but alive to the unity of all existence, achieves blissful extinction in nirvana – the difficulty of defining which was to be the cause of much dissent.

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.5

14

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

In fraught promenading at Gaya, the Buddha long deliberated with himself on the possibility of communicating enlightenment to others but ultimately concluded that he should try with the companions of his last phase of privation in the deer park at Kashi (Sarnath, outside Varanesi). He returned there and with his first sermon on the Four Noble Truths (‘Turning the Wheel of the Law’) he converted his audience and formed the nucleus of his order of monks (Sangha). ‘Sage of the Shakyas’ (Shakyamuni), for the rest of his life he travelled continuously throughout the Ganges basin, preaching his doctrine to all and expanding his following. On his death (Mahaparinirvana) at the age of 80 at Kushinagara his body was cremated and the remains divided into ten parts,each of which was enshrined by its recipient in a tumulus (stupa). The Buddha designated no succcessor, prescribed no establishment and left no scripture: he bequeathed only his verbal teaching (Dharma). Immediately after the Mahaparinirvana the Sangha met to take stock: one representative is reputed to have recalled the master’s rules for monastic life (Vinaya) and Ananda, his cousin and personal attendant, supposedly outlined the precepts (Sutta).

1.6a

15

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

The tradition remained an oral one for centuries and complete consensus proved elusive despite several councils called to establish a canon. The Buddha counselled his vollowers to concentrate their veneration on his Dharma, not on his person. Hence, though artists working both for the Sangha and Vedic patrons had mastered the representation of the human form by the beginning of the 2nd century bce, they represented Shakyamuni only with the symbols of his mission: the seat of enlightenment (Vajrasana) under the Mahabodhi at Gaya and the deliberative promenade there (Chankrama); the ‘Wheel of the Law’ (Dhammacakkra) first turned in the sermon at Sarnath; the ‘Three Jewels’ (Tri-ratna) – the Buddha himself, the Dharma and the Sangha. Beside the Bodhi tree, the Vajrasana and Chankrama at › 1 . 6 S T U PA Sanchi). Gaya, the principal objects of veneration were the ten stupas enshrining the Buddha’s remains and the very monumentality of the form recommended it as the principal Buddhist symbol. Adapting the native yaksha cult of chaityas, by walking around them clockwise (pradakshina) within a protective railing (vedika) modelled on the sacrificial enclosure, and providing protective covers where practicable – a bodhigara for an offshoot of the Bodhi tree, for example – the Buddhist led the way to the development of the monumental shrine.1.6 Sakyamuni’s stupas naturally became the principal places of Buddhist pilgrimage together with the sites of major events in his career – especially his birth at Lumbini, his enlightenment at Gaya, his first sermon at Sarnath and his Mahaparinirvana at Kushinagara.To tend the pilgrims the Sangha developed settlements at all these sites. Though peripatetic himself, the master had rejected extreme asceticism and accepted endowments of land from lay followers anxious to acquire merit by providing for the 16

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.6b

A N D B O D H I G A R A : (a, b) reliefs from

retreat of the Sangha during the rainy season. Retreat became base, the origin of the monastery (sangharama) to which accommodation for pilgrims was a natural extension.The prototype of the great establishments in the Holy Land,the original sangharama naturally followed the form of the primitive settlement.1.7 › 1 . 7 E A R LY S E T T L E M E N T : (a) sangharama; (b) village (reliefs from Sanchi, 1st century BCE). Several monasteries were built during Buddha’s lifetime and the remains, including the traces of four long apsidal halls, at a site near Rajagriha may be identified with one known to Buddhist chroniclers as the Jivakamravana.

1.7a

S E T T LE M E N T Presumably adapting native practice to their patriarchal social organization, the Aryan village community consisted of several families each with its own house (griha), cowshed and granary in its own compound centred on a courtyard. These family establishments were arranged informally around a hall (sabha) for the headman and communal assembly, which possibly replaced, or remained associated with, a special tree. While forms naturally varied throughout India in accordance with materials available and climate, as organized civic life developed with settlement, ancient urban types recur. The descriptions of cities like Ayodhya, Mathura and Indraprashtra make it clear that early Indian town planning conformed to the principles of order conveyed in the Vedic treatises for laying out a sacred site. No distinction was drawn in principle between camp, village and town. Skirting a ring road corresponding to the ambulatory route around a sacred site, the walls would conform to the location in practice but the ideal was rectangular – like that of the Romans. As in Roman theory, too, there were two major axial roads, aligned with the four cardinal points, and parallel subsidiary streets divided the town into wards graded for the different strata of society. The gods were installed at the central crossing, the king to its north. The royal inner town (rajanivesana) was a walled complex of courts and pavilions (mandapas and prasadas) not unlike that of the gods.

1.6b

17

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

In addition to theoretical writing, Vedic in origin, there is lavish illustration, Buddhist in motive: tales related as the context for the master’s mission in multiple previous existences were to provide material for the anthropomorphic embellishment of the gates and railings which defined the pradakshina-patha around the stupas and other venerable objects in the monastic establishments which had proliferated in the half-millennium after the Mahaparinirvana. Removed from the Buddha in time but not place, these confirm the massive defence works revealed by excavation at the most important centres which developed into towns in the first half of the last millennium bce, straddling the Madhydesa from Mathura on the Yamuna to Magadha on the lower Ganges. However, while excavators have revealed traces of courtyard houses like those of the Indus valley, the 1.8a relief carvers purvey pervasive trabeation. As the secular is identified with the sacred in the Vedic tradition, and the primitive monastery reproduced the primitive village which conformed to the primitive sacred enclosure, the buildings of the Sangha – shrines and meeting halls, in addition to residential accommodation, illustrated in their later embellishment – conform to the basic vernacular of the part of the Ganges valley in which the Buddha fulfilled his mission. In the accommodation of townsman and monk or sacred symbol, transition from post to beam was effected by brackets and over the beams a framework of bowed bamboo carries a thatched roof rising to a boss over square plans, and to a ridge pole over rectangles and projections. The earliest monumental 1.8b architecture, palatial but derived from these Gangetic › 1 . 8 T O W N A N D PA L A C E : (a) outer town with types, was to be sanctified by association with the Buddha ramparts protecting multi-storey residential buildings; throughout the subcontinent.1.8, 1.9 (b) inner town palace (rajanivesana) with multi-storey residential prasada (centre) and audience mandapa (reliefs from Sanchi, 1st century BCE).

18

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

T h e t ow n , t h e m o n a s t e r y a n d t h e p ra s a d a In the relief images of early town defences typical is a ceremonial portal (torana) in an outer palisade preceding a drawbridge which leads to a twin-towered galleried gatehouse, large enough for elephants, in a massive wall. Crenellation, embrasures for marksmen and battering were characteristic and the projection of the gate tower’s upper storeys may have accommodated elementary machicolation. The ideal of axial town planning seems to be denied in the reliefs by the informal clustering of prasadas within the walls – though, naturally, allowance has to be made for the medium of representation. However, like those in the enclosure of the gods defined by the vastupurushaman1.9a

dala, the elements of the king’s palace were probably organized formally in both theory and practice: the principal elements, mandapa and prasada, are formally aligned in the reliefs as theory prescribed. The palatine temple, armoury and granary were served by outer courts, the hall of public audience (rajabhavana) by the great court accessible to all supplicants, the hall of private audience communicated with the treasury and the king’s withdrawing-room beyond or above which were the quarters for the royal ladies. As the relief implies, the main audience hall is attached to the living accommodation – which doubtless had nuclear halls. Private audience would have been held on the ground floor of the

1.9b

›1.9

MONA STIC BUILDING AND THE GODS’:

‘ PA L A C E king’s principal vimana, in a mandapa below his chamber.

(a) prasada image inscribed ‘Vijayanta Prasada’ (‘Palace of the Gods’, Ghantasala, 1st century CE?); (b) shrine (chattri with triratna) attached to residential accommodation (vihara) identified in inscription as the ‘Prasada of the Gods’, Bharhut (2nd century BCE). The timber trabeated structure may have been walled with wattle and daub or, as the relief from Ghantasala shows, it may have been screened only with lattice and lit by windows in bow-gabled dormers (gavaksha) with grilled shutters (jalis). The storeys may be stepped back beyond balustraded terraces (alinda) which often accommodated square or rectangular pavilions (kutagara or chandrashala). OF

THE

Within the monasteries, there were residential complexes of cells around a court or hall (vihara), often of several storeys like the king’s residence (but sometimes called vimana rather than prasada). Emphasizing teaching and distinguishing between lay followers and the brotherhood of teachers who devoted their lives to the faith, moreover, Buddhists needed a congregational hall (griha) in each of their establishments. Incorporating a chaitya – a sacred object usually in the form of one of the Buddhist symbols – and pradakshina-patha, the meeting hall became a shrine (chaitya-griha). The combination of pavilion or shrine and vihara was the norm – as in the Bharut ‘Palace of the Gods’ – but often the residential block must have stood alone with a hall on the ground floor, at least, as in the magnificent image from Ghantasala.1.9a

19

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.10a

1 the mauryas and their successors The republics in which Shakyamuni first found favour were sorely pressed by the time of his mature ministry. By the end of the 6th century bce King Bimbisara of Magadha and his son Ajatashatru, ruling from Patiliputra, had eclipsed Kosala and established the first great empire in India by extending their sway over most of the Ganges. Magadha’s rise may have been viewed with foreboding by the heterodox fraternities in the neighbouring republics but Bimbisara changed the pattern of patronage by espousing the Buddhist cause. The consequences were to be spectacular two centuries later, when Maghda passed to the Mauryan dynasty. On his advent to power in Magadha c. 320 bce Chandragupta Maurya’s first task was to come to terms with the 20

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

heirs of Alexander of Macedon who had pressed his conquest of the great Achaemenid empire across the Hindu Kush in 327. His followers had refused to go further: his rapid departure and untimely death in 323 left a power vacuum in the area which his general, Seleucus Nikator, was striving to fill. Beyond this, the Macedonians’ penetration into India had had little effect, though some of them were settled in the area and a Greek kingdom established in neighbouring Bactria was a source from which Hellenistic influence was later to be transmitted. Inheriting a formidable army, Chandragupta was able to assert himself in the former eastern possessions of the Achaemenids, Gandhara in particular, and this was recognized by the Seleucids. Backed by a sound economy and efficient administration, having secured the west he proceeded to consolidate control over the whole of north India. Chandragupta’s grandson Ashoka (c. 270–232) took Indian empire to its greatest extent. He conquered Kalinga (modern Orissa and parts of Andhra) and established close relations with, if not direct rule over, the various powers of the extreme south. To assert his authority, Ashoka had edicts carved on rocks throughout his vast domains following the example set by Darius, the King of Kings, at Behistun. These were primarily concerned with defining the order (Dharma) of his state and, though he asserted respect for all the religions of his realm, he is credited with embracing Buddhism and its creed of non-violence in expiation for the carnage caused by the conquest of Kalinga. He disinterred the remains of the Buddha from their original ten stupas for redistribution and reinterment in new stupas throughout the empire. By many of these he erected pillars (stambha) with devices of Buddhist and imperial symbolism, sometimes inscribed with the precepts of the Buddha and exhortation against faction in the Sangha.1.10 21

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

A s h o k a’s s t a m b h a The form of the imperial stambhas reflects the complex set of cultural relationships with Persia and the Hellenistic West which were now being reinforced on the economic plane. Two of them, erected in 257

BCE

to

commemorate Ashoka’s visit to the Buddhist homeland, are the earliest of India’s dated stone monuments. The conventional treatment of the tassellike cap reveals Persian influence and it seems unlikely that the exercise could have been initiated in India without the experience imported by Persian immigrants. However, whether or not he saw Buddhism as a unifying force, the unifying purpose of his pillars depended on the essentially indigenous significance of their age-old form, familiar to all his subjects: Indra’s pole (yashti), the axis mundi (stambha) associated with Vedic and native shrines, the standard of kingship (dhvarja). Further, however, the syncretism at the heart of the Ashokan ideal is apparent in their embellishment with indigenous and imported symbols of royalty, with specifically Buddhist symbols and with symbols relating to India’s most ancient native tradition, centred on Indra’s great predecessor and rival Varuna – the Water Cosmology. 1.10b Long before Ashoka, faction in the Sangha had issued in › 1 . 1 0 A S H O K A N P I L L A R S , c. 270 BCE: (a) Sarnath, division between those who maintained the way of the lion capital; (b) Lauriya Nandangarh (19th century phoarhant in strict austerity and those who would be flexible, tograph). especially in the acceptance of monetary alms: calling Of the forty or so pillars thought to have existed, the themselves the Mahasanga (the ‘Great Sangha’), the latter remains of twenty have been identified. Only two survive complete and in situ – at Basarh (ancient Vaishali) departed from the Sthaviravada (the ‘Way of the Elders’). and Lauriya Nandangarh in Bihar – but essential fragInevitably, perhaps, flexibility had promoted laxity. The ments from five or six others demonstrate that in genemperor is credited with having called a new council to eral the composition of these two was typical. Originally surrounded by vedika and pradakshinareform the Sangha and to attempt a compilation of doc- patha, an unfluted shaft rose to a tassel-like cap below trine cleansed of impurities: in its light, the Sthaviravadins an abacus embellished with goose or lotus and carrywere declared orthodox and it seems probable that they ing an animal device symbolizing royalty – the foreign lion, the native bull and an elephant have been found at sponsored a rudimentary record in the Pali vernacular of a various sites. The capital from Sarnath also has the canon comprising the Vinaya Pitaka (monastic rules), the equally royal horse, separated by chariot wheels, and Sutta Pitaka (doctrine derived from the master’s sermons, four addorsed lions. It was once surmounted by the ‘Wheel of the Law’ which was set in motion by the Budcommentary on them and, perhaps, the Jatakas) and the dha’s first sermon in the deer park at Sarnath. A similar Abhidhamma Pitaka (the basis of subsequent psychologi- capital was found by the Great Stupa at Sanchi.

22

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

›1.11

P L A Q U E W I T H R O YA L F A M I LY , Shunga

period (1st century Museum).

23

BCE),

(New York, Metropolitan

cal and metaphysical speculation). Be that as it may, missionaries equipped with orthodox doctrine were sent abroad – most successfully to Sri Lanka where the definitive canon was ultimately to be inscribed. At home Ashoka’s favour and the moral imperative of his edicts,stressing karma,played an important part in promoting Buddhism among the laity – to whom the master seemed to have offered some kind of remission from samsara in virtue of merit earned through veneration of the symbols of his Dharma and support of his monks. Designed to inspire social responsibility in the interest of mutual well-being among all his disparate peoples, Ashoka’s enlightened despotism certainly brought them unprecedented prosperity. Important as the Dharma was, the force of the personality behind it was crucial. Ashoka’s weak successors proved inadequate to preserve unity, especially as the vast cost of maintaining the empire in more traditional ways began to undermine the economy. In about 187 bce the last of them, reduced to the Ganges valley, was dispatched by his Brahmanical general, Pushyamitra. Continually at war with rival successors to Mauryan power, his Shunga successors maintained tenuous sway over a limited and essentially feudal domain ultimately centred in Vidisha, near Sanchi in the east of old Avanti (Malwa).1.11 While the north-west was soon to be prey to external forces, the south-centre was harassed by the indigenous Andhra. Their leaders, the Satavahanas, probably turned provincial responsibility under the later Mauryans into autonomy and then to considerable dominion around Paithan in the north-west Deccan late in the 2nd century bce. Before the middle of the 1st century bce they had halted the southward expansion of Kharavela of Kalinga in the east but had limited success in the west against several waves of foreign intruders.

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.12a

I N D I A’ S E A R L I E S T I M P E R I A L WO R K The ambassador of Seleucos Nikator to Chandragupta's court, Megesthenes, left a celebrated account of Pataliputra transmitted by later writers: a parallelogram, it was girded by a ditch and a wooden wall with 570 towers and sixty-four gates; the sumptuous palaces set in gardens and containing a series of hypostyle halls whose columns were decorated in gold and silver, and excelled in magnificence those of Susa and Ecbatana. One of these halls is the earliest known large-scale stone structure in India.1.12 If the religious developments we have traced – and the building forms which emerged along with them – were of native inspiration, Achaemenid Persia was to hand as the secular model for the Magadhan empire. Persian craftsmen sought employment at the Mauryan court following the extinction of Achaemenid patronage. In addition to the freestanding symbolic pillar, which was to remain a common enough form in India long after the era of Ashoka, the principal architectural legacy of the Mauryan translation of the wooden standard into the stone column with Persian guidance was the precedent it set for design in the more familiar context of real or apparent load and support – first for the halls of Pataliputra. The Persians also provided the setting for the daily round of royal duties and the ceremonial that clothed them. These were translated from Persia in the treatise on statecraft (Arthashastra) attributed to Chandragupta’s 24

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.12b @ 1:1000

›1.12

PATA L I P U T R A , M A U R YA N PA L A C E (c. 300

BCE): (a) capital, (b) hall plan.

Excavations at Pataliputra yielded monolithic column shafts, polished in the Persian manner, and a capital like those illustrated in the reliefs of Sanchi and Bharhut, but with volutes vertically disposed, as at the Persian dynastic cult centre of Persepolis, and adorned with decorative motifs of west-Asiatic origin long familiar in Persia. Also uncovered were the remains of massive timbers from a raft, upon which an apadana could have been sited.

chancellor, Kautiliya, c. 330 bce, which stressed the need for the king to maintain direct touch with the people as well as to retain the most astute of his subjects for his council of ministers. Thus the royal morning was devoted to public audience, with private audience following as the occasion required. The provision of distinct facilities for these in appropriate relationship to the royal apartments had been the concern of Persian royal architects from the earliest days of Achaemenid power (see Origins, aic1, pages 206–210): it was to be, equally, the concern of two millennia of Indian architects.

M AU RYA N S A N C T UA R I E S A N D SHRINES The ubiquitous burial mound or tumulus referred to in the Vedas and often accompanied by the deceased’s standard, seems to have acquired its characteristic hemispherical form in India by the 6th century bce when Shakyamuni’s ashes were interred.However,the scanty surviving remains of the original Buddhist series indicate that they were hardly more than mounds of impacted mud and clay, sometimes with shallow projections at the cardinal points. The centuries which elapsed between the Mahaparinirvana and the accession of the Mauryas doubtless saw the refinement and elaboration of the primitive form. References in Ashoka’s edicts and fragments of a harmika in Mauryan polished chunar among the remains of the stupa at Sarnath suggest that the canonical form had been approached before Ashoka’s death but it is not clear whether, through the general use of durable materials, his was the final achievement of the precision, clarity and strength upon which monumentality depends. This is because, like their predecessors, most of his works have either been lost or were enlarged and embellished under later rulers. 25

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

The early stages in the evolution of the monastic complex are, of course, also lost to us. However, after their imperial patrons had inaugurated the Indian tradition of monumental masonry, but well before the acquisition of the skill to erect structures enclosing appreciable space, Buddhist monks and other heterodox ascetics sought permanence for their chaitya-grihas and viharas by carving them from the living rock. As in far-off Dorian Greece, perishable forms sanctified by association were translated literally into durable stone by builders steeped in the craft conventions of timber structure. However, the earliest dated works, carved under Ashoka at Barabar, are extremely plain, in keeping with the austerity of the 1.13a early Hinayana faith, plainer perhaps than the contempo- › 1 . 1 3 E A R LY E X C A V AT E D W O R K S : (a) Barabar, rary structural work whose basic forms they faithfully Lomas Rishi, the Ajivika chaitya-griha (3rd century reproduce.1.13 The complete mastery of the art of repro- BCE), front; (b–d) Udayagiri, Rani Gumpha Jaina complex (second half of 2nd century BCE?), view from the ducing the trabeated system – not in structure, as in south and plans of upper and lower levels. Greece, but in sculpture – was the over-riding objective of their successors.

1.13c @ 1:500

1.13b

26

1.13d @ 1:500

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

› 1 . 1 4 B H A R H U T : S T U PA T O R A N A , c. 100 BCE, 19th century reconstruction showing makaras, yakshini and various lotiform mouldings among cosmic and Buddhist symbols.

S T U PA A N D M O N A S TE RY U N D E R T H E M AU RYA S ’ S U CC E S S O R S Buddhists may have been persecuted under the Brahmanical Shunga who succeeded the Mauryas, but in the Shunga domains, no less than in the Peninsula under the Satavahanas, the Sangha flourished with the support of rich merchants and a large section of the working class. Monastic building and excavation proliferated and ultimately, under the patronage even of the later Shungas, foundations usually credited to Ashoka at the main centres of Buddhist pilgrimage were developed into the major 27

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

monastic teaching establishments of the Sangha. Constantly augmented over a thousand years, little original work survives above foundation level at the principal sites of the Buddhist holy land. The most impressive witnesses to Shunga activity are the rails and gates of the great stupas of Bharhut and Sanchi whose embellishment provides such valuable information on early building and is of prime importance in the introduction of anthropomorphic forms to beings whose essence is spiritual. Royal portraiture developed in parallel.1.11, 1.14, 1.15 T h e G re a t S t u p a Perhaps the earliest surviving examples of Shungan structural stonework are the vedikas of Stupa II at Sanchi and the Mahastupa (Great Stupa) at Bharhut. Their relief-encrusted posts (stambha), cross-bars (suchi) and rail (usnisha), reproducing the timber originals at a monumental scale, break forward at the four cardinal points to screen the entrances. The one

2

at Bharhut was the more lavish of the two. It had at least one monumental torana – to the east. Like those depicted before the town gates of Madhyadesha in the early reliefs, this ceremonial structure reflected the wooden prototype of the Vedic enclosure whose primitive portcullis was 1

doubtless also surmounted by symbolic devices. The rich iconographical programme ranged from the Buddhist Dharmachakra, stupa and chaityagriha to the voluptuous maiden, makara and lotus of the Water Cosmol-

3

ogy. Apart from the emblematic horseman bearing Indra’s dhvaja, the vedika bears a variety of figures, including yakshini, and medallions with Jataka episodes or lotuses. The Mahastupa at Sanchi is the prime surviving example of the type: a Mauryan pillar capital found near the southern portal indicates Ashokan 4

foundation. Elaboration is generally thought to have begun c. 150 BCE. In the first campaign the mound (anda) was enlarged to nearly twice its original size and given a plastered envelope and a high drum (medhi) as its base. The top of the drum provided a railing-bordered terrace with a double ramp leading up to it on the south side. The new railing around the greatly expanded circumference at ground level screens the entrances 1.15b @ 1:4000

30

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

with their ceremonial portals surmounted by devices symbolic of enlightenment. Below the addorsed lion and elephant capitals, the simple rectangular posts are incised, like the curved cross-beams, with magnificent reliefs. These and the splendid yakshini who lend their virility to the support of the cross-beams of the toranas, as earlier at Bharhut they displayed their voluptuousness on the cross-beams themselves, represent the formative stage in the establishment of India’s exceptionally rich tradition of representing transcendent spirits in human form.

1.15c

› 1 . 1 5 S A N C H I : (a, pages 28–29) Great Stupa, general view, (b) plan of the monastic site with (1) Stupa I, ‘Mahastupa’, with Ashokan pillar to the right of the south portal, (2) Stupa III, (3) Temple 17 (considered to be the earliest-known masonry structure of its kind, c. 450) and (4) Temple 40 (which incorporates foundations of the earliest-known structural chaitya-griha), (c, d) Great Stupa, detail of tree-goddess bracket from the east torana and southern torana.

1.15d

31

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

› 1 . 1 6 A J A N TA : (a) plan of monastic site (after Burgess, 1879, who numbered the excavations 1 to 28 from east to west around the bend in the Waghora River); (b) Vihara 12, east range of cells; (c) Vihara 9, interior; (d, pages 34–35) view to the north-east with Shrines 9 and 10 right of centre. Here, as at the other excavated sites, dating is guided by the degree of elaboration of form which may reflect practice in wood, and less reliably by the degree of dependence on wood to supplement the stone, but it is generally based on the somewhat problematical analysis of the script and content of the many votive inscriptions. Thus the earliest work at Ajanta (10) is dated from a votive inscription ascribed to the early 1st century BCE. The initial series (8–13), probably begun in

The railing asserted that the stupa, no longer merely commemorative, had become a chaitya, an object symbolic of the Mahaparinirvana. The second railing at the top of the mound specifically asserted the sacred significance of the cubicle (harmika) and the canopy (chattri) with its mast (yashti): the harmika probably initially contained the reliquary; the chattri represents the honorific parasol due to the royal Prince Siddhartha Gautama, which received its ultimate significance in superimposed tiers (chattravali) as, the ‘chattri of chattris’, the symbol of Dharma. The anda and chattri were circular, the lower railing defined both circle and swastika, while the upper railing and harmika were square, prompting their later endowment with the symbolism of Vedic cosmology.

No less impressive are the extensive monastic complexes hewn from the rock walls of the valleys through which the routes frequented by potential converts and patrons linked the centres of power in the north-west Deccan with Arabian Sea ports. In the last century bce and the first of the new millennium, recurrent activity produced more than a thousand significant excavations at a score of sites: Ajanta, Bhaja, Bedsa and Karle are among the most notable. Each site offers at least one chaitya-griha and several viharas, associated as closely as the consistency of the rock and the expansion of the monastery permitted.1.16–1.19 T h e e xc a va t e d m o n a s t e r y Stone carving seems to have been mastered only after at least a century of effort from the first attempts at Barabar – after the Satavahanas had established their stable and prosperous regime. Working from top to bottom and finishing each section before starting on the next, the craftsmen showed themselves adept from the outset at reproducing in rock the intricate carpentry of multi-storey structures – vedika-bordered terraces and balconies, lattice screen walls, dormer and bay windows. The viharas range from isolated cubicles to cells distributed regularly around a hall or court preceded by a portico. The typical chaitya-griha is an elongated, unpartitioned hall with an apse containing the chaitya. Its façade, origi1.16b

32

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

the previous century, took at least a century to complete. Work revived at the site in the second half of the 5th century CE under the later Vakatakas. In response to the transformation of Buddhism into a theistic cult, two new shrines (19, 16) and associated viharas (15–28) were excavated to the west of the original ones and another series added to the east (1–7).

1.16a @ 1:2500

nally of wood, was later of stone, and aisles were separated from nave with increasingly elaborate columns incorporating all the forms of the Mauryan pillar: the tassel-like element in the capital became an inverted padma-kalasha, sometimes below a boxed amalaka, and a water pot protected the base of the shaft. The earliest inscriptions so far deciphered, from the beginning of the 1st century

BCE,

were found in the earliest chaitya-grihas at Ajanta and

Bhaja. These are comparable in their simple, slanting octagonal posts, without base or capital, and the irregular curve of their great arches. They originally had front screen walls entirely of wood, and support holes indicate that applied woodwork played an important part elsewhere in 1.16c

33

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.17a

recreating the sort of detail to which stone did not immediately lend itself – such as galleries for musicians. At Bedsa the multi-storey vihara (vimana) carved on the verandah walls in juxtaposition with the chaitya-griha – as in the relief from Bharhut1.9 – could hardly be a more literal translation of the structural prototype represented in the Bharhut ‘Palace of the Gods’. The simple faceted posts sep1.17b @ 1:500

arating aisles from nave are not inconsistent with a relatively early date, probably before the end of the last century BCE. However, a permutation of the Mauryan stambha Order is introduced to screen the verandah: in the process of translation and retranslation into timber and masonry from the Mauryas’ original Vedic interpretation of Persian forms, the tassel-like binding at the top of the shaft takes on the form of an inverted kumbha, echoing the base but petalled like a lotus, below an abacus encapsulating an amalaka and addorsed animals (bull, horse and elephant). The example was followed at most western Ghat sites most notably, perhaps a century later, throughout the great chaitya-griha at Karle.

36

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

›1.17

B H A J A , C H A I T YA - G R I H A , inscribed, like

the earliest work at Ajanta, in the 1st century BCE: (a) façade, (b) plan.

› 1 . 1 8 B E D S A , C H A I T YA - G R I H A , dated from votive records over the half-century from c. 25 BCE: section.

1.18

1.19b

›1.19

K A R L E , C H A I T YA G R I H A , dated from votive records to the last half of the 1st century CE: (a) exterior, (b) interior. If the earliest votive records followed soon after completion, excavation here seems to have followed a decline in activity at western Ghat sites for two or three generations. The last significant precedent was the shrine at Bedsa but in the portico here large-scale mithunas flank the doorway and life-size elephants support the ‘prasadas’ on the end walls.

37

1.19a

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.22a

2 hellenistic intruders and the mahayana Towards the middle of the 2nd century bce the Mauryans had lost their north-western province of Gandhara to Bactria, whose Greek rulers had been independent of the Seleucids for nearly a century but maintained close cultural relations with the West. Introducing a debased Hellenism, they had struck far into Madhyadesha by the end of the 2nd century bce. Bactria itself then fell to the Parthians who were masters of Hellenized Iran but essentially eclectic in culture. Their fortunes and eastward advance were turned by Scythian hordes from central Asia but by the end of the 1st century bce the Shakas (as the Scythians were called in India) had been displaced in Gandhara by the rebel Parthian Gondophanes. His Pahlava dynasty was dispatched by a second major horde, 38

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.20a, b

1.20c, d

›1.20

C O M M E R C E : (a, b) coin of Menander (2ndcentury BCE Bactrian king responsible for consolidating his dynasty’s control of Gandhara), obverse with king’s head and reverse with Athena; (c, d) coin of the late-1stcentury BCE Scythian (Shaka) king Azes I, obverse with king on horseback and reverse with Athena wielding a thunderbolt; (e) Silk Road caravan (Tang era fresco, Dunhuang).

39

the Yueh-chi, whose Kushana dynasty controlled most of central Asia. The Kushanas pushed the remnants of the Shakas south into Gujarat and Malwa and had won the whole of north India as far as Kashi and Sanchi by the time of the accession of their greatest monarch, Kanishka. Originating from the frontiers of China with no more culture than the Scythians, their coinage, like that of their predecessors, offers eloquent testimony to the basic Hellenism of the hybrid cultures they acquired on their ascent to empire: with the images of the king and Hellenistic attributes of secular power sharing the surfaces with the symbols of virtually every religion known between Egypt and India, the coins also assert politically expedient tolerance of local traditions.1.20a–d They held sway from their capitals at Purushapura (Peshawar) and Mathura until the resurgent Persia of the Sasanians reduced them to vassalage towards the middle of the 3rd century ce. Their descendants were finally overcome by the White Huns in the second half of the 5th century. Meanwhile the Satavahanas were under pressure from resurgent Shakas led by the Kshatrapas (Satraps) who had won Gujarat and sought control over the Arabian Sea trade. The Kshatrapas ultimately pushed them from their northern provinces but from a new capital,Dhanya-kataka (Amaravati), they asserted their dominance south of the Vindhyas and regained access to their former ports at the expense of the Kshatrapas c. 125. From the beginning of the 3rd century ce they ceded power rapidly to former subordinates,notably the Ikshvakus in the Andhradesha and the Vakatakas in the Deccan. The trade contacts fostered by the Mauryas prospered once more under the invaders and the Satavahanas. The latter and the displaced Shakas developed ports on the west coast to service the sea routes from Arabia and Egypt.

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.20e

Indian merchants were quick to see the advantages of acting as middlemen and the boom in mercantile activity promoted those associated with it – traders and artisans, organized in guilds of no mean political importance who readily espoused the heterodox cults opposed to Brahmanism.The Kushanas controlled much of the great trade route which linked India through Taxila and Bactria to Persia and the Roman empire on the one hand, to China on the other:1.20e they were particularly favourable to the heterodox sects as the rigid caste laws of Brahmanism inhibited access to Indian society. Indeed, Kanishka was to be Buddhism’s greatest patron after Ashoka. The impact on India of eclectic invaders drawn to the Sangha’s cause and fostering prosperity accelerated the ‘Great Transformation’ of Buddhism from a spiritual discipline to a devotional religion – a popular, theistic alternative to the aspirations of the monk to nirvana through yoga. The old and the new ways were to be called respectively ‘Mahayana’ and ‘Hinayana’ (the Great and Small Vehicles) by the populist schools. 40

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

T H E T R A N S F O R M AT I O N O F B U D D H I S M : V E N E R AT I O N TO WO R S H I P Buddha made no supernatural claims, yet he accounted for past manifestation of his Buddhahood and his followers could believe him no ordinary man: in hardly two centuries the main stages of his career were seen as miraculous and the devotion to the memory of a great teacher was well on the way to becoming the worship of a transcendent being. The impulse came first from the lay followers rather than the ordained members of the Sangha and dissent among the monks over the status of the laity paved the way. The monks had given up all for the Buddha’s way and their path was prescribed – for the arhant alone. The laity, still encumbered by the concerns of this world, were considered not to have fulfilled the condition for salvation,and in accordance with the prevailing orthodoxy seemed destined for transmigration in the eternal cycle of samsara. This was implicitly sustained by the Buddha in reputedly acknowledging that the laity would earn merit (karma) to improve their future lot by offering alms to the Sangha and through the veneration of symbols. Absorbing and adapting the age-old popular cult of yakshas at chaityas, this was the key to the success and ultimate transformation of Buddhism. It was also the cause of some confusion. The doctrine of karma was inseparable from samsara and in prescribing means to improve the lot of the lay devotee in a future existence the Buddha was implicitly ambiguous in his attitude to ‘soul’ – or whatever other term might be preferred in the attempt to define post-mortem consciousness. Debate over their teacher’s stand on this fundamental principle produced factions within the Sangha: in particular, the Mahasanghikas, who promoted the magical above the human nature of the Buddha, and the Sarvastivadins,who denied that the invalidity of the subjective 41

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

(soul) implied that the objective (salvation) was illusory › 1 . 2 1 T H E W H E E L O F L I F E (fresco in the Punakha Dzonb, Bhutan; 17th century, but much restored). too. They espoused the popular cause against the The cycle of samsara is represented as a wheel lubrientrenched power of the orthodox Theravadins: contrary cated in the fangs of Yama (god of death): the concento the claims of the latter and as an alternative to the yoga, tric rings are the levels at which man is shackled in dukkha by tanha and translated through the wages of they derived a religious means to the ultimate goal of salkarma. vation from the concept of karma.1.21 The outer rim is devoted to twelve images symbolizThe Mahayana overtook the Hinayana in the number of ing man’s condition: ignorance (blind man), striving in creativity (potter and wheel), waywardness (monkey), its Indian devotees no earlier than the 7th century.The precorporeality (men in a boat representing the body as vious half millennium and more, many new sutras – often vehicle), sensibility (house with windows representing poetic and mystical, usually elaborate and difficult of the sense organs), sensuality (lovers), delusory (arrow in eye representing the danger of relying on the senses access, all claiming the authorship of the Buddha – were to perceive truth), insatiability (drinking), possessivededicated to expounding its devotional precepts, its way to ness (monkey and fruit tree), self-perpetuating (pregsalvation for all – as opposed to the selfish preoccupation nant woman) in the cycle of life (woman giving birth) and death (burden-bearing old man approaching the of the arhant – in the obviation of being (Shunyata, ‘NoStyx from which the blind man is retreating in the first soul’ somewhat inadequately translated as ‘Emptiness’) panel). and its concept of absolute truth comprehensible only to Five (or six) spokes divide the outer rim from the hub. Within the five (or six) semi-prismatic zones thus buddhas. Among the most important are the corpus known created are the field of the wages of karma, the layers as Prajnaparamitra (‘Perfection of Wisdom’) and its of spiritual existence: the low zones of the damned, the Vajracchedika (Diamond) extension, the Vimalakirti-nird- unsatisfied and the animals; the higher zones of man, titans (asuras) and gods (devas). Progress or regress esa (Exposition of Vimalakirti), and the Saddharmapunfrom zone to zone is represented by the climbing and darika (White Lotus of the True Law, of which the main falling figures around the hub. The hub itself is infested by the pig of ignorance, the snake of menace and the part is generally known as the Lotus Sutra). cock of greed – the vices which keep the wheel spinning Primacy may be claimed by the corpus with the generic in the jaws of death. name Prajnaparamitra, which introduced the ideal of the bodhisattva, asserting that wisdom was the chief among its six perfections (the others are generosity, morality, patience, vigour and meditation) and considering its conditioning. All-embracing knowledge attained through the perfection of wisdom is required of the bodhisattva for the assistance of others but such knowledge and such perfection are illusory: until it is grasped that all – even samsara and nirvana – is one and one is empty, perfected wisdom has not been attained. The Vimalakirti turn on this point by crediting its enlightened lay subject with greater knowledge even than the great bodhisattva Manjusri, Lord of 42

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

43

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

Wisdom – and, of course, the attainment is especially significant because Vimalakirti was a layman. The Saddharma-pundarika, claiming primacy among all sutras, propounds the essential Mahayanist tenet that the Universal Truth, the Buddha Nature, is innate in all beings and, therefore, that all may realize it through devotion to its ideal and faith in its essential compassion, manifest in the bodhisattva. The Sukhavati-vyuha (‘Happy Land’) opens a realm of rebirth in which all impediments to the attainment of final enlightenment are obviated by faith. This realm of bliss, the Pure Land of the Western Paradise, is that of Amitabha who achieved it after aeons of accumulating merit as the bodhisattva Dharmakara, and admits to it all who call on his name in faith. Rebirth in the lotuses of the lake before Amitabha’s glorious palace may be taken literally – as it was on the popular level – or to mean assimilation with Amitabha’s limitless compassion and wisdom and, ultimately, with the Universal Truth – the Buddha Nature. Of course there were more factions: the most prominent were the Yogacara of Ghandara and the Madhyamika of the south. The former maintained that ‘mind is all’, that things exist only in the mind to which the senses convey perception and that release is the pure consciousness of their total obliteration in trance-like meditation. On the other hand, the southern school approached Shunyata intellectually, the basis of the Prajnaparamita, defining it as ‘no-self ’ and drawing the conclusion that all things are interdependent – even samsara and nirvana. And if everything is interdependent in its shunyata, all share one nature – the nature of the Buddha, no less. Crucial in the thinking which underlay the ‘Great Transformation’ was the ascription to the Buddha of three bodies: essence (Dharmakaya), the ‘primal essence’ which propels the cycle of existence and in which all will ulti44

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

mately find resolution; Sambhogakaya, the ‘blissful’ emanation of Dharmakaya which permeates the heavens where the blessed in grace await the final resolution; the actual (Nirmanakaya = created) the emanation of Sambhogakaya which assumed terrestrial form as transitory messenger. Only the last died, the others were ever accessible. This provided the key to the circumvention of the master’s counsel against the veneration of his person – even by the orthodox Sthaviravadins. Under the influence of Mahasanghika heterodoxy, the human nature of the Buddha was discounted. It was emphasized that Gautama was not the only Buddha: he had known that he belonged to a different order of being, that in the infinite cyclical process of existence there had been, and would be, other aeons with other Buddhas. He was the fourth in our aeon and would be followed by a fifth, Maitreya. If the former had assumed human form, so too would the latter and so too, presumably, had their predecessors as emanations of bliss. And they were not extinguished by the passage of the aeons, at least on the level of ‘conventional truth’ distinguished by Mahayana philosophers from the ‘absolute truth’ of the Buddha in ineffable emptiness: hence the bodhisattva. In the view of the empyrean from the plane accessible to the average layman, faith obviated renunciation of the world for the yoga of the arhant: if many beings had aspired to Buddhahood perhaps all might do so and, as compassion was at the heart of the Buddhist ideal, some aspirants would renounce their goal to help the devoted in their passage from suffering to salvation.These beings ‘whose essence is enlightenment’ are bodhisattvas and it was as such that the Buddha had been manifest in his previous existences. Veneration turned to worship (puja) with the effloresence of faith in the will of the bodhisattva to lead the 45

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

devotee out of the cycle of transmigration not only in virtue of merit won in worldly life but through its transference. The venerable symbols of the master were supplemented, then supplanted, by shrines sheltering images of the Buddha and bodhisattvas formed under the inspiration of Hellenistic anthropomorphic pantheism – even by the orthodox Sthaviravadins whose canon nowhere specifically proscribed images.

T H E ‘ G R E AT T R A N S F O R M AT I O N ’ : M A N I F E S TAT I O N Gandhara and the sometime distinct kingdom of Taxila on the eastern side of the Indus shared with Mathura way off on the Yamuna the responsibility for fostering the ‘Great Transformation’. Art was an essential factor: the introduction of the Buddha’s image as an object of worship was the

›1.22

T H E C L A S S I C A L B U D D H A : (a; page 38) fragment of standing image from Gandhara (2nd century; Paris, Musée Guimet); (b) seated image from Mathura (Kushana; Fort Worth, Texas, Kimbell Museum); (c) Sakyamuni (Kushana; London, British Museum); (d) Maitreya (Kushana; Paris, Musée Guimet). The canon of idealization and the toga-like cloak are both characteristic of the Indo-Hellenistic hybrid evolved in Gandhara.

1.22b

46

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

crucial step from the symbol-orientated, non-theistic Hinayana to the theistic Mahayana.The condition was the patronage of the invaders, exercised through the sects within the Sangha dedicated to the popularization of the faith, like the Sarvastivadins. The initial inspiration for the transformation must be credited to the Hellenistic Bactrians: they introduced India to a tradition of monumental sculpture representing god in terms of ideal man just at the time when the Indians were beginning to make god out of man. The Hellenistic ideal was transmitted from Gandhara as far as Mathura where the native tradition had already evolved the spiritual iconography – so well represented c. 100 bce at Bharhut.1.2 By the time of Kanishka, the Buddha appeared in the Classical toga – if not always in strict Classical proportions – on the banks of the Yamuna, as in Gandhara. And under the Kushanas and their Satavahana contemporaries, his image was applied to the stupa: the anthropomorphic idea of representation was superimposed over the abstract.1.22, 1.27, 1.28 Anthropomorphic representation flourished. Of course the doctrine of the ‘two bodies’ facilitated its extension to the host of intercessionary bodhisattvas, though they existed in the world of the spirit, and images of the principal ones were to become at least as familiar as images of the ci-devant Shakyamuni. The most important of the former were Avalokitesvara, the Lord of Infinite Compassion, Manjusri and Vajrapani, the trident-bearing Lord of Infinite Wisdom and Enemy of Evil, and Maitreya, the Buddha to Come. The cult of Maitreya was seminal but as compassion and wisdom were elevated to primacy amongst the six perfections (paramita) of the bodhisattva, the devotee’s invocation of Avalokitesvara and Manjusri or Vajrapani together – of compassion and ‘skill-in-means’ combined – was infallible.The main icons 1.22c

47

1.22d

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

› 1 . 2 3 T H E P R I N C I PA L B O D H I S AT T V A S : (a, b) Avalokitesvara Padmapani (‘Lotus Bearer’) and Vajrapani (Bearer of the Trident or Thunderbolt, the bolt of enlightenment, like Manjusri), (wall paintings from Ajanta I, 5th century); (c) Amitabha and the True Land of the Western Paradise (9th-century fresco from Dunhuang). The Blissful Land of Amitabha is the Western Paradise where the Blessed are reborn in the buds of lotuses rising from the Celestial Lake before the Buddha’s throne in his palace.

1.23a

were defined in the first half of the 1st millennium ce – Maitreya first after Shakyamuni – but the iconography was long to be elaborated. And terrestrial imagery served the invocation of superterrestrial realms assigned to emanations of the Body of Bliss, the Dhayani Buddhas of the cardinal directions: Amitabha (Immeasurable Glory) alias Amitayus (Immea1.23c

48

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.23b

surable Age) west, Amoghasiddhi (Unfailing Success) north, Akshobhya, (Immovable) east, Ratnasambhava ( Jewel-born) south and Vairocana (Illuminator) centre. Blissful beings, their role is celestial but the devotees of the Sukhavati-vyuha believe that Amitabha, ministering through Avalokiteshvara, especially cares for this world and our aeon and that his Western Paradise (Sukhavati) is a lakeside palace of unequalled splendour.1.23 49

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

T R A N S F O R M AT I O N I N T H E N O RT H : TO W N A N D M O N A S TE RY Unfortunately, the sparse remains throw no light on the initiation of the Hellenistic culture of Bactria into the service of the Buddha in Gandhara. However, the Hellenistic stamp was impressed upon the plan of the Bactrian capital at Taxila, Sirkap. In marked contrast to the earlier Mauryan and later Kushana settlements in the vicinity, Sirkap was laid out strictly in accordance with the grid principle of Hellenistic town-planners elsewhere and the grid survived much rebuilding on the site.1.24a Renovation has left little trace of the major Bactrian buildings but the palace built by the Parthians has been recovered – at least in plan: in sharp constrast to the trabeated structures so far encountered elsewhere in India, it is related to those of Ashur or Nysa with walled chambers surrounding courts among which one at least – which may have been for public audience – was dominated by a raised iwan-like hall. The eclecticism of the invader is particularly apparent in the diversity of their religious foundations,in their imagery and especially in their embellishment.The icons and reliefs which proclaimed the dedication of the shrine were Greek in inspiration and form, but usually – if not invariably – Indian in content. Framing them are architectural motifs arranged with distant recollection of the armature of Hellenistic Order: they frequently included debased Classical Orders but Persepolitan and Mauryan ones were also used, independently or combined.1.24b In Sirkap a crucial development away from the orthodox tradition of the Buddhist Sangha was marked by the erection of shrines for lay devotees, independent of a monastic establishment. Most prominent was a great apsidal chaitya-griha on the main artery: its ornament was characteristically eclectic and sculptured reliefs recovered from the remains of twin stupas flanking the entrance include 50

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

›1.24

S I R K A P ( TA X I L A ) : (a) plan with (1) Parthian palace, (2) apsidal shrine serving the Buddhist laity, (b) debased Corinthian capital with Buddha inset centre (probably from the Kushana period); (c) plan of the socalled Fire Temple at Jandial (late-1st century BCE).

2

1.24b

1.24c @ 1:1000

1

1.24a @ 1:3000

vigorous Hellenistic figures which have been identified as the earliest surviving images of bodhisattvas. At nearby Jandial, moreover, are the earliest remains of a freestanding temple so far discovered in India: probably built for Zoroastrians by a Parthian magnate, it was an Ionic structure strikingly similar to the typical Roman temple.1.24c 51

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

Outside Sirkap were several of the main monasteries of the region and there were many more around Purushapura, the capital on the other side of the Indus.The fecund eclecticism of the invaders is nowhere better apparent than in the elaboration of the stupa at these sites: additional medhi elements and rectangular plinths, often in several tiers, were introduced and the chatravali was sent up to great heights with multiple discs; the sides of the drums and plinths were richly decorated, usually in stucco, with reliefpanels depicting scenes from the life of the Buddha set in a hybrid architectural framework. No mahastupa survives to full scale at the Gandharan sites but eye-witness accounts match votive work in stucco.1.25 In the Madhyadesha the most impressive relic is the monumental brick stump of the Kushana Dhamekh stupa at Sarnath. However, as in the north-west, small-scale votive stupas give some idea of the form bequeathed by the Kushanas. They make it clear that the royal audience hall (rajabhavana), often within a multi-storey prasada, provided the model for the frontispiece framing the image, the Buddha or bodhisattva thus being enshrined in the great hall of the prasada: the ideal is splendidly evoked in both paint and sculpture at 5th-century Ajanta.1.16, 1.30 By the Kushana era the mahastupa towered over a precinct, crowded with small votive stupas and shrines, beyond which were the quarters of the Sangha. At first, inevitably, the growth of the monastery was as organic as the growth of the town, but ultimately axiality was not entirely foreign to the organization of whole complexes. As for the whole, so too the parts: the early viharas were ad hoc agglomerations of cells, perhaps ranged behind verandahs with communal facilities in detached structures; later, as settled monasticism became the norm, more regular walled quadrangles were surrounded by colonnades with one or two storeys of cells.The central court was occa-

1.25a

1.25b

52

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

› 1 . 2 5 V O T I V E S T U PA S , from the Kushana period and later: (a) from Mohra Moradu; (b) at Bodh Gaya. According to ancient Chinese travellers, the highest and most magnificent structure in Gandhara was the Mahastupa at Shah-ji-ki-Dherri: they noted, variously, thirteen storeys and a chatravali of twenty-five gilt umbrellas. ›1.26

SIRK AP, DHARMARAJIK A MONA STERY:

plan with (1) Mahastupa, (2) votive stupas and shrines, (3) viharas. The Mahastupa seems to have been rebuilt with a considerable amount of earlier material after an earthquake which devastated the Parthian capital and its surroundings c. 30 CE. It was unexcelled in scale but not in the elaboration of form. Above the anda, the medhi, supporting a pradakshina-patha reached by stairs at the cardinal points, was embellished in stages under the later Kushanas: first came shallow Corinthian pilasters resting on torus and scotia mouldings supported by Indian brackets and surmounted by a dentillated cornice; then came a circle of niches (rathikas), alternately trefoil and trapezoidal, containing images of bodhisattvas in an architectural framework which broke forward opposite the steps where three large rathikas enshrined a central figure of the Buddha. Around the base of the medhi, the main circumambulatory path was ringed by small votive stupas and many other ex-voto structures, including several apsidal temples, were scattered haphazardly throughout the compound: one of these contained the earliestknown building record of an image shrine (arca-griha) dated c. 78 CE. The main viharas, none formally related to the Mahastupa but some intrinsically formal, include the earliest-known rectangular walled complex with continuous verandahs before the cells.

sionally roofed to form a closed assembly hall and some of the cells were converted into stupa or image shrines (arcagriha) dedicted to a saintly former occupant, an obviously practical arrangement in the exposed north which had a ready parallel among the most sophisticated excavated viharas of the Western Ghats: the transformation of the purely residential vihara of the Hinayana into a place of worship is perhaps the most significant architectural response to the introduction of the Mahayana.1.26

3

1

2

1.26 @ 1:1500

53

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

› 1 . 2 7 N A S I K , ‘ G A U TA M I P U T R A ’ V I H A R A (III, named in virtue of inscriptions of Gautamiputra Shri Satakarni, the Satavahana king who defeated the Kshatrapa Nahapana c. 125 CE): (a) portico, (b) stupa on axis with the entrance, (c) plan. The portico, based on simulated posts supported by giant ghanas, is now screened by six columns of the fully evolved ‘water-pot’ permutation of the Mauryan ‘Order’ in which the ribbed lotiform element of the capital is replaced by a water pot removed from the base. The entrance to the roughly square hall is in the form of a torana embellished with mithuna panels. It is flanked by figures which, though massive, seem too peacable to be ghanadvaras: as the embellishment of the interior anticipates the transformation of the vihara into a shrine under the impact of the transformation of Buddhism itself, these figures may well introduce the imagery of the bodhisattva.

1.27a

M A H AYA N A I N T H E S O U T H The Mahayana developments fostered by the Sarvastivadins under the protection of the Kushanas in the north were parallelled by the Mahasanghika under the protection of the Satavahanas and Ishvakus in the Andhradesha. Buddhism had been introduced there by Ashoka but it flourished after the establishment of the great Mahasanghika sage Nagarjuna at the Ikshvaku capital in the late-2nd century ce: Vijayapuri was renamed in his honour. And with its recovery of the north-west Deccan from the Kshatrapas c. 125, restoring the lucrative links with the Arabian Sea ports, the Satavahana regime sponsored important developments in excavation in the Western Ghats – particularly at Nasik.1.27 No Ashokan remains have been definitely identified in Andhradesa, but a polished pillar fragment found near the site of the Mahastupa at the Satavahana capital Amaravati may be linked with Ashoka’s series. No great stupa survives in the south either but much of the embellish-

1.27b

1.27c @ 1:1500

54

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

›1.28

A M A R A V AT I , G R E AT S T U PA , last century of the Satavahanas from c. 130 CE: (a, b) elevations at two stages of development (ASI); (c) panel from last phase of development (London, British Museum).

ment of the most important Satavahana work has been recovered from the Amaravati site and similar material was recovered at the site of Nagarjunakonda: the Amaravati panels, unsurpassed in richness, are invaluable in illustrating the various stages of the imperial mahastupa’s protracted evolution.1.28 T h e G re a t S t u p a o f A m a ra va t i The plastered mound, once unadorned, acquired relief panels in superimposed bands around its base and a rich garland towards its summit. It was set back from the edge of the relatively low circular drum, leaving room for a circumambulatory path – though there is no trace of access to the terrace. The drum, which had projections at the cardinal points bearing pillars (ayaka), was at first surmounted by a plain railing and adorned only with Hinayana symbols on the projecting wall below the pillars.

1.28a

1.28b

55

1.28c

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

Ultimately, the reliefs representing the stupa were applied to all its walls below a magnificent frieze of legendary episodes from the life of the Buddha, relief panels were added to the railing, and the pillar projections received superb Mahayana images. On the outside of the circumambulatory passage about the base of the drum, another magnificent railing was finally decorated on both sides with floral or figural medallions. The railing broke forward in two stages, before the projections at the cardinal points, to form lion-guarded entrances. Relief panels showing a simple stupa with a plain hemispherical mound on a circular drum seem contemporary with the representations of the Great Stupa in various phases of its elaboration and may represent, or even derive from, associated votive works.

The Nagarjunakonda valley at the height of Ikshvaku power, like Taxila at the height of Kushana power, had dozens of monasteries belonging to various sects.The simplest often consisted only of a stupa and a vihara varying in size, but some included an apsidal chaitya-griha containing a stupa.The more elaborate ones also had arca-grihas. The viharas were usually regular quandrangles with cells on three sides and the fourth open to shrines. A square wooden or stone mandapa sometimes filled their centres, as at Kalawan and in the more elaborate rock-cut monasteries of the Western Ghats. Little remains above base level at any important early Andhradeshan site but two apsidal vaulted structures survive virtually intact at Ter and Chezarla, both within the Satavahana orbit.1.29 Hundreds of such temples – doubtless elaborated along palatial lines in ephemeral materials as they were soon to be in masonry – must have been built throughout India not only by the Buddhists but also to serve the reformed Brahmanical faith later known as Hinduism, even before the latter was backed by the resources of truly imperial patronage.1.30

56

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

›1.29

T E R T E M P L E : view from the south-west (19th-century engraving). The shrine at Chezarla was divided into nave and aisles by stone piers but its exterior seems to have been plain. At Ter the interior is undivided but the exterior is articulated with pilasters surmounted at the point of transition from support to load by a torus and a cyma recta: in the shastras the torus and cyma recta mouldings are called, most significantly, kumbha and padma.

›1.30

T H E L O R D I N A U D I E N C E (fresco from Ajanta, Vihara 1, 5th century CE). The posts of the king’s mandapa clearly follow the padma-kumbha ‘Order’ of the pilasters at Ter but the torus of the capital’s kumbha has been subtly transformed: originating with the tassellated binding to the top of wooden posts, it has become an elegant kalasha with a lip extravagantly curved up into the padma. The kalasha ‘Order’ would henceforth be dominant.

3 the pantheon of the gods The centuries of vicissitude during which the Mahayana emerged had a parallel effect on Brahmanism itself and the success of Buddhism prompted a reform movement from within. Rejecting the claims of the Vedic priest and his abstruse mystical sacrifice, but inspired by the native holy itinerant, the most progressive minds sought liberation from samsara through meditation aided by severe, still mystical, discipline and the life of the ascetic. But liberation was remote from the popular level and the masses, committed to the cycle of transmigration and bound to pay the wages of former deeds, sought more immediate comfort from the hope offered in later Upanishadic thought, particularly the Bhagavad-Gita, that the divine grace of salvation could be invoked through devotion to a personal god. In a process parallel to the demotion of yoga and the eclipse of the monk in Buddhism, well before the end of the last millennium bce sacrifice had receded in importance before the growing belief in the efficacy of worship (puja). 57

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

T H E A DV E N T O F H I N D U I S M In the synthesis of late-Vedism and native populism, many lesser Vedic gods were endowed with the properties of native fertility deities but Vasudeva-Vishnu and PasupatiRudra (Shiva) emerged dominant from the syncretic process. Together with the personification of the Purusha, Prajapati who embraced Brahman as Brahma, they were to form a trinity governing the cycle of creation, preservation and destruction. Vishnu and Shiva ultimately emerged separately as paramount deities and each gained vast followings to the almost total exclusion of the daunting Brahma – naturally, as preservation and destruction are the 58

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

› 1 . 3 1 V I S H N U : Narayana (Active on the Waters) reclining on and canopied by many-headed Shesha (Subsisting), the serpent of life from the primordial waters, the god is attended by his consort Sri Laxmi and her sister river-goddesses and other members of the Trinity look on from above, notably Shiva with his consort Parvati and vehicle Nandi (right) (Deogarh, Gupta Dashavatara Temple Vishnu Narayana, c. 500). ›1.32

S H I V A : (a, b) Maheshvara (Trimurti) and linga, Elephanta, Great Shiva Temple (6th century, possibly Kalachuri); (c) Shiva and Parvati (Chola bronze, 9th century); (d) Ganesha (11th century).

1.32a

immediate concerns of the living. But Vaishnavites and Shaivites were largely tolerant of each other, none denying that the object of devotion was an aspect of a single divinity, as both preservation and destruction comprehended creation and implied one another. In awe of the supreme unity (Om) which transcends diversity, nevertheless in practice the Hindu is impressed with the multiplicity of the facets of God: thus, under its broad cloak, the new faith found room for all the old Vedic deities and a wide variety of popular cults. Responding to the same popular needs as the Mahayana, the most important strand in the development of 1.32b

59

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

the new religion in the last half of the 1st millennium ce – hand in hand with which went the elaboration of the temple – was the descent of the deity from transcendence to immanence. Crucial, thus, was the intercession of the shakti, the consort and activator of the deity. The concept clearly derived from the age-old cult of the mother-goddess as the feminine power of fertility and abundance which we have already seen in the imagery of Varuna’s yakshas and yakshinis.1.31, 1.32

1.32c

God and shakti Vishnu, the motive force behind the eternal cycle, awakes from sleep on the coils of Shesha, the thousand-headed snake, in the primordial ocean when Brahma – the instrument of creation – emerged in a lotus from his navel. Vishnu became Narayana, the promoter of creation: the old role of Varuna. The blast from his conch stimulated life from the primordial sea, the trajectory of his discus at once generated time and menaced destruction. Carried on the man/eagle Garuda to his residence on his holy mountain, Vaikuntha, he observes the world, descending to save it in the various heroic and benevolent incarnations (avatars) through which he is worshipped. The principal treasure redeemed from the ocean by Vishnu in his avatar of the tortoise Kurma was his consort Sri Lakshmi. Goddess of good fortune, her origin as an apsara (female stimulator) descended from the

60

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

mother-goddess is clear: she was, indeed, the consort of Varuna as Lord of the Waters. Far more than destructive, Shiva is a complex of the fearsome and the benign. The Great Lord (Maheshvara), whose procreative and potentially destructive energy motivates the cosmos, he is the omnipotent, allcomprehending Trimurti, in his most primitive aspect he is Pasupati, Lord of the Animals, universal progenitor, worshipped through the phallus (linga) and carried by the bull (Nandi) inherited from his pre-Vedic ancestors. He is most persuasively Nataraja, ‘Lord of the Dance’, whose 108 permutations of rhythm encompass all the phases of the cosmic cycle. But in his mountain fastness of Kailasa he is the comprehender of order as the equipoise of the forces of creation and destruction, Dakshinamurti, the universal teacher and patron of ascetics, the fountain of art. Shiva’s consort, Mahadeva (the Great Goddess) is naturally as ambivalent as her lord. As Mata and Annapurna, she is the Great Mother and abundance. In the most benign of her aspects she is Gauri the Pure, Sati the Virtuous, Parvati the Daughter of the Mountain, and may be identified with Varuna’s river-goddess consort as Ganga flowing from the mountains around Kailasa, the very source of shakti. As Minakshi. she is the daughter of Kubera, defender of the faith, who himself entered Shiva’s service on Kailasa. But she is also the savage Durga and the bloodthirsty Kali.

The product of a syncretic process and embracing a wide range of roles and powers, the multiple identities of the deity are conveyed in a multiplicity of iconic forms – never mere idols but potential seats of grace – which recall this inadequate world of appearances in order to transcend it. Thus hybrids endow the figure with the attributes of relevant animals, and multiple heads and arms express their super-human importance. Meanwhile, the details of human physiognomy cede to an idealization, governed by Brahmanical prescription,ultimately promoting a formula for supreme beauty and arousing sexuality. Transitory human emotion and the accident of personality are equally irrelevant. Transcendent facial expressions, rather, invoke 1.32d

61

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

character – the principal aspect of the deity as benign and › 1 . 3 3 M A H A B A L L I P U R A M : ‘The Descent of the compassionate or terrible and compelling, for instance – Ganges’ or ‘Arjuna’s Penance’, mid-7th-century relief. Bhagiratha, the holy king of Ayudhya, devoted himand these are reinforced through hand gestures reflecting self to penance for having begged Shiva to let the heavthe attitudes that underlay the earliest representation of enly Ganges descend into the world to purify it and the transcendent being for the Buddhists. Beyond this, iden- souls of its departed: doubt that this is the subject here springs from the lack of the key iconographical element tity is established in the attributes of a particular manifes- of the god first receiving the inundation in his hair as a tation of the deity, from his or her vehicle (vahana), conduit to protect the earth from its divine force. Alterinstruments or weapons,to the whole corpus of shakti sym- natively Arjuna, an epic player on the great stage of the Mahabharata, devoted himself to penance for having bolism deriving from the Water Cosmology and the image won the divine weapon in contest with Shiva: doubt of Shiva’s procreativity, the phallic linga.The deity’s power that this is the subject here springs from the absence of is most graphically portrayed in episodes from the rich the key contest between the valiant warrior and the god disguised as the hunter Kirat. Unquestioned, howmythology inherited by Hinduism from the Vedic past, ever, is the presentation on the rocks flanking the riverine fissure of a forest alive with animals, hunters and chosen as significant of divine intervention.1.33 62

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

ascetics as Shiva’s Himalayan retreat. And Shiva is the focus of all the animate, including the naga harbingers of inundation in the fissure and the rishi standing on one foot in the yogic posture of penance. However, below the rishi to the left, Vishnu is also present in a little temple rising from a host of ascetics: it should doubtless be recalled that a Mahabharata climax is reached when Arjuna receives the Bhagavad-Gita from Vishnu’s avatar Krishna.

63

TA N T R I S M About the middle of the 1st millennium ce heterodox shakti sects, both Buddhist and Hindu, developed a radically different way to salvation from the premise that cosmic force is generated by the interaction between male and female elements. Incorporating material of the remotest antiquity,their highly unorthodox texts (tantras) recognize emotion, stimulated through sensation, as man’s most potent force and prescribe a yoga which, rather than suppressing it as in the traditional forms, develops and harnesses it. Electrifying, their means to salvation was known as the Vajrayana (the ‘Way of the Thunderbolt’) and combined as its prime ritual objects the vajra (the spearhead or diamond tip of Indra’s staff ) representing ‘skill-in-means’, with the ghanta (bell) representing wisdom. Tantric doctrine, usually focused on a particular manifestation of the deity, is reduced to a formula (mantra) to be invoked repeatedly in trance-like meditation for the elevation of the mind over the body’s gross appetites: it is central to a range of esoteric exercises comprehended only by the initiated and deemed to be so dangerous in their breaching of taboos, even with strict control, that they were available only to the elect under the special guidance of a guru. The guru (siddha – ‘adept’) may be seen as the terrestrial equivalent of the Mahayana’s bodhisattva in guiding the disciple (chela) to release along an alternative to the way of the Hinayana’s arhant. He is natually common in Tantric imagery – as is the Buddha or a supreme aspect of the Hindu deity – and the Mahamudra (‘The Great Seal’) which represents the indivisible purity of shuntaya to which all must aspire. Most characteristic, however, is the mandala, the macrocosmic/microcosmic diagram of the vastupurusha. Most arresting are the quasi-anthropomorphic/zoomorphic representations of primordial energy in

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.34a

the hierarchy of its manifestation whose ultimate elaboration is Tibetan. From the ultimate source, the Vajradara in the Buddhist scheme, flow five primal energies (Dhayani-Buddhas): Akshobhya, Amitabha and Amoghasiddhi, Ratnasambhava and Vairocana. These energize all the facets of animate existence whose infinite diversity, terrible and benign, is matched by a daemonic pantheon of spirits (yidam) in which prominence is assumed by the benign Avalokiteshvara (Lokeshvara) and his female couterpart, Tara, no less than by the ghastly Chakrasamvara, Mahakala or Yamantaka. In the elaboration of their fantastic iconography, most pervasive is the representation of the male energy in the embrace of shakti as passion is the 64

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

› 1 . 3 4 TA N T R I C I M A G E R Y : (a) Konarak, Surya Temple (mid-13th century), detail of base; (b) Khajuraho, Khandariya Temple (early 11th century), detail of mithuna panels.

1.34b

most potent of the primal impulses explicit in the conjuction of male ‘skill-in-means’ and female wisdom – the surest means to enlightenment. Sexual symbolism, naturally, embodies the concept of unity in duality – and is, therefore, natural to a religion which seeks release, salvation, in the ultimate unity of absolute truth, shuntaya.Thus 65

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

the age-old mithuna,the arch symbol of fertility,represents the definition of fecund opposites resolved in the issue of life. Thus too the Purusha was divided by desire into the progenitive duality which issues in the unity of macrocosm and microcosm and thus, again, the coitus of God and shakti issues in the supreme unity of grace.1.34 Indebted to the ancient Water Cosmology, Tantrism was also indebted to both major Mahayana schools: to the Madhyamika for its concept of Shuntaya, to the Yogacara for its mystical, entranced methods. Dependent on, but divergent from, the Mahayana, Tantrism was not incompatible with Hinduism and the ancient attitudes it incorporated – the erotic aspect of Shaivism in particular. Thus, though Buddhist and Hindu Tantrics differed over abstruse questions of ultimate meaning and, therefore, over the significance of an often-common symbolism, for both the primary object of the aroused emotion was a shakti descended from the Great Mother, the active agent of creation. Shared Tantrism was but one manifestation of the convergence of Buddhism with Hinduism. The Mahayana schools themselves, more and more abstruse in metaphysical speculation, ultimately subscribed to a pantheon hardly distinguishable from the Hindu when Avalokiteshvara was equated with Shiva as Shiva-Lokeshvara and the Buddha himself was recognized as the ninth avatar of Vishnu. Slowly the Buddhist intellectual elite and the laity were absorbed into the dominant Hindu culture and the final blow was dealt by the Muslim invaders who set themselves to extirpate monasticism and the outrageous practices which Tantrism encouraged them to believe it fostered. By then the Jains, too, had ceded most of their ground to the Hindus but managed to retain a precarious foothold in the mountains of the west and south even after their last major patrons had succumbed to the Muslims. 66

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

›1.35

B H U B A N E S H W A R : processional carriage of a

Hindu deity (ratha).

WO R S H I P The deity whose grace is invoked for salvation is worshipped in the form of an image or symbol sanctified to fit it for the god’s residence. As in the earliest native cults, worship is primarily the sacrifice of service and sustenance by the individual worshipper as he wills, or more regularly at the four principal states of the sun by the priest whose caste and consecration fit him to represent the community at large.The Hindus evolved the most elaborate ritual: like 67

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

a supreme personage, the deity incumbent in its image is awakened from the sleep of non-manifestation, greeted with flowers, accommodated, bathed, anointed, dressed, adorned, fed, honoured in accordance with the tradition of circumambulation, entertained with dancing, confined with his wife and paraded through the town in a car (ratha) on festival holidays.1.35 As worship (puja) is not congregational in practice, it would require the provision of little more than a cella (mulaprasada), a porch (praggriva) and perhaps a vestibule (antarala), to house the image and shelter the individual worshipper (pujari) or priest. However, beyond the sanctuary and a pavilion (mandapa) large enough for ritual dancing or banqueting are many other facilities. The temple is the centre of intellectual and artistic endeavors, promoting the development of painting, sculpture, architecture and the performing arts as well as philosophy and theology. As the nucleus of the community, as school, hostel, hospice and hospital, its expansion over the centuries catered for priests, poor and pupils as well as the bureaucracy sustaining its endowments, managing its estates, administering its charities and employing its servants. However, the conception of the Hindu temple goes far beyond mere practicalities. The temple is a place of pilgrimage. Ideally pilgrimage is to the holy waters at a spiritual ‘fording place’ (tirtha) providing purifying and regenerative passage through those waters as initiation to salvation: the temple is a tirtha and its natural site is by the sacred waters of a river – often, in practice, in the vicinity of the grove or pool of some time-honoured yaksha. In any event a tank is constructed to collect water for the obligatory ritual ablution. And water is ever-present symbolically: embellishment encompasses the full repertory of the Water Cosmology, especially in the portals whose succession symbolizes pas68

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

› 1 . 3 6 B A D A M I , capital of the Early Chalukyas from the 6th–8th centuries: (a, pages 70–71) general view with tank and temples, the upper Shivalaya prominent on the cliff above the remains of the fort (centre), excavated Temple III (extreme right), (b, page 74) Vishnu on the coils of Shesha at the end of Temple III’s portico.

69

sage through the ‘fording place’ to the new life generated in the sanctum.1.1. 1.36 As the house of the god, the theatre of the sacrifice of service and sustenance, the temple is a place of epiphany where the operation of the god’s grace, his descent from transcendence, is effected through the shakti. Thus its sanctum,penetrable only by the priest competent to invoke divine conjunction, is called ‘womb chamber’ (garbhagriha) because the interaction of shakti and deity, the gestation of grace, takes place there. The Buddhists set the precedent in creating or adapting caves as wombs of grace with mithunas conjoined at the portal but the conception achieved its climax in the penetration of the linga as the focus of devotion to Shiva.1.32a Though the theatre of grace rather than an altar rose from its base, the building of a temple was itself a sacrificial act earning the builder merit in accordance with the permanence of the work. As the Vedic ideal of the constitution of the Purusha still governed the exercise, the formula for sacred building (vastupurushamandala) remained the first concern of the Hindu science of architecture (vastushastra) and at all phases of construction the sanctity implicit in the forms is secured by strictly defined ritual. Indeed, the persistence of the Vedic ideal ensured a strong measure of consistency in the conception of the temple throughout the subcontinent, despite important regional differences – of which the broadest is not uncontroversially distinguished between the ‘Nagara’ of the north and the ‘Dravidian’ of the south. Though the mastery of masonry and the ability to handle widely differing hard and soft stone are keys to the development of the major schools of Hindu temple architecture, representation rather than structural innovation was always the main concern of Hindu builders. If the geometrical formula of the mandala provides the key to its

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

planning, the temple is constructed as the manifestation of the Purusha’s towering residence invested by the hierarchy of the gods in accordance with the mandala to which the sculpture provides the key. And differing conceptions of that manifestation motivated the evolution of the superstructural forms which define the two broad divisions in Indian temple architecture. Initially of superimposed slabs, the mass superimposed over the garbha-griha was first modelled on the multistorey prasada that formed the nucleus of the traditional residential palace pavilion or its monastic derivative (vimana) – the palace of the gods, the levels representing the stages of grace.1.9 This approach was to survive in the ‘Dravidian’ south where the storeys were marked by open terraces bordered with cell-like pavilions (and called vimana). In the north, ‘Nagara’ maturity achieved a series of progressively abstract permutations which reflect the imagery of the mountain – specifically Kailasa of Shiva or Vishnu’s Vaikuntha – encountered in the shastras from the very earliest reference to the superstructure of temples. Sustainer of Brahma, personification of Brahman, Shiva or Vishnu is now usually the living presence (jiva) in the symbol or image of the Brahamasthana – the garbha-griha. Personified as the consort of the dedicatee, the shakti motivates the jiva to emanation as divine grace to endow the devotee at the portal and to manifestation in blind doors (ghanadvaras) at the cardinal projections to its mass as the principal accessory aspects of deity (parshva devatas). Maturity was to accommodate many images in multiple recessions and projections but the essentials were the three persons of the trinity, avatars of Vishnu, faculties of Shiva, the shakti herself – or their symbols.1.31, 1.32 Hand in hand with the consequent development of the iconographic programme, which itself went hand in hand with the development of devotional Hinduism as it had for 72

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

the Mahayana, went the endowment of structural form with symbolic value. For Buddhists and Hindus alike – as, indeed, for the Jains too – the elements of the traditional timber structural system provide the basic armature not only of aesthetic unity but of shakti symbolism. Lotus and pot (padma and kumbha) informed the evolution of the socle from a simple stepped stylobate and the same motifs enriched the petrified trabeation: the tassellated binding which once protected timber posts from splitting was first translated into the kumbha and then into the pitcher/vase (kalasha) with trailing foliage, the ‘bowl of plenty’ (purnakalasha) – as we have seen at Ter, in anticipation of Mahayana Ajanta and Hindu Deogarh.1.29 The motif naturally finds its most significant place in the portal whose succession symbolizes passage through the ‘fording place’ to the new life generated in the garbha-griha. Thus the tirtha, the theatre of grace, the reconstituted Purusha, pulsating with the power of shakti, is infused with the regenerative essence of the waters throughout.1.1, 1.33

73

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

4 hindu empire and the fruits of dynastic rivalry

1.36b

The declining Kushanas were to cede most of their territory east of the Punjab to local powers and the lower Ganges basin, the eastern periphery of their empire, went to the Gupta, a Magadhan family of obscure origin. Its head,Chandra Gupta,assumed the Kushana title Maharajadiraja (Great King of Kings) in about 320 ce. Rivalling the Mauryas,his son and successor Samudra (c.335–376) reestablished Pataliputra as an imperial capital. It is unlikely that he extended direct control beyond the Ganges basin but to his dynasty’s ultimate cost he broke republican regimes in the Punjab.Chandra ii (376–415) – a great patron of art, like his father – ousted the last Shakas early in the 5th century and annexed western India. Meanwhile, the Pallavas of Kanchipuram had risen at 74

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

the expense of the Ikshvakus of Andhradesha and went on to eclipse the Cholas who were in contention with the Pandyas further south. All these powers were beyond the reach of Chandra Gupta but he effected a marriage alliance with the northern-Deccani Vakataka ruler. This completed a network of contractual relationships to secure the empire’s south flank throughout the reign of Kumara (415–54). Knowing a longer period of peace and consequent prosperity than any other ruler in the subcontinent since Ashoka, Kumara Gupta presided over the maturity of one of the greatest phases in Indian cultural history: painting, sculpture, music and literature were brought to a degree of excellence which persisted under the great emperor’s successors and their contemporaries to set the standard for later ages.1.31 Moreover, Hinduism naturally flourished under the first great Hindu dynasty and to serve the developing trinitarian faith the basic forms of the temple were stated in most refined terms. The Buddhists, who had initiated the process of temple development, certainly furthered it in tandem with the Hindus – especially in the domains of the Vakatakas where they continued to enjoy rich mercantile support.However, denied official patronage since the Ishvakus had embraced Shaivism at much the same time as the Kushanas were succumbing to the Gupta, the Sangha began to compromise itself with Hinduism. Undermined by protracted fighting with new tribal invaders led by the Huns, by the end of the 5th century the Gupta had lost control over their clients. Despite brave attempts, no lasting empire was to emerge in the north for several centuries, though in the Deccan by the end of the 6th century the ‘Early’ Chalukyas of Aihole and Badami had built a considerable one on the ruin of the Vakatakas, the rump of whose state in the north-west of 75

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.37b

1.37a

the peninsula had fallen to the Kalachuris of Maharash- › 1 . 3 7 G U P TA B U D D H I S T W O R K S : (a) Sanchi, tra about the middle of the century. The latter were the Temple XVII (c. 450): view from north-west; (b) standing Buddha (5th century; New York, Metropolitan residual legatees of the Gupta in the periphery of the Museum). defunct empire but the Chalukyas were to be responsible The flat-roofed cella (mulaprasada) and porch for the first flowering of the Hindu architectural and (praggriva) are bound by a continuous architrave and based on a simple stepped stylobate. The columns still sculptural traditions beyond the Gupta domain.1.36, 1.37 clearly conform to the Mauryan type, suggesting that

G U P TA F O U N DAT I O N S As the temple is the palace of the god, it is composed of the two major elements found in the palace of the king: audience mandapa and residential prasada.And,like many others, the Indians modelled their approach to worshipping the god on the way they would honour the king. The essence is distilled in India’s oldest intact freestanding temple. Built c. 450 at Sanchi in finely dressed masonry, it is hardly different in form to the primitive arca-griha of Sirkap and, like the simplest of Roman temples, it consists of a square cella for the deity preceded by a little portico to shelter the worshipper.1.37 76

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

this is the oldest of a series of similar works, including the temple at Tigawa and several at Udayagiri (near Sanchi), in which the tassel-like member of the capital has become a ‘bowl of plenty’.

Gupta inscriptions testify to extensive building activity but few of its products have survived time and the Muslims: Temple xvii at Sanchi and the Kankali Devi at Tigawa are the prime examples marking the advent of ashlar. Similar in conception but part-excavated, partstructural, a series of shrines at Udayagiri – near Vidisha where the craftsmen employed by the Buddhist Sangha at neighbouring Sanchi came from – are the earliest datable Gupta works: one was inscribed under Chandra Gupta ii early in the 5th century and another records the emperor’s visit to the site.The next phase, from the later 5th century, states the principal themes to be developed over the next half millennium of Indian temple architecture. After the emergence of the image cella with portico in durable masonry – not for the Buddhists alone – the development of Indian temple architecture is in principle very simple: the augmentation of the space for audience and the addition of a superstructure over the hall representing the many-storeyed prasada of the gods in terms derived from the residence of the king. The process was parallel to that through which the original simple stupa form was taken under the Parthians and Kushanas but the contribution of the Buddhists to it has largely been lost to the depredations of the Muslims in northern India. However, the elaboration on the theme in horizontal sequence, if not in elevation, is first apparent in the vihara courts and image chambers excavated for the sangharama in the Western Ghats.

E XC AVAT I O N The triumph of Mahayana inspired a great revival of activity in the north-west Deccan. With funds supplied largely by their tradional supporters, the merchants of the Arabian Sea ports, the heterodox sects undertook new excavation at the old Hinayana sites, notably Ajanta and 77

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

› 1 . 3 8 T H E M A H A YA N A C H A I T YA - G R I H A : (a, b) Ajanta, chaitya-griha XIX (c. 470), exterior and interior; (c, d) Ellora X, Vishvakarma (7th century), interior and exterior. Activity at Ajanta revived under the later Vakatakas when relations with the Guptas were at their closest, particularly under King Harisena (460–78) when most of the huge cost in money and labour was expended. Inscriptions have been interpreted to indicate that activity began towards the middle of the site, west of the early nucleus (IX, X, VIII, XII, XIII), with the excavation of a great new chaitya-griha (XIX) and associated viharas (XV–XX, XVI and XVII bear inscriptions relating to Harisena and one of those in XVII refers to XIX). The activity culminated in the unfinished series of viharas XXI–XXIX at the western end of the site, including the second Mahayana chaitya-griha (XXVI, which has an inscription datable to the last years of the dynasty). Meanwhile, the series had been extended eastwards from the original group with VI, VII and I–V.

1.38a

Aurangabad, and at entirely new sites, notably Ellora and Bagh. The major effort was concentrated on the transformation of the vihara into a place of worship as well as residence, as in the north. Chaitya-grihas are consequently rare but the last of the type,at Ajanta and Ellora,are sumptuous both in Water Cosmology symbolism and in their anthropomorphic iconography.1.38, 1.39, 1.30, 1.23 1.38b

78

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.38d

1.38c

At Ellora work began under the patronage of the early Chalukyas about the middle of the 5th century with a series of viharas (I–V); a second series (VI–XII), which included the last chaitya-griha to be excavated in India, seems to have terminated with the defeat of Pulakeshin II by the Pallava Narasimha-varman in 642 though it is possible that work continued on the threestorey Tin Tal (XII) until the end of the century.

A p o t h e o s i s i n e xc a va t i o n The chaitya-griha as a building type was superseded by the vihara shrine before the completion of the latest examples at Ajanta and Ellora but its culmination was magnificent. Ajanta

XIX, XXVI

and the so-called Vish-

vakarma at Ellora have fully developed entrance courts flanked by chapels and subsidiary chambers. The single entrance of the former is sheltered by an elegant portico but Ajanta XXVI and the Vishvakarma, each with triple entrances, have full verandahs across their façades, that at Ellora returning around the contiguous sides of the court. Instead of the former representation of obsolete wooden structural features in obsessive detail, images of the Buddha and bodhisttavas cover much of the façades and a general anti-architectonic tendency affects even the treatment of portal and window frame. This is well typified by the fate of the lunette which had dominated the traditional façade: increasingly obscured below decorative elaboration as the series progresses, in the two Ajanta examples it has grown ears and a top-knot while at Ellora it is hardly recognizable at all in

79

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.39a

its drastic reduction to a leathery trefoil form, revealing a screen wall, ironically enough in imitation timber. The supports, outside and inside, are removed from the primitive prototypes by convoluted elaboration: the shafts of the columns are manysided and bear floral or even figural ornament in varying degrees of relief below richly sculptured representations of wooden brackets. The kumbha member of the Mauryan capital is often turned upright and takes on the time-honoured significance of the purnakalasha. Alternatively it is a ribbed cushion-like form that begins to suggest the amalaka already encased beneath the abacus at Bedsa.

1.39b @ 1:500

The richly tiered votive stupa is now often cushion-shaped too and the anti-architectonic tendency is apparent in the frames of the varied representations of the Buddha applied to it: in Ajanta XIX the image stands protective below a makara-torana; in Ajanta

XXVI

the Buddha is enthroned

like a chakravartin in the sumptuous mandapa of a multi-storey prasada; at Ellora in the Vishvakarma the Buddha is similarly enthroned within a mandala of bodhisattvas. The process of converting the vihara into a shrine, which in the Ghats may be traced back at least to the Gautamiputra at Nasik,1.27b advanced with the introduction of a rectangular shrine-chamber as an inner sanctum beyond a vihara-like hall with surrounding cells and portico. The main lines of development were concerned with provision for circumambulation and the distinction of the shrine-chamber, often with a vestibule, from a hall approximating the nine-square formula which was later to 1.39c

80

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

mark the planning of the freestanding temple. Such a hall, preceded by a portico and with a vestibule before the shrine chamber opposite the entrance, is characteristic of the early Mahayana vihara shrines of Ellora and Ajanta. Columns are permutations of those encountered in the shrines, often with ‘bowl of plenty’ (purnakalasha) capitals. On the columns defining the particularly sumptuous nine-square hall at Aurangabad, however, amalaka and purnakalasha are fused and on those framing the door to the sanctuary the bulbous amalaka is combined with the opening padma. Like the frames of the stupa images, shrine portals are occasionally anti-architectonic but the prasada motif is most common, representing a ›1.39

THE

WESTERN

M A H A YA N A

VIHARA

S H R I N E : (a, b) Aurangabad III (probably late-5th cen-

palace audience hall through which the deity was seen enthroned. Con-

tury), section and plan; (c) Ajanta XVI, portal; (d) Ellora II comitant iconographic development promoted the Buddha from the (c. 500), interior. preacher of Sarnath, seated cross-legged, to chakravartin.

1.39d

81

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.40a

Under the vassals of the Gupta and their successors, Hindus and Jains quickly followed the Mahayana example at several sites in the north-west Deccan, notably Elephanta and Jogeshvari, Ellora and Badami.1.40 The earliest Hindu efforts repeat the latest Buddhist forms. Multijamb portals incorporating a prasada lintel generally play their now familiar part: they rise from Ganga and Yamuna often joined by dvara-palas before garbha-grihas though porticoes usually have powerful independent guardians. Elaboration of both the purnakalasha and padmakumbha type of supports appealed to the Hindus and Jains no less than to Buddhists but square blocks

1.40b

82

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

› 1 . 4 0 E L L O R A : (a) Vihara II; (b) Dashavatara, section; (c) site plan. The Hindus seem to have joined the Buddhists under Kalachuri patronage about the middle of the 6th century (probably starting with the Rameshvara, XXI, well to the north of the Buddhists) and had achieved a first maturity in the magnificent Dhumarlenya (XXIX). The Dashavatar (XV), which follows the Buddhist Tin Tal (XII) in general disposition but with two storeys, may have been begun for the Buddhists about the same time (second half of the 7th century) and been commandeered by the Hindus: it was inscribed by the Rashtrakutas after the middle of the 8th century, about the time when their King Krishna I (756–73) commissioned the great Kailasanatha Temple (XVI) with which the Hindu series culminated. The Jains added their series of five (XXX–XXXIV) at the northern extremity of the site in the 9th century.

1.40c @ 1:10,000

83

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

supporting simple brackets (potika), sometimes with fig- › 1 . 4 1 E L E P H A N TA , G R E AT S H I V A T E M P L E , attributed to the ‘Early’ Kalachuries, late-6th century: ural struts, are common in Hindu rock-cut architecture. (a, b) interior and plan. As the Hindus became surer in meeting their own non- The main axis, asserted in the treatment of the ‘roof’ monastic needs, the centralized pattern of cells about a beams, runs through a rectangular hall from the Nandi statue and the entrance (west) to a four-faced shrine ‘court’ was suppressed, the problem of circumambulation chamber (east); the north–south axis, depending on about one dominant shrine opposite the entrance was the columns dividing the portico and vestibule, leads resolved and a sophisticated relationship was developed from a southern entrance to the Trimurti. between the shrine – with its ambulatory – and the increasingly impressive hall. At Elephanta and in the Dhumarlenya at Ellora (xxix), the culminating achievements of the early phase of Hindu excavation, two axes were reconciled – canonically at Ellora, where the depth of the rock was adequate for the main axis to terminate in the garbha-griha, uncanonically to stupendous effect at Elephanta.1.40, 1.41 1.41b @ 1:1500

1.41a

84

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.42a

C L A S S I C S T RU C T U R E The maturity of the Gupta structural tradition depended on a sophisticated balance between unity and diversity in whole and in part – as in the classical everywhere. For the themes stated before the end of the 5th century, and richly to be varied over the next five centuries, the base is provided by the elaboration of the stylobate into a multitiered socle enlivened with mouldings symbolic of the Water Cosmology with particular reference to the sacred objects immured in the foundations. Over and within this plays the differentiation of planes vertically, first with a central projection to each exposed side, then with intermediate ones: the principal doorframe (dvara) and the blind doors (ghanadvaras) which repeated it in the projecting bays of the exposed sides, became the elaborate proscenia for the deity’s display. Above all are the striated zones of a superstructure developed in counterpoint, both vertically and horizontally, to assert the dominance of the sanctum in full-scale representation of the divine prasada. In so far as the accidents of survival testify, this early phase culminates at Deogarh in Malwa.1.31, 1.42

› 1 . 4 2 D E O G A R H , D A S H A V ATA R A T E M P L E , usually assigned to the 6th century on stylistic grounds but bearing an inscription which has been attributed to Govinda Gupta, Viceroy of Malwa, for his brother the emperor Kumara in the mid-5th century: (a) Gajendramoksha panel (Vishnu Narayana saving the elephant king from savaging by the Naga king and queen D a s h a va t a ra of the waters) from the north front, (b) plan, (c) general The broad podium, with steps at the cardinal points, carries a five-shrine view from south-west.

(panchayatana) complex. The podium and the socle of the cella have a simple range of mouldings that persisted throughout the history of the Hindu temple, despite later augmentation and elaboration with lotiform motifs in particular: the work here well represents the earliest and most pervasive formula for applying Water Cosmology symbols to the elaboration of the primitive stylobate. The main floor slab was given a rounded top, presumably to protect it (a form called khura after its supposed resemblance to a hoof ); above that is a recession with a bold torus (significantly called kumbha in reference to the shakti pot of sacred water upon which the work was founded) and finally an eave-like dripcourse (kapota) which may have been intended to recall the tortoise also immured in the foundations. 1.42b @ 1:500

85

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.42c

Single projections to the cella walls, accommodating the magnificent five-jamb portal and the blind doors with their splendid reliefs (including the Narayana to the south), are embellished with an Order in which the ‘bowl of plenty’ replaces the Mauryan capital throughout. The architectonic element in the sanctum portal, representing the mandapa of audience, relates to the conception of the whole as the divine prasada – or vimana. The theme is developed to full scale in the three dimensions of the superstructure: graded tiers of gavakshas, projecting in response to the frontispieces, accommodate the gods in their hierarchy. The work survives as seminal: it may not have been completed until the opening of the 6th century but most of the essentials were present in the 5th-century Parvati temple at Nachna Kutara.

The introduction of an upper shrine chamber facilitated the development of shikara construction by greatly reducing mass and weight. It was a feature of such large-scale works as the Mahayana shrines of the Buddhist Holy Land which took the elaboration of the primitive image86

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

›1.43

B H I TA R G A O N , B R I C K T E M P L E , 5th century: engraved elevation (ASI). The structure is much restored but the square cella with axial projections to the mass and the superstructure with its graded tiers of gavakshas were essential to the original conception. The resident deities were represented in terracotta relief panels.

›1.44

SHRINES

OF

THE

BUDDHIST

H O LY

L A N D : (a, b) Bodh Gaya, Mahabodhi Temple (founded

6th century, much restored not least by the Burmese in the 19th century), engraved view before 19th-century restoration, general view from the north-east, shrine portal in compound (late-Gupta period); (c, d) Nalanda (5th–12th century), site plan and detail of stupa revetment (London, British Museum).

1.44a

87

1.44b

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

shrine to rarely exceeded heights. They have largely been lost to the depradations of the Muslims but the Bodhi Temple at Gaya remains the prime example of the fully developed superstructure as multi-storey prasada.1.8, 1.44 Conceived in the 6th century to house an image of the enthroned Buddha in place of the empty throne on the site of Buddha’s enlightenment, that is much restored but the contemporary brick Vishnu Temple at Bhitargaon survives in its original, if much eroded, form.1.43 Principal pilgrimage sites of the Buddhist holy land Though subject to many restorations, the temple at Bhitargaon still resembles the building described by the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Hiuen Tsang in the 7th century: ‘to the east of the Bodhi tree was a temple above 49 metres high and with a front breadth at the base of more than twenty paces. This temple was made of bricks and coated with lime; it had tiers of niches with gold images; its four walls were adorned with exquisite carvings of pearl strings and genii; on the roof was a gilt copper amalaka; connected with the east side of the temple were three lofty halls one behind another.’ The principal image chamber, preceded by a prominent porch, is uncharacteristically built on arches. The zone of circumambulation around the cella is reflected in the open terrace above a second cella. The multi-storey prasada clearly provided the model for the superstructure, each storey dominated by a dormer which penetrates the zone of the one 1.44c @ 1:40,000

above. At the corners of the terrace small replicas of the main shikhara were constructed during the most recent restoration, apparently by analogy with the remains of the temple at Nalanda of which Hiuen Tsang wrote: ‘in size and ornamentation and in its image of the Buddha this temple resembles the one at Bodh Gaya’. It is not clear whether the Burmese influenced or were influenced by the stupa which crowns the edifice with its chattravali in the form of a ringed cone: it predates the latest restoration but matches the Burmese type. At Nalanda, the principal Buddhist university in the homeland of the faith throughout the Mahayana era, the extensive complex was richly 1.44d

88

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

›1.45

THE

BUDDHIST

VIHARA

SHRINE

A B R O A D : (a–c) Lhasa, Jokhang Temple (founded

c.645), plan, shrine portal and internal colonnade. The first building on the site, from which the settlement at Lhasa developed and which remains the nucleus of the town, is attributed to Queen Brikuti, the Nepalese wife of Tibet’s first great king, Songtsen Gampo, who favoured Buddhism. As Indian builders were then introducing Indian forms to the queen’s homeland, it is assumed that they were called to her adopted seat to build the premier monument of Buddhism there. The Jokhang Temple has been much renovated and extended since its foundation, first under King Thisong Detsen (755–97) who made Buddhism the state religion. Except for the 13th-century amplification to the portal, the plan certainly follows 6th- and early 7thcentury developments at Ajanta, Ellora and Nalanda: the significance of the last site for the transmission of Buddhism suggest that Queen Brikuti’s workers came from the Buddhist holy land of Bihar. The timber columns and door frames of the innermost cloister are generally accepted as the oldest wooden architectural elements to survive in Tibet: their relationship to the works of the late-Gupta era (6th–7th century) is not inconsistent with their ascription either to the first campaign of work on the Jokhang or to the augmentations of Thisong Detsen a century later.

endowed by the Buddhist Palas. With increasing formality as development progressed from south to north, largely in the 7th century, the four major temples address nine viharas across the axial route. The two basic storeys and attic of the most substantial survivor, Temple III with its rich articulation of pilasters and images niches, frame the denuded bulk of a massive brick tower but the corner towers seem to have supported stupas. The viharas are of the regular courtyard type with a central shrine opposite the entrance.

1.45a @ 1:2000

1.45b

89

1.45c

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.46a

C H A LU K YA N E X P E R I M E N TS I N S T RU C T U R E In the century after the apogee of the Gupta there were doubtless many areas of experiment in the structure of the Hindu temple but the accidents of history have left us nothing earlier or more comprehensive than the Early Chalukyan exercises at Aihole. While the Gupta temple evolved from the rectangular arca-griha familiar from Buddhist sites at important centres all over India, Hindu builders beyond Gupta domains seem initially to have been at least as interested in the apsidal form. However, Chalukyan architects were preoccupied with more complex plans and forms than Hinduism is known yet to have produced and as Hindu image-worship was still comparatively new, its ritual still evolving, it is not surprising that the mainstream of their experiments took its departure from the Buddhist vihara shrine, itself still evolving.1.46 1.46c

90

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.46b

The Chalukyas at Aihole The Durga Temple is the masterpiece of the apsidal form: its cella encloses both hall and semi-circular sanctum with ambulatory and is itself embraced by a colonnaded gallery providing a second ambulatory. The form descends directly from the Buddhist chaitya-griha: the immediate 1.46d @ 1:500

precedent was set in the mid-5th century Hindu temple at Chikka Mahakuta near Badami where, perhaps for the first time, the provision of an enclosed ambulatory and a dominant vertical element were experimented with together. The Lad Khan – like the earliest of the Kontigudi group – is experimental in form, reflecting the ‘nine-square’ Buddhist vihara type, if not recalling the age-old form of the village meeting hall. Beyond a portico of twelve columns, the ‘nine-square’ hall is expanded: two series of pillars define galleries and a central ‘court’ over which rises a tower with a sanc-

1.46e

›1.46

A I H O L E T E M P L E S (dating is controversial

tuary chamber; the main shrine interrupts the outer gallery, to which light

but the predominance of dedication to Vishnu in the is admitted through screened windows, but in compensation the inner examples cited here suggests the 6th/7th centuries when that was the sectarian affiliation of the rulers): gallery forms a continuous ambulatory about the central space.

91

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.46g @ 1:500

1.46f

Unwilling to move the garbha-griha to the centre of the main hall, where it would have left space only for circumambulation, but realizing the illogicality of placing it to one side, where it interrupted circumambu-

(a–e) ‘Durga’ (probably originally dedicated to the sungod Surya c. 600 but sometimes dated up to a century later), views from the south-west and south-east, ambulatory, plan and detail of main portal; (f, g) Lad Khan (converted for Shiva but originally Vaishnavite and manifestly more primitive than the Durga yet sometimes considered to be its contemporary), overview and plan; (h) Narayana, plan; (i, j) Hucchimallaggudi, plan and view from the east; (k) Hucchippayagudi, ceiling slab with Vishnu Narayana; (l, m) Meguti (dated from an inscription of Pulakeshin II in his year corresponding to 634 and clearly the most sophis-

lation, the Chalukyas seem simultaneously to have projected a three-bay mulaprasada from the back of a square hall with internal ambulatory – the basic vihara shrine type – and to have extended the ambulatory around both hall and garbha-griha – a fully rectangular version of the

1.46h @ 1:500

chaitya-griha type: the Narayana represents the former, the Huccchimallaggudi the latter. Additional space was gained in the first type by interposing a vestibule between hall and garbha-griha while in the second

1.46j @ 1:500

1.46i

92

1.46k

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.46l

type a vestibule was formed by partitioning off a raised area between the garbha-griha and the inner pair of hall piers. Naturally, the alternatives admitted of variation and ultimate synthesis: this is the significance of Pulakeshin II’s Meguti, the earliest securely dated structural temple in India but the last great work undertaken at Aihole before disaster from 1.46m @ 1:500

the south overwhelmed the regime. Separated by a vestibule, the

ticated Early Chalukyan exercise in planning), plan and entrance hall and mulaprasada are distinct nine-square blocks but the view from the south; (n) Kadamba-style temple in the latter is subdivided to form an ambulatory about a central shrine. Galaganatha group.

The earliest socles at the site are devoid of the kumbha element but the later works have a faceted moulding in the recession between the khura and kapota. Naves are typically flat-roofed and clerestory-lit, aisles have sloping roofs like the Lad Khan and pilasters are also of the Lad Khan type. The pillars, reproducing the main elements of a timber structural system despite their massiveness and occasional ornament, are usually monolithic, square in section, without bases but with simple bracket capitals. Essentially architectonic, like those of the early Guptas, sanctuary portals sometimes represent single-storey halls, sometimes multi-storey 1.46n

93

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

prasadas either with continuous galleries or with terraces bordered by miniature square and rectangular cells. The form of the part reflects the whole: the Lad Khan and Meguti apart, the norm is a multi-layered superstructure of the prasada type which, though essentially representational, signals a tendency towards abstraction in the interlocking of the miniature niches to produce a mesh-like pattern in the centre and in the exaggeration of the amalaka finials over the vestigial cells at the sides.

The somewhat abstract prasada type of superstructural composition (shikara) extensively represented at Aihole must once have proliferated throughout northern India but Muslim iconoclasm has left little trace of the evolution of the form from its first appearances at Deogarh and Bhitargaon. Beyond Aihole, indeed, there are few survivors between isolated Chandravati in the west and Sirpur or Bhubaneshwar in the east: the Parashurameshvara at the latter site, contemporary with the Aihole Meguti, is the best preserved.1.47

1.47a

94

1.47b @ 1:500

› 1 . 4 7 B H U B A N E S H W A R , PA R A S H U R A M E S H V A R A , mid-7th century: (a) exterior from the southwest, (b) plan, (c) eastern ghanadvara. The early Orissan builders were clearly indebted to the Guptas for the decorative detail, base and doorframe composition and probably for the major constituent elements as well. There is no developed relationship between the hall and cella: incoherently articulated, indeed, the former is juxtaposed at the expense of the latter’s embellishment. Though there is some advance in the process of assimilating the shikara elements into a more homogenous composition in which the original prasada prototype is less literally represented than it was in the early examples at Aihole, the variations in plane are not fully reflected in the walls below.

1.47c

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.48b

1.48a

Also represented among the early superstructures at Aihole is the superimposition of eave-mouldings (kapota) and recessed bands of miniature piers and brackets, precisely repeating the flat slab roofs and clerestories of hall naves. This apparently primitive form, which doubtless derives from the vernacular response to the shedding of rain, is generally associated with the Kadambas of the central Karnatic coast though a related form, with pitched roofs instead of kapotas, seems first to have been adopted by the Maitrakes in Kathiawar (c. 470–748).1.48 There were peripheral northern traditions governed by similar considerations, as we shall see.

1.48c

1.48d

›1.48

V E R N A C U L A R V A R I A N T S : (a) Bileshwar (Gujarat), Vishnu Temple (early 7th century); (b, c) Kadvar, Varaha Temple aedicules (early 8th century?); (d) Bhatkal (Karnataka), Narayana Temple (17th

95

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.48f

1.48e

1.48g

1.48h

1.48i

96

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.48j

century); (e–k) Kerala, timber models of the largely timber Vaishnavite and Shaivite shrines in the sacred compound at Tirukkulasekharapuram (Kozhikode, Pazhassirajah Museum), Trivandrum, Mahadeva Temple, Padmanabhapuram, Royal Palace of the Maharajas of Travencore, mandapa, prasada and the women’s quarters. Pitched roofs with wide eaves and gabled dormers, elaborate brackets and scale-like tiles are usually superimposed over prominent ‘clerestoreys’ in Kerala: as in other lush areas stone did not generally displace timber and the buildings are not often old.

1.48k

97

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.49a

› 1 . 49

T I R U C H I R I PA L L I ,

provincial seat of the early Pallavas: (a, b) Lalitanikura mandapa exterior and interior with the relief of Shiva Gangadhara (Shiva receiving the Ganges in his hair for its diversion to earth, see 1.33) attributed to the Pallava king Mahendravarman I (c. 580–630).

1.49b

5 the south and the great dravidian vimana The Pallavas of Kanchipuram, dominant in the south meanwhile, presented themselves as rivals to the Chalukyas – and hardly inferior to them in aesthetic achievement.1.32, 1.33 The protracted conflict of these two powers was indecisive as force and fortune were equally matched, but it fostered interaction between Aryan and non-Aryan cultures. Finally exhausted by the forces of Islam pressing in with Arab traders from the west, the Chalukyas succumbed to the Rashtrakutas, their former vassals, in the middle of the 8th century. The Pallavas lasted more than a century longer.

PA LL AVA N E X P E R I M E N TS While the Hindu excavators in the north-west Deccan followed the tradition established there by the Buddhists working in soft sandstone, hard rock was the lot of their 98

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

›1.50

southern contemporaries who worked on new sites for the Pallavas, the Pandyas and their neighbours. Their works are smaller and weightier than most northern ones, at first much less sculpted and with simple pillars of square and octagonal blocks supporting elementary brackets. The basic alternative plan forms followed throughout the whole course of Pallava excavation were evolved under Mahendra-varman i (c. 580–630) presumably in accordance with the age-old timber structural tradition: a hall, fronted by pillars in antis and occasionally subdivided by corresponding interior pillars, serves one or more shrine chambers; to face east or west these are cut into the back or sides according to the configuration of the rock on the site.1.49 Mahendra-varman’s successor, Narasimha-varmam i Mamalla (630–68) – conqueror of the Chalukyas – took excavation to its southern apogee at his new port of Mamallapuram (Mahaballipuram).1.50 Beyond this splendid achievement, however, Mamalla initiated a new departure in carving temples wholly out of freestanding

M A H A B A L L I P U R A M , E X C A V AT E D W O R K S

7 T H C E N T U R Y : (a) single-shrine Varaha-mandapa, exterior; (b) triple-shrine Mahishamardini-mandapa, exterior; (c) Krishna-mandapa, interior. Most of the temples excavated for Narasimha-varman I at Mahaballipuram follow the alternative planning precedents set by Mahendra-varman’s architects but the major elements are fully elaborated representations of structural prototypes with increasingly sumptuous supports. Socles now generally consist of a plinth, a recessed zone with faceted kumuda and a projecting slab, representing the floor, rather than the eave moulding (kapota) encountered in the north. A permutation of the padma-kumbha type of support incorporating a tapering polygonal shaft, festooned and with faceted capital, appears at first based on a square block, later on a seated lion (vyala). A frieze often relieves the cornice and later over both hall and garbha-griha the eaves are crowned by a miniature prasada terrace. In the greatest works, the hall and even the interior of the garbha-griha are embellished with iconic reliefs of unsurpassed quality.

O F T H E E A R LY

1.50a

99

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.50b

1.50c

100

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.51a

›1.51

MAHABALLIPURAM,

F R E E S TA N D I N G

W O R K S : (a) general view of the main group of ‘rathas’

from the north with (left to right) Draupadi, Arjuna, Bhima and Dharmaraja (mid-7th century); (b–e) section, plan, elevation and exterior of Dharmaraja Ratha (with Bhima Ratha left); (f ) south-west view of the isolated Pidari Ratha; (g, pages 102–103, h–l), Shore Temple, general view from the west, the Shiva linga and Someskands relief (the god, his shakti Uma and their son Skanda/Subrahmanya) in the eastern sanctuary, Vishnu reclining on Shesha in the original western sanctuary, vyala, and view from east showing gopura.

1.51f

101

1.51b–d @ 1:1000

boulders on the outskirts of his seaside seat. These ‘rathas’ seem to have been the earliest freestanding stone temples in the domains of the Pallava.Their example was to be followed elsewhere throughout India but at Mahaballipuram

1.51e

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

excavation was to be superseded by construction under Narshimha-varaman ii Rajasimha (700–28): his Shore Temple there initiated the seminal series of Pallava structures developed at the dynastic capital, Kanchipuram, from the Kailasanatha to Vaikuntha-perumal.1.51, 1.52 T h e e vo l u t i o n o f t h e Pa l l a va v i m a n a The ratha series begins with the single-storey Draupadi, an elegant reconstruction of a simple thatched shrine. The Arjuna next, reproducing a square two-storey vihara vimana, is prophetic of the main line of Dravidian development first furthered in the three-storey Dharmaraja (‘righteous king’) and the isolated Pidari Ratha: in the former, unfinished, two halls

1.51h

and a solid octagonal cupola are superimposed over a miniature square apadana with shallow porticoes inset on three sides and projecting to form the entrance from the west: the latter is similar but the plan is oblong. On each of the upper terraces there is room for circumambulation between the parapet cells and the central hall. The Bhima – an unfinished clerestory-lit hall on an elongated apsidal plan – stands before the Dharmaraja in the traditional relationship of mandapa to prasada: reproduction of the structural forms represented in the early Buddhist reliefs could hardly be closer. 1.51j

The rathas carefully imitate timber structures with the brackets, joists, rafters and cross-beams required in the originals but hardly in stone con-

1.51k

1.51i

104

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.51l

struction and certainly not in monolithic sculpture. They incorporate the sculptural vyala form of column but not the architectonic socle elaborated in the excavated works, with a faceted kumbha from the outset and later khura and kapota as well. Above all they mark the appearance of the characteristic southern vimana modelled on the residential form developed for the multi-storey vihara. The two vimanas of the Shore Temple are the earliest large-scale structural examples of the type. Containing a square inner sanctum (garbhagriha) with porch, each is articulated with pilasters recalling the timber prototype, like the rathas, though the rhythm is somewhat irregular: as no attempt was made to impose the logic of timber structure on the plan, their profile is markedly steeper than that of the Dharmaraja Ratha. They rise from among subsidiary shrines in a precinct with a gate which

105

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

provides the prototype for the monumental entrance (gopura) which was to be such an important feature of the southern temple – indeed the development of the enclosed complex, responding to the southern elaboration of Hindu temple life, began here. At Kanchipuram, the Pallavan capital, the later great works are even richer than the Shore Temple but also more regular and monumental. In the Kailasantha a simplified version of the Arjuna Ratha serves for the

›1.52

KANCHIPURAM: (a–e) Kailasanatha (founded by Rajasimha towards the end of his reign and furthered by his successor, Mahendra-varman III, c. 720–28): plan with (1) entrance gate (gopura) into main cell-bordered compound, (2) original detached hall, (3) later link hall, (4) vimana; general view from the north-east, gopura, details of hall and vimana; (f–i) Vaikunthaperumal (probably founded by Parameshvara-varman II, c. 728–31 and completed by

Shiva shrines which back on to the prakara. In contrast, elongated roofs developing the Bhima form cover the more substantial shrines on the main axes of the vimanas and the portals – which develop the gopura pro-

4

3

2

1

1.52a @ 1:500

1.52c

1.52b

106

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.52d

107

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.52f

1.52e

totype of the Shore Temple. Nine subsidiary shrines are integrated with the main vimana and a hall, originally detached, was later joined to it. The vimana has four storeys, like the main one of the Shore Temple, but the incorporation of an inner ambulatory gives a broader base to the pyramidal gradations. That advantage was further realized in the Vaikunthaperumal which has a double ambulatory at ground level, beyond the attached hall, and a single one in the first storey. After the Dharmaraja Ratha, the Pallavas seem to have preferred elegance to monumentality, and the ornamental detail is comparatively rich. The tendency towards floridity, marked at the Kailasanatha, stems from the process of symbolic elaboration initiated at the Shore Temple, for example by the replacement of the main rectangular plinth-slab with a generous padma. Most of the Kailasanatha’s columns and pilasters are

1.52g @ 1:500

lion based, moreover, but at the Vaikuntha the zoomorphic form is reserved to emphasize the main rathikas of the vimana and for the cloister colonnade attached to the prakara.

108

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

Nandi-varman II, c. 731–96), plan, section and view from north-east cloister and vimana detail; (j) Matanggeshvara, entrance front .

1.52h

1.52i

As impressively monumental as the principal masses of the Kailasanatha, but more fully integrated in plan and less hectic in detail, the Vaikuntha Perumal of Kanchi was the last great achievement of the Pallavas before the arrival of the Chalukya king Vikramaditya ii and his conquering army. When the Pallavas reasserted themselves, they returned to floridity. The balance between elegance and monumentality redressed by Rajasimha’s architects impressed Vikramaditya ii, as a Chalukyan inscription at Kanchi relates, and it is tempting to believe that the architects of the Vaikuntha Perumal were those known to have been taken off in the victor’s train. The contrast between his works and those of his predecessors is striking. 1.52j

109

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

S T RU C T U R E S O F T H E R E S TO R E D C H A LU K YA S Though the Meguti at Aihole was not finished until the dynasty recovered in the period immediately after Vikramaditya i (c. 655–81) had ousted the Pallavas, the inscriptions of the restored dynasty relate to building activity mainly at Badami (the new political capital) and at Pattadakal (the major cult centre). The Badami works include the Upper, Lower and Malegitti Shivalaya Temples on the spur of rock behind the town to the north, the Bhuthanatha and Lakulisha on the lakeside below and the Mahakuteshvara just outside the town. Both the alternatives evolved at Aihole are represented but the Meguti seems to have been the starting point for the architects of Pattadakal. Of some ten temples there, four great Shaivite foundations are dominant: the Papanatha, which follows the prasada superstructural precedents set at Aihole; and the Sangameshvara, Virupaksha and Mallikarjuna which take up the southern theme first stated in the Malegitti works at Badami.1.36, 1.53, 1.54

› 1 . 5 3 B A D A M I , M A L E G I T T I S H I V A L A YA : (a–c) elevation, section and plan. The plans of both the Malegitti and Bhutanatha derive from the Aihole Narayana type – in contrast to those of the Upper Shivalaya and Lakulisha which follow the Huchchimallagudi alternative. As in the Meguti and many Pallavan works, outer walls are articulated with pilasters of the padma-kumbha type but unlike the Maguti, the Malegitti tends towards centralized articulation. Socles recall the Meguti form – and, indeed, the Dharmaraja Ratha of Mahaballipuram – but with a cyma-recta khura and a frieze of iconic reliefs between the kumuda and kapota. In general the earliest Chalukyan vimana superstructures are heavier, less supple, than the Pallavan prototype – though the differentiation of the parts is at its clearest in the Malegitti and the Mahakuteshvara at Mahakuteshvar. The latter is the only work of this Badami phase datable from an inscription – of Vijayaditya (696–733).

1.53a

Pa t t a d a k a l The Sangameshvara is credited to Vijayaditya on a stone tablet in its precinct. The Virupaksha and Mallikarjuna were founded by the principal wives of Vikramaditya II (733–44) in commemoration of the conquest of Kanchi and attributed in an inscription on its gopura to the ‘most eminent master of the southern kingdom’. The Papanatha is undated but evidently among the first works at the site initiated in the reign of Vijayaditya: the

1.53b

Virupaksha gopura inscription attributes it to craftsmen who assisted the southern master imported by Vikramaditya and it is not inconceivable that they began work some forty years earlier. The Papanatha is composite in plan, like the Meguti, but of two distinct volumes: a nine-square hall with projecting porch and a sanctuary with 1.53c @ 1:500

inner hall and enclosed ambulatory of the Huchchimallihudi type lit through axial balconies. The pronounced elongation of this work,

110

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.54a

› 1 . 5 4 PAT TA D A K A L : (a) Sangameshvara from the south-east; (b, c) Papanatha, shrine portal, exterior from the south-west; (d–f ) Virupaksha, exterior from the south-east, porch details; (g, h) Nandi pavilion, interior and plan; (i) Mallikarjuna, exterior from the north-west.

enhanced by the mechanical repetition of aedicules, is corrected in the Sangameshvara by the reduction of the inner hall to a mere vestibule: the vimana is clearly related to the latest Badami works but marks an advance in lucidity. The socle also follows Malegitti form and, as there, projecting bays are defined by padma-kumbha pilasters: this recalls the Meguti rather than the Pallavan norm and, unlike the latter, sculptural relief is modestly confined to the aedicules dedicated to the principal

1.54c

111

1.54b

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.54d

1.54e

112

1.54f

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.54g

1.54h @ 1:500

113

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.54i

icons. Great square piers are the basic means of internal support, as at Aihole and Badami. As in the Vaikuntha-perumal at Kanchipuram, both the foundations of Vikramadithya’s wives have an attached hall and vimana linked by a vestibule but, as there is only one ambulatory, the hall is the widest element. The Virupaksha has a splendid detached pavilion for Shiva’s bull, Nandi, in an expansive compound. Padma-kumbha pilasters are the norm outside, but the square remains the internal norm where they are relieved with bands and medallions incised with fine representations of episodes from the epics. Outside, the padma-kumbha order is ubiquitous: an important permutation is represented by the Virupaksha Nandi pavilion’s squat columns with their ring capitals. Concern with relief and a more even gradation of tiers was furthered by the imported Pallavan architects. The vigorous monumentality of the later-Pallavan works, deriving from a clearly defined pyramidal form and the crisp delineation of carefully attuned parts, is fully realized in the four-storey Virupaksha. 1.55a

114

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

›1.55

E L L O R A , T H E G R E AT S C U L P T E D T E M P L E :

(a–e) Kailasa, section, plan, detail of elephant base, views from the east and (pages 118–119) west; (f ) Indra Sabha (mid-9th century), forecourt with Indra’s elephant and vimana. Like the greatest of Pallava temples, the Kailasa is a walled complex with a gopura. As in the greatest of the Chalukyan works at Pattadakal, the principal axis leads through the forecourt, with the pavilion for Shiva’s Nandi flanked by ceremonial pillars, to a nine-square hall with porch and balconies and a vestibule leading to the inner sanctum. The last, with its superstructure of three cell-bordered terraces and an octagonal cupola, is flanked by subsidiary shrines beyond an open ambulatory – as in the multi-storey vihara which provided the prototype for the southern vimana. Raised over the tremendous elephants of the platform, the socle mouldings, like the pillars of the hall, conform to the types encountered at Pattadakal. Subsidiary halls and shrines are excavated from the rock walls.

115

T H E C U L M I N AT I O N O F E XC AVAT I O N The Rashatrakuta king Dantidurga, who dispossessed Vikramaditya ii’s successor Kirtivaman ii (744–57), was engaged at the time in excavating temples at Ellora – notably the Deshavatara where his activity is recorded in an inscription. Next to that work is the great rock-cut, freestanding Kailasa temple of Krishana (756–75). This bears such a striking resemblance to the Virupaksha at Pattadakal, and through it to the great works of Kanchi, that it is tempting to believe that the same artists were employed on both – carried off by the Rashtrakutas from the Chalukyan capital. The whole gigantic Kailasa enterprise is the culmination of all the main strands of early Hindu architecture delineated by the Chalukyans and Pallavas. It was never to be emulated, though others were certainly inspired by it: the Pandyas at Kalugumalai, for instance, or the Jains in their first work at Ellora, the so-called Chhota Kailasa

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.55b @ 1:1000

of the early 9th century – a creditable if much-reduced model. Also at Ellora, the Jains incorporated a threestorey, four-faced vimana in the forecourt of the Indra Sabha which, though much smaller and more decidedly axial, effectively recalls the Kailasa’s combination of a monumental three-dimensional mass with rich excavated volumes.1.55

1.55c

116

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.55d

117

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.55g

120

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.56a

C H O L A I N H E R I TA N C E The final conquerors of Kanchi were the Cholas of Thanjavur. After an unsteady rise beginning in the 9th century, during which they had fostered a Chalukyan revival to the cost of the Rashtrakutas, the zenith of Chola power, prosperity and cultural brilliance was reached with Rajaraja i the Great (985–1014) and his son Rajendra i (1014–42), whose ambitions extended to the Ganges and Sri Lanka and even to Sumatra to protect trade with China.The later Cholas could not maintain such far-flung activities and confined themselves to the more traditional spheres of rivalry with the Chalukyas on the one hand, the Pandyas of Madurai on the other: the fortunes of each waxed and waned in the usual way. The Chola school of architecture took to its apogee the southern mode of representing the image of the Purusha’s 121

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

residence as the multi-storeyed prasada or vimana with the storeys marked by open terraces bordered with celllike pavilions. That it appeared more or less fully mature is hardly surprising as Chola architects were heir not only to the past lavish brick and sandstone tradition of the Pallavas but also to the mastery of reproducing carpentry in monumental granite achieved by the Pandyas early in the 9th century. Modest in scale and simple in plan, the early Chola temple reveals increasing interest at once in greater sumptuousness, precision and the clear distinction of parts. It consists of regular, logically articulated forms: a high

1.56c

›1.56

T H E E A R LY C H O L A S C H O O L : (a) Shiva

Nataraja (9th century; Paris, Musée Guimet); (b) Pullamangai, Brahmapurishvara, overview (inscribed 910); (c) Shrnivasanallur, Koranganatha, detail (inscribed 927); (d) Tirurvarur, Achaleshvara (inscribed 992). The padma-kumbha type of support follows the festooned Pallavan permutation, but square, round or polygonal shafts are common. Finely chiselled kalasha shaped necks are a particular feature of Chola columns and their expansive padma abacus is often given distinct, sensuously curved petals. Figures or heraldic beasts sometimes rise from the abacus as struts but the anti-architectonic vyala base of the Pallavas was early eliminated in favour of a padma type descended from the Shore Temple. The tendency to add figures or beasts where they may logically be supported is carried over into the superstructure which has more sculpture than its predecessors and more subtly varied forms for its miniature cells. Circular or square, the cupola is invariably waisted, crowned with a padma and incised along the edges.

1.56b

122

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

walled compound, entered through a gopura as in all the early southern traditions, protects a rectangular flatroofed hall, now generally aisled, from which a square vimana is effectively distinguished in mass; occasionally there is also a detached pavilion for music and dancing. Exteriors are more decisively varied in plane than Pallava work and still more consistently articulated with applied pilasters, piers or attached columns to bind the distinct masses together. The garbha-griha contains only the cult object but the aedicules which punctuate the external ordinance of both vimana and hall shelter the major icons in the canonical disposition initiated by the Pandyas of the south.1.56 The Brahmapurishvara at Pullamangai and the Koranganatha of Shrinivasanallur may be taken as exemplary of the rich legacy of Parantaka’s reign. Thereafter development was temporarily interrupted by two or three decades of dynastic reverse but resumed with the reconsolidation of Chola power under Uttama Chola (969–85), especially through the patronage of Queen Sembiyan Mahadevi.

1.56d

123

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

C H O L A LE G AC Y The vast expansion of Chola power under Rajaraja i (985–1014) ensured the resources were available for splendid achievement. The experiments with massing and iconography begun under Parantaka i led to distinct vimana and hall enriched through variation in wall plane but unified through consistent articulation: they culminated in Rajaraja’s great Brihadeshvara temple which still dominates the old imperial capital, Thanjavur, and the Gangaikondacholeshvara which emulated it at the new capital founded to celebrate Rajendra’s triumph in taking Chola arms to the Ganges.1.57, 1.58 T h e g re a t v i m a n a Much of the resources even of a great empire must have been absorbed by the mammoth exercise of expanding the standard components of the Chola complex to the stupefying proportion of the Brihadeshvara temples at Thanjavur and Gangaikondacholapuram: the majestic vimana of the earlier work rises as a hollow pyramid to more than 63 metres through sixteen storeys; the later one is shorter (rising through nine storeys to 50 metres) but broader at base and elegantly incurved.

1.57a

124

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

Both works have enclosed ambulatories, unlike most early Chola works but like the greatest works of the Pallavas which provided the obvious precedents for imperial pretension. Expressing the superimposition of these ambulatories around the immense linga, the first floor is divided into two registers separated by a full entablature. There are eleven bays in the earlier work, of which four have ceremonial pillars and represent the base plane of the wall, while six have aedicules and project between pilasters, the central pair of which are linked into a triad by a continuous entablature over the great voids which light the ambulatory wall and its superb icons. The intermediate storeys – the lower ones extending over the vestibule – bear various miniature shrine forms whose scale is calculated to provide relief without denying homogeneity in both works. A series of gables (gavakshas) lends intermittent relief to the centre of the outer sides at Thanjavur but all Rajendra’s storeys project their curve over the central triad of base bays, providing variety of relief to counteract the ›1.57

C H O L A A P O G E E AT T H A N J A V U R , B R I -

H A D E S H V A R A O R R A J A - R A J E S H V A R A , c. 1010: (a)

striated effect of repeated unbroken kapotas. The crowning element of

general view from beyond the eastern gopura, (b) plan, both is a monolithic circular cupola – the method of raising which to its (c) detail of the vimana. great height is the subject of continuing speculation.

1.57b @ 1:1000

125

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.57c

126

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.57d

›1.58

CHOLA

CHOLAPURAM,

APOGEE

AT

G A N G A I KO N DA -

The vestibule, similarly articulated and originally of three storeys at

T E M P L E , c.

both sites, forms an intermediate element between the vimana and the

BRIHADESHVARA

1040: vimana and hall from the south-east.

imposing closed hall. All the contiguous elements share a common socle and platform in both works: the platform, projecting beyond the socle, is vigorously indented throughout below the eave-like kapota and frieze; the former is of the most elaborate type developed by the Cholas, combining two recessed friezes, the lower one with vyalas (lions or leopards), torus (kumuda) and minor cyma-recta mouldings.

127

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

There is one enclosure at Gangaikondacholapuram, two main ones at Thanjavur. The outer enclosure there is surrounded by a moat and later defence works integrated with the magnificent five-storey gopura of Kulottunga

III

(1178–1218). The three-storey inner gateway on the same

axis provides access to the main temple precinct through the inner enclosure wall; subsidiary gates to the north, south and west are aligned with the centre of the inner sanctum. Around the inner face of the enclosure, multiple subsidiary shrines – including one for the shakti, an essential element of the Chola temple – are sheltered by superimposed colonnades.

1.59a

128

1.59b

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

129

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

› 1 . 5 9 C H O L A M AT U R I T Y : (a, b) Darasuram, Airavateshvara (built under Rajaraja II, 1146–72) from the south-east (with five-storey vimana and ‘ratha’ portico) and Daivanayaki Amman shrine in its own enclosure to the north of the main prakara; (c) Tribhuvanam, Kampahareshvara (built under the last great Chola king, Kulottunga III, 1178–1218) detail of the seven-storey vimana.

1.59c

Many works were inspired by the achievements of the two great rulers whose reigns spanned the first half of the 11th century. The Airavateshvara at Darasuram and the Kampahareshvara of Tribhuvanam well demonstrate the endurance of the great tradition into the later 12th century, though the scale is much reduced.1.59 130

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

›1.60

THANJAVUR, RAJARAJESHVARA, SUB-

R A H M A N YA S H R I N E , 17th century: view from the

west. The Tirukkamakottam or Amman usually faced south beside the main shrine with which it shared a pavilion in Shiva complexes. The Tayarsannadhi in Vaishanava complexes was given a totally separate identity.

131

The addition and integration of hall and portico were to be an important concern but most significant was the development of the temple compound along the lines stated at Thanjavur:the spirit of inventiveness which characterized Chola work from the start produced many variations on the theme.1.60 In addition to new works, there was much rebulding in stone of many existing temples, often the foundations of the Pallavas and their contemporaries in brick and other less durable materials. Most of these, especially at the abodes of the dynasty’s patron deities like Chidambaram and Tiruvarur, were to be the nucleii of compounds extended to provide for the temple’s expanding role in the life of the community with facilities ranging from ablution tanks to teaching halls.1.61, 1.62 Special buildings were also needed by developing cults like those of Shiva Nataraja and of Devi, the shakti of the deity. Nataraja was usually served in a pavilion. Devi was given a separate shrine as part of the original conception from the time of Rajendra i and one was added to existing temples over the following centuries. A ramification

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.61a

› 1 . 6 1 T I R U V A R U R , T H YA G A R A J A S H V A M I T E M P L E : (a) view from the east, (b) 19th-century overview. As we have seen, the main subsidiary shrine, the Achalesvara dates from the last decade of the 10th century. Rajendra I followed not only with the rebuilding of the Thyagaraja shrine, which, with the venerable Valmikinatha beside it, forms the nucleus of the complex, but with the provision of a main hall to serve both and a colonnaded enclosure with a three-storey gopura to the east on axis with the Valmikinatha. A second enclosure, embracing the Achalesvara and three other subsidiary shrines, was constructed well before the end of the 11th century, probably by Kulottunga I (1070–1122) who had enlarged the compound to the north for the Amman and along the main axis to include the extensive Rajanarayana Tirumandapam, one of the first of the ‘hundred-columned’ halls which were soon to proliferate. A third enclosure with four gopuram and two more hyperstyle halls was being worked on under Kulottunga III and beyond that two more enclosures sheltered temple servants and itinerants. This was the pattern followed until the 17th century and beyond in the development of the great temple ‘cities’ which are the principal glories of the south.

1.61b

of the Devi cult was the annual celebration of the marriage of the god and goddess and for this a special pavilion was often added to the festival halls which catered for › 1 . 6 2 C H I D A M B A R A M , N ATA R A J A T E M P L E : (a) ministration to the deity, such as ritual ablution and inner enclosure, (b) plan with (1) inner enclosure with principal shrine, (2) second enclosure, (3) Amman adornment before procession. shrine, (4) third enclosure with main gopura, (5) ShivaThe temple at Tiruvarur is a typical example of both ganga Tank, (6) ‘Thousand-Pillared’ Hall, (7) Subrahrebuilding and expansion but the pattern for the latter manya Temple, (8) Shivakumasundari Temple. The venerable foundation at the site of Shiva’s cosseems to have been set at Chidambaram where most of mic dance is mentioned in Pallava records but the two the new facilities – including the separate Amman shrine Shiva shrines which form its nucleus – the principal one 132

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

– first appear. These are overshadowed by the gopuram of the third enclosure which develop the precedent set at Thanjavur.The first two registers of their vertical walls are built of stone and though brick and plaster are used for the seven diminishing prasada-like terraces above, their elements are lucidly expressed. Like the ‘Sundara Pandya’ of the Jambukeshvara on Srirangam Island, they sustain the architectonic logic characteristic of the Chola school from the outset.1.63 1.62a

4

6

7

8

5

3

1

2

1.62b @ 1:5000

dedicated to Nataraja – are largely modern reconstructions. Of the four enclosures, the outer one is probably post-Chola but the third seems to have been achieved under Kulottunga III (1178–1218) and at least three of its gopuram (west, east and south consecutively) were completed by the mid-13th century.

›1.63

S R I R A N G A M , J A M B U K E S H V A R A : Sundara

Pandya’s gopura. 1.63

133

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.64a

10

9 8

6 5

7

3 2

4 1

1.64b @ 1:100,000

134

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

› 1 . 6 4 V I J A YA N A G A R A : (a) Sulai Bazaar from the north; (b) site plan with (1) imperial ceremonial enclosure, (2, 3) emperor’s private quarters and zenana, (4) Hazara Rama, (5) Achyuta Raya’s temple, (6) Sulai Bazaar, (7) Hampi Bazaar, (8) Virupaksha – ‘Pampapati’ – temple, (9) Krishna Temple, (10) Vitthala Temple; (c, d) palace enclosure, raja-nivesana platform, plan, and Mahanavami Dibba (throne platform); (e, f ) Vitthala Temple, ratha and gopura and detail of mandapa; (g, h) Hazara Rama, hall before sanctum and detail of exterior.

1.64c @ 1:1000

V I J AYA N A G A R A N E M PI R E A N D I TS S U CC E S S O R S The revived Pandya successors to the Cholas succumbed to the pressure of Muslim invaders from the north in the mid-14th century. However, the newly emergent and militant kings of Hastinavati (in the central Deccan) halted Muslim expansion and were responsible for the last significant development of the Hindu tradition over the next two centuries.They established their capital, Vijayanagar, on the upper reaches of the Tungabhadra where it controlled the main route to the south, and the seats of their provincial governors (Nayakas) in great forts at Vellore, Gingee, Thanjavur, Madurai and Ikkeri. With the weakening of the central power in the mid-16th century the Nayakas asserted their independence.1.64 The empire passed its apogee after the reign of Krishnadeva Raya (1509–30), who gained the upper hand over the disintegrating Bahamani sultanate to its north: the arrogance of his successors provoked its destruction by the united armies of the Muslim successor states in 1565. Of its several ring walls – which follow the tortuous contours between the incorporated outcrops of rock – little more survives than the inner curtain of the central royal complex which itself attracted the major depredations. However the four main temples – the Virupaksha (Pampapati), the Krishna, the Venkateshvara and the Vitthala – still

1.64d

135

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.64e

dominate the land hemmed in by the rocky hills and the river. All four addressed impressive avenues along which the temple cars (rathas) were hauled at festivals and, indeed, one of the most celebrated features of the Vitthala is a life-size model of a ratha on axis with its eastern gopura and the processional way beyond.1.64e In distinct compounds towards the western end of the main enceint, the emperor’s courts of public and private audience and the zenana are grouped roughly in accordance with shastra principle about perpendicular axes, orientated to the cardinal points, with the exquisite Ramachandra palatine temple at the crossing. Each compound contains the stepped and terraced basement of at least one freestanding building, clearly related to the typical temple in plan. In the ceremonial compound there are two: the largest one was a great hyperstyle audience hall with ten rows of ten timber columns – clearly a rajabha1.64f

136

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.64g

vana in the most venerable tradition; even more magnificent, the other tiered base is usually identified as the ‘throne platform’ (Mahanavami Dibba) from which the emperor reviewed the principal dynastic cult festival (Mahanavami) whose processions and ceremonies are depicted in its splendid reliefs. The remains in the more private compounds are of multi-storey trabeated structures in stone and timber, partitioned with brick and plaster, preceded by or based on an assembly hall. The prasadas of the raja-nivesana, they doubtless took the ancient prototype of palace and temple – the Palace of the Gods – to the apogee of secular splendour. 1.64h

137

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.65a

138

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

6

6 5

6

6

4

1

6

2

7 3

1.65b @ 1:4000

1.65c

139

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

6

6

In the imperial domain at large, patronage of new tem- › 1 . 6 5 M A D U R A I , M I N A K S H I - S U N D A R E S H V A R A : (a) view from the southern gatehouse, (b) plan ple foundations had flagged following the last extravagant within definitive enclosure with (1) Sundareshvara exertions of the Cholas, but the Pandyas had been active (Shiva) shrine, (2) Minakshi (shakti) shrine, (3) tank, in the expansion of existing sanctuaries. The Vijayana- (4) Viravasantaraya mandapa with Nandi statue, (5) ‘thousand-pillared’ Airakkal mandapa, (6) gatehouses, garan rulers and their Nayaka successors, too, found that (7) entrance hall of the 18th-century ruler Tirumalai if a venerable shrine was not susceptible to aggrandise- Nayak, (c) tank and gopuram. ment its environment was: the provision of additional › 1 . 66 S R I R A N G A M , J A M B U K E S H V A R A T E M P L E : compounds with ever more dominant if increasingly less 16th-century colonnaded gallery. architectonic gopuram, and a wide range of facilities to meet the community's needs, was an admirable means of › 1 . 6 7 K A N C H I P U R A M , E K A M B A R E S H V A R A N AT H A T E M P L E , Raya-gopura of Krishna Deva Raya acquiring merit. Thus the original shrine was ringed by (1509–30) and kalyana mandapa. enclosure after enclosure, each embracing secondary shrines and extraordinary pillared halls for regular rituals, periodic festivals and occasional cultural performances,

1.66

140

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.67

141

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.68a

accommodation for attendant brahmins, sect gurus and a › 1 . 6 8 S R I R A N G A M , R A N G A N AT H A T E M P L E : wide range of temple servants, and dormitories, refecto- (a) overview (19th-century engraving), (b) southern gopura of the outer enclosures from the north. ries and infirmaries for pilgrims. Of the many great complexes which evolved over the centuries between the decline of the Cholas and modern times, in addition to the great shrines we have already encountered with the Cholas, the two great temples near Tiruchirapalli, the Srirangam Ranganatha and Jambukeshvara, the Ekambareshvara-natha at Kanchipuram and the great Minakshi-Sundareshvara of Madurai may be singled out. Most of these have at least four enclosures in which the main elements are related to one another with varying degrees of regularity. By far the largest is the Srirangam Ranganatha with seven enclosures, the three outer ones primarily commercial and residential.1.65–1.68 142

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.68b

143

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

The most characteristic contribution of the later dynasties was the vast hyperstyle pavilion, often a royal reception hall. While the main temple hall and Nandi pavilion may be on axis with the principal shrine, others were provided for ad hoc in existing or specially built enclosures. In addition to mandapas, great galleries surround interior courts and link them to other major elements in the complex, the ablution tank in particular. The elaboration of piers, columns, capitals and brackets was increasingly anti-architectonic: above all, Vijayanagaran builders and their followers delighted in attaching highly involved sculpture groups, usually including rampant beasts, to the shafts of multi-faceted piers, often in conjunction with superimposed shrine motifs or clustered colonnettes.1.64f, 1.65c, 1.66 The gopura, which began to overshadow the vimana in the late-Chola period, became the most prominent feature of the southern temple-city, dominating not merely the temple complex but the entire surrounding countryside. As in the Chola prototype, the first two storeys are generally of stone, the second continuing in the plane of the first. The superstructure, in diminishing tiers of plastered brick, was at first essentially architectonic in articulation, like the vimana. Obscured in later Vijayanagaran works, under the Nayakas this was totally eclipsed by profuse figure sculpture and the profile was given an elegant concave curve. Of the many fine examples of the Vijayanagara period, remarkable for their great size, the elevenstorey outer gopura of the Ekambaranatha at Kanchi may be taken as representative of the architectonic type.1.67 The stupendous series of twenty-one gopuram at Srirangam span the whole period but the florid concave Nayaka variety is nowhere better represented than at Madurai – which is itself the most complete surviving representative of town planning in accordance with the ancient shastras.1.68, 1.65 144

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

6 the north and the ‘nagara’ temple mountain

1.69a

›1.69

PA L A E C L E C T I C I S M : (a) aedicule with Vishnu from an 11th-century temple (New York, Metropolitan Museum); (b) Paharpur (Somapura), Buddhist temple (late-8th century), plan. Multiplication of the elements of the standard Buddhist temple formula – as represented by the Mahabodhi Temple at Bodh Gaya – produces a cruciform plan with porches and halls on all four sides of the square cella, as at Paharpur where the north–south axis of the structure exceeds 100 metres. Framed by a cell-bordered prakara, entered from the north but punctuated with shrines on the other cardinals, the main mass rises from three terraces embellished with a wide variety of human and animal images: the form of the tiered superstructure is lost. In the mandala-like conception of complex but highly formal plans and in the treatment of the order in the surviving fragments of lost buildings (like the Vaishnavite aedicule reproduced here), the main Pala legacy is to be found abroad – in Nepal and Tibet.

Chaos had been left in the north by the disappearance of the Gupta after their power had been exhausted in conflict with the Huns. From it, and the clans of the Gujara tribe who had entered northern India in the wake of the marauders, a brief imperial revival was effected by the Pushyabhuti chief Harsha Vardhana (606–47), who established a prestigious capital at Kanauj. The effort proved unsustainable. Not until the end of the following century did another Gujara tribe, the Pratiharas, emerge dominant with their capture of Kanauj. They built their power on successful resistance to the Arab intruders but weakened it in rivalry with their southern and eastern neighbours. The main eastern rivals of the Pratiharas were the Palas of Bengal and they sought to fill the vacuum left by the Gaznavids: they presided over the last flowering of the Buddhist tradition in India but also patronized the Hindus. Weakened in conflict with Rajendra Chola, they succumbed to the Hindu Senas from Orissa. Though bereft

1.69b @ 1:4000

145

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

of official patronage, the Sangha subsisted in the Buddhist homeland until it received its final blow when the Senas were dispatched by the Muslims at the end of the 12th century: Hinduism persisted, of course, but most of the Pala and Sena architectural legacy was obliterated.1.69

1.70b, d @ 1:500

›1.70

T H E B E N G A L I V E R N A C U L A R T E M P L E : (a,

b) Bansberia, Ananta Vasudeva (1679), view and plan, (c) Badanganj, Damodara; (d) Vishnupur, Keshta Raya (1655), view.

1.70a

BENGAL Built usually of brick, mud, bamboo and other perishable materials on an alluvial plain constantly subject to inundation and the changing course of rivers, the temples that did not fall victim to nature were removed by the Muslims. Sculpture and manuscript painting, inscriptions and literature record buildings with superimposed pitched roofs, crowned with a stupa, an amalaka or even a sikhara: perhaps mainly Buddhist, these were the precedents for such structures as the Maynapur Hakanda and Atbaichandi temples, with their superimposed courses of receding masonry. 1.70c

146

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

The vernacular precedent consisted of a rectangular room rising above a verandah with a lean-to roof. The most basic Bengali vernacular form, however, was the bamboo and mud hut with thatched roof curved to throw the water off more effectively and despite the importation of more sophisticated types, this form (bangaldar) and its derivatives, the pitched and hipped roof (do- and chouchala), was to remain dominant throughout the architectural history of the province – partly because of the non-monumental nature of Bengali materials and partly because of the non-hieratic attitude of the Bengali himself. In the many relatively late extant works, clay fired to a rich red brick is the usual material but pillars, windows and doorframes may be of wood or stone and a revetment of terracotta panels provides a protective skin; a podium is invariable, increasing in height with the dampness of the region.1.70

1.70d

147

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

› 1 . 7 1 K A S H M I R : (a) Pandrethan, Shiva Temple (10th/11th century?) from the south; (b) Martand, Surya Temple (mid-8th century), from the south-west. The great Sun Temple at Martand was built for Lalitaditya (c. 741–60), under whom Hindu Kashmir reached the apogee of its political and cultural splendour. Like the later work at Avantipur and Pandrethan, it recalls the debased Classicism of the Kushana era and combines it with the plan forms of the Gupta elevated in accordance with the vernacular tradition of high-pitched, gabled roofs.

1.71a

148

KASHMIR Meanwhile on the northern periphery of the former great powers, Kashmir sustained an idiosyncratic independence which had reached its peak in the 8th century. The Hindu architectural tradition of Kashmir, too, suffered at the hands of the Muslims: its surviving fragments form a homogeneous group not notable for varied development from its inception in the 6th or 7th century. With a two-tiered pyramidal roof penetrated by pedimented porticoes, they reflect the transitory structures of the domestic vernacular well attuned to the shedding of rain and snow; beyond that the compound surrounded by a colonnade with cells or shrines reflects Buddhist practice and the Orders commonly used, often strangely reminiscent of the permutations of late-Roman forms produced by Byzantine architects, reflect the influences of neighbouring Gandhara in particular – the provenance of the characteristic trefoil arch associated with the Order is by no means so clear. Of the monuments surviving from before the Muslim conquest, the great Surya Temple at Martand may be taken as representative of the larger ›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.71b

complexes.The smaller, but better-preserved, Shiva Temple at Pandrethan (Srinagar), in addition, offers a clue to the appearance of its greater predecessors.1.71

THE PRATIHARAS AND THE EARLY NORTHERN TEMPLE The Pratiharas and their subordinates prepared the full flowering of the northern tradition between the 8th and 10th centuries. The imperial seat, Kanauj, succumbed like the dynasty itself to the onslaught of invading Muslims in 1018 and elsewhere most of the works of the era were lost the same way or to later pillagers, but enough survives to demonstrate that the Pratihara period saw the emergence of all the elements of the mature northern temple. The 149

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

›1.72 WORKS 8TH CENTURY

A S S O C I AT E D W I T H T H E L AT E P R AT I H A R A S AT O S I A N : (a) Hari-

hara I from the south-east, (b,c) Surya Temple I from the south-west and plan. The main works at Osian (near Jodhpur in modern Rajasthan) are the three so-called Hari-Hara temples, two Surya, two Shiva and two Vishnu shrines, the Pipla Matha and the Mahavira, the last dated in a later inscription to the reign of the Pratihara king Vatsaraja (c. 777–808). In the absence of firm evidence the other works are generally ascribed to the same king and his immediate predecessors or successors: most have five-bay mulaprasadas, porch and open hall, but no vestibule or ambulatory.

1.72c @ 1:500

›1.73 WORKS 9TH CENTURY

A S S O C I AT E D W I T H T H E L AT E P R AT I H A R A S : (a) Roda, Temple III

1.72a

1.72b

150

1.73a

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

(c. 800), portal with mithunas, padmas and prasada motifs; (b, c) Gwalior, Teli-ka Mandir (c. 800), view from the south-west and façade detail. A rare oblong shrine dedicatied to a shakti cult, the dating of this very dilapidated monument is somewhat controversial (as usual): the sculptural style tentatively suggests mid-8th century but the meagre inscriptions are in a style associated with the early 9th-century reign of the greatest Pratihara, Mihira Bhoja. The three-bay side elevations – with shallow intermediate recessions – centre on a portico in a triad of bold projections. The portico is crowned by a prasada composition of superimposed lunettes; each of the three planes has its own crowning gavaksha below the bizarre multiple gavaksha motifs of the superstructure. The east front has the same constituents as the sides but the central bay is doubled.

1.73b

151

1.73c

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

most important examples are at Osian in the heart of Gur- › 1 . 74 G YA R A S P U R , M A L A D E V I T E M P L E , datjara, to the east in the great fort at Chittor and at Roda in able from inscriptions to the late-9th century: view from the south-west. the south – near the border of modern Gujarat which the Partly excavated, the work marks advance to Pratidynasty had absorbed by the end of the 8th century. By hara maturity in its incorporation of an ambulatory as then, too, the forces of resurgent empire had reached well as a vestibule and a closed hall made cruciform by balconies and porch. Over the clearly articulated fivenorth-central India, where several temples around bay mulaprasada, the shikhara is prophetic of maturity Gwalior are comparable to the later works at Osian: the too in its miniature reproductions clustered about its extraordinary Teli-ka-Mandir in Gwalior fort is the old- base. est surviving large-scale Pratihara work.1.72, 1.73 The Pratiharas had inherited the two essential elements of the mature northern temple, the mulaprasada and 152

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.75a

1.75b @ 1:500

›1.75

B A D O L I , G H AT E S H V A R A , c. 900: (a) view from south-east, (b) plan. Rising over parapets with miniature Latina shikharas in the corners, the Badoli work has a phamsana in two registers over the portico. The sanctuary shikhara is taller and more elegantly curved than hitherto and attached to its eastern latas is a vestibule gable incorporating a variety of miniature shrine forms. The columns of the portico – the corner ones with applied apsaras – terminate in graded rings and stepped friezes below convoluted brackets. Undulating arches are suspended over the entrance.

153

antarala, aligned on an east–west axis and usually facing east on a podium which might also accommodate four subsidiary shrines. The pancharatha (five-shrine) complex dates from the inception and the past – largely lost to us beyond the realms of the Chalukyas and their adversaries, as we have had cause to regret – also prompted syncretic development embracing an ambulatory, a vestibule and an open or closed, nine-square or oblong hall catering especially for ritual. In addition to the increasingly generous portico, already lavishly embellished with symbols of fecundity in an architectonic context, subsidiary porches or balconies were invented to stress the major axes of both main elements and integration was furthered by matching their richly varied planes. In the next phase of their development they turned their attention to the elaboration of the column and pier, the socle and the superstructure: in particular, diversification was introduced to the mass of the main shikhara and the flat hall roof ceded to a subsidiary pyramidal of stepped slabs (pidhas). The process may be traced from Gyaraspur and Badoli to Kiradu and Jagat.1.74–1.76 When the Jagat Ambica Mata was being repaired towards the end of the 10th century, the power of the Pratiharas was in advanced decline. Their greater feudatories – collateral branches of the dynasty itself and other Rajput clans such as the Solankis in the west, the Kachchapaghathas and Chandellas in the north-centre, the Kalachuris in the east and the Paramaras in the upper Deccan – seized the initiative, threw off the imperial yoke, founded little empires of their own and achieved individual manifestations of cultural maturity. Naturally they built on the legacy of their former imperial masters – perfectly represented at Jagat – and on the defining differences of articulation and superstructure which their inheritance proffered.1.76, 1.77

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

› 1 . 7 6 J A G AT , A M B I K A M ATA , first half of the 10th century: (a) view from south-east and (b) west detail. Dated on the inconclusive evidence of an inscription recording repairs carried out in 981, this miraculous survivor marks the exquisite refinement of the Pratihara synthesis.

1.76a

1.76b

154

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

Northern temple styles One of the principal developments in the north, anticipated at Jagat, is the elevation of the ubiquitous khura-kumbha-kapota form of socle to the position of a dado above an accumulation of symbolic mouldings – especially the astragal (karnaka) and cyma recta (padma) representing the tortoise and lotus as symbols of life in and emerging from the waters – and friezes of sacrificial animals, heraldic beasts and narratives relevant to the patron. Also as at Jagat, porches and balconies are all usually bordered by a low parapet (vedika, recalling the fence of the sacrificial enclosure) supporting a ‘seat-back’ ledge with vertical or sloping back and a truncated Order which bears deeply projecting eaves (chadya).

1.77a

155

1.77b

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

Early pillars are usually square, sometimes with graded projections, but later Pratihara elaboration superimposed square, octagonal, sixteensided and circular zones often treated to richly varied relief, below a wide variety of capitals including permutations of the puranakalasha – as at Kiradu. Corbelled arches (torana) thrown between columns, especially at

›1.77

M AT U R E N O R T H E R N T E M P L E E L E M E N T S :

(a, b) portal and column mouldings (Kiradu Someshvara, Modhera Surya; (c) socle (Sunak Nilakantha); (d, e) Latina and Sekhari superstructural types (Bhubaneshvar Lingeraj, c. 1030; Khajuraho Khanderia, c. 1020).

entrances, may be cusped or undulate in the form of the makara. The kapotali

becomes the kirtimukha, especially over the principal projections. The

kalasha

main portals have five or more frames, originating in branches (shakha) tied together for strength: the inclusion of an architectonic one is not

ve d i b h a n d a

characteristic horseshoe dormer (gavaksha) – once of bowed bamboo –

kumbha

invariable but the others, rising from the river-goddesses Ganga and Yamuna and incorporating the essential mithunas, are always incised

khura

with the Water Cosmology symbolism of the tirtha. They rest on a sill with

narapitha

a circular projection flanked by kirtimukhas in the jambs. gajapitha

Impressed with the repertory of Water Cosmology motifs in the several horizontal divisions from base to parapet, mulaprasada and matching hall walls are treated to the wide range of variations in plane needed to

pattika (grasapatti)

accommodate the waxing pantheon. Stepping forth dynamically from

karnaka antarapatta

aedicules (devakoshtha) in the increasingly complex system of projec-

jadyakumbha (padma)

tions and recessions produced by five centuries of development in the

bhitta

diversification of the mass, are more and more subsidiary members of the bhitta

pantheon (avarana devatas) and the guardians of space (ashtadikpalas) regulators of time, controllers of the destinies of men. Attendant in niches (rathikas), ultimately, are myriad yogini representing cosmic power and its stimulation as the virile shardula, the indolent damsel (alasa kanya), the heavenly dance of celestial apsaras and the mukti to which it is all directed, the new birth of salvation, as release – mithuna. The increasingly complex system of projections produced by five centuries of development in plan, with or without ambulatory (sandhara and nirandhara respectively), was naturally matched by diversification of mass: the sandhara mulaprasada at Gyaraspur matches the hall in its balconied central bays but the corners are distinguished by the innovative miniature shikharas; at Jagat, on the other hand, the equilateral projections of the five-bay nirandhara mulaprasada produce a diagonal as well as orthogonal grouping of elements as the base for more complex clus-

156

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.77c

pitha

kapotali (chadyaki)

tering in the superstructure. And there above all, progressively more abstract permutations of the prasada prototype characterized the main varieties of shikhara which reflect the imagery of the mountain – the many-peaked Meru, Kailasa or Vaikuntha encountered in the shastras from the earliest reference to the superstructure of temples. Essentially a single entity – like the dominant element at Gyaraspur, indeed – the basic type of shikhara is called Latina: relief is provided by miniature blind lunettes in tiers marked by rectangular derivatives of the amalakas motif on the corners and central bands (lata) of miniature lunettes in a mesh-like pattern over the projections to the mulaprasada below. We have already encountered putative examples from Chalukyan domains to Bhubaneshvar and the form was to be taken to its ultimate stage of development in Orissa in the 11th century. There is diversity of emphasis on minor elements within the system in the greatest Somavamshi shikharas but elsewhere in the north – from Chandella to Solanki domains – it derives from the repetition of the major element to 1.77d

varied reductions in scale – tentatively at first, as at Gyaraspur, decidely at Jagat – in the mode known as Sekhari: the shikhara rises as a peak from one or more levels of graded miniatures on the diagonals clustered with larger ones in tiers above the central and intermediate projections to the mulaprasada walls. The alternative, apparently invented in Malwa and known as Bhumija, has distinct storeys of miniature shikara or shrine forms interrupted above the central projections by strongly emphasized vertical bands of enmeshed lunettes. On all these varieties a massive cap incorporates a single or double amalaka, a flattened bell-shaped element developed from the padma and a kalasha finial. Over halls the mature northern temple usually has a stepped pyramidal roof, of the kind encountered at Badoli and known as Phamsana, or tiers of miniature bell-shaped lotus forms called Samvarana: the former was favoured by 10th-century Pratihara builders, the latter emerged with post-imperial diversification. Ceilings are at first flat but later elaborate corbelling was to produce dazzling compositions with receding courses of diagonally disposed squares and other geometric forms or concentric circles of lotiform cusps and matching central pendants often borne on flying figural brackets. The pediment over the porch or vestibule, in all

1.77e

157

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

but the earliest Pratihara examples, is usually an elaborate kirtimukha form with a major relief medallion – as at Pattadakal – and the horseshoe dormer became the gaping leonine monster Kirtimukha, symbol of eclipse – the cosmic sexual act from which existence is reborn.

A F TE R T H E P R AT I H A R A S The forces of Mahmud of Ghazni overwhelmed the Pratiharas early in the 11th century but, content with booty, they did not press on. The vacuum was filled by the feudatories of the lost imperium. The Solankis of Kathiawar and Gujarat came nearest to re-establishing a comparable power but they were contained on the east by the Paramaras, who had established a kingdom in Malwa at the end of the 10th century, and on the north by the Chahamanas, who asserted their suzerainty in much of modern Rajasthan from Dilike (Delhi). Between these three powers, other lesser clans – generally known as Rajputs – sustained a measure of independence while the Khachhapagathas of Gwalior, the Chandellas of Khajuraho and the Kalachuris of Tripur shared Pratihara, Rashtrakuta or Pala domains in modern Madhya Pradesh. The inability of these powers to recognize common cause favoured the triumph of Islam.

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

S O L A N K I W O R K S : M O D H E R A , S U R YA

with (1) cella with ambulatory around sanctum, (2) closed hall with porch, (3) open hall preceded by torana, (4) tank, (b) section (ASI), (c–e) details of open hall portal and closed hall exterior and interior. On a platform, unusual hitherto in Gujarat, are three axially aligned elements: a five-bay mulaprasada with ambulatory and superimposed garbha-grihas, matching attached closed hall, detached, cruciform open pavilion and freestanding torana. In front of the whole complex is a large flagged tank surrounded by smaller shrines. Below the orthodox dado, the range of mouldings embraces most known varieties – including major and minor padmas, khura and karnaka, as well as Kirtimukha, elephant and human friezes. The central projections of the west, north and south faces are occupied by matching balconies with puranakalasha columns and a deep porch frames the entrance in the east; as at Jagat the equilateral subsidiary projections and corner bays are similar in their extremely rich treatment, with apsaras and other shakti and Water Cosmology symbols of fecundity in superimposed niches flanking the main icons in their aedicules. The ring of spectacular multi-faceted columns, deeply incised with figures in niches and the usual repertory of symbolic motifs, forms a great octagon in the closed hall. Anticipated in Pratihara works such as the late-10th-century Someshvara at Kiradu (an early

1.78b

1.78c

158

›1.78

T E M P L E , datable from an inscription of 1026: (a) plan

acquisition of the Solankis), the splendid open pavilion is actually comparable with the closed hall in plan and size but this is obscured by the absence of walls and the extension of the cruciform arrangement of the columns to form porticoes with flying arches at the cardinal points. The columns are exceptionally rich examples of multi-faceting and the flying arches girding the central octagon are alternately cusped and undulating. In further elaboration of the Pratihara inheritance, the vedika has lavishly adorned verticals and coping below dwarf puranakalasha columns. The superstructures are fragmentary but enough remains to suggest that the shikhara was Sekhari and the roofs of the halls Samvarana, as was to be comm0n Solanki practice from this time.

1

2

3

THE SOLANKIS AND JAINA PATRONAGE IN WESTERN INDIA The Solanki kings who ruled most of north-western India from the 10th century were prolific builders. Exposed to the full force of Muslim iconoclasm,their major sites retain only fragments of stupendous achievement. Of these the early 11th-century Surya Temple at Modhera is the most substantial – if not the most extensive.1.78 Some idea of the

4

1.78a @ 1:1000

159

1.78d

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.79

S U N A K , N I L A G R A N T H A T E M P L E , 1020–30:

southern elevation (ASI).

1.80

S I D D H A R P U R R U D R A M A L A , mid-12th century: remains of portico (ASI). Only the northern and eastern porches, an interior screen and one of a pair of toranas remain to guide conjectural restoration of a scheme comparable to that of Modhera but twice as extensive and two storeys high. Superimposed colums screened the arms of a cross from the broad ambulatory in the closed hall, eight major and sixteen subsidiary columns, again in two storeys, ring the vast octagonal central hall and six more large columns form porches north, south and west. Eleven subsidiary shrines, dedicated to the Rudras, surrounded the main structure.

1.78e

1.79

160

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.80

1.81

161

V A D N A G A R T O R A N A , late-12th century (ASI).

loss is conveyed by the small contemporary Nilagrantha temple at Sunak.1.79 Of the major works carried out in the next century by the great rulers Siddharaja Jayasimha (1094–1143) and Kumarapala (1143–72): Siddharaja’s Navalakha temple at Sejak159pur (early 12th century) is among the finest, rivalling the Modhera work in extent, but it was far overshadowed in scale by the Rajavihara of Siddharaja’s seat and by the stupendous Rudramala built by Kumarapala on the banks of the Sarasvati at Siddhapur.1.80 Enormous though the resources required for these work must have been, more were found for many other vast complexes – such as one at Vadnagar of which only a great torana remains – and the rebuilding in emulation of the Rudramala of the Somanatha temple at Prabhas Patan after its destruction by Mahmud of Ghazni and his followers.1.81 It is hardly surprising that after yet another grand scheme, the Navalakha at Ghumli of the early 13th century, architectural activity in Solanki domains began to falter.Yet, though they were the first Indians to feel the full force of Muslim vandalism, their architectural tradition subsisted longer than elsewhere in the northern subcontinent, fostered by the Jains in spectacular fortified complexes in the mountain fastnesses of Kathiawar and Gujarat. Solanki ministers were responsible for the great Dilwara series of Jain shrines at Mount Abu inaugurated by the Vimala-Vasahi early in the 11th century and completed by the Lunar-Vasahi two hundred years later. This extraordinary achievement echoed through the ravines to Kumbheria, Satrunjaya and Mount Girnar.1.82 As elsewhere in India, the Jains drew directly on the Hindu repertory of forms, reorganizing them in accordance with plans evolved to cater for the specific needs of their faith – in particular devotion to their Tirthankaras. From as early as the 9th century, perhaps the most

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

› 1 . 82

S AT R U N J A YA :

overview

(19th-century

engraving).

1.82

characteristic feature of Jain temples – anticipated in the typical Buddhist sanctuary and in several of the great Hindu complexes of the south – is the row of miniature mulaprasadas introduced to house the images of the twenty-four Tirthankaras, on the edge of the platform parallel with the sides of the hall. Indirectly lit, infused by the opalescent sheen of the local marble, the open hall is › 1 . 8 3 C H I T O R , S A L I N D H E S H V A R A , 15th century: the chief glory of Jaina architecture: the most celebrated precinct and main shrine from the south-east.

1.83

162

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

› 1 . 8 4 M O U N T A B U , D I L W A R A C O M P L E X : (a) plan with (1) Vimala-Vasahi of the first Tirthankara, Adinath (c. 1040), (2) Luna-Vasahi of the 22nd Tirthankara, Neminath (c. 1230), (3) second Adinatha Temple (14th century), (4) the shrine of the twenty-third Tirthankara, Parshvanata (15th century); (b) Vimala-Vasahi, interior towards sanctuary.

2

3 1

4

1.84a @ 1:2000

1.84b

163

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

›1.85

R A N A K P U R , D H A R A N A - V I H A R A , mid-15th century: (a, pages 164–165) view from the south-west, (b) plan, (c) western entrance hall, (d) view through the great hall beyond the western entrance to the foursquare complex. Dedicated to Adinatha, the first of the Tirthankaras, this stupendous building represents the final flowering of the Solanki tradition in north-west India. It has no closed hall but a three-storey open hall stands before each face of the cella, the one to the west being the most majestic. Beyond these, additional triple-height halls communicate with the entrance halls, and yet more serve subsidiary shrines in the corners.

1.85b @ 1:1000

extant examples are at Dilwara but in all the great Jaina complexes equally fine ones survived, or were built after, the Muslim invasion.1.83, 1.84 Beyond the elaboration of the essentially Brahmanical plan form, the Jaina architects’ culminating achievement was the four-faced (chaturmukha) temple – based on a centralized plan anticipated as early as the Deogarh temple – with halls succeeding one another before all four sides of a mulaprasada enshrining a four-faced image of the Jina. Literary references to the form date from the 12th century and Sidharaja’s vanished Rajavihara – contemporary with those accounts – evidently provided a model for the earliest and greatest surviving example, the Dharana-Vihara at Ranakpur. The view from the entrance of that stupendous exercise, through the western halls, with a beam of sunlight entering their clerestories and penetrating the suffused atmosphere to illuminate a succession of individual elements on the shafts of the many-faceted piers, is unsurpassed in all India.1.85 1.85c

166

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.85d

167

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.86a

THE CHANDELLAS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS The most significant of the former feudatories of the Pratiharas in central India during the 10th and 11th centuries were the Chandellas of Jejakabhukti. Loyal defenders of the interests of their overlords for several generations, after asserting their independence under Dhanga (c. 950–1002) they were prolific builders for well over a century, above all in their capital, Khajuraho. With the contemporary efforts of the Solankis in Gujarat and the Somavamshis in Orissa, their great series of works there marks the culmination of northern development.1.86 1.86b

168

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.86c

Khajuraho Though closely related in articulation and embellishment, the masterpieces of Khajuraho conform to both the sandhara and nirandhara plan types (with and without ambulatory), and these naturally produce distinct variations in mass. The Jagadamba and its sister Chitragupta – dedicated to Surya – are nirandhara. The Lakshmana, Vishvanatha and Khandariya are the prime sandhara examples and each is amplified by an open pavilion between the portico and main closed hall. In all five a discernible progression in articulation confirms the inscriptional evidence for their dating. All have high, broad and elaborately moulded platforms, that of the Khandariya joined to the Jagadamba’s to provide for the small Mahadevi shrine. The five-shrine Lakshmana and Vishvanatha have separate pavilions for Garuda and Nandi respectively before their entrances. All have 1.86d

169

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

high socles and dadoes: the latter incorporate the full range of karnaka, kalasha and kumbha mouldings; exceeding the most elaborate of its Pratihara predecessors, the socle incorporates friezes of sacrificial animals, symbolic beasts and narratives relevant to the patron in addition to the full range of padma, astragal and kumbha mouldings. The Lakshmana’s mulaprasada and closed hall are still basically fivebay compositions, with deep balconies projecting from both masses. The Chitragupta and Jagadamba, like the Vishvanatha and Khandariya, have seven-bay façades with three registers of dazzling sculpture; the principal manifestations of the deity in their ghanadvaras, visible from without in the central projections of the Chitragupta and Jagadamba, are lit by the balconies around the ambulatories of the other three great works. In addition to the cults of their orthodox dedicatees, the main Khajuraho temples seem also to have been associated with heterodox Tantric sects: their walls are divided into two registers alive with wonderful shardulas, apsaras and mithunas whose vigorous sexuality reflects the elaboration of the Karma Sutra. The vedikas of porticoes, balconies and open halls are relieved only by

1.86f @ 1:500

›1.86

K H A J U R A H O , the evolution of the great tem-

ple from the reign of Yasovarman

I (died c. 950), through those of Dhanga (c. 950–1002) and Ganda (1002–17) to its culmination under Vidyadhara (1017–29): (a) Yasovarman’s Vaishnavite Lakshamna from the north; (b–d) Dhanga’s Shaivite Vishvanata from the south, antarala and ambulatory interiors; (e, f ) Vidyadhara’s Shaivite Khandariya from the southeast (pages 168–169), plan and detail of mithuna panels; (g) Chandella apsara (early 12th century); (h, i) Ganda’s Jagadamba, view from the north-east with Khandariya in the background and plan.

shallow slats, introducing a note of severity as sharply in contrast with the luxury of the walls as their voids are to the masses. Beyond the porticoes, with flying arches, the halls are divided by matching piers and pilasters, generally recessed, occasionally faceted, with capitals formed of grotesque brackets bearing apsaras and other shakti symbols. Ceilings are stunning in their variety and sanctuary portals, usually with seven jambs and still basically architectonic, are overwhelmed with exuberant figure sculpture. The phamsanas of the Lakshmana’s halls clearly follow the precedent set by the Pratiharas in works like the Jagat Ambika Matha: progressively higher pediments step back over all the balconies and the gable over the vestibule is a taller, more elaborate variation on the same theme. The shikhara, like the earliest of the Sekhari form, has only two levels of minor spireletts and one major one to each projection. The Vishvanatha’s phamsanas are more complex, their slabs breaking forward over the projections below with gables of varied miniature shrine forms on the balconies and miniature shikharas on the corners. No distinct advance is 1.86g

172

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.86h

marked by the shikhara, the proliferation of forms in the vestibule gable notwithstanding, but the build-up of masses from the portico to their culmination in it is much more resoundingly orchestrated. The progression developed in the Vishvanatha’s masses set the precedent for the Khandariya but the superstructure over each of the elements there is far more complex. The slabs of its phamsana have given way 1.86i @ 1:500

entirely to miniature shrine forms. The shikhara is unprecedentedly tall and slender, with no less than four half-spires before its central projections: the contrast between solid and void, the tension between horizontal and vertical, resolved in the monumental but elegant composition of the shikhara through the agency of small-scale but comprehensible forms, reflecting the whole of which they are parts, is one of the most masterly achievements of Indian architecture.

173

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

On either side of Chandella domains former feudatories of the Pratiharas carved out kingdoms hardly inferior to the Chandellas’ own – the Kachchapaghatas centred on Gwalior and the Kalachuris further east. The influence of the Chandellas is particularly apparent in the Kalachuris’ greatest surviving work, at Sohagpur. Of the Kachchapaghatas’ most outstanding works – or rather remaining fragments, for like the Solankis their flank was exposed to the full force of the Muslims – the twin Vaishnavite temples at Gwalior known as the Sas-bahu, built by Mahapala towards the end of the 11th century, may be singled out. In addition the surviving sculptural details from the Kokhanmatha at Suhania demonstrate supreme facility in combining richness and refinement.1.87

1.87a

174

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.87b

›1.87

G W A L I O R , S A S - B A H U T E M P L E S , c. 1090: (a) view from the north-west, (b) interior detail.

›1.88

U D A YA P U R ,

U DAYE S H VA R A

TEMPLE,

inscribed by its founder 1059: (a) detail of shikhara, (b) view from the south. The seven-bay cella and nine-square closed hall stand on a platform facing east and are surrounded by seven subsidiary shrines. The bays of the cella, amplified for the hall, radiate like the points of a star within a circle. The facets are treated as piers bearing aedicules, and diminutive piers support substantial model shikharas in the seven-tiered superstructure. These are separated by the delicately incised bands of meshed miniature niches which face the cardinal directions above magnificent Kirtimukha gables. The roof of the hall is a variant on the Samvarana type popular with the Solankis. The base is comparable to the fully developed Solanki or Chandella types. Below the floor slab, the early form of socle consisting of kalasha and karnaka on a thick kumbha is raised to form a dado above major and minor padmas and karnakas superimposed over several more slabs. Like the external piers, the pillars are multi-faceted and incorporate a similar repertory of mouldings: they are relieved with elaborate niches to the cardinals above their bases, like those of the Solankis, but the upper bands prefer Water Cosmology abstractions to assertive mithunas. The portals have three richly incised bands except for the main one leading to the sanctuary: that has five including an architectonic one with a prasada lintel.

175

1.88a

THE PARAMARAS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS The Paramaras, established in the northern Deccani domain of Malwa and expanding to the borders of Rajasthan, were among the more important heirs to the Pratiharas but were also exposed to exotic influence from the south. The distinctive Bhumija style, which they were to favour, appears early in the period of their dominance but the earliest securely dated example, the supreme masterpiece of the type, is the Udayeshvara at Udayapur of the mid-11th-century king Udayaditya.1.88

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.88b

Malwa shared the Bhumija with Maharashtra. The Ambaranatha Mahadeo at Ambarnath near Mumbai is contemporary with the Udayapur work and clearly related but subtly different in the faceting of its masses and in the scale of the miniature shrine elements in its shikhara.1.89 176

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.89a @ 1:500

›1.89

A M B A R N AT H , A M B A R A N AT H A T E M P L E ,

inscribed c. 1060: (a) plan, (b) hall from the north-east, (c) detail of mulaprasada, (d) column. Unlike in the contemporary work at Udayapur, the rectangular faceting at Ambarnath produced squares joined on their diagonals. Instead of diminutive piers and substantial model shikharas in the superstructure, substantial piers support tiny shrines. The pillars relate more closely to the Malwan permutation than to that of the Solankis and the socle is among the richest species of the genus represented throughout the 11th-century north.

1.89b

1.89d

177

1.89c

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.90b

1.90a

1.90d @ 1:500

›1.90

T H E D E C C A N I S T Y L E , late-11th to early 12th

century: (a–c) Sinnar, Gondeshvara, view from west, detail of column, hall section; (d) Lonar, Daitya Sudana, plan (ASI). With a faceted mulaprasada bearing seven ranges of miniature shikharas on piers but diagonally aligned 1.90c

178

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

with a nine-square closed hall, the principal work at Sinnar reflects the influence of both Udayapur and Ambaranath. Star-shaped mulaprasadas appear at other Yadava sites – Lonar, for example, where the hall of the Daitya Sudama is an enlarged variation on the theme of the mulaprasada. The Malwan precedent for closed halls, followed at Sinnar, was perhaps the Yadava norm but the particularly sumptuous fiftycolumned open one at Anwa, with a central space defined by twelve great faceted columns and covered by a superb concentric ceiling, bears comparison with the one at Modhera. As at Sinnar, Yadava builders developed an essentially Deccani Order, mainly square in section with recessed octagonal or circular bands and sometimes with a purnakalasha interpolated well below the graded rings and padmas which form the capital. The most ambitious Yadava temples have a full Solanki socle but the Gondeshvara has only one frieze band. After the Gujarati pattern, one register of iconic sculpture is the norm but the Gondeshvara is unsual in its class in having applied pillars and other abstract motifs instead of figural reliefs in most of its aedicules.

The style was taken up by the Yadavas of the northern Deccani domain adjacent to Maharashtra and virtually a cultural province of Malwa: their extensive corpus in their extended domains is best represented by the Gondeshvara of their capital, Sinnar.1.90 The Bhumija mode rapidly spread east and west, reaching the Kalachuris by the end of the 11th century and being taken up even by the later Chandellas for their last notable work at Khajuraho, the Duladeo. The mode is rare in Gujarat but in Rajasthan it was to be an important ingredient of the prolix, hybrid style forged between the 12th and 15th centuries from components provided by all the major post-Pratihara schools. The Devi shrine of the fine Bhumija Shiva Temple at Ramgarh is an early hybrid example, the Surya Temple at Ranakpur a particularly fine late one highly characteristic of the prolix inventiveness of the Rajasthani imagination.1.91

› 1 . 9 1 R A N A K P U R , S U R YA T E M P L E , 15th century: view from the south. The mulaprasada has eight principal projections separated by triads of minor ones. Above, miniature shikharas half-mask the mesh bands in the Sekhari manner in contrast to the tiers of still smaller ones which fill the adjoining zones in the Bhumija manner.

1.91

179

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

› 1 . 9 2 B H U B A N E S H V A R , T H E E A R LY P H A S E : (a) Vaital Deul (dated from its style and palaeography to the mid- or late-8th century, after the advent of the Bhauma Karas), view from the east; (b) Sisireshvara (dated from its style to the mid- or late-8th century), view from the south-east.

1.92a

ORISSA Much of modern Orissa (old Kalinga) had been forged into a kingdom by the Somavamshis of Koshala, who displaced the Bhauma Kharas of Utkala early in the 10th century and were themselves displaced early in the 12th century by Gangas of obscure origin. Under these powers, temple building reached a peak seemingly equalled only by their Solanki, Chandella and Chola contemporaries. A dearth of royal foundation inscriptions means few firm dates and the construction of a chronology for Orissan temples, based on early treatise references to the sequential development of three- and five-bay mulaprasadas, 180

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.92b

relies on analysis of form, iconography and decorative detail. Thus, for instance, a progressive development may be discerned in the relationship between mulaprasada and hall, especially their distinction in mass but assimilation in articulation. A clear line of development can be discerned too in the curve of the shikara and the elaboration of the socle to include padmas and purnakalasha mouldings. Interiors remained plain, except for the occasional carved ceiling and niches with icons in garbha-grihas, but manifestations of the deity and shakti imagery proliferated on exteriors in line with developments elsewhere. The emergence of a single central projection from the exposed sides of a square mulaprasada, in no developed relationship with the superstructure, is common in the temples that stylistic considerations place among the earliest surviving examples: of these the most important is the Parashurameshvara.1.47 The introduction of the five-bay type, with graded projections through three planes from base to summit, seems to have been an 8th-century development: the Sisireshvar and Vaital Deul may be singled out, though the latter has an unusual oblong mulaprasada. Maturity is achieved in the reconciliation of assimilation and differentiation as complementary aims: the Mukteshvar and the Varahi temple at Chaurasi mark the first stage, the great Lingaraj its culmination.1.92, 1.93 Bhubaneshvar: Latina masterpieces Hand in hand with the enrichment and integration of the elements of the mulaprasada, the hall is transformed into a monumental entity assimilated to the mulaprasada in articulation but distinguished by an elegantly curved pyramid of superimposed slabs rising to a massive finial. This was the final assertion of the hall’s discretion as an entity coexisting with the sanctuary. On the other hand, the centralizing tendency discernible in the common five-bay scheme of articulation upon which the assimilation of the two units depended led to the progressive grading of the projections

181

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.93a

from the sides to the centre of each which distinguishes the Mukteshvara. The system is amplified in favour of the intermediate piers in the context of the rectangular mulaprasada at Chaurasi. Naturally the elaboration of the socle advances with the development in massing and articulation: first a simple footing is surmounted by kumbha and kapota; these then become the purnakalasha and the footing is given a cyma-recta profile. With its prophetic articulation and exquisite sculpture, the Mukteshvara must be considered one of the region’s three supreme masterpieces but some further advance over the Mukteshvara is represented by the mid-11th-century Brahmeshvara. The hall is now square and assimilated to, if slightly differentiated from, the five-bay mulaprasada. With gargoyles and miniature shrine forms incorporated in the design of the shikhara, greatly enhancing the vitality of the whole, this significant work 1.93b

182

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

is clearly related to the second of the three great masterpieces of mature Orissan architecture, the Lingaraj. Rising from a compound of lesser shrines, the superstructure of the great Lingaraj dominates the town. Following the precedent set in the Mukteshvara, in particular, all the elements are co-ordinated in the Lingaraj. The socle has five tiers, one following the profile of the kalasha, as in the earlier work, and the five bays of the cella are reflected in the

1.93c @ 1:500

shikhara. The greater scale of the Lingaraj required two registers in the walls, with miniature slab-roofed shrine forms providing niches for icons.

1.93d @ 1:500

›1.93

B H U B A N E S H V A R , M AT U R I T Y : (a–c) Mukteshvara (usually placed for stylistic reasons in the late-10th century), view from the north-west, detail of mulaprasada, plan; (d, e) Rajarani (early 11th century), plan, view from the south-west; (f ) Varahi at Chaurasi (early 11th century); (g, h) Lingaraj (credited most convincingly to Yayati II, c. 1020–40), view from the north and plan.

1.93f

183

1.93e

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.93g

184

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.93h @ 1:500

The curve of the Lingaraj shikhara effected the canonical Latina balance between strength and grace: there are miniature shikharas over the vestibule and in the intermediate zones, where they are superimposed all the way from the first storey to the last, enlivening the great bulk most effectively. Elaborate kirtimukha gables with lion finials relieve the centres of its three outer faces above the blind doors and, as in all northern varieties, it is crowned by a massive amalaka, here supported by more heraldic lions. The slabs of the hall roof, diminishing progressively and culminating in a double-lotus finial, are interrupted by the recessed vertical of a gallery. The lower slab interferes with the spring of the shikhara, suggesting to some that the hall was added later, like the subsidiary shrines at the cardinals of the cella and the pavilions for ritual dancing and feasting beyond it. The miniature shrine forms which made such a vital contribution here were to be the key to the final phase of development in Orissan architecture but the Rajarani is an exceptional example of flirtation with the Sekhari mode. The transformation of the monolithic block, subdivided vertically over a plan approximating the star shapes of Malwa and the Deccan, into a vibrant accumulation of miniature shrines at once provides closing elements for the main façade composition when viewed orthogonally and centralizing elements for subsidiary façade compositions when viewed diagonally.

185

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

Neither the Bhumija nor the Sekhari mode was to play a important role in the subsequent development of Orissan architecture. Under the Gangas, towards the end of the 12th century, the basic five-bay scheme was retained but plasticity of mass was enhanced by the interpolation of an extra intermediate zone: with increase in mass, however, went decrease in internal volume.Profuse ornament,much with intricate and highly stylized details comparable to ivory or fine metalwork but not well calculated to enhance monumentality in stone structures, is typical of Ganga work at Bhubaneshvar. However, the greatest works of the Gangas were not there. The important Jagannatha at Puri, closely modelled on the Lingaraj, offers little that was new but the stupendous Surya Temple built by Narasimhadeva Ganga (c. 1238–64) at Konarak must be counted as the third of the masterpieces of mature Orissan architecture though it was hardly innovative except, perhaps, for representationalism on a massive scale. Set in the centre of a vast compound associated with Tantric cults, this astonishing work was conceived as a colossal car, the chariot of Surya, with twelve pairs of wheels represented on its high platform and the horses of the sun prancing beside the steps which lead up to the main entrance in the east. Among the sadly depleted remains, the monumental freestanding sculpture groups in particular, which rank among the major achievements of Indian art, clearly show the ability of those who conceived the whole complex to reconcile the usually irreconcilable objectives of overbearing size and supreme aesthetic accomplishment.1.94 Ko n a ra k Like other Ganga temples, this complex work had subsidiary shrines attached to the mulaprasada and a splendid freestanding pavilion, in addition to the hall, with a ceremonial pillar between them. All were set on

186

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

a platform with a base of the five-tiered kalasha variety, unparalled in richness, and a marvellous series of friezes depicting secular subjects – hunting, military, trade – in which the wonderfully observed elephants are particularly noteworthy. Behind the great wheels which punctuate them, the sides of the platform conform in articulation to the structures above. The work at Konarak post-dates the development of the seven-bay scheme at Bhubaneshvar but seems to have conformed to the earlier fivebay tradition. As at the Lingaraj, however, the walls of both the mulaprasada and the hall had two registers. The lower one is subdivided by projecting miniature shrines at each change of plane, and further subdivided by rich pilasters, each field alive with the sardulas, nagas, apsaras and mithunas for which these remains are celebrated. Little survives above the lower register of the mulaprasada – other than three superb images of Surya, the eight-jamb sanctuary portal and platform with reliefs representing the king’s progress to the consecration of the temple. However, early 19th-century records indicate that the shikhara had miniature shrines in its intermediate zones, like that of the 1.94a

›1.94

K O N A R A K , S U R YA T E M P L E , consecrated on Surya’s birthday in 1258: (a) Surya and his horse, (b) view from the east in the mid-19th century when part of the shikhara survived, (c) detail of socle, (d) view from the east with the ruins of the shikhara in the foreground.

1.94b

187

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

Lingaraj, and the remains of the wall are closely related to the corresponding elements of the hall. The hall is square: porticoes preceded by steps project to each exposed side, the main one to the east leading from the pavilion. The upper zone of the walls, happily intact, follows the general scheme below but is taller and has pilasters of a padma type instead of miniature shrines and complex narrative reliefs in addition to shakti imagery; the entabulature incorporates a frieze depicting a variety of kingly pursuits. The assertive horizontals of base, stringcourse and entablature offset the verticals in the corner and intemediate bays with richly diversified aedicules superimposed in the registers and splendid vyalas, shardulas and mithunas in the recessions. The sequence of roof slabs is interrupted by two recessed storeys. Superb dancers orchestrating the progression of the walls are doubled by freestanding female musicians at the salient points and eight lions support the lotiform finial with apparent ease, as it were, containing the forces set up below. The architectural importance of these masterly sculptures in asserting the verticals against the horizontals of the roof slabs, with a vitality rivalling that of the Lingaraj, would be difficult to exaggerate.

1.94d

1.94c

188

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

189

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.95a

7 central synthesis Ruling from Kalyani, the restored – or ‘Later’ – Chalukyas maintained a somewhat tenuous control over their peripheral feudatories: the Yadavas of Sinnar and Devagiri in the north, the Kakatiyas of Warangal in the east, and the Hoysalas of Dorasamudra who had risen to local significance on the basis of brigandage in the lower western Ghats. These were the beneficiaries when the Cholas finally broke Chalukyan power towards the end of the 12th century at the cost of their own exhaustion. By the middle of the next century the Pandyas of Madurai were supreme in the south.

CROSS-FERTILIZATION The northern and southern traditions were crossed by the Later Chalukyas in west-central India in a synthesis of palace and mountain imagery that reflects attitudes of mind as ancient as the mystical identification of Indra’s 190

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

yashti with the axis mundi, with the cosmic mountain Meru, and of Meru itself with the Palace of the Gods. Displacing the Chalukyas, the Hoysalas built on their eclectic achievement with infinite intricacy – and, in particular, on the star-shaped plan of the northern Deccanis and Malwans. With a change of material, too, from sandstone to fine-grained, easily worked chloritic schist, blocks became smaller and the early vigour and purposefulness gave way to decorative exuberance. ›1.95

T O W A R D S T H E L AT E R C H A L U K YA N S Y N -

T H E S I S , K U K K A N U R : (a) Navalinga complex (c.

980), general view; (b–d) Kalleshvara (c. 1000), general view from the south-east, hall interior, plan. The shrines in the Navalinga group, sandstone vimanas semi-formally associated with four mandapas, are probably the earliest Later Chalukya survivals: more prolifically ornamented than their predecessors at Badami and Pattadakal, they are still essentially southern. The Kalleshvar at Kukkanur and the Jaina temple at Lakkundi have three- and five-storey vimanas without ambulatory linked by a generous vestibule to nine-square closed halls. The vimana walls break forward from the base plane through two intermediate zones to the central projection and each corner is stressed by a projection equal to the first intermediate plane of the central sequence. The system is repeated for the hall but the first intermediate plane extends on either side of the intermediate recession. Socles have a faceted karnaka between the plinth slabs and contracted eave mouldings. The superimposition of graded ring mouldings and elegantly curved kalasha, first noticed at Pattadakal, is developed for the hall columns by turning them in part on a lathe. Elsewhere pillars show more variation in the profile of shafts, more octagonal zones and more lathe-turned members. The Lakkundi sanctuary portal has pilasters supporting an elaborate kapota but no architectonic lintel. The miniature cells of the superstructure’s parapets, extending over the hall from the vestibule gable, are still distinguishable in both works but relief is drawn from the variation in plane of the walls. The central cell at each level, covering the cardinal projec-

191

THE LATER CHALUKYAS On their restoration to power towards the end of the 10th century, the Later Chalukyas emerged immediately as vigorous patrons of architecture like their ancestors.Like their ancestors, too, they were subject to potent influence from both south and north and, as might scarcely have been expected after two crucial centuries of development around them,they took up their syncretic work once more at a point not far beyond where their forebears had left off. The vimana retained its essentially southern storeyed form but, as the new phase of Chalukya patronage progressed, the definition of the architectonic parapet elements decreased as planar variation increased to a climax in the centre. Their earliest temples belong to neighbouring groups at Kukkanur and Lakkundi – the latter an important centre of power in the south of the kingdom near modern Gadag. The column type develops the model provided in the Virupaksha Nandi pavilion at Pattadakal.There is only a moderate interest in varying the wall plane of both vimana and hall but the systems generally match, as in the later works of Pattadakal. Ghanadvaras and aedicules crowned with miniature Dravidian vimanas are common to both temples. Prophetically, the Kalleshvara has pilasters bearing Nagara shikharas in the recessions and the Lakkundi work has miniature shrines within kirtimukha arches.1.95

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.95b

1.95c @ 1:500

tions, is dominated by superimposed dormers which provide an assertive vertical accent and the square cupola is vigorously faceted in line with the projections below.

1.96

TO W A R D S

C H A L U K YA N

M AT U R I T Y

IN

THE

L AT E R

S T Y L E , c. 1020–1090: (a) Chauda-

dampur, early 11th-century Mukteshvara, view from the east; (b, c) Niralgi, Siddharameshvara of c. 1050, plan and section (ASI); (d–f ) Haveri, Siddeshvara of c. 1070, plan, elevation, column type (ASI), detail of ghanadvara; (g, h) Nilagunda, late-11th-century Bhimeshvara plan, view from the east. The Mukteshvara at Chaudadampur and the Siddharameshvara at Niralgi are similar in plan to the Kalleshvara at Kukkanur, apart from the disposition and number of porches. The Havari work has three 1.95d

192

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.96a

entrances and only the inner corners of the hall adjacent to the vestibule, are closed. The three shrines of the Bhimeshvara at Nilagunda open from a central hall with a portico to the fourth side also serving a fourth shrine. Open halls, like porches, have full vedika with seat-back coping. Apart from the wide variety of lathe-turned columns, those inside the hall of the Sarasvati shrine at Gadag are related to the multi-faceted Gujarati type, reflecting the bands of ornament of the highly adorned wall. The articulation of closed halls is consistent with vimanas, the inner bays breaking forward from the base plane to much the same degree and as at Kukkanur and Lakkundi these projections are usually all framed by attenuated padma-kumbha pilasters. Weighty pierbuttresses relieve the corners of the first intermediate projections at Niralgi and this feature is given even

193

The next phase, opening in the first half of the 11th century, is represented at Gadag, Chaudadampur, Haveri, Niralgi and Nilagunda. It is characterized by adventurous planning, by more assertive planar variation, and by the introduction of weightier pier-buttresses to the intermediate zone between the side and central projections. Notable above all are the treatment of the superstructure and the use of a wide variety of miniature superstructural forms over the aedicules and pier-buttresses. Until the middle of the century the prototype for the latter was the southern vimana but then Latina, Sekhari, Bhumija and idiosyncratic hybrid types began to appear as well.1.96 Synthesis of northern and southern elements was the

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.96c @ 1:500

1.96b

1.96d @ 1:500

1.96e

194

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.96f

1.96g

1.96h @ 1:500

greater weight at Haveri. Several further lightly projecting planes in the centre are assimilated to house the assertive ghanadvaras, with their increasing variety of miniature shikharas and vimanas. The tendency to fuse the once structural elements of the Dravidian vimana into an increasingly abstract pattern with a major central accent may well be traced from Haveri to Chaudadampur to Niralgi.

195

distinguishing characteristic of the mature style in macrocosm no less than microcosm. To full scale, as in miniature, the verticals are asserted to break down the autonomy of the storeys in response to the stepped projection of the mass: the capitals of the pier-buttresses in the recessions are repeated at each level between the miniature parapet cells over the corner and central projections, giving the vimana superstructure five distinct vertical zones like the Latina shikhara of the north. Further, the elongation in profile of the central cell gables, suggesting the continuity of their lines though in fact each is stepped back from the one below, produces a determined central accent. Just as the central cells have lost most of their structural identity, becoming elements in an increasingly abstract pattern, so too the corner cells

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.97a

›1.97

M AT U R I T Y O F T H E L AT E R C H A L U K YA N

S Y N T H E S I S , c. 1100–25: (a–d) Lakkundi, Kashiv-

1.97b @ 1:500

are hardly distinguishable as miniature pavilions and the increasingly serrated cupola becomes more and more like an amalaka. Hybrid maturity was achieved by the end of the 11th century at several sites including Hangal, Kuruvatti, Ittagi and Lakkundi. Apart from the introduction of magnificent cruciform open halls with equilateral projections between the arms of the cross and ceilings as sumptuous as those of the Solankis, the mid-11th-century works retain the basic sequence of square mulaprasada, generous rectangular vestibule and larger nine-square closed hall. Though considerable variety in the combination of circular and square elements continued to enliven the composition of pillars, circular lathe-turned forms 196

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

ishveshvara (inscribed in 1087, completed later) view from south-west, plan and column (ASI), detail of western vimana; (e, f ) Hangal, mid-12th-century Tarakeshvara, hall ceiling (ASI); (g–k) Ittagi, Mahadeva (datable to 1112 from inscriptions) hall, view from south-east, plan, detail of vimana and main shrine portal; (l) Kuruvatti, mid-12th-century Malikarjuna, entrance front. The interpenetration of horizontals and verticals was completed between the Mahadeva of Ittagi, the Malikarjuna of Kuruvatti and the Kashivishveshvar of Lakkundi. There the main entablature is broken in the centre and the miniature Sekhari shikharas over the ghanadvaras penetrate up into trefoil dormers. In contrast to the increasing abstraction of the vimana itself – far advanced at Kuruvatti – the precision with which the structural elements of the traditional Dravidian vimana are quoted in miniature is well illustrated at Ittagi. Ittagi offers one of the school’s most notable open hyperstyle halls with a sumptuous variety of column types. While architectonic lintels are not the LaterChalukyan norm, Ittagi's shrines portal has a magnificent multistorey prasada motif. The Gujarati influence is well represented by the profusion of base mouldings at Lakkundi and the unsurpassed intricacy of the ceiling in the hall at Hangal.

1.97c

197

1.97d

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.97e

1.97f

1.97g

198

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

199

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.97h

1.97i @ 1:500

200

1.97j

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

now dominate but there is no less fertility of invention in varying the basic theme: one particularly significant innovation is fluting across all the mouldings. Walls have even greater plasticity than formerly due both to the enhanced depth of projection and to the consistent interpolation of piers in the peripheral recessions. Above all, the various constituent elements of the Dravidian vimana have now resolved themselves into a series of luxurious horizontal mouldings which step forward more vigorously than ever. Somewhat ironically, structural forms reassert themselves in the more elaborate works as miniature Dravidian vimanas over the pier-buttresses of the intermediate recessions.1.97

1.97k

1.97l

201

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.98a

›1.98

1.98c

202

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

B E L U R , C H E N N A - K E S H A V A , datable from an inscription of 1117: (a, b) general views from the east and south-west, (c) detail of vimana exterior, (d) detail of hall exterior. The twin Chenna-Keshava shrines at Belur, one slightly larger than the other, dominate an extensive Vaishnavite complex surrounded by an enclosure with gopuram in the east, opposite the entrances to each. On platforms generous enough for circumambulation and echoing the configuration of their plans, the vimanas are still essentially five-bay, though the relationship between the equilateral projections tends towards the star-shaped. All the bays are richly faceted and two-storey balconies are attached to the cardinals. The multiple aedicules are particularly florid makara toranas but the exuberant sculpture, often applied to miniature shrine-capped pilasters within them, tends to obscure this. Beyond its three large porches, the hall is screened over seat-back coping between latheturned pillars with figural brackets. Similar columns, varied in pattern and often richly fluted like those of Ittagi, support the splendid tiered ceilings. The socle mouldings are richly varied: the vimana and adjacent hall walls have plinths with elephant frieze, karnaka, khura, and kumuda interrupted by niches with miniature vimanas and surmounted by a dado above the floorslab with padma and karnaka mouldings. The balconies have three superimposed

1.98b

T H E H OY S A L A S The Chalukyas were in disarray from the middle of the 11th century, well before the Hoysalas occupied Lakkundi and established their capital there in 1191. The new rulers were certainly no less eclectic in their taste for architecture than their Chalukyan predecessors. In the vicinity of their original south-west Deccani base, Dorasamudra, Chalukyan syncretism seem to have been their starting point. Beyond that, cultural contacts with their south-eastern neighbours seem to have been insignificant but a fondness for multishrined complexes and star-shaped plans was acquired from the spheres of their military campaigns in the northwest of the peninsula. Characteristic of the school’s major surviving works are tiered platforms echoing the perimeter of the buildings they support, superimposed frieze slabs, screened halls, lathe-turned columns with bold figural brackets and 1.98d

203

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

profuse ornamentation carved like ivory or sandelwood. The great Chenna-Keshava at Belur may be singled out from among their earliest works, dating from well before the capture of Lakkundi.1.98 The second half of the 12th century, when the extinction of the Chalukyas was approaching, was dominated by the Hoysaleshvara at Halebid.1.99 At the same time the star-shaped plan, approximated at Hangal, was fully realized in both vimana

1.99b @ 1:500

206

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

friezes; the open hall retains the magnificent plinth with elephants below rich padma, karnaka and kapota mouldings, and its particularly sumptuous entablature has rows of filigree mouldings, niches and piers bearing miniature vimanas above a valance-like chadya. The superstructure is missing.

› 1 . 9 9 H A L E B I D , H O Y S A L E S H V A R A , c. 1160/70: (a, pages 204–205) view from the south-west, (b) plan, (c) detail of north-eastern hall exterior, (d) detail of vimana. The Hoysaleshvara is comparable in most respects to the Belur temple but its twin Shiva shrines, preceded by Nandi pavilions, are commensurate and joined on the cross axis of their nine-square halls. The vimanas are star-shaped with two-storey balconies. The socle throughout is of superimposed slabs with splendid reliefs. The exquisitely executed figure sculpture on the walls almost entirely obliterates the supports but an ‘attic’ of niches separates two chadyas below the lost superstructure.

1.99c

207

1.99d

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.100a

1.100b @ 1:500

and hall of the Dodda Basappa at Dambal and the Ishvara at Arsikeri. Maturity was fully realized over the next one hundred years and the culminating Hoysala achievement was the Keshava at Somanathpur.1.100–1.102 1.100c

208

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

›1.100

S O M A N AT H P U R , K E S H A V A , datable from an inscription of 1268: (a) view from the south-east, (b) plan, (c) vimana exterior detail. The triple-shrined complex is set in a compound surrounded by an enclosure with cloisters, sixty-four subsidiary shrines and a magnificent columned entrance pavilion. The gorgeous little Ishvara at Arsikeri amplifies the star plan of its vimana for its open hall, but at Somanathpur the star-shaped vimanas share a ninesquare pavilion, extended to provide entrance hall and porch. The perimeter of the whole is echoed by the platform for cirumambulation. The socle consists of superimposed slabs, with sumptuous reliefs as at Halebid. Each facet of the walls in the vimanas and the closed corners of the pavilion between them has a lavish icon below makara toranas superimposed over pilasters bearing miniature vimanas, those on the side shrines cut by the entablature. The porch parapets bear faceted square pillars but inside the columns are mainly lathe-turned, with and without fluting, and the ceiling compartments are distinguished by a stunning diversity of pattern. Above a broad chadya, with lace-like valance, the upper storeys, with parapets of vestigial cells and substantial vestibule gables, reflect every variation of plane in the ground floor.

› 1 . 1 0 1 D A M B A L , D O D D A B A S A P PA , early 12th century: (a) vimana, (b) plan. The date and many of the features of the Dodda Basappa suggest that it is due to the Hoysalas but it lacks the dazzling relief with which Late-Hoysala workers obviated monotony and relies instead on the somewhat mechanical repetition of slender pilasters forming identical niches. All variations in plane are preserved to the summit of the shikhara and the effect is entirely removed from the Dravidian vimana, though the reappearance of distinguishable cells to form each facet of all six storeys suggests familiarity with the Bhumija tradition well entrenched further north.

1.101a

1.101b@ 1:500

1.102a @ 1:500

›1.102

A R S I K E R I , I S H V A R A , inscribed by the late-12th-century Hoysala king Ballala II: (a) plan, (b) view from the south-east.

1.102b

209

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

8 forts

›1.103

J A I S A L M E R , from the mid-12th century:

general view.

From Kashmir to Coromandel India is studded with imposing fortresses.Their origins usually lost in antiquity, most of them were transformed after the Muslim invasion of the 12th century and although some retain early work, the nature of the indigenous legacy is revealed primarily in India’s impressive corpus of ancient literature – religious, epic and professional. Kautiliya was eclectic: in addition to Persian precept he drew upon India’s indigenous lore – and common sense – in his prescriptions for the defence of the realm and its cities. His classification of forts is based on the traditional – and obvious – distinction of types of site with natural defences.They were preferably perched on precipitous outcrops of rock with a town at their base or isolated by tracts of forest, desert, marsh or water. Strategy over-ruled tactics for the canonical sixth type, the metropolitan fort founded on the open plain where human ingenuity must compensate for nature: the line of approach was deflected and strewn with obstacles, water was introduced to a moat by tapping or damming the nearest river and the land beyond was laid waste to form a field open to the fire of the defenders (maidan). Beyond their natural advantages, the 210

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

strength of all the types depends upon ramparts and the materials used in them – mud, stone, timber, etc. – sometimes make further categories. We shall encounter several spectacular Hindu foundations later, in their definitive form. Here we confine ourselves to an example from each of Kautilya’s basic categories – and from widely various parts of India: Chittor and Devagiri, Jaisalmer, Gaur and Gingee – which may be taken as representative of Hindu achievement before the advent of the Muslims. Incidentally, though references to agni-curna (a compound of saltpetre, sulphur and charcoal) in post-Kautilian treatises have prompted claims to the early Indian invention of gunpowder, proof is wanting that firearms were used in the subcontinent before the late14th century. Most of India’s strategic crags were fortified by one or other of the many ambitious Hindu dynasties we have so far encountered but, naturally, they have been rebuilt or upgraded many times: examples of an isolated acropolis protecting a settlement in the plain are legion but Chittor and Gingee may well be taken as representative of northern and southern practice not least because they preserve substantial pre-Muslim elements. Passion for change and war, of course, have meant that little remains of the palaces built within the ramparts at these sites – or, indeed, anywhere else – before the Muslims achieved dominance in India and for a considerable time thereafter: we shall turn to them in due course.1.103, 1.104 Chittor When Chittor was first occupied is uncertain but, as the key to Rajasthan, it must always have been the objective of any would-be potentate there: it is first mentioned under the Guhilot-Sisodias in the 7th century CE. It fell to › 1 . 1 0 4 ( PA G E S 2 1 2 – 2 1 3 ) C H I T T O R , first men- the forces of the Delhi sultan at the beginning of the 14th century but was tioned in the 7th century: view from the south-west. recaptured by the Rajputs in 1326. Success in eluding Muslim conquerors

211

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

in the following century is commemorated by the ‘Tower of Victory’ (1440) which dominates it still. Two hundred metres above the plain, the acropolis is reached primarily from the west but there are subsidiary paths to the north and east: these have one and four gates respectively, including the major eastern Suraj Pol. Across the sinuous western approach are seven massive gates culminating in the magnificent Ram Pol. In most the lower masonry is comparable with 11th-century Hindu work elsewhere on the site but the battlements seem generally to have been rebuilt after Muslim assault early in the 14th century. All the gates except the first have twin towers. The fourth and fifth were rebuilt with arches but all the rest have lintels carried on corbel brackets, in the Hindu manner, with varying degrees of elaboration culminating in the particularly sumptuous 15th-century Ram Pol. This has a richly moulded base incorporating three friezes like those of temples built immediately before the Muslim invasion. There are no barbicans but to prevent circumvention cross-walls link several of the gates to the main ramparts. The bastions are slightly battered but the battlements, like those of the gatehouses, are distinct from most work elsewhere carried out after the Muslim invasion. The merlons have a ‘pointed-arch’ profile which one might associate with the Muslims

214

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

› 1 . 1 0 4 G I N G E E F O R T , 9th century and later: general view. The fort at Gingee was founded by the Cholas. Their work may well have been confined to the high conical hill called Rajagiri, which bears the citadel, but in the mid-15th century the Pandyan governor of Tanjore incorporated the two neighbouring hills of Chandragiri and Krishnagiri into the great triangular complex which made Gingee the most celebrated of all southern forts. An outer curtain defends all three hills and culminates in the system of walls protecting usable high ground on Chandragiri and Krishnagiri. Entrance was through the base of the triangle. From the centre three main lines of walls succeed one another before the citadel on Rajagiri at the apex. The citadel’s outer bailey, partially moated and containing the granaries and the palace – many times rebuilt – was entered through a great triple gate, with barbican and heavily guarded courts, forcing passage though nine hundred turns no less than six times. The next two gates, into and out of the second bailey, are diagonally disposed and hardly less complex. Just below the summit the rock is divided by a deep chasm over which a drawbridge led to the final narrow gate, defensible by a mere handful of men.

but the embrasures splay out from narrow slits below a continuous stringcourse to form rare wedge-shaped forms. As there is no record of massive damage beyond breaches made by Muslim artillery in the 16th century, the walls of Chittor are generally considered to be the finest examples of medieval Hindu defence work to survive in any degree of completeness.

Elevation and forestation still distinguish many forts in the Western Ghats but many others which once benefitted from lush vegetation elsewhere in north-central India have long been left exposed. Jaisalmer, founded in the late12th century on the profits won from control of trade routes across the Thar, is the supreme example of the true desert fort and though it was much expanded from the 14th century it remained resolutely Hindu.1.103 Set in the Deccani wilderness of scrubby bush, metropolitan Devagiri preserves the astonishing work carried out on its acropolis for the Yadavas long before it was transformed by the Muslims into the capital of empire and renamed Daulatabad.1.105 D e va g i r i Unexcelled even in Rajasthan is the extensive chain of strongholds with which successive Hindu – and Muslim powers – controlled the Deccan. Devagiri was a key link in this chain. Of the town’s four ring walls the Muslims were probably responsible at least for the outer one and for strengthening the gates of the second circuit but all the major features of the citadel, outstanding of their kind, seem to date from the Yadava period. Some 900 metres high, the isolated rock upon which it is established is ringed by a moat and scarped all round to produce unscaleably smooth vertical faces rising to about a third of its height. After passing through several gates into and out of the innermost town enclosure, the sole entrance to the stronghold opens from a wall-walk skirting a huge bastion and is reached by a causeway which crosses the moat between descending and ascending flights of steps – as the moat was dammed and the water level under the control of the occupants, the causeway could be

215

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.105a

› 1 . 1 0 5 D E V A G I R I ( D A U L ATA B A D ) : (a) general view, (b) detail of moat, causeway and bastion, (c) plan of causeway and chambers at the back of the tunnel.

1.105c @ approximately 1:10,000

1.105b

216

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

flooded. From the wall-walk steps mount to a cavernous guard chamber beyond which a narrow passage leads to a small open court before the portal of a dark and tortuous tunnel. Steps within, barred by retractable stone slabs and sealed with an iron trapdoor, connect natural caves for additional guards and a ventilated chamber in which smoke could be produced to suffocate those attempting ascent.

›1.106

G A U R : general view of ramparts. Framing the later ruins on the site is a considerable part of the rectangular earthworks – more than 10 metres high and 60 metres at the base. The Senas – like their Muslim successors – maintained this bulwark and its causeway as much to protect themselves from the forces of nature as to withstand those of man but both have destroyed much where brick and bamboo are the traditional materials.

Naturally no fort is viable without the water supplied at least by an oasis or artesian bores. At Devagiri, if not Jaisalmer, that was sufficient to supplement the defences ingeniously and,of course,water contributes to the defence of many forts that fit into other categories – Udaipur and Amber for instance.The most prominent surviving waterforts properly so called – like Vellore in the south or Vijayadurga on the west coast – were built for Hindu rulers but took their definitive form well after the advent of the Muslims, the European colonial powers and gunpowder. Founded long before that, the outstanding example of a city whose defences depended on water is the metropolitan seat of the Senas at the junction of the Ganges and the Mahanadi at Gaur in Bengal: rare representatives of Kautilya’s subcategory of earth or mud fortification, the great moated, rectangular ramparts rank among the most tangible surviving realizations of ancient shastra principles.1.106

1.106

217

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.107a

9 sri lanka Mythology has it that Sri Lanka was populated by a race descended from the union of a ravishingly beautiful Bengali princess and a lion (simha) who detained, but did not devour, her after attacking her merchant convoy in an unlocated desert: hence the alternative name Sinhala or Ceylon for the beautiful island off the south coast of India and for the lion symbol of its modern nation. In reality there were natives, now subsisting on the verge of extinction, but the overwhelming majority of the island’s people descend from the Indo-Aryan invaders who had slowly infiltrated the subcontinent itself from the middle of the 2nd millenium bce: they seem to have taken a thousand years to reach Sri Lanka and brought their Vedic deities – including the ancestors of Shiva and Vishnu – with them. 218

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

›1.107

PRIME RELICS OF THE INTRODUCTION

O F B U D D H I S M AT A N U R A D H A P U R A : (a) meditat-

ing Buddha (8th century); (b), Bodhi-ghara (18th century, in place of the primitive one of the 3rd century BCE).

Thereafter, the history of the realm was the subject of Buddhist chroniclers active between the 3rd century bce and the advent of the British in the early 19th century. The scope of the two main series, the Mahavamsa and Culavamsa, is unique in Asia due in part to the longevity of the Buddhist monastic tradition which produced them. In addition, there are the many inscriptions on Sri Lanka’s rich heritage of monuments. The Mahavamsa begins with an Indo-Aryan prince Vijaya, exiled from his northern realm in the early 5th century bce: whoever he actually was, he and his followers brought Brahmanism, the Pali language and agriculture with them. By the end of the century Anuradhapura had been established as the capital by King Pandukabhaya. Buddhism was introduced there 150 years later by Ashoka’s son Thera Mahinda. Sent c. 245 bce as an imperial emissary to King Devanampiya Tissa (c. 250-210 bce), the prince was received at the subsequently sacred site of Mihintale. The conversion of the king converted his subjects but not without the Ashokan – or, indeed, Gautaman – spirit of tolerance of folk traditions. Sanctified by a shoot of the yaksha’s Bodhi tree under which Buddha attained enlightenment at Gaya, transplanted at the instigation of Ashoka, Anuradhapura was the island’s premier cult and royal centre for more than a thousand years.1.107 Towards the end of the 3rd century, India was the source of a new invasion, that of the Dravidian Tamils (who can hardly have failed to establish a bridgehead on the northern peninsula long before): they were led by King Elara, who took the throne at Anuradhapura but resisted the expurgation of Buddhism in favour of his own Brahmanical faith and earned a reputation for justice. Naturally this failed to mollify the heirs of Tissa: after prolonged struggle, one of them despatched him in 161 bce and resumed the throne as Dutthagamani.

1.107b

219

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

The restored king presided for nearly a quarter of a cen- › 1 . 1 0 8 R E L I G I O U S D I V E R S I T Y AT T H E A P O G E E O F A N U R A D H A P U R A (8th–9th century): (a) the bodtury over the elevation of his realm’s Buddhist culture to hisattva Avalokiteshvara; (b) Vishnu (both Colombo, an apogee as eminent as any achieved in Madhyadesha or National Museum) . Andhradesha – where Buddhist monks from Sri Lanka were resident at Nagarjunakonda.The glory was sustained by his successor, Saddhatissa (137–119 bce). The reigns of Vattagamani (103–102 and 89–77 bce),Kutakanna (c.41–19 bce) and Bhatika Abhaya (c. 19 bce–9 ce) were separated by periods of Tamil incursion but they and their followers sustained an astonishing programme of utilitarian public works, most notably an island-wide network of dams and irrigation canals which, naturally, also had profound religious significance.

O RT H O D OX A N D H E TE RO D OX After King Vattagamani had regained his throne from the Tamil invaders in 89 bce, Sri Lanka was to the fore in the recording of Buddhist doctrine. The purified Sthaviravadin (Pali ‘Theravadin’) form, reputedly promoted by the council held under Ashoka’s auspices, had been implanted by the emperor’s emissary in the Mahavihara established on land given by King Tissa. It is not clear how far the canon had been defined in scripture before Mahinda’s mission but after 150 years a council was required to refine it and credit for the definitive scripture is usually given to Vattagamani’s orthodox scholars. Their authoritative doctrine proved readily exportable to foreign kings seeking to cloak themselves in legitimacy. The integrity of the Theravada was sustained by the conservative power of the Mahavihara establishment. There were to be kings who resented that power and endowed rival orthodox and even hetorodox sects in opposition to it. The most notable is Mahasena (276–303), the greatest king of the Lambakanna dynasty which had acceded in 65 ce. One of the island’s great builders in both

1.108a

1.108b

220

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

› 1 . 1 0 9 S I G I R I YA : (a) apsara fresco (5th century, restored); (b, pages 222–223) general view of rock. A colossal, roughly cylindrical outcrop of gneiss rises from the plain over the remains of the ephemeral capital of the regicide king Kassapa I (477–95). The celebrated frescoes embellish the walls of exposed caves about halfway up the sole means of tortuous access to the summit citadel: nude or scantily veiled but richly festooned with jewels, fair-skinned apsaras or princesses and darker-skinned attendants emerge from clouds. Contemporary with the frescoes of Ajanta I, they mark the high point of Gupta influence. Now much restored, to the detriment of their refinement if not of their sensuality, near-contemporary fragments of murals salvaged from the ruins of Anuradhapura offer instructive comparison between original and restored work in the genre.

the religious and secular fields, he founded the Jetavanaramaya at the Mahavihara’s expense – and on part of its domain – for a dissident sct of Theravadins. The major precedent was the Uttaravihara (Northern Monastery) endowed by King Vattagamani ex voto for his victory over the Tamils:initially for the Theravadins who promoted the king’s purifying agenda, it was the centre of opposition to the Mahavihara establishment from the outset and later the major Mahayana teaching college. The Mahayana was introduced towards the end of the 3rd century by missionaries from the hetorodox sects established in the domain of the Satavahana. It failed to eclipse the prevailing Theravadin orthodoxy. The latter was greatly reinforced in the 4th century when a princess from Kalinga, betrothed to one of Mahasena’s heirs, brought a tooth of the Buddha in her dowry: the most sacred of relics, it was consigned to the protection of the principal orthodox sect, enshrined in the Dalada Maligawa adjacent to the palace. As the palladium of the Sinhalese monarchy, legitimacy of power was deemed to reside with it.1.108 The Lambakannas were overwhelmed by a renewed Tamil invasion in 432.A generation later,the invaders were expelled by a remote descendant of the original royal line, who reigned as Dhatusena (459–77). The greatest king of latter-day Anuradhapura, the perfecter of the irrigation system, he was murdered by his son Kassapa. To secure himself from his brother, the usurper resorted to the extraordinary natural rock fort of Sigiriya and installed himself as king in a palace on its summit: the frescoes in the rockcut shrines off the path to the acropolis bear witness to the refinement of the brutal usurper’s lair. After eleven years, the brother triumphed in 496 with forces recruited in India and regained his throne in Anuradhapura. His line endured for two centuries.1.109

1.109b

221

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.110a

› 1 . 1 1 0 D A M B U L L A , T E M P L E I I : (a, b) interior details with rock-cut stupa, Buddhist and Brahmanical cult images (1st century BCE, restored notably in the late-12th century, the early 17th century, the late-18th century and in modern times). The transformation of the natural caves high in the spur of rock into a Buddhist cult centre is attributed to King Vattagamani Abhaya who took refuge there when Anuradhapura was occupied by Tamil forces (102–89 BCE). The second temple in the series, the greatest, is noted for the rock-cut icon of the Buddha Shakyamuni, Vishnu and a portrait of the king: much of the embellishment and all of the mural painting are late but the central stupa, often replastered, doubtless descends from the primitive chaitya.

1.110b

224

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

THE ANURADHAPURA ERA: THE M O N A S T I C CO M P LE X The chroniclers refer to the establishment of the Mahavihara by King Tissa in the royal park beyond the citadel at Anuradhapura. It incorporated the shrine of the sacred Bodhi tree, whose descendant survives, but the traces of its original buildings are too limited to permit comprehensive reconstruction. Four more major monasteries were established in the capital in the two main phases of the Anuradhapura period – before and after the Sigiriyan interregnum – and,of course,there were many lesser establishments elsewhere on the island. Timber was the common building material not only for secular buildings but also for the superstructures of religious ones – except for dagobas – and, therefore, much is lost. However, caves provided a ready, if naturally irregular, nucleus in scattered outcrops of rock: later supplemented by excavation, inevitably informally in conformity with the geology of the site, the primitive shelter was initially protected by a screen with chadya (cornice with dripcourse).The most celebrated rock complexes,at Mihintale and Dambulla, have never been abandoned and, constantly embellished and renovated, preserve little of their original quality except for their natural setting.1.110 On regular sites, the compound was often moated – especially in suburban or rural areas. Development was typically organic, as at Sanchi, but from the outset the dagoba was the inescapable focus at each of the viharas founded by royal charter for the principal schools of the realm’s orthodox order. The other essential elements were an enshrined cutting from the sacred Bodhi tree (bodhigara), at least one image house (pilimage), assembly halls for devotion and more general purposes (uposathaghara, upatthanasala), a refectory with a communal rice trough, facilities for ablution and residential complexes often with 225

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

multi-storey prasadas. In addition the islanders developed › 1 . 1 1 1 A N U R A D H A P U R A , M O N A S T I C R E M A I N S : (a, b) Isurumuniya Gala Vihara, general view and rock a unique stupa-temple hybrid (vatadage). sculptures; (c) Abhayagiri vihara, plan; (d) Kuttam A site in the western outskirts of the capital, where cre- Pokuna; (e, f ) the chapter house known as ‘Ratna mation took place, was developed in the 8th century by a Prasada’ and its Nataraja guardstone; (g) Mahavihara rice trough; (h, i) the image house known as sect of ascetics possibly affiliated to adjacent Abhayagiri Mahasena’s Palace and its ‘moonstone’ threshold. but certainly in opposition to the opulence of the royal The city was supposedly founded by a prince from establishments: in common with other ascetic founda- Vijaya’s suite, the great-grandfather of King Devanampiya Tissa who embanked the Tissa Wewa (the tions, their ‘wilderness monastery’ (pabbata vihara) was city’s largest reservoir): he was converted by Ashoka’s centred on a ‘sacred quadrangle’ in a moated compound missionary, planted the sacred Bodhi tree shoot and quartered for a dagoba, a bodhighara, a pilimage and an founded the Mahavihara (the seat of the monastic establishment) to tend it. As the original monastic uposthaghara, and incorporated novel double pavilions buildings have long been lost to carnage and reconlinked on a single platform. Related, and also specifically struction, the earliest monument to survive is the IsuSinhalese, is the pancayatana parivana added in consider- rumuniya Gala Vihara excavated under Tissa from a rock close to the banks of the Tissa Wewa: the steps able numbers to the main viharas in the last half millento the entrance are flanked by remarkable reliefs of nium of Anuradhapura’s dominance: probably for a elephants, mithunas, a mounted horseman and a teacher and his pupils, they consisted of a central prasada seated deity. These figures clearly reveal the influence of the 7th- or 8th-century Pallavas. On the other hand, with a teaching hall, library and accommodation for the as elsewhere at the site, the natarajas recall the style master, and cell blocks for the boys in each corner. of Amaravati in their sensual elegance and rich Of all the monastic building types – dagobas apart – adornment. Most of the remains of the other major monasteries the most substantial remains are stone platforms and, of Anuradhapura date from the 8th to 10th centuries or occasionally, the stone piers which originally carried the later. Adjacent to an enormous rice trough, a minor forupper storeys of prasadas. Access to the platform, by est of slender stone piers survives from the final

1.111a

226

1.111b

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

rebuilding of the main prasada of the Mahavihara: reputedly of nine storeys and known as the Brazen Palace (Lohpasada) because of its legendary bronze roof, the original work is attributed to Dutthagamani but the remains date mainly from the 12th century when the capital had moved to Polonnaruwa. More conventional in scale are the platforms and groundfloor pillars of the Abhayagiri chapter hall and image house, 8th-century multi-storey structures known respectively, but inaccurately, as the Ratna Prasada and the Palace of Mahasena. The latter represents the central element in the numerous walled residential compounds developed for teaching monks and their pupils at the site’s major monasteries: square, they all have a central image hall for dissertation surmounted by a library and four corner dormitories. Also of note, again, is the pair of finely dressed stone ablution tanks probably used by the Abhayagiri monks: aligned north–south the Kuttam Pokuna (‘Twin Tanks’ but respectively 40 and 28 metres long) are fed through a makara orifice and connected by an underground conduit.

steps with makara balustrades, is invariably preceded by a semi-circular threshold stone (‘moonstone’) – its concentric bands richly incised with friezes of the animals of the four terrestrial quarters (elephant, horse, lion and bull), the hamsa of the fifth dimension linking earth and empyrean and padmas. The threshold is guarded by a pair of images carved in high relief on vertical monoliths: the usual motif in later Anuradhapura is Nagaraja under makara toranas.1.111

1.111c @ 1:2000

1.111d

227

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.111e

1.111g

1.111f

1.111h

228

1.111i

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

›1.112

A N U R A D H A P U R A , D A G O B A S : (a) reliquary cap from Girikanda Vihara, Tiriyaya (8th–9th century; Colombo, National Museum); (b–f ) Thuparama of Devanampiya Tissa (after 245 BCE), plan, elevation, general view, models; (g) Lankarama of Vettagamani (c. 85 BCE, restored in the 12th century and, most recently, in the late-20th century); (h) Abhayagiri (final form 4th century CE, restored 12th and 20th centuries);

(i) relic chamber (Anuradhapura Museum); (j) Ruvanvelisaya of Dutthagamani (consecrated 140 BCE, restored from 1873). Tissa is credited with the founding of the Thuparama dagoba – the earliest and smallest (19 metres high) of the great works at Anuradhapura – as a reliquary for the right collar-bone of the Buddha sent by Ashoka: defining the pradakshina-patha, the vatadage structure of concentric circles of monolithic columns carrying a thatched roof over wooden beams was originally provided in the 7th century. The British historian James Fergusson, author of pioneering works on ‘Eastern’ architecture from the 1860s, studied the ruined dagoba soon after its emergence from the jungle and credited it with ‘a singularly elegant bell-shaped outline’. It is followed by the Lankarama vatadage, founded by Vettagamini in a monastic compound subsidiary to the Uttaravihara and reputedly in its mid-12th-century state before its restoration in the late-20th century. The Ruvanvelisaya (originally half as big again as its model at Amaravati, at 90 metres diameter and 53 metres high) was founded by Duttagamani on a site associated with the meeting of Mahinda and Tissa, to mark his victory over Elara. The Abhayagiri (107 metres in diameter and originally more than 100 metres high, now reduced to c. 75 metres), reputedly founded by Vettagamani on the site of a footprint of the Buddha, was the seat of opposition to the Theravadin establishment from the outset and later provided the focus of a major Mahayana monastic college. The Jetavanarama (c. 115 metres in diameter, originally c. 120 metres high, now reduced to c. 80 metres) was reputedly the most perfectly hemispherical of the great stupas of Anuradhapura and remains the highest brick building in the world.

229

1.112a

1.112b and 1.112c @ 1:1000

T H E A N U R A DA P U R A DA G O B A The pre-eminent Sinhalese dagobas are Thuparama, founded by Devanampiya Tissa in the second half of the 3rd century bce as the first dagoba of the Anuradhapura Mahavihara,and the Rajamahavihara enshrining the ashes of Mahinda at Mihintale.The Lankarama of Vettagamani emulated the Thuperama as the focus of his metropolitan Abhayagiri monastery, founded to commemorate the recovery of his throne from the Tamils in 89 bce. All these were immeasurably exceeded in scale through rivalry between the three greatest monasteries at Anuradhapura: the Ruvanvelisaya, founded in the Mahavihara complex by Dutthagamani in the middle of the 2nd century bce to commemorate his victory over the Tamil king Elara; the Abhayagiri which supplanted the Lankarama in the 2nd century ce and was augmented two centuries later; and Mahasena’s Jetavanarama, founded in the late-3rd century ce to overshadow the Mahavihara. Long after Tissa’s foundation, the Thuparama complex marked the origin of the vatadage.This is a peculiarly Sinhalese hybrid reliquary building type covered by a conical roof over ascending circular ambulatory terraces with four axial staircase leading to the doors of a walled cella enshrining a stupa: the Lankarama conformed. All these dagobas were restored in the 12th century but not again until modern times.1.112

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.112d

1.112f

1.112e

230

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.112g

The Sinhalese dagoba The dagoba – from the elision of dhatu (= relics) with garbha (= womb) – in Sri Lanka, is typically set in a square walled compound and divided into base, dome and superstructure like the mainland prototypes. At its greatest, the scheme is panchayatana: small-scale reproductions of the central stupa mark the corners of the base platform. The major example is the Ruvanvelisya where the base platform is distinguished by a frieze of life-

1.112i

231

1.112h

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.112i

232

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

sized elephants, mostly modern reproductions of the few surviving original remains beside the western steps. The corner stupas retain their original supporting elephants. The three-tiered circular socle has stairs rising from moonstone cills and guardian stelae (doratupalas = dvarapalas) at the cardinal points to a ballustraded pradakshina-patha with projections (vahalkadas) for Buddha images, as in Andhra but without ayakas. The superstructure incorporates harmika and conical tiered chattravali in a denser conical form than was usual even in North India. The anda is usually a slightly-flattened hemisphere like a ‘bubble’, roughly parabolic supposedly like a measure of boiled rice, or it curves outwards into the tiered rings of the base like a bell. Contrary to Indian practice, the islanders used brick throughout – fired only for the outer crust – and left voids in the anda to be plastered and frescoed as relic chambers to supplement the harmika at the top. At first the Sri Lankans followed the form perfected at Sanchi and introduced to the south in works like the Great Stupa at Amaravati.1.15, 1.28 As all the greatest works at Anuradhapura have been subject to centuries of augmentation, renovation, neglect and rebuilding, their primitive profile has long been lost but it is assumed that the small corner dagobas of the Ruvanvelisya, which retained much original substance before restoration in the 1870s, transmit the best idea of the original form. The origin of the campaniform is even more elusive. Reliquaries indicate that it was current before c. 800 CE, thus long predating regular commerce between the Theravadins of Anuradhapura and Pagan in Burma: as it was novel in the latter it is usually assumed that it travelled from the former. The most prestigious example there, the Thuparama, was originally semi-spherical but is known to have been campaniform before restoration at the site began in earnest in the 1870s. Despite its original dedication to asceticism these offer fine examples of the ‘moonstone’ threshold and the Nataraja guardian stele: the latter is particularly well represented before an 8th-century multi-storey structure known as the Ratna Prasada which seems to have provided accommodation for those seeking sanctuary from the king’s regime; a fine ‘moonstone’ precedes the platform of the so-called Palace of Mahasena, a structure built c. 800 on earlier foundations probably as an image house.

233

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.113a

1.113c

T H E PA L AC E A N D S I G I R I YA Nothing of the timber palace buildings at Anuradhapura or Sigiriya survives but a fragmentary relief image from Anuradhapura conforms to the venerable subcontinental tradition of a trabeated mandapa on a high moulded base: the residential facilities were undoubtedly multistoreyed prasadas like the main residential buildings of the major royal monasteries – as in the courts of India from time immemorial. At Sigiriya, where the podium

1.113d @ 1:500

234

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.113b

›1.113

PA L A C E R E M A I N S : (a, b) Anuradhapura,

fragmentary relief of an audience hall and king enthroned with deva (6–7th-century reliefs and fresco; Anuradhapura Museum); (c–h) Sigiriya, citadel from garden, plan, aerial view, general view of approach avenue and formal gardens from citadel. Within the doubled defences of walls and moats at Sigiriya, off the axial route to the foot of the citadel rock, the most extraordinary element is the formal garden of Kassapa’s lower palace; the most substantial element is the audience hall with its dais cut from the rock. Destroyed by the vengeful brother who reclaimed the throne from the usurper, little more survives of the citadel palace at the summit: the most impressive element is again an audience hall with an excavated throne platform overlooking a ritual tank and cisterns.

1.113f

1.113g

1.113h

1.113e

and dais of the main audience halls were cut from the rock, there are several splendid excavated tanks on the acropolis and the remains of the gardens laid out on the plain below are among the most extensive and revealing of their age in all Asia.1.113 235

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

T H E TO OT H , T H E TA M I L S A N D T H E TE M P LE In the second half of the 1st millennium, after the introduction of the Mahayana and the Sigiriyan interregnum, the monastic complex was often endowed with an image shrine (gedige). The earliest so far identified, a rectangular cella accommodating the Buddha at Maligavila, dates from c. 700. By the 9th century brick and timber had given way to stone and the influence of the Pallavas is apparent in the evolution of the type as a temple. Well before the end of the 1st millennium, too, Maitreya (Natha) was accepted as the future Buddha and there was some popular devotion to Avaloketeshvara (as a past Buddha) but in general, of course, the Mahayana pantheon was essentially foreign to the Theravadins. Ironically enough, therefore, guardianship of the four directions of space was at least popularly assigned to Hindu deities rather than the Dhayani Buddhas: north, east, south and west respectively are Saman (a Sri Lankan manifestation of Shiva associated with Maitreya), Skanda (Kataragama, the warrior son of Shiva), Vibeheshana (hero of the Ramayana for defying his brother Ravana, the demon king of Lanka, and helping Sri Rama regain Sita) and above all Vishnu who, in addition to guarding the west, is the national protector. The outstanding early example of the gedige, at Nalanda, is hybrid: primarily Buddhist but embellished with Hindu and Tantric images as well, it consists of mandapa and vimana, the former carrried on stone columns, the latter embellished with reliefs below deities in gavakshas. Under the Cholas in the next century Anurhadapura was endowed with many Shaivite shrines but, usually of brick and now devoid of their original plaster revetment, few match the Nalanda example in form or substance.1.114

1.114a

›1.114

N A L A N D A G E D I G E , c. 800?: (a) view from north-east, (b) hall, (c) detail of vimana. The site, fortified by Parakarmabahu I in the second half of the 12th century but endowed with a monastery between the 8th and the 10th centuries, was named in honour of the great Buddhist university in Bihar but the small limestone image house – the main survivor of a

1.114b

236

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

once-extensive complex – well demonstrates how Pallavan Hindu models were translated to Buddhist purposes. However, the exercise was hybrid: Buddhist images and chaityas were joined by Tantric, Vaishnavite and Shaivite elements and icons – Lakshmi, Ganesha, Kubera in particular – in the embellishment.

F RO M A N U R A D H A P U R A TO P O LO N N A RU WA Renewed dynastic rivalry culminated in the flight of King Aggabodhi iv (667–83) from Anuradhapura to a temporary seat at Polonnaruwa: the Pallavas intervened, ended the reign and reinstalled the Lambakannas. The first king of the restored line, Mannavamma, maintained close relations with his Tamil patrons and their virile culture made its mark at Anuradhapura. With the Pallavas in advanced decline by the middle of the 9th century, the Pandyas of Madurai invaded and sacked Anuradhapura: the king (Sena i, 833–53) survived but was reduced to vassalage in a ruined city. The process was repeated by the Cholas in 947 and in 993 Rajaraja i (985–1015) put paid to vassalage, destroyed Anuradhapura, annexed the main part of the island kingdom and settled his administration on Polonnaruwa – the once-royal refuge whose origins are obscure. The Cholas reigned over Sri Lanka for three generations: in 1070 the descendant of a fugitive prince from Anuradhapura managed to overwhelm the garrison of Kulattonga i. As King Vijayabahu he re-entered the old seat but, finding it desecrated, moved to the Chola centre at Polonnaruwa where he built the Atadage for the holy Tooth but was largely preoccupied with the reconsolidation of central Sinhalese power in his forty-year reign (1070–1110). As an extended bout of dynastic rivalry ensued, the new capital’s great age opened only with the accession of the progenitor’s grandson, Parakramabahu in 1153: thirtythree years of grand works followed in the venerable architectural tradition of Anuradhapura buildings and their embellishment. The next effective king, Nissankamalla, a prince from Kalinga who had married into Parakramabahu’s family, pressed the kingdom to the edge of bank-

1.114c

237

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

ruptcy with his megalomania. When he disappeared in 1196 he left Polonnaruwa the wonder of its age but the kingdom without sufficient resources to meet renewed challenge from Tanjore. The success of the Cholas was short-lived. In 1214 they lost to the king of Shrivijaya (Sumatra): his forces occupied and pillaged Polonnaruwa but it was maintained as the base of his over-extended administration. Claimants to Nissankamalla’s succession regrouped elsewhere in the 1.115a island and one, who reigned at the head of a provisional government under the venerable name of Vijayabahu, recaptured the Sinhalese monarchy’s most prestigious relic – the Buddha’s tooth – in 1232. However, it was another thirty years before his son, Parakramabahu ii (1236–70), finally dispatched the Sumatrans. 1.115b @ 1:500 Ruling from Dambadeniya, the Sinhalese victors had › 1 . 1 1 5 P O L O N N A R U W A , T H E C H O L A T E M P L E : not eliminated all their potential rivals within Sri Lanka. (a, b) Shiva 2 (dedicated in the name of Rajaraja I’s queen Vanavanmadevi) from the south-east, plan; (c, Power was returned to Polonnaruwa in 1287 by Parakram- d) Shiva 1 from the east and south. abahu iii, who sought to end the era of decentralization, but he was defeated and the Tooth taken in 1293 by the ruler of Kurunegala. Polonnaruwa and Anuradhapura were abandoned to the jungle where their ruins remained until about 1840.

P O LO N N A RU WA M O N U M E N TS Stone temples in the Dravidian style proliferated at Polonnaruwa before and after the Cholas were expelled: Tamil devotion to Shiva accounts for the dominance of the linga or splendid bronze images of Nataraja and the Somaskanda group in their garbha-grihas. The Sinhalese had produced the largest solid brick masses on earth but Chola scale was hardly to be emulated in structure: like the temple at Nalanda, the finest complexes in the capital reproduce in miniature the standard elements of the contemporary Dravidian temple – vimana, antarala and

1.115c

1.115d

238

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

mandapa within a prakara entered through a gopura and also containing subsidiary shrines for Nandi, Shakti, Skanda and Ganesha.1.115 With the re-establishment of the Sinhalese monarchy at Polonnaruwa, the prime building exercises within the newly refortified citadel were the palace and the Atadage shrine for the Sacred Tooth. The former was rebuilt by Parakramabahu i to the ancient Indian formula on a scale which presumably emulated that of the vanquished Cholas. A model of such a structure, the Satmahal, is incorporated in the ‘Sacred Quadrangle’. Adjacent to the palace, the latter was accorded royal protection as the precinct for the shrine of the Tooth.1.116, 1.117 Po l o n n a r u w a’s s a c re d q u a d ra n g l e The Sacred Tooth was first housed in Vijayabahu’s Atadage, an arca-griha like the elementary Dravidian temple, to the north of a raised platform beside an earlier ‘chapter house’ and the Satmahal. More shrines were added by Vijayabahu’s successors, most notably a new one for the Tooth, the Hatadage, a gadage (image house) of similar form and the circular, terraced Vatadage centred on a reliquary dagoba. With porch and rectangular relic chamber, Vijayabahu’s Atadage once had two levels and a timber superstructure over stone and brick like the Dalada Maligawa at Anuradhapura. The Hatadage, built to the same form but on a larger scale and with a grander pillared hall, superseded the Atadage under Nissankamala: on a base articulated with pilasters and embellished with lions, its façade is plain except for frames of incised hamsas and hamsas in bold relief which carry the kapota; as at Anuradhapura, the steps have makara balustrades rising from dvarapala stelae and moonstones. Of the same type but built of plastered brick, the second major religious structure in the new capital is the Thuparama gedige, usually attributed to Vijayabahu I, which originally housed a colossal image of the seated Buddha: the sanctuary retains a unique domical vault and, though much-eroded, the exterior is richly embellished within bays defined by pilasters. 1.116a

239

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.116b

1.116c

3

5

2

4

6 1.116d

›1.116 POLONNARUWA, SACRED QUADRANG L E : (a) Satmahal (‘seven-storey palace’, undated); 1 7 10

8

9

1.116e @ 1:1000

240

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

(b) Thuparama (c. 1100); (c) Hatadage (‘house of sixty’, late-12th century); (d) Nissankalata mandapa; (e) plan with (1) entrance, (2) Satmahal, (3) Chapter House (reputedly dating from the mid-Anuradhapura period), (4) Hatadage, (5) Atadage (‘house of eight’, c. 1060), (6) Patimaghara, (7) Nissankalata mandapa, (8) Bodhighara, (9) Thuparama, (10) Vatadage (second half of the 12th century); (f–h) Vatadage, general view, southern Buddha image and steps to colonnaded terrace.

1.116f

1.116g

1.116h

The Vatadage (inscribed by Nissankamala but probably due mainly to Parakramabahu I) follows the form of the Anuradhapura Thuperama: its lower terrace (18 metres in diameter and unadorned) had columns in three concentric rings which presumably once provided the outer supports for a conical roof; the second terrace, served by the usual stairs rising at the cardinals from notable moonstone lintels and dvarapalas, is embellished with pilasters framing lions and dwarfs in two registers; within a ring of columns linked by balustrades around the pradakshina-patha, a circular screen wall (possibly added by Nissankamala) defines the central dagoba shrine and its four Buddha images facing in the cardinal directions.

241

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.117a

1.117b @ 1:1000

›1.117

P O L O N N A R U W A , T H E R O YA L PA L A C E

C O M P L E X : (a, b) model and plan of the residential

prasada; (c) Kumara Pokuni tank; (d, e) ceremonial platform, general view and detail. The most substantial surviving ceremonial element is the three-tiered platform which once supported a trabeated audience mandapa: the base is embellished with a frieze of heraldic animals, notably elephants and lions; lions guard the stairs to the terrace on which four rows of richly chased masonry columns once supported a timber roof. Rising from a compound protecting many pavilions to the west, the principal residential element, was a huge stepped pyramidal prasada of seven storeys with a ground-floor audience hall. The complex of pools in a garden below the audience platform to the east is improbably named the ‘Prince’s Bath’ as the site was beyond the palace compound, outside the citadel walls. 1.117c

1.117d

242

1.117e

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

Chola dominance had disadvantaged the Sinhalese but not suppressed their religion. As the major seats of the Sangha schools had been developed in Anuradhapura over the preceding millennium, so now they were relocated for renewed development to Polonnaruwa. The most extensive complex was the Alahana Privena to the north of the citadel: due mainly to Parakramabahu i and dedicated to the royal cremation ceremony, it incorporated the whole range of building types familiar from the Anuradhapura period and as there it is dominated by an immense stupa – built, inevitably, by Nissankamalla. Novel, however, is the form of the gedige known as Lankatilaka: preceded by stone mandapa and antarala within a pradakshina-patha, the cella is no longer a vimana but a rectangular chamber which,built and vaulted in brick,rose to exceptional height to house an image of the standing Buddha. Much of the ›1.118

P O L O N N A R U W A , A L A H A N A PA R I V A N A

A N D R A N K O T V I H A R A : (a) Buddhasima Prasada,

plan; (b) Rupavati Cetiya, now known after its ostensibly original ‘milk-white’ plaster revetment as ‘Kirivihara’ (attributed to Parakramabahu’s queen Subhadra); (c, d) Lankatilaka (‘Glory of Lanka’) image house (attributed to Parakramabahu I), view from the east, detail of revetment. In the Rankot compound to the south of the main enclosure, Nissankamalla’s stupa (55 metres at base and 61 metres tall) is exceeded only by the three major monuments of Anuradhapura which it emulated but, not of solid brick, it has an impacted earth core. The much more modest Kirivihara in the main compound is a campaniform dagoba which seems to have survived largely unrestored. The Buddhasima Prasada (the chapter house) consists of a pillared convocation hall on a square platform rising from a court flanked on all sides by ranges of cells backed by walls thick enough to have supported multiple storeys. The five-storey Lankatilaka rose through the equivalent of five storeys to 17 metres on a base of 52 by 20 metres (the image was 14 metres high before decapitation). The site is also notable for its lotus ponds which, rather than baths, were probably reservoirs.

243

1.118a @ 1:1000

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.118b

stucco revetment survives on the external walls and,Hindu icons apart, its principal motifs are invaluable images of extensive multi-storey buildings – clearly prasadas,though doubtless monastic, they provide invaluable evidence for timber roofing on the scale of the vatadage and, beyond that, of Parakramabahu’s Satmahal.1.118 244

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.118c

1.118d

245

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.119b

1.119a

1.119d

1.119e

I N TE R I O R R E A L M S A N D K A N DY After the fall of Polonnaruwa, remnants of the monarchy sought refuge in the central highlands where they established several petty realms. Most notable was Gampola where King Bhuvanekabahu iv (1341–51) established a capital which claimed universal suzerainty until 1408. In the vicinity, at Lankatilaka, Gadaladeniya and Embekke, the most significant temples of the era survive in various states of preservation. The first two, built under Bhuvanekabhu iv, are Buddhist gediges with Hindu guardians. Lankatilaka is a cross between its namesake at Polonnaruwa, a south Indian temple of the Pandyan era and a shrine type common at Bagan in Burma. At Gadaladeniya there is a panchayatana stupa composition before a relatively faithful copy of a Pandyan temple but with separate shrines for Buddha and Vushnu, each with a cupola of the form familiar in the lands of the Tamils from the days of the Pallavas. Embekke is a Hindu site:the devale,built by Vikramabahu iii in 1371, is distinguished by the drum mandapa reputedly built with the columns salvaged from a redundant hall of the royal palace at Gampola.1.119

1.119f

246

1.119c

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

›1.119

G A M P O L A T E M P L E S : (a–e) Lankatilaka (‘Glory of Lanka’, dated from the extensive inscription on the rock beside it to 1344), exterior, detail of entrance, western interior façade and its central icon of the national protector Vishnu with Lakshmi, Ganesh; (f–i) Gadaladeniya, portrait of King Bhuvanekabahu IV from the eastern image chamber, image chamber with restored icon of the Buddha, panchayatana stupa composition and general view of the gedige; (j–m) Embekke devale (1371, dedicated to Kataragama – Skanda), general view with drum hall foreground, entrance, detail of roof structure and detail of pillar reliefs (mid-14th century). The structure of the Lankatilaka originally rose to four storeys (one less than its namesake at Polonnaruwa but probably roofed as there before the upper storeys were replaced with a roof in the vernacular style in the 19th century). It defined an ambulatory around the west, north and south sides of the main east-facing image chamber: the latter is articulated in the refined Pandyan style to either side of niches enshrining the guardian deities Vishnu (west), Saman (north), Vibeshana (south) and Skanda and his brother Ganesha (on the short return walls to the east). The outer walls with the foreparts of elephants framed by pilasters are much coarser in conception and detail than the interior – though they are traditionally attributed to the same building campaign. The main eastern entrance is a makara-torana issuing from a kirtimukha and a similar motif frames the main seated Buddha image in the frescoed interior. The Buddha – in the same mode as at Lankatilaka – presides within the main structure of the Gadaladeniya and in the shrines projecting to the cardinal directions from the solid core of the stupa composition. The latter is a miniature variant of the panchayatana scheme familiar from Anuradhapura. The main gedige was reputedly was given its Tamil form at the behest of a monk who had studied at Amaravati and had acquired a taste for the contemporary Pandyan style: Shiva and Krishna appear prominently on the right-hand pillar of the portico but the left-hand one is without icons.

1.119g

1.119h

247

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.119i

1.119j

1.119l

1.119m

1.119k

248

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.120a

1.120b

1.120c @ 1:2000

249

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.120d

250

Kandy, initially one of several royal seats founded on rel- › 1 . 1 2 0 K A N D Y , R O YA L PA L A C E C O M P O U N D A N D T E M P L E O F T H E T O O T H : (a) general view with atively secure interior sites, emerged as the capital of the the gilded roof of the Dalada Maligava centre; (b) secmajor Sinhalese power in the 15th century. Sited on the ter- tion; (c) plan; (d, e) main gedige entrance front and raced contours of the site’s spectacular hills, the typical interior of sanctuary (late-17th century, renovated and enlarged several times in the 18th century and largely shrine complex included a small gedige preceded by an rebuilt in the early 19th century); (f ) Magul-maduva intricately carved mandapa like the one at Embekke. By far (foundation dated 1784) . the most important complex, adjunct to the royal palace, The most prominent feature, the octagonal belvedere known as Pittirippuva and now housing a preserves the Sacred Tooth, symbol of Sinhalese sover- library of manuscripts in its enclosed base, is the latest: it was built by the last king, Sri Vikrama Rajasimha. eignty, which finally came to rest in Kandy in 1592. ›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

From its inception in 1687 Kandy’s major building, the Dalada Maligava (Temple of the Tooth), conformed to type but its importance dictated that the main structure was of stone: thus the original mandapa survives but its precinct has been much rebuilt and augmented by multistorey residential accommodation for the monks. Achieved in the early 18th century, its definitive form has provided the most pervasive image of Sinhalese building – and the least typical. On the other hand, the late-18thcentury Magul-maduva in the much-reduced palace represents the typical Sinhalese – if not Chola – royal audience hall on a magnificent scale, and goes far in compensation for the lost masterpieces of Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa.1.120f 1.120e

The main shrine, late-16th century in origin, was rebuilt under Vimala Dharma Suriya II (1687–1707), renovated by Narendra Simha (1707–39), again rebuilt under Kirti Sri (1747–82) after the depradations of the Dutch in 1765 and again renovated by Sri Vikrama Rajasinha after the depredations of the British in 1803. Of two storeys, stone below and wood above, it is a variant on the gedige form of the Polonnaruwa Atadage within a timber-colonnaded cloister; flanked by dvarapalas, as usual, the portal is of brass in a silver frame dominated by an image of the sun.

1.120f

251

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

› 1 . 1 2 1 T H E N E W A R I D E I T Y : (a) Bhairava (16thcentury gilt mask; Dallas Museum); (b) Buddhist/ Hindu syncretism and the sattal (18th-century altar panel; London, British Museum).

1.121a

10 nepal In legend, purveyed by the Vamsavali (Nepal’s extraordinary proto-historical chronicle), the valley cradle of Nepali civilization was a lake drained by the bodhisattva Manjusri to provide the site for a royal metropolis – whose name, Manju Pattana, echoes from myth to manifestation in Kathmandu. From time immemorial, in fact, the area of the southern foothills of the Himalayas constituting the modern kingdom has been divided into numerous obscure little states, of which that of the Shakyas achieved pre-eminence in virtue of its prince’s enlightened son. However, the valley site of the modern capital was always the seat of the most significant power in the region – politically and culturally. People called Newari had descended from Tibet and established themselves in the valley by the 3rd century bce. Their extraordinary culture was born of their congress with immigrants from the great subcontinent to the south. It was visited c. 250 by the emperor Ashoka, reputedly on 1.120b

252

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

pilgrimage to assert his commitment to Buddhism accompanied by his daughter, who is credited with founding the country’s first stupas at the cardinal points of the city later to be called Patan. But the Newaris were never entirely to shed their native animism.1.121

L I C H C H H AV I S The emanation of Sanskrit and writing after the introduction of the Sangha secured the place of the valley in the consciousness of India but it was half a millennium before history is conscious of Indian dynastic power there. The Lichchhavi dynasty, obscure in origin but contemporary with the Guptas, was established at Kathmandu c. 300 ce: Indian ancestry is assumed from the efflorescence of Indian culture, Mahayana and Hindu, under their rule. The first historical record of Lichchhavi rule is dated to 464, at the beginning of the reign of the greatest king of the line, Manu Deva (died c. 500), who pursued expansion from beyond the valley primarily in the interests of securing the trade routes linking his capital, Kathmandu, with India and Tibet. In the middle of the 7th century, King Amshuvarma (son-in-law of the late Lichchhavi king) found it politic to counter Indian interests – or Indian support for Lichchhavi pretenders – by marrying the daughter of the T’ang emperor of China and giving his daughter in marriage to the king of Tibet. The devout Buddhist queen of Lhasa reputedly converted her husband, Songtsen Gampo (627–49) who had also married a Chinese princess and was rapidly expanding his power over the vast plateau to the north of the Himalayas. He and his successors found the universality of the imported faith an effective antidote to the diversity of animist beliefs in the absorbed territories and the Jokhang temple, founded in his capital by his Nepalese wife, was to remain its centre thenceforth.1.45 253

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

The nucleus of the Lhasa Jokhang gives the best idea of the Lichchhavi architectural tradition,inherited from India and transmitted to Tibet. However, inscriptions on votive stelae and pillars attest to an extensive corpus of religious and civic building under the early Lichchhavis. They presumably brought recensions of the shastras with them from India and remained exposed to stylistic developments under the Gupta and their north Indian successors. It is known that many stupas were founded in the Lichchhavi period, doubtless on the model of the five earliest ones at Patan credited to Ashoka, but later rebuilding and embellishment under the Mallas have usually concealed their form: if not the denuded mound of Patan’s primitive eastern stupa, the many early miniature votive stupas go some way to compensate for the loss. These and the pillars apart, the legacy of the first millennium of Nepal’s architectural history – until the end of the so-called Transitional Period c. 1200 – is limited to step wells, though these too have been much renovated. The earliest Buddhist viharas suffered a similar › 1 . 1 2 2 K AT H M A N D U : (a) vihara court rebuilt fate but often their foundations are still visible as the around votive stupas; (b) Lichchhavi votive stupa. bases for the later work.1.122

1.122a

254

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.122b

K I N G D O M A N D C I T Y- S TATE S The patronage of China freed the rulers of Kathmandu from India but was probably never proof against the forces of division in the kingdom – not only in the rugged terrain beyond the valley. As the power of the T’ang contracted, so too did the effectiveness of their Nepalese client. By the end of the 8th century the Lichchhavis, who had regained the throne after Amshuvarma’s demise, had disappeared and some four centuries of confusion supervened. Links with both India and Tibet remained of prime significance but India provided the Rajput founder of the Thakuri dynasty which emerged to fragile primacy at several reprises in the so-called Transitional Period. An essentially feudal system had emerged – or, doubtless, re-emerged – and encouraged intervention from both the Indian and Tibetan sides. Chaos persisted until towards the end of the 14th century when Sthiti Malla (c. 1380–95), whose obscure family first emerges in the records as rulers at the beginning of the previous century, overcame all his rivals in the valley and established himself as paramount ruler at Bhaktapur. Probably Rajput, his line was Brahmanical and quasi-divine in accordance with Rajput belief. His son, Jyotir Malla (c. 1395–1428), codified its caste laws. Conformity to these by the Newari Buddhists, who largely abandoned monasticism in the 14th century, marks the near-complete assimilation of Buddhism and Hinduism, advanced in India with the identification of the Buddha as an avatar of Vishnu and of Avalokiteshvara as a manifestation of Shiva long before the extirpation of the Sangha by the Muslims in the 13th century. However, well into the era responsible for virtually all Nepal’s architectural heritage, the physical Sakyamuni and the metaphysical Dhayani Buddhas are particularly prominent in the iconography of the great stupas.1.123 255

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

› 1 . 1 2 3 T H E G R E AT S T U PA : (a, pages 256–257, b) Bodhnath, views from the the south-east corner of the second terrace and from the air; (c) Swayambhunath, from the south with the Ratnasambhava shrine. On a hill 5 kilometres west of Kathmandu, the Swayambhunath chaitya is dedicated to the primordial Buddha Adibuddha or (Swayambhu), creator of the universe, of whom the Dhayani Buddhas are the primary emanations. According to legend, the progenitor – who some commentators see represented in the allseeing eyes of the harmika – appeared in a lotus in the lake then filling the Kathmandu basin to which Manjusri provided access by opening a pass in the surrounding mountains with his sword – thus inventing Nepal. Inscriptional evidence attributes its foundation to the progenitor of the Lichchhavis, Vrishadeva, but the earliest evidence for its construction dates to the mid-5th-century reign of Mandeva I. By the advent of

1.123b

Bodhnath and Swayambhunath The Sanskrit ‘chaitya’ or its colloquial derivative ‘chibha’ is preferred by Newaris for this universal Buddhist building type. In its proliferation throughout the Kathmandu valley, the dominant monumental form is idiosyncratic in its semi-hemispherical, flattened anda inherited from Ashoka’s foundations. This is apparently best represented by the eastern one at Patan and not by the miniature Lichchhavi works which survive in many vihara courts, but their definitive form is due to the cultural renaissance of the Malla epoch. The greatest are the Swayambhunath and Bodhnath on the western and eastern outskirts of Kathmandu respectively. Characteristic of definitive development at these two sites, and primary in their influence, are the engaged chapels at base and the pairs of eyes addressing the four cardinal directions from the faces of the harmika. The chapels are dedicated to the Dhayani Buddhas of the cardinal directions: Amitabha west, Amoghasiddhi north, Akshobhya east, Ratnasambhava south. The fifth Dhayani, Vairocana the Illuminator of the vertical axis in the centre, is represented by the eyes emblazoned on the four faces of the harmika.

258

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

the Mallas it was a prime centre of Buddhist teaching and scholarship frequented by Tibetans. It was extensively renovated in the second decade of the 17th century under Pratap Malla and refurbished in the mid-18th century. On the road to Lhasa, outside Kathmandu, the Bodhnath stupa (38 metres high, 100 metres in circumference) was founded by the mid-5th-century Lichchhavi king Manadeva – according to Newari records. Restoration – or reconstruction – was undertaken in the early 16th century at the behest of the Tibetan Nyingmapa lamas but they retained the characteristically Nepali subdued profile, suppressed under the weight of the harmika and thirteen tiers of the chattravali.

1.123c

259

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

Though these are Nepal’s most monumental objects, by the time of their perfection Buddhism had been eclipsed by Hinduism. The Pashupati Shaivite sect played a leading part in the introduction of Hinduism to Nepal and its centre, the Pashupatinatha seat of the monarch’s divine patron, the Lord of the Animals, is the most venerable temple complex in the valley.The principal seat of Vishnu at Changu Narayan claims to be its near contemporary. Throughout the valley Shiva’s mukhalinga is ubiquitous, so too is Vishnu Narayana on Sesha and Nandi and Garuda are invariably in attendance. Ganesha is as popular as he is elsewhere in the Hindu world. Under the impact of Tantrism in particular, however, the gods were distinct more in name than in competence or attribute: Shiva in his terrifying aspect of Bhairava, for instance, may be represented as a fanged mask or with five heads, one facing in each of the cardinal directions and one representing the central vertical axis, like the Dhayani Buddhas or the Tantric Mahakala; primordial, all-progenitive Vishnu Vishvarupa conforms to the type but with ten heads.1.121, 1.124–1.126 The consolidation of power over a united kingdom extending beyond the valley took two generations. The exceptionally long reign of Yaksha Malla (c. 1430–82) whose association with divinity was asserted in the founding of his capital in the vicinity of the venerable Pashupatinata temple complex, guaranteed his line’s legitimacy. Unity did not outlive him: the kingdom was divided between his three sons based on Kathmandu, Bhaktapur and Patan. Rivalry was the norm again for three centuries but as it was mainly cultural rather than military it did not negate the valley’s central advantage in the lucrative trade between India and Tibet. If little survives from the long Lichchhavi era, the rivalry of the three rulers issued in an extraordinary efflorescence 1.124

260

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

261

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

› 1 . 1 2 4 PA S H U PAT I N AT H A C O M P L E X (in the eastern outskirts of Kathmandu): view from the south. The centre of the principal royal cult, the temple was supposedly founded by the early Lichchhavi king Pushuprakha but the first inscriptional record dates from 477 and the main shrine in the extensive complex was given its definitive form by Queen Gangadevi c. 1600. › 1 . 1 2 5 C H A N G U N A R A YA N C O M P L E X (east of Kathmandu): the tutelary deity Vishnu as Vishvarupa over Narayana awakening on Sesha after his sleep between the cycles of universal destruction and recreation (9th century). The centre of early Nepalese Vaishnavism, complementary to the Pahupatinatha, the foundation of the main shine at Changu Narayan is traditionally given a late-4th-century foundation date but is probably primarily due to the 5th century: the inscription on a commemorative pillar at its entrance is dated to 464 and the main shrine was rebuilt following a fire at the outset of the 18th century and again after the earthquake of 1934. ›1.126

K AT H M A N D U : Ganesha shrine.

1.125

of building in their seats – not least of palace courts dominated by ever more assertive prasadas – funded by their trading profits: a climax was reached under Pratapa Malla of Kathmandu (1641–74), Sri Nivasa Malla of Patan (1661–84) and Bhupatindra Malla of Bhaktapur (1696–72). Within a century the Malla era was terminated by a Gurkha chief, Prithvi Narayan Shah, who claimed Rajput descent: in 1768, after twenty years of contention, he took Kathmandu, went on to occupy the other two Malla seats and founded the Shah dynasty of the modern state. 1.126

262

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

›1.127

K AT H M A N D U ,

K A S H T H A M A N D A PA

(‘wooden pavilion’): view from the south. References to the building date from some fifty years before the Malla termination of the ‘Transitional Period’ (c. 800–1200): at the crossing of the east–west and north–south trade routes, it was the hub from which the city developed and derived its name. Originally built in the 12th century as a trade exchange and resthouse for merchants but later converted into a temple, it doubtless always incorporated a shrine but the latter eclipsed the secular function in the early Malla period. Extensive renovation was carried out from 1596 at the behest of King Lakshmina Narasimha Malla.

263

V E R N AC U L A R B U I L D I N G The Kathmandu valley, densely forested until the second half of the 20th century, experiences heavy precipitation, mainly rain in the monsoon season rather than snow in winter: the natural response of the vernacular builder was a rectangular timber trabeated structure, supplemented by brick walls, supporting a steeply pitched roof. Ubiquitous, this basic pavilion type (sattal) was doubtless originally domestic: the oldest surviving example is the much renovated and amplified Kashthamandapa. As there, maturity is marked by the multiplication of bays in the grid plan and of tiers in the superstructure.1.127 Beyond the vernacular profile of the most common

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.128b

1.128a

1.128c

1.128e

264

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.128d

› 1 . 1 2 8 V E R N A C U L A R E M B E L L I S H M E N T , 17th– 18th century: (a, b) Kathmandu, Basantpur tower oriel and Masan Chowk tower on Makhan Tole; (c) Bhaktapur, peacock window; (d, e) Patan, Golden Portal of Mani Keshab Chowk, with Shiva and Parvati in the torana and Avalokiteshvara above, and detail of the woodwork on the interior west elevation of Mul Chowk with matrika (mother-goddess) struts.

265

building type,common elements of the Nepalese complex, religious and secular, begin with the nuclear square court defined by double-height ranges of rooms within a severe brick perimeter: the main door, like the shrine opposite it in a religious foundation, will have an elaborately carved inset frame with a lintel projecting beyond the jambs on figural brackets; above the door there may be a balcony, also lavishly carved; external windows are rare, of course, in monastic enclosures but are the occasion for high elaboration elsewhere.Internal façades of all types usually have a regular succession of richly carved window frames and balconies. Eave struts with large figures – Dhayani Buddhas, Hindu devas or, particularly in a royal durbar context, the ashta matrikas – are the norm. Major iconic relief panels, especially the tympanum which asserts sacredness – of the residence of a deity, including the king as the agent of divinity – are of wood sheathed in copper and other salient features of the most important buildings – finials, even roofs, for instance – are similarly protected.1.128 The builders and rebuilders of religious complexes are, of course,noted for their conservatism:working within the venerable shastra tradition imported from India, at least in the reproduction of the macrocosm enshrined in the mandala which governs its plan, it is unthinkable that the priest-architect would have departed radically from vernacular forms which had found favour with the gods – even if the destruction of a particular example might throw some doubt on the extent of that favour.Thus – and in the light of rare ancient descriptions – Buddhist and Hindu builders of the Malla period are presumed to have sustained a well-established tradition rather than to have been essentially innovative. As timber played a vital role in their structures,they too have left a limited legacy but repair and renovation on foundations dating from their earlier period – or earlier – are assumed to reproduce the original work.

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.129a

›1.129 OLD

10 11 9 7 8

6

12

13

5

4

17

3

16

14

2 15 1 18

1.129b @ 1:2000

266

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

K AT H M A N D U , D U R B A R S Q U A R E A N D

PA L A C E : (a) view from the south-east with

Mahadeva Mandir (left) and Asta Yogini Mandir (right background); (b) plan with (1) Kashthamandapa, (2) Trailokya Mohan Mandir, (3) Mahadeva Mandir, (4) Asta Yogini Mandir, (5) Makhan Tole, (6) Kala Bhairava, (7) Jagannath Mandir, (8) Indrapur Mandir, (9) Vishnu Mandir, (10) Kotilingeshvar Mahadev Mandir, (11) Kakeshvara Mahadeva Mandir, (12) Taleju Mandir, (13) Mohan Chowk, (14) Nasan Chowk, (15) Basantpur tower, (16) Dhak Chowk, (17) Masan Chowk, (18) Kumari Bahal; (c) Basantapur tower dominating Nasal Chowk (the nuclear court of the old palace); (d) Makhan Tole, the city’s main commercial artery which opened the trade route to Tibet.

1.129d

1.129c

267

CO U RT A N D S Q UA R E The court is ubiquitous as the nucleus of urban and domestic planning: as the town square it is as organic in its development as the town itself; monastic or domestic, on the other hand, it is usually rectangular but in the palace complex several courts will be grouped informally. The oldest of the three palaces, at least in origin, is the Hanuman Dhoka of Kathmandu but little of the original fabric survives successive rebuildings of which the most important began under Pratapa Malla and inspired the next generation of rulers at Patan and Bhaktapur. The palace usually consists of three-storey ranges of interconnecting rooms – narrow corridors are avoided for security – framing courts. Brick and timber are ubiquitous. External façades are pierced with generous but intricately screened windows at all levels and there are usually loggias at the top. The principal palace court, with even more elaborate fenestration, is dominated in all three seats by multi-storey residential prasadas for both the king and the gods: of the latter, the Malla patron-goddess Taleju (Durga in her heroic aspect as slayer of the demonbuffalo Asura Mahisha) was accommodated in the tallest ›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.130b

7

6 8 5 4 3 9 10

2

11 12

1

1.130c @ approximately 1:2000

270

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

› 1 . 1 3 0 PATA N , D U R B A R S Q U A R E : (a, pages 268–269) view from the south with the pillar of King Yoganarendra Malla (1685–1706), the Krishna Mandir (1634, centre) and the Vishvanath Mandir (1627, right), (b) view from the north with Garuda column (centre) and Mani Keshab Chowk (left), (c) plan with (1) Chyasim Deval, (2) Taleju bell, (3) Hari Shankar Mandir, (4) King Yoganarendra Malla’s commemorative column, (5) Narasimha and Jagatnarayana Mandirs, (6) Krishna Mandir and Garuda column, (7) Vishvanath Mandir, (8) Mani Keshab Chowk, (9) Degu Taleju Mandir, (10) Mul Chowk, (11) Taleju Mandir, (12) Sundari Chowk; (d) Mul Chowk below Degu Taleju Mandir (1640–68).

1.130d

271

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.131a

3

1

2

1.131b @ @ approximately 1:2000

272

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.131c

structure associated with the restricted sacred precinct of the palace. The palace type is followed at reduced scale by the grander houses which line the main streets of the residential quarters in all three capitals. Usually incorporating shops or open galleries at ground level, most have three storeys ranged around courts and lit from the street through windows with frames matching the means of the patron in the elaboration of their carving. Of course scale matches means but palatial features distinguish obsolete monastic courts converted into tenements.1.129–1.131

1.131d

›1.131

B H A K TA P U R , D U R B A R S Q U A R E : (a) view from the west with Vatsala Durga Mandir (centre) and Pashupatinatha Mandir (right), (b) plan with (1) Vatsala Durga Mandir, (2) Pashupatinatha Mandir, (3) Golden Gate; (c) Golden Gate (Sun Dhoka, 1753); (d) tank associated with Taleju complex; (e) town house; (f ) King Bupathindra of Bhaktapur. After Sthiti Malla established himself at Bhaktapur, remote from the venerable seat of monarchical legitimacy in the Pashupatinatha complex on the Bagmati beside Kathmandu, dynastic pretension demanded the reproduction of the shrine as the dominant element on the durbar square opposite the new royal residence.

1.131f

273

1.131e

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.132a

THE VIHARA Like the structural viharas of Ghandara, the monasteries of Nepal doubtless always had a central court addressed by cells on one or more levels to either side of an image chamber on axis with the entrance. Characteristic are the torana portal of the main front, usually with images of Shakyamuni and his disciples, upper-storey niches with images of the tathagatas and struts supporting the eaves with bodhisattvas. Typological distinction may be made between monas274

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

›1.132

K AT H M A N D U : (a, b) Chusya Bahal (14thcentury foundation), street portal and overview; (c) Kumari Bahal chowk (18th century). The Kumari Bahal is the quasi-monastic residence of the living goddess Kumari – the incarnation of Parvati/Tara who makes regular appearances from the upper windows – and her entourage.

› 1 . 1 3 3 B H A K TA P U R , TA D H U N C H E N B A H A L , an early Malla foundation converted into a temple in the 15th century: (a) entrance range, (b) shrine portal.

1.132b

1.133a

1.132c

teries for Mahayana monks and Vajrayana sects. The former required celibacy and provided suites of single cells (bahil): replete with votive stupas and surrounded by unpartitioned accommodation, the court is invariably raised on a podium and the shrine opposite the entrance is usually distinguished only by its portal, perhaps with screened windows above.The Vajrayana allowed monks to marry and introduced the multi-storey complex of family apartments (bahal): the court is not elevated above the plane of the world at large but in the context of its higher elevation the shrine is distinguished by tiered roofs of the sattal type above a lavishly embellished façade. After the eclipse of Buddhism, terminology was blurred and most former monasteries are known as bahal.1.132, 1.133 As monasticism contracted from the 14th century, many viharas were converted into Hindu temples – the more readily as Buddhism was assimilated to Hinduism – and the tiered superstructure of the central shrine was amplified. The Rudravarna-mahavihara in Patan is typical: its foundations, among the earliest of the type identified in the Valley, have been assigned to the 12th century but little above them predates the Malla era.1.134

1.133b

275

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.134a

›1.134

PATA N , R U D R A V A R N A - M A H A V I H A R A , a 12th-century foundation much renovated for conversion into a temple after the 14th century and substantially restored in the 19th and late-20th centuries: (a) entrance preceded by votive stupas, (b) court and central shrine from inner entrance.

› 1 . 1 3 5 B H A K TA P U R : (a) Siddi Lakshmi Mandir (dedicated 1696) from the south-east with detail of façade of the so-called ‘Palace of Fifty-five Windows’; (b) Vatsala Durga Mandir (1737), detail of shikhara.

1.134b

276

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.135a

T H E TE M P LE The typical Hindu temple is, of course, also enclosed but in Nepal the principal sanctum (dega), freestanding as in India, occupies a considerable part of the precinct. There are examples of the north-Indian masonry pancharatha sikhara on Shaivite and Vaishnavite temples in all three capitals: variation on the form in stuccoed brick with stone porticoes to all four sides seems first to have appeared in the Narayana Mandir,reputedly the oldest work on Patan’s durbar square; by the 1630s stone was used for the sikhara of the Krishna Mandir, Narayana’s northern neighbour,1.130, centre and a century later the refinement of masonry produced the Chyasim Deval,the square’s unique octagonal temple. Patan also has an impressive terracotta reproduction of the Mahabodhi Temple at Gaya.1.134 In the late-17th and early 18th century,Kathmandu and Bhaktapur were endowed with stone sikharas too.1.129, 1.131, 1.135 Yet direct derivation from India is rare by the Malla period: the norm derives from the sattal then but, of course, there are hybrids and exceptions.1.136, 1.137 The temple in Nepal, as in India, is the palace of the god and it most usually matches the prasada of the king. With rare exception – the Asta Yogini Mandir in Kathmandu – the model is not the three-storey range with durbar façade but the multi-storey tower – the prasada. Thus the vernacular sattal may be the most prolific of temple types but, perishable by nature,it is not distinguished by its longevity. In the adaptation of the type to the cult purposes of Buddhism and Hinduism, pragmatism proved resistant to religious symbolism as it rarely did in India: though at the furthest subcontinental remove, Kerala provides the most obvious comparison. Kashmir would seem more relevant and, certainly, the steeply pitched tiered roof is a major distinguishing feature there too but, unlike their Nepalese colleagues in the main, Kashmiri builders

1.135b

277

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.136a

1.136b

translated their vernacular into stone for their temples › 1 . 1 3 6 PATA N : (a) Mahabouddha Mandir (dediand borrowed a repertory of decorative mouldings from cated 1585, rebuilt after the earthquake of 1934), detail of ‘prasada’; (b) the Krishna Mandir known as Chyasim their sub-Classical Kushana neighbours. In Nepal, tim- Deval (1723). ber trabeation with brick reinforcement is the norm in A variation on the North Indian pancharatha form of sikhara in place of a tower with tiered roofs is first the temple as in the palace. known to have appeared in the Narayana Mandir – Rising from a stepped brick stylobate, a tower with mul- reputedly the oldest work on Patan’s durbar square. tiple tiers of wooden roofs on prominently projecting That was of stuccoed brick with stone porticoes to all eaves supported by iconic struts (tunalas), distinguishes four sides and brick with terrracotta revetment constituted the Mahabouddha built under Mahendra Malla the garbha-griha. A lower, wider roof leaning against the later in the century. tower covers the pradakshina-patha.The superimposition of roofs in the sattal manner follows logically from the accretion of exclusive and perambulatory space. To serve the priest entering the shrine and the pilgrim entering or 278

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.137b 1.137a

›1.137

AT Y P I C A L

TEMPLE

FORMS,

K AT H -

M A N D U : (a, b) Kotilingeshvar Mahadev Mandir (sec-

ond half of the 16th century), exterior and interior with linga; (c) Kakeshvara Mahadeva Mandir (1681), view from the west; (d) Asta Yogini Mandir (1750). The Kotilingeshvar – among the earliest of Kathmandu’s temples – is a rare attempt at combining the Hindu mulaprasada with the domed kubba (popular with the sultans of Delhi but largely Zoroastrian in origin). No less synthetic, the Kakeshvara combines the sattal mandapa with the Nagara sikhara. Devoid of superstructure, the Asta Yogini Mandir is rare as an exquisite variation in miniature of the typical palace durbar façade – though, raised on a stepped podium as propriety decrees, it has only two storeys. The main one enshrines the icons of the eight mothergoddesses in the necessarily oblong cella beyond a screened arcade. The upper one, the holy living quarters, is screened with a gorgeous balcony from which Shiva and Parvati overlook the world of the durbar square below.

1.137c

279

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.137d

exiting the ambulatory, there is usually a triple portal: the central one is invariably a torana with the vehicle of the dedicatee. Beyond the side jambs, an outer frame extends at base into a rhomboid enclosing figural reliefs. Over this, figural brackets support an extended lintel richly embellished with the familiar range of tirtha and shakti motifs. Above this is a dentillated stringcourse supporting the frames of clerestory windows and the eave struts: these alternating elements are all richly carved, the struts with figural motifs such as the river-goddesses of plenty or, later, manifestations of the deity whose principal representation is enshrined in the garbha-griha.1.138 280

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.138a

› 1 . 1 3 8 C H A R A C T E R I S T I C S AT TA L T E M P L E F O R M S : (a) section (Changu Narayan Mandir); (b) brick-walled cella, timber trabeated ambulatory and struts supporting prominent eaves (Patan, Vishvanatha, 1627) .

1.138b

In all three cities – and beyond – sattal temples are legion and we have already encountered many on their durbar squares. Among the earliest fruits of Malla affluence, from the period before Buddhism was eclipsed, are the Hiranyavama at Patan (the so-called ‘Golden Temple’ first documented in 1409) and the syncretic Dattatraya 281

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.139b

›1.139

1.139a

282

Mandir (mid-15th century) which dominates its own square at Bhaktapur. The more venerable Hindu shrines include the Jagannatha on the upper durbar square at Kathmandu (1563) and the Jagannarayana in the centre of the durbar square at Patan (1566). Among the most assertive of rivals are the Kumbheshvara at Patan, the city’s ›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

PATA N ,

TEMPLES:

(a, b) Hiranyavama (‘Golden Temple’ traditionally associated with the late-14th-century king Bhaskar Deva but first documented in 1409), portal and main compound with the later subsidiary Swayambhunath shrine before the three-storey copper-roofed shrine accommodating a wide variety of Buddhist icons but principally dedicated to Avalokiteshvara and his shakti Tara; (c, d) Kumbheshvara Mandir (also traditionally associated with Bhaskar Deva), overview from the south-west and detail of tripartite portal to the dega which enshrines a Shiva linga. These two foundations have been much renovated since their early inception, of course, but the rare fivestorey Kumbheshvara survived the earthquake of 1934 relatively unscathed. S AT TA L

1.139c

1.139d

283

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

› 1 . 1 4 0 B H A K TA P U R , S AT TA L T E M P L E S : (a) Nyatapola Mandapa (erected early in the 18th century by King Bhupatindra Malla to surpass its model, the Patan Kumbeshvara) view from the south-west; (b) Bhairavnatha Mandir (founded on its unusual rectangular base by King Jagat Jyoti c. 1613, the upper two storeys added by King Bhupatindra a century later, rebuilt after the earthquake of 1934), view from west over Taumadhi Square; (c) Dattatraya Mandapa (foundation traditionally attributed to King Yaksha Malla, 1427, completion dated to 1458), view from the northwest corner of the eponymous square. The Dattratraya square seems to have been the original durbar place of King Yaksha Malla before the division of his kingdom and his successor’s relocation of the palace. Originally a trade exchange and resthouse, like the Kashthamandapa of Kathmandu, the temple addressing it from the north was first dedicated to a yogini cult but that developed along typically Newari syncretic lines: the temple is attended by Garuda on a pillar by the entrance but is frequented by Shaivites as well as Vaishnavites and Buddhists who recognize their master as the ninth avatar of Vishnu. The Nyatapola is dedicated to a syncretic Tantric cult centred on Siddhi Lakshmi.

1.140a

1.140b

284

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.140c

oldest in foundation and in elevation, and the similar, fivetiered Nyatapola Bhitgaon (1708). Naturally predominant in magnificence are the three palatine Taleju Mandirs, the most obvious focus of inter-dynastic rivalry, but the standard set by the Kathmandu ruler in 1564 remained unsurpassed.1.139–1.141 285

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.141a

286

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.141b

›1.141

K AT H M A N D U , S AT TA L T E M P L E S : (a) Sweta Matsyendranath Mandir; (b) Jagannatha Mandir (1563) beyond Kala Bhairava (right) and Vishnu Mandapa beyond Indrapur Mandir (left); (c, d) Taleju Mandir (1564), general view from the west and portal. The principal icon of the Matsyendranath is Avalokiteshwara Padmapani but the sanctuary is equally venerated by Hindus in honour of Shiva Lokeshvara. Rising from a three-tiered plinth, the two-storey Jagannatha of 1563 is the oldest of the sattal type in the vicinity of the palace. Undated, the neighbouring Vishnu temple has three storeys on a four-tiered base. The smaller Indrapur Mandir, also undated, is distinguished not by the multiplication of storeys but by the balcony of its superstructure on which Indra appears during his annual festival though the temple’s main icon is a linga. On a base of seven receding tiers, unprecedented and designed to elevate the temple of the dynastic patron above all other buildings, the Taleju sattal rises from miniature shrines on the corners of the upper terrace through three tiers with steeply pitched roofs to 36 metres: the gate was embellished with terracotta panels a century after the completion of the main shrine within in 1564 but the figural struts and the tripartite portal of the latter, with its lintels projecting over brackets, set the standard for these archetypical Newari sattal motifs.

1.141c

1.141d

287

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.2 SOUTH-EAST ASIA

1.142a

288

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.142b

11 java and its neighbours Over the first half of the last millennium bce, the population of the great archipelago which we now know as Indonesia seems to have been swelled by immigrants from the Yunan region of south-east China pushed out by pressure from the Mongoloid northerners.They brought with them the proto-civilized skills of their homeland, particularly bronze casting, pottery and rice cultivation. Some worked their way through the subcontinent of IndoChina and down the Malay peninsula: many must have acquired the ways of the sea and seafaring, natural to their new environment, took their commerce far. At least as early as the late-Mauryan era there were trade links with India and Indian ideas were transmitted by traders both native and Indian. Travelling without wives, Indian sailors and merchants settled and married in Sumatra and Java, at least. The children were raised in the faith of their fathers – Buddhism or Hinduism. The religion of their mothers – and their long-native forebears – was animistic, and the synthesis of the two produced the extraordinary architecture of ancient Java. The sophistication of that synthesis, of course, presupposes the intervention of priests whose advent to the archipelago and its courts is unlikely to have waited on commercial developments.1.142 289

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

›1.142

THE

PLACE

OF

THE

GODS

AND

I M P O R T E D C U LT U R E : (a) view of Merapi’s volcanic

domain; (b) trade ship with primitive vernacular building; (c, d) Dravidian-style vimana and stupa under worship (9th-century reliefs, Borobodur). Semeru, the greatest of Java’s volcanoes, is naturally the one identified with implanted Meru but for the central Javanese the ‘Place of the Gods’ is in the vicinity of Merapi. The square kuta and oblong sala trabeated prototypes of Dravidian shrines, which first achieved transition from ephemeral materials to monumental masonry in the sculpted Dharmarajika and Bhima rathas at Mahaballipuram, reappear in early 9th-century Javanese reliefs lightly dressed in the local vernacular. Wood is uncontroversially assumed for the structure of posts and beams.

1.142c

290

RELIGIONS AND CENTRAL DY N A S T I E S Historical records begin with the introduction of Sanskrit script from India at the start of the 5th century: apart from the first, isolated, example discovered in east Kalimantan, the earliest record a kingdom called Trauma in western Java. By 683 a new power based in southern Sumatra is announced in the Malay vernacular – in a Pallavan script – for the first known time: master of the many minor principalities which had developed with the need to control water, Srivijaya is also recorded as dominant in the archipelago by the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Yi Jing who stopped there on his way to and from Nalanda in 671 and 685 ce. The capital was at Palembang, the major entrepot in the archipelago for Indo-Chinese trade until the 12th century: then the Chinese supplanted foreign carriers, ›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.142d

controlled by a nominal vassal, with their own extensive merchant fleet and forged direct links with widespread centres of commerce. It is, of course, on the prosperity brought by trade and by the exercise of determined authority over an extensive agricultural area that the production of monumental architecture to celebrate that authority depends. Extending its sway over western Java,Malaya,Borneo and even the north coast of the Gulf of Thailand, Srivijaya achieved the former but not the latter: there is no evidence that their early rulers should be credited with effecting the transition from perishable native timber construction to durable masonry. The rulers of Srivijaya were Buddhist: indeed, their power was sanctified in their veneration as bodhisattvas. They – or perhaps the depradation of subsequent developments – have left no great temples but they did model 291

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

an admirable school of sculpture under the inspiration of the Satavahanas who provided one of the sources from which they imbibed their faith. In addition to trade contact which doubtless stretched from Coromandel to Malabar, by the later 7th century, when Yi Jing recorded his impressions, the regime maintained strong links with the monasteries of the Gangetic holy land from which missionaries will have been familiar visitors and to which pilgrimage must have been a principal goal.1.143 The Sailendra dynasty which ruled south-central Java from the mid-7th century was also initially Buddhist and similarly open to the ideas which came with the ministers of the Mahayana from the universities of the Buddhist 1.143a homeland: its foundation is credited to a prince from › 1 . 1 4 3 T R A N S L AT I O N O F B U D D H I S M : (a) BudOrissa.Their northern contemporaries,the Sanjayas,were dha head (Srivijaya period); (b) stupa under worship (early 9th century relief from Borobodur); (c) AvalHindu and claimed descent from the Pandava heroes of oketesvara (central Java, 9th century; New York, Metrothe Mahabharata: the founder was a prince from the politan Museum).

1.143c

1.143b

292

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.144a

1.144b

293

declining Gupta house who escaped the depredations of the Huns in the late-5th-century subcontinent by defying taboo and travelling over the sea in the wake of the merchants to Java, taking brahmins with him. As we have seen, Brahmanism is a birthright which comes with inherited caste. Opposing this with its heterodox promise of release from the inexorable cycle of existence, the Mahayana is universal by nature: it proved as attractive to foreigners of all classes as it had to Indians. On the other hand, while it is easy to see how a Hindu population developed in Indian colonies abroad, it is less easy to explain the rise of Hindu ruling classes beyond those colonies. Of course, a ruler may merely exercise his whim – whatever Brahmanical purists in India might say. And an expansionist tribal chief could not fail to see the advantage of the Brahmanical type of sanctified kingship as the ineluctable basis of legitimacy. Buddhist or Hindu, in the syncretic climate of Java the rulers themselves were overwhelmingly impressed by the great epics imported by the Indians, especially by the Ramayana’s ideal of kingship, which achieved its apogee in Sri Rama’s identification as an avatar of Vishnu, by the Mahabharata’s account of the triumph of their Pandava progenitors under the patronage of Krishna and by the derivative account of the culmination of Krishna’s campaign against evil governance in the elevation of the princess Rukmini as his consort (Krishnayana). This apotheosis is at its most explicit in the iconography of the east Javanese regimes which eclipsed the central powers from the 12th century.1.144, 1.153 The Indian auras notwithstanding, the rulers and their courts (kratons) retained an essentially native mysticism, encouraging syncretism rather than a strict adherence to theological dogma – as they sustained the aesthetic of elementary timber trabeation long after it was rendered ›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.144c

obsolete by the introduction of masonry. And the people › 1 . 1 4 4 T H E D I V I N E I D E A L O F K I N G S H I P : (a) Sri at large were devoted to the spirits of their ancestors, Rama (shadow puppet); (b) Krishna on Garuda (Central Java, 9th century; New York, Metropolitan Museum); (c, beside those of trees and water which the Buddha had d) the king’s progress and private audience; (e) Ratu been sage enough to woo in any case. The volcano as the Boko, ‘istana’ terrace. source of the waters of life and the manifestation of the Sri Rama, prince of Ayodhya, hero of the Ramayana, ideal king, is the seventh avatar of Vishnu. In the power of the ancestors in their nether world was central Mahabharata Krishna cleansed the earth of evil rulers to indigenous belief. From India came the cosmology of in favour of the dispossessed Pandavas, from whom Meru: the brahmins brought it, the Buddhists subscribed the kings of Java claim descent. The remains of the compound at Ratu Boko include to it and it endowed native belief with universal signifi- slabs carved with religious inscriptions in Sanskrit but cance – indeed a pervasive Javanese legend ultimately the terrace supported a variety of wooden mandapas in postulated that Meru itself had been transferred to Java a configuration atypical of the temple compound: it is in consequence usually identified as a palace. by the gods. The first Sailendra established himself as ‘Lord of the Isles, King of the Mountain’: he was recognized as a bodhisattva and the final resting place of the body which played host to the divine spirit, before its final attainment of Buddhahood, was a mountain. By the early 9th century, too, the Sanjayas seem to have been ‘Kings of the Mountain’, incarnations of Vishnu or Shiva with whom they were reunited after their agency on earth had ended, and the last resting place of the body of such a lord as host to the divine was also a mountain. 294

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.144d

The precise relationship between the Sailendras and the Sanjayas, whose Buddhist and Hindu patronage overlapped in central Java, remains undefined. However, for both, the adoration of the king and the veneration of his monument were the worship of the god: it is clear that in this lies the significance of Mahayana Borobodur and Shaivite Loro Jonggrang at Prambanan – Java’s earliest masonry monuments of international importance. The former marks the culmination of a brief period – less than half a century from c. 775 – in which Buddhism eclipsed the Shaivism hitherto enshrined in the monuments of the Dieng plateau, the ‘Place of the Gods’. Loro Jonggrang marks the culmination of Shaivite resurgence.

1.144e

295

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

M O N U M E N TS O F S Y N C R E T I C FA I T H With the imported religions came the shastras and the memory of shastra prototypes. These were re-evoked first in ephemeral materials: the reliefs of Borobodur well represent such buildings, religious and secular. Those reliefs also reveal glimpses of the pitched-roofed vernacular tradition – developed with spectacular variations throughout the archipelago – which complemented the imported in the synthesis effected by the rival Buddhist Sailendras and Hindu Sanjayas in monuments of stone. There were sumptuous palaces of course, but the ephemeral materials used for all but the defensive elements have ensured their loss.1.144e Above all, the ethos of quasidivine monarchy determined that the principal monumental masonry building type of courtly Indo-Indonesia was the candi. The word is thought to derive from a corruption of Kali or Chandika, the consort of Shiva responsible for death. The structure was a shrine for a king identified in death with the Buddha, Shiva or Vishnu: a model of the cosmic mountain, Meru, it was a focus of Hindu or Buddhist worship and the forum for contact with indigenous spirits.The place of passage to the nether world, it has generally been misinterpreted as a repository for the ashes of the deceased: in fact its three-tiered structure, representing ascent from the mortal through purification to the divine, was conceived to protect and preserve the image of the ruler in the guise of the god-head. Built over a square plan, the typical candi consists of a cubical cella, oriented to the cardinal directions, resting on a broad base providing for circumambulation, and surmounted by a pyramid of tiered terraces bordered by multiple miniature shrines – like the prasada-vimanas of the Pallavas from the domains of whose Satavahana or Ikshvaku predecessors the earliest Buddha images had come to 296

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

›1.145

T H E C A N D I P R OTOT YP E I N T H E E A ST :

Badut (8th century). Badut appearts to have been an eastern outpost of a central power and its candi is a rare survival from the earliest period of monumental masonry in Java: its reconstruction is the model of Meru. The three levels of existence accommodated on Meru were represented in the conception of the Javanese candi as the stepped base of mortality (burloka), the body of the purified (bhuvarloka) and the tiered superstructure of divinity (svarloka).

297

Indonesia. The image of the patron deity was enshrined in the cella: the Maheshvara was usually represented in the sanctuary by the linga, elsewhere in anthropomorphic form flanked by his partners in the triad. Relics of the deceased prince were encapsulated in a subterranean chamber. The oldest candis, dated to the first quarter of the 8th century, are small Shaivite shrines on the Dieng plateau: beyond the main centres of political power, the typical resorts of holy men were the objects of pilgrimage and foci for burials. The Arjuna-Semar complex may be taken as representative of the first phase. The area skirting the southern slopes of Mount Merapi was more richly endowed in the second half of the 8th century – most notably at Kalasan, Sari and Mendut – but there was also rare work further east, at Badut and Songgoriti in particular, and important activity north on the southern slopes of Mount Ungaran – notably in the development of the nine shrines, randomly grouped, known as Gedong Songo. In the accident of survival, it is these works which most clearly mark the establishment of the canonical form of the Javanese candi. Over a plain base, at first there is a simple rectangular cella and porch, like the earliest stone temples in India: the load-bearing post has ceded to the massive wall but the tiered superstructure of the vimana prototype is sustained. By mid-century, at Dieng as at Gedong Songo, the base has been supplemented by a plinth with a panelled frieze recessed between padmas, and thin pilaster strips divide the main walls into three bays. The central bay of each exposed side is framed with pilasters supporting toranas formed from the idiosyncratic Javanese fusion of the imported kirttimukha and makara known as the kalamakara motif. Usually the lower jaw of the latter’s gaping mouth is lost to an inset ghanadvara corresponding to the

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.146b @ approximately 1:300

›1.146

c. 750: (a–d) Dieng (c. 750), general view of main group with Arjuna and Semar (left), Srikandi, Puntadewa and Sembadra (right), Arjuna, cut-away axonometric, Srikandi, Bhima. The earliest evidence for dating the masonry candi is an inscription of 732 on the surviving base of Candi Gunung Wukir (near Borobodur). No superstructure survives but by mid-century numerous shrines were being assembled from finely dressed andesite blocks without mortar. From early in the 9th century lime mortar was introduced to the detriment of precision. Though a vegetable binding agent was used to improve the coherence of brickwork, the traditional reliance on corbelling was often inadequate to the task of providing enduring cover in the exercise of expansion. Candis Arjuna and Semur are the mulaprasada and detached closed hall of a Shaivite complex. Semur is exceptional at Dieng. Arjuna typical of the first phase of candi design: like its contemporary neighbours it has a moulded plinth and pilasters. In the same suite, Candi Puntadewa is distinguished by a plinth or platform as well as a moulded socle and protruding aedicule frames. The most pervasive motif of the early stone candi is the kala without lower jaw – or, rather, with the orifice of door and niche as its gaping mouth.

1.146a

1.144c,d

projecting portal. At several of the Gedong Songo temples Ganesha, Durga and Agastya are enshrined in niches to the east, north and south respectively. Candi Srikanda at Dieng is distinguished by reliefs of the Hindu trinity – 298

T H E E A R LY C E N T R A L J A V A N E S E C A N D I ,

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.147a

›1.1.147

1.147b

MOUNT UNGARAN, GEDONG SONGO:

(a, b) Candi IV and general view of Candi VI (c.760) from the south-east. As in the shrines of Gedong Songo, the kala-makara portal, revealing the linga within, was the central Javanese norm. The blind doors on the other sides of Candi VI have lost their icons: however, the support of Shiva with Agastya, Durga and Ganesha elsewhere at the site was to be canonical in Java. Durga and Ganesha are among the most prominent members of Shiva’s family throughout the Hindu world. Agastya was the sage who reputedly took Vedism to the Dravidian south of India: in Pallavan-influenced Java he is elevated into a manifestation of Shiva as ascetic teacher.

299

Shiva to the east, Vishnu north and Brahma south. The style of the kala embellishment derives from the native tradition of florid woodwork: it was cut from the masonry – usually unbonded andresite – but a liberal revetment of stucco invited a crisply incised finish.1.145, 1.146 The roof of the earliest porches is somewhat uncomfortably juxtaposed with the main mass at cornice level, as hall and mulaprasada were in the earliest North Indian examples.1.47, 1.72 By the middle of the 8th century or shortly after, when the Shaivite Candi vi of Gedong Songo was built, the main cornice embraces the porch whose tympanum is profiled against a generous eave moulding (kapota) and the base mouldings of the first tier of the superstructure.The norm by then was a socle incorporating a major padma motive in mirror image of the cornice. The entrance is reached by a short staircase with makara balustrades.1.147

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.148b

›1.148

THE

CANDI

AND

THE

CRUCIFORM

M A N D A L A : (a, b) Kalasan (original work dated from an inscription to 778, transformed on cruciform lines from c. 790), exterior and detail of kala-makara lintel; (c–f ) Sewu: axonometric reconstruction of central shrine (after Dumarcay), general view of central and subsidiary shrines, exterior and interior of crossing.

1.148a

T H E G R E AT S T U PA M O U N TA I N Of masonry, the candi has proved the most durable of Buddhist – or Hindu – structures in Java. There, as elsewhere, the most characteristic Buddhist buildings were stupas and monasteries. The early monastic buildings, usually of timber and brick, have disappeared and most of the stupas have been reduced to rubble – though major examples have been skilfully reassembled. If only in part, this was the fate of the crowning achievement of Javanese architecture, the Mahayana mountain built c. 800 on a Meru-cosmology mandala at Borobodur: the purpose of the early Sailendra patron was primarily to venerate his bodhisattva ancestors who were believed to have merged with the celestial body of the Dhyanis.

1.148c @ 1:1000

1.148e

300

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.148d

In response to the development of devotion to the Dhyanis in the late-8th century, the cruciform plan was introduced to the transformation of an existing square candi at both Kalasan and Sewu. Five distinct, but associated, cellas resulted at each site and at Sewu the central shrine was surrounded by 250 smaller ones on a square terrace.1.148 The cruciform candi With the insignificant exception of Candi Gunung Wukir, the original square cella of Candi Kalasan is Indonesia’s oldest dated stone monument, though manifestly later than Candi Bhima. It appears to have commemorated one of the first Sailendra queens dedicated to the bodhisattva Tara. 1.148f

301

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

The original foundation at Kalasan was of the standard single-cell type but from c. 790 this was entirely obscured by an envelope with projections on the cardinal axes. The base was originally plain but ultimately incorporated a socle, as at Mendut, over a platform wide enough for pradakshina: the torus is introduced to the repertory of socle mouldings. The axial projections of the envelope formed chapels, the eastern one doubling as the vestibule to the central cella: all had portals protected by aggressive kala masks over kala-makara frames. The side bay walls are relieved with pilasters, incised with vines, and kala-makara aedicules surmounted by prasada images with vase-shaped stupa finials. The latter presumably reproduced the temple’s own three-tiered pyramid (which once rose to 21 metres). The extensions have stupa superstructures. At Sewu the main square shrine seems initially to have been flanked on the cardinal axes by four similar but smaller shrines beyond a narrow pradakshina-patha on an expansive platform (cella and platform were the squares of 27 metres and 17 metres respectively). An inscription dated to 792, which identifies the original dedicatee as Manjusri, records alterations some ten years after the probable foundation date: less radical than at Kalasan, the second phase did not entirely obscure the first. The original square was extended to a Greek cross at the expense of the pradakshina-patha: the four axial cells were joined to the central one so that the ghanadvaras of the latter were enclosed within the former as icon niches except in the eastern chamber which provides a vestibule to the central shrine. Among the few icons still in place, Aksobhya has been identified in the east, Rathnasambhava in the south, Amithaba in the west and Amaghasidhi in the north, but no trace has been found of Vairocana presiding over the centre. Though access was primarily from the east, the stylobate and recessed socle are cut on the other three cardinal axes with staircases serving the subsidiary shrines: initially open for the exposition of the icon, as elsewhere these seem to have been closed with doors c. 800 in response to the growth of esotericism. All five cellas are surmounted by stepped pyramids supporting a major stupa flanked by triads of minor ones. The detached chaityas in the complex are similar to those attached to the central shrine. 1.149a

302

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

303

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

The exercise at Sewu provided the immediate precedent › 1 . 1 49 B O R O B O D U R , G R E AT S T U PA , base terraces probably begun c. 775, work resumed at third terfor – if not contemporary experiment in – constructing a race level c. 790 and largely completed some forty vastupurusha accommodating the many gods of Meru. years later: (a) site view, (b) aerial view, (c, d) plan and The form, anticipated in the open porticoes of Deogarh, section, (e) general view from below, (f–h) square terrace and detail of Dhyanis and Jataka reliefs, (i, j) circurecalls the great terraced chaumukha structures in and lar terrace with latticed stupas and crowning stupa. near the Buddhist holy land, such as contemporary Paharpur in Bengal, or earlier Nalanda – the main destination of pilgrimage.1.148, 1.149

1.148f

1.149c @ 1:1000

1.149b

B o ro b o d u r A natural hill is terraced to resemble the cosmic prasada-crowned mountain. The omnipresent volcano as a symbol of the power of regal ancestors emanating from the nether world hardly needs explaining. It is probable that the basic two terraces were laid by the Hindus in the third quarter of the 8th century but the upper terraces were achieved by the Buddhists to represent ascent to enlightenment as well as the abode of the ancestors: the gloss of Brahmanical cosmology may best be taken as an exercise in analogy thoroughly consistent with the hybrid court ethos derived from the union of an Indian prince with a local animist princess. After several augmentations to the original conception, nine pradak-

304

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.149d

1.149e

shina terraces, including the buried basement, constitute a mandala determining the material and spiritual stages of the Buddhist quest for enlightenment. That is the quest here of pilgrims ascending the four axial stairs through tiered squares, then tiered circles, to the stupa at the top, immersing themselves on the way in relief images of the three stages of Buddhist progress: earthly desire (kamadhatu), undesired material phenomena (ruphadhatu) and transcendental formlessness (arupadhatu). The tripartite division is clearly central to Buddhist doctrine but this complex has no precise precedent other than in the cosmic mandala of the Dhyanis. On a platform 107 metres square at its surface (which projects 6 metres from the first retaining wall), the terraces diminish as they ascend

305

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.149f

1.149g

through a gentle curve in profile – like a stupa. Like the platform, the first five are square with shallow projections forming five bays on the lower three levels, three on the upper ones. Representing the material world, the retaining walls of their galleries (2 metres wide) are embellished with some 1300 panels of magnificent relief sculpture ranging from the realistic to the ethereal: images of earthly desire and its hellish consequences are confined to the buried basement; the next five galleried levels offer didactic scenes from the life of the Buddha – real and legendary – and of other Mahayana heroes representing the stages of progression away from terrestrial concern. The 432 aedicules crowning the top level of the ruphadatu zone (the last of the square ones) enshrine life-size meditative images of the Dhyani Buddha appropriate to each face – Amoghasiddhi, Akshobhya, Ratnasambhava and Amitabha clockwise from north to west. Protected by them, the last three terraces – the product of the major phase of augmentation – are circular and open with seventy-two bell-shaped, latticed

306

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.149h

1.149i

stupas in diminishing rings around the main stupa at the top (which rises to some 30 metres above ground level). These are the zones of the spirit. The partial revelation of the Buddha’s image through the latticework presages the enlightenment achieved in extra-sensory apprehension of Buddhahood at the completely sealed crowning stupa. Their zone defined by the Dhyani lords of the four cardinal horizontals, the images revealed by the latticework of the stupas on the uppermost levels must be of the fifth Dhyani, Vairocana, Lord of the Perpendicular. The dedication of the closed central stupa is the subject of some controversy: yet inescapable is the mandala’s reduction of apparent multiplicity into the essential oneness of the Primal Essence, Dharma, and this could hardly better be symbolized than by a spatial void in the central stupa. The mandala of the Three Bodies cosmology, the whole stupendous exercise thus also represents the apotheosis of the Sailendra monarch, King of the Mountain, in union with indivisible Dharma as Devaraja – Universal Sovereign. 1.149j

307

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.150b

1.150a

To the east of Borobodur, and on axis with the great stupa, are two candis which mark the apex of sophistication in the Buddhist permutation of the form: Candi Mendut, where the pilgrim paid first homage to Sakyamuni flanked by the great bodhisattvas Avalokiteshvara and Vajrapani, and Candi Pawon, a simplified but complete reduction of the type traditionally associated with Kubera, god of wealth. The cella walls were embellished with reliefs in the side bays and vital relief in external mass was provided by projecting the central bay on each front of the square mulaprasada for the porch and 1.150c ghanadvaras. Usually with kala-makara-toranas at the › 1 . 1 5 0 T H E C L A S S I C S A I L E N D R A C A N D I : (a, b) Mendut (begun from c. 790), exterior from the northapex, the door and niche frames were readily understood west, interior with Buddha image; (c) Pawon (late-8th by the natives as representing the spirits to which they century), from the north-west. were principally devoted, and the assimilation of The platform (22 metres square at base and 3.5 metres high) includes a dentillated frieze among its imported forms was complete when images of the deified multiple mouldings, as elsewhere in the late-8th-cenprince stood for the Buddhist, Shaivite or Vaishnavite tury Sailendra domain, and is surrounded by a novel figures in the niches. There was no corresponding parapet. The socle – doubled in height – is extended east for the porch but the cornice is sustained to all enrichment of space within: even at Mendut Shakya- sides without interference. Only two tiers of the supermuni and his attendants were backed by the flat walls of structure survive but the simplified reduction at Pawon may be taken to represent the mature Mendut formula. a square cella with steeply corbelled roof. 1.150 308

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

Well before the end of the 9th century Buddhism had ceded to Hinduism as the principal religion in Java. It remained dominant – if certainly not exclusive – in the empire embracing Sumatran domains, which sometimes claimed the Malay peninsula, until the advent of Islam. Though there are several notable stupa sites there – notably in the vicinity of Palembang but also further north at Muara Jambi and Takus – the later Srivijayans and their followers never approached the glories of the Sailendras: indeed, in all the Buddhist world even the greatest achievement of the late-Khmers is barely comparable.

5

1

T H E G R E AT H I N D U C A N D I Javan Shaivite rulers were certainly no less potentially divine than their Buddhist confreres as ‘Lords of the Mountain’. Their candis vary in form and decoration, departing further from the Indian model towards the indigenous the further east they were conceived: given the two poles of indigenous inheritance and imported legacy, that is the mark of an essential conservatism. The grandest is central, though probably completed for an early 10th century eastern Mataram ruler. This is the richly embellished Shaivite Loro Jonggrang at Prambanan, dedicated to the Hindu triad but predominantly Shaivite,below the centre of which the ruler’s ashes were incarcerated.1.151

6

2

3

4

1.151a @ 1:2500

›1.151

P R A M B A N A N , G R E AT T E M P L E C O M P L E X

O F L O R O J O N G G R A N G , dated to the early 10th cen-

tury from its style but incorporating an inscription of 856 which may have related to an earlier phase in the development of the site: (a) plan with (1) Shiva candi, (2) Nandi pavilion, (3) Brahma candi, (4) pavilion, (5) Vishnu candi, (6) Garuda pavilion; (b, pages 310–311) general view; (c) central vimana and its entrance; (d–g) Candi Siwa, blind door with kirtimukha lintel and brahmanical figure, detail of Ramayahna scene from outer balustrade, detail of Lokapala relief from socle at terrace level and heraldic relief from base, Durga icon from sanctuary; (h–j) Candi Brahma, balustrade relief of meditating brahmin, Shiva relief, balustrade detail.

309

Lo ro J o n g g ra n g On a tiered platform (220 metres at base) some 144 subsidiary shrines in three ascending rows frame a plateau (110 metres square, its extent marked by stones preserved in miniature shrines) bearing three great cruciform vimanas: Shiva in the centre, Vishnu to the north and Brahma to the south. Aligned to the west of the cardinal north–south axis, which is terminated by a pair of slender candi apit (court temples), these face their accompanying vahana pavilions to the east. The patron’s sepulchral chamber is below the centre of the platform by the eastern steps to the Shiva candi. Java devotes

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.151d

1.151c

1.151e

more masonry to Brahma than is common in India but only Shiva’s structure (30 metres square at base, nearly 50 metres high) has rooms in all four projections: the eastern one forms a vestibule for the central cella, as at Kalasan and Sewu; the others are chapels for Agastya (south), Durga (north) and Ganesha (west) – the canonical configuration of deities in the orbit of Shiva, encountered in the first generation of masonry temples. All three vimanas have secondary platforms relieved with a common motif: a lion in a niche between trees guarded by kinnaras (bird-men) and 1.151f

312

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.151j

other symbolic beasts. The balustrades defining pradakshina in the three individual precincts have apsaras without and reliefs drawn from 1.151g

the Ramayana and Krisnayana cycles: here, as elsewhere, superb variations on the epic themes mark the advance towards a classic standard in the 9th century. The upper zone of the stylobate is relieved with the torus and cyma recta familiar from 8th-century Sailendra works and their style is reflected in the kala-makara gables. Much restored, the articulation of the main walls further enhances the taller proportions of Candi Sewu though a moulded stringcourse creates the illusion of two storeys in all six main structures. The horizontal lines of the tiered superstructure are countered by the incorporation of bell-shaped finials as though the system of Candi Sewu were projected on to the sides of a mountain peak: the change of religion did not mean the jettisoning of familiar forms.

1.151h

When the great complex at Prambanan was built, the Pratiharas had already begun the transformation of the northern Indian shikhara from the multi-storeyed palace to the many-peaked mountain but in the south – the main source of inspiration for the Javanese – the Pallava tradition of literal representation was soon to be taken to its apogee. Until that achievement of the great Cholas, the main structure of the Loro Jonggrang was the grandest of its type – except perhaps, for the greatest structures of the Buddhist holy land. 1.151i

313

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.152b

› 1 . 1 5 2 B U D D H I S M U N D E R T H E L AT E S A N J A YA S : (a, b) Candi Sari, general view and detail of embelishment; (c–f ) Candi Plaosan, general view, interiors and entrance. Built to the order of the Sanjaya king Rakai Pikatan over old foundations, these works recall the form of the primitive timber trabeated structures reproduced in the reliefs of Borobodur and Prambanan. Much dilapidated, Sari has two superimposed ranges of three cellas, separately roofed, within walls divided into two registers, each with windows flanked by aedicules framing bodhisattvas. The formula was repeated twice at Plaosan, but in each building a single roof covers the triad of shrines dedicated to a manifestation of the Buddha (the main icon is missing) flanked by bodhisattvas. Substantial restoration did not extend to the timber floor of the upper triad of shrines. The compound is endowed with 174 votive stupas and image chambers. 1.152a

Though the triumph of the Hindu Sanjayas was resound- › 1 . 1 5 3 C A N D I S A M B I S A R I , (c. 850): (a) exterior, ingly asserted at Prambanan, the Buddhists were not (b) interior of cella with Shiva linga. The mulaprasada rising from the centre of a entirely quiescent. They – or their new overlords con- balustraded podium anticipates – or parallels – the cerned to placate them – commissioned the related archai- Loro Jonggrang formula on a tiny scale but the squat cizing exercises at Sari and Plaosan.1.152 These were proportions run counter to the main line of central Javanese candi development. The whole was apparundertaken during the latest phase of work on the Loro ently covered by a timber canopy. Jonggrang. The latter had no successor of its scale or complexity in Java, but many smaller Hindu shrines were built in the following decades: the Shaivite Candi Sambisari may be taken as representative.1.153 From the two centuries thereafter, however, no significant candi survives in central Java. During that period power moved to the east. 314

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.152d

1.152e

1.152c

1.153a

1.152f

315

1.153b

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.154b

›1.154

E A S T J A V A N S Y N C R E T I S M : (a, b) the

Buddha Sakyamuni or Vairocana flanked by Avalokiteshvara and Vajrapani, finial with a makara disgorging a lion (East Java, 10th century; New York, Metropolitan Museum); (c) King Airlangga of East Java as Vishnu (tufa, mid-11th century; Trowulan Museum); (d, e) Singasari queen (Ken Dedes?) as the bodhisattva Prajnaparamita and king (Kertarajasa) as Harihara (c. 1300; Jakarta, National Museum ); (f ) Majapahit queen as Parvati (14th century; New York, Metropolitan Museum).

1.154a

E A S TE R N S U P R E M AC Y The Sailendras and Sanjayas exhausted themselves in territorial rivalry but the Sanjayas seem to have prevailed soon after 850. They were eclipsed in 929 by Sindok, a prince from Mataram who claimed descent from the Sanjayas and founded the kingdom of the east sometimes identified with its sometime capital,Kadiri.The last of the Sailendras took refuge at the court of Srivijaya, which was suffering its own reverses, ultimately regained power there and sought to extend it back to Java. The outcome is unclear as events in western and central Java seem to have gone unrecorded for nearly half a millennium after power moved east and the lack of monuments then is the legacy of exhaustion. However, superb late-9th-century Mahayana images have been found in the east.1.154a 316

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

The Kadiri realm was restricted to the east of the island by the Srivijayans. King Dharmawangsa took advantage of Srivijayan preoccupation with the Cholas to turn to the offensive. The change of Chola sovereigns in 1014 gave respite to Srivijaya: they counterattacked and killed Dharmawangsa. However, Chola ambitions had not died with Rajaraja the Great:his son Rajendra soon forced Srivijaya’s attentions westward again.The extinction of Sindok’s line was averted by the late king’s son-in-law, Airlangga, the son of a female descendant of the progenitor and her consort, the king of Bali.1.154b Airlangga regained Sindok’s kingdom and took it to its apogee in an unusually extended period of peace (1019–49). Beginning the transformation of a quasi-feudal entity into a centralized state, the royal authority promoted an examination system to staff a central bureaucracy with scholars, military training and organization were improved and the victorious king’s prestige sustained considerable prosperity in maintaining control over its several vassal principalities. Whereas Shiva had overtaken but never entirely supplanted the Buddha in central Java, now it was the Preserver’s turn. Then, as the creation of realms attendant on the destruction of others was their vital urge, the Sanjayas naturally promoted analogy with Shiva’s procreative role. Now the restoration and preservation of established order were the concern of Airlangga and his affiliation prevailed until the Kadiri order finally disintegrated at the end of the 12th century.1.154c Airlangga divided his realm between his two sons before he died: one inherited the east,Janggala centred on the late king’s capital Kahuripan; the other received Kadiri. Rivals, the new masters and their successors were, naturally, in constant contention but Kadiri ultimately regained the upper hand in a decentralized state. Its last king, having upset a delicate balance of religious and secular powers by 1.154c

317

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

claiming personal divinity, was overthrown by Rajasa, an adventurer who had usurped the throne of Janggala, with the connivance of the religious establishment in 1222. The victor asserted legitimacy in marriage to his victim’s wife, Queen Ken Dedes.1.154d,e Rajasa moved his seat to Singasari near Malang and his state took the name of its capital. Within five years, however, he succumbed to the vengeance of the legitimate claimant, Anushapati – Queen Ken Dedes’s son by her first marriage. He, in turn, was murdered by Rajasa’s son in 1248 but the legitimate heir again prevailed and ruled effectively as Vishnuvardana for two decades until his uncharacteristically non-violent death in 1268. Once again the restoration and maintenance of stability were the king’s prime concern and that recommended the patronage of the great Preserver, but he seems to have been eclectic as he was enshrined in candis as both Buddha and Shiva. After two centuries of surprisingly little royal building in masonry – sacred bathing fountains apart – the candis of Vishnuvardama and his father initiate East Java’s great age of monumental construction. The next king, Kertanagara (1268–92), was a great expansionist and preferred syncretism: in deference to both the great Indian religions of the former Kings of the Mountain, he styled himself Shiva-Buddha and his chroniclers credited him with destroying the demons of disunity in Java. Reducing former royal domains to provinces while ostensibly sustaining Kadiri’s centralizing bureaucracy, he is sometimes seen as Indonesia’s first true emperor but he decreed the complete autonomy of the priesthood in religious affairs. Taking advantage of the decline of the Sumatran west following the change in Chinese trade patterns – which had brought new prosperity to the Javanese east – he imposed his authority on the rump of Srivijaya and extended it to Bali. Under real

1.154d

1.154e

318

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.154f

319

or perceived threat from the Mongol power of China, he rebuffed the emissary of Kublai Khan and attracted reprisal but was assassinated by a rival court faction with Kadiri connections. The late king’s son-in-law – the great-grandson of Rajasa who had been endowed with an estate at Trowulan near Mojokerto – turned disaster to his advantage by persuading the Chinese of his good offices as the rightful ruler: they dispatched the conspirators; he then dispatched them and ascended the throne as Kertarajasa in a new capital at Trowulan, called Majapahit, in 1293. He sustained the syncretism of his predecessors and was commemorated on his death as both Harihara and the Buddha. Many of his successors were commemorated in several candis with various dedications but most preferred Shiva again.1.154f Majapahit sustained the state system of Singasari, at least throughout East Java and Bali, but waxing ambition extended the assertion of authority over disparate vassal principalities in a network of marriage alliances. As usual, all depended on the strength of the central personality and, with the consolidation of the suzerain power base through a bureaucracy of unfathomed complexity, Kertarajasa’s effective heirs furthered Kertanagara’s western advances at the expense of exhausted Srivijaya. Rajasanagara (Hayam Wuruk, 1350–89) expanded the imperial ‘mandala’ to its greatest extent – from western Irian (New Guinea) to northern Sumatra and the Malay peninsula. Thereafter imperial authority was eroded by succession disputes, marriage alliances were contentious, subject kingdoms asserted their independence and all soon succumbed to the novel messianic force of Islam.

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

E A S T J AVA N M O N U M E N TS The great age of East Javanese building was initiated under King Sindok’s heirs at Jolotundo and furthered by King Airlangga with Candi Belahan, both prime representatives of the ritual fountains honouring the spirits of the ancestral gods of the mountain. At the latter site, as we have seen, the king was represented deified as Vishnu. Mysteriously, however, the terraced form of the water shrine seems to derive from a prehistoric animist prototype.1.154c, 1.155 Under the Singasari, established from the third decade of the 13th century, the memory of the deceased ruler was again to be honoured in a candi form with the multi-tiered superstructure which may be taken as representing Meru. The form had been introduced from central Java to the vicinity of Malang in the 8th century, notably at Badut where the original tiered structure collapsed under the weight of later alterations, but the following two centuries 320

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

›1.155

MOUNT PENANGGUNGAN, JOLOTUNDO,

founded 977 and dedicated to the ancestors of King Udayana, then regnant, ceremonial bathing fountains: general view with ablution tanks (left), fountain in the form of Meru embellished with reliefs relating the mythology of the royal line (centre). Though the waters dispensed by their fountains were sacred and, therefore, ideal for ritual cleansing, the precise purpose of these bathing places is obscure – or rather the role of ritual bathing remains undefined. However, mountains were ever the source of animist veneration, intimately related to ancestor worship, and Mount Penanggungan was considered especially holy as the summit which fell from Meru during its translation from Jambudvipa to East Java: it was converted into a veritable Meru with the construction of more than sixty shrines in the early 15th century. The connection between Jolotundo and Udayana (born 963, reigned 989–1001) is also obscure: the fountain was built some twelve years before he ascended his throne and that was in Bali. He was honoured in conjunction with his son Airlangga at Candi Belahan, founded in 1049.

› 1 . 1 5 6 T H E S I N G A S A R I T O W E R T E M P L E : (a–d) Candi Kidal (south-east of Malang and of Singosari), built to commemorate King Anushapati, died 1248), east elevation, cut-away axonometric (archaeological survey 1992, Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan), details of embellishment; (e) Candi Jawi (built on the northern slope of Mount Arjuna for the last Singasari king, Kirtanagara, after his murder in 1292), reconstruction viewed from the south-east; (f ) Candi Singosari (the capital candi unfinished on Kirtanagara’s murder) from the north-east. The high stepped terrace on which the sanctuary of the earlier work is based has major and minor recessed panelled friezes, the former with Garuda images in the centre and lions at the corners. The square cella, probably Shaivite, is entered through a kala-crowned portal at the head of a staircase with a naga/makara balustrade (west): there are matching shallow projections on the other three sides for the ghanadvaras. The portal is flanked by medallions in low relief over a pair of aedicules and a similar aedicule motif, enlarged, stands in its stead on the other three sides to shelter icons. The tiered superstructure, relieved with miniature candi abstractions, is notably tall and steep in its

are largely void of successors – unless the dilapidated brick bulk of Candi Gunung Gangsir, with its false fenestration and stucco work of central Javanese derivation, is accurately dated to the 11th century. Persistent into the 13th century, when the Singasari turned to monumental building, was a layered base supporting a mulaprasada divided into two ‘storeys’ by a stringcourse and surmounted by a tiered ‘Meruvian’superstructure with multiple shrine motifs – as at Kalasan,Sewu or Prambanan but to a much-reduced scale,especially after King Kertanagara decreed the independence of the priesthood. However, the bold cruciform plan is contracted, shallow projections subsisting at the cardinals, and there is a new verticality in the elevation of the prasada motif over a relatively slender body. The evolution of the form in the second half of the 13th century may be traced from the Candis Kidal and Jawi to Singosari itself.1.156

1.156b @ 1: 1000

1.156a

321

1.156c

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.156d

Triangular antefixes and miniature stupas are retained as the main elements of relief in superstructures – sometimes together in this non-dogmatic era – but on the walls below architectonic articulation cedes to medallions and even to applied relief. The latter may be predominantly florid but embraces fauna as well or it may represent dynastic achievement in terms of indigenous or imported

1.156e

322

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

diminishing profile: the weight was decreased by leaving a void in the mass above the cella. Variations in the Jawi work (whose complete reconstruction rises to 24.5 metres) include the elaboration of the upper tier of the base as a socle for the cella and embellishment with both Buddhist and Hindu reliefs. The finial, uniquely, is a stupa: the shrine was Shaivite but the ruler proclaimed his omniscience by identifying himself both as a bodhisattva and a manifestation of Shiva and by officiating at Tantric ceremonies. Similar syncretism was served by the unfinished candi at the dynastic capital, Singosari (where the remains of several temples and many splendid icons were uncovered) but there the crucial variation was the incorporation of several main shrine chambers in the base rather than in the square mass above: that was void.

epic narratives: foreign naturalism cedes to indigenous stylization which ultimately petrifies the style of the leather shadow puppets with which the epics are still popularly portrayed throughout the former Majapahit domain and beyond.1.144a Well representing the characteristic development of the era away from Indian models towards a more thoroughly indigenous style, too, the kala has become a disembodied mask complete with lower jaw in an unframed tympanum.

1.156f

323

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.157b

›1.157

C A N D I J A G O , founded to commemorate King

Wishnuvardana (died 1268), reworked in the mid-14th century: (a, b) general views from the south-west and north-east, (c) axonometric reconstruction, (d) relief from the east side of the base illustrating a temple compound. The three tiers of the basic terrace are oblong: east of centre, the double platform bearing the superior structure is square; the elevation of the cella is indeterminable as only the socle and portal remain. The terraces are distinguished by at least five superimposed series of reliefs – as on a much more splendid scale at Borobodur. Much of the sculpture datable to the original campaign is Buddhist and the king was enshrined in the upper cella as the bodhisattva Amoghapasa: elsewhere (Candi Waleri) he was commemorated as Shiva. No elements of a masonry superstructure have been identified but a clue to the missing form is provided by a relief in the upper register depicting several permutations of multi-tiered roof over low cella walls: of timber, such a structure would well withstand earthquakes but not iconoclasm. The gopura survives only at foundation level.

1.157a

1.157d

A significant alternative approach, orientated towards a mountain in the ancient indigenous way rather than to a cardinal as recommended by the Indians, was based on a pyramid of superimposed terraces: not unrelated to the platform type perfected at Mendut, it recalls the stepped 1.157c @ 1:2000

324

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.158a

1.158b

water shrines of Penanggungan.The lower terrace usually projects beyond the others to form a forecourt interrupting the flight of axial stairs to the summit. The shrine set back on the top consists of a relatively low cella on a manytiered base probably with a timber superstructure of telescoped miniature storeys with multiple projecting eaves. Candi Jago is the outstanding example from the Singasari era.1.157 Both the terraced and tower temple types were sustained in the era of Majapahit: both achieved full maturity in the compound of the state temple at Panataran. As must have been the norm in the major compounds of Singasari and Majapahit – illustrated at Jago – they shared a succession of courts with a variety of buildings including columned mandapas (pendopo) and many canopies of timber and thatch, sometimes with superimposed roofs.1.158

1.158c

325

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.158d

5 2 3

4

1

1.158e

1.158f @ 1:2000

The Majapahit state temple A site was endowed with a temple before the end of the 12th century but most of the present complex dates from the 14th century. The slender candi in the outer compound, with its shallow projections surmounted by full-faced kala masks and multi-tiered pyramid, is known as the Dated Temple in virtue of its unique inscription of 1369: it marks the latest phase of development in the reign of Rajasanagara (1350–89). The completion of the cella of the main shrine, probably built over the late-12th-century structure on the initiative of King Jayanagara (1309–18), may be dated to 1323 from an isolated lintel inscription. At the culmination of the complex of courts entered from the north1.158g

326

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

west, off the north-west–south-east axis of the principal elements, the main shrine was dedicated to the Devaraja Shiva. On a stepped stylobate (30 metres square at the base with a 4-metre extension north-west for the principal access), a three-tiered platform supported the profusely ornamented cella (which has been partially re-erected, disorientated, to the north of the compound). The lowest tier is embellished with reliefs of Ramayana episodes separated by symbolic animals in roundels; the second level has an extended narrative cycle of the Krishnayana; the third has winged lions and serpents in high relief; the staircase is protected by dvarapalas. The cella walls were also embellished in both low and high relief but, with the loss of the main icons from the central aedicules, the iconography has proved elusive. The reliefs at Jago have guided conjecture in the reconstruction of the superstructure despite the survival at the site of stones from a tiered roof.

The terraced type was certainly not confined to the imperial compound: it recurs to varied scale at several sites, central like Surowono and remote like Kedaton and Sukuh. Far to the west, the last is unique in the elevation of its truncated platform except for neighbouring Ceto: it seems to have been built in overt opposition to the Majapahit state temple by a rival to the throne.1.159

1.158h

›1.158

C A N D I PA N ATA R A N , late-12th to mid-15th

century: (a) general view from the main temple platform with Naga Temple foreground and ‘Dated Temple’ centre; (b–e) main candi platform in the inner compound, Krishana relief panels, general view from below and reconstructed cella; (f ) plan with (1) main entrance, (2) pendopo terrace, (3) ‘Dated Temple’, (4) main candi compound with reconstructed cella (5); (g) King’s Tank; (h) ‘Dated Temple’ (1369) in the outer compound.

›1.159

C A N D I S U K U H , mid-15th century: (a) detail

of reliefs, (b) general view.

1.159a

327

1.159b

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.160a

1.160b

› 1 . 1 6 0 T H E M A J A PA H I T C A P I TA L AT T R O W U L A N , 14th century: (a) Gapura Wringin Lawang; (b) Gapura Bajang Ratu; (c) Candi Brahu; (d) Candi Tikus; (e) plan with (1) royal residence, (2) principal audience hall, (3) tanks, (4) priests’ compound, (5) Candi Siwa (main Shaivite shrine), (6) Candi Brahu (main Buddhist shrine), (7) Bajang Ratu precinct, (8) Candi Tikus (ceremonial bathing place with fountain modelled on Meru). The ancient shastra principles for laying out a royal capital are still honoured here but in the ethos of divine monarchy the canonical location of the gods in the centre and the king to their north is obviated: the Devaraja is central.

3 9

2 3

4

1 3 7 5

8

1.160e @ 1:2000

328

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.160d

1.160c

› 1 . 1 6 1 ( PA G E S 3 3 0 – 3 3 1 ) YO G YA K A R TA , T O N : audience hall (19th century).

329

KRO-

The tower type too survives in various permutations dedicated to the memory of Majapahit rulers – often at remote sites like Jabung, where the mid-14th-century candi is unique in its hexagonal interior and semi-cylindrical exterior. It was also to serve as a ceremonial portal to sacred sites in both the Singosari and Majapahit eras. The stepped pyramid may surmount an elevated passage instead of a cella (gapura paduraksa) or, idiosyncratically, the passage may be extended vertically to split the form into twin pylons (gapura bentar).Only the foundations are left of the earlier works – at Jago, for example – but both gapura types are well represented at the Majapahit capital, Trowulan, where their slenderness is in sharp contrast to the bulky mass of structures like Candi Brahu,in the northwest sector.1.160 Its north-eastern rural contemporary, Candi Pari, is similarly bulky. The Trowulan palace has been extensively surveyed but, the restored brick-built gates and candis apart, little survives above ground as even the great hall was built primarily of timber. In its absence – and that of all its predecessors1.144 – it may not be entirely irrelevant to look forward to the kratons of the sultans of Yogyakarta or Solo for some idea of its vanished splendour.1.161

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.162

332

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

F RO M J AVA TO B A L I From at least as early as the mid-11th century Muslim traders from India had established riverine realms in northern Sumatra, where vassalage to a far-off emperor was naturally at its loosest. These proliferated in both Sumatra and northern Java, where the Hindu-Buddhist culture of the imperial court was at its least assertive but commercial activity was at its most virile, boosted again for Indonesian carriers after the new Ming regime reimposed restrictions on Chinese foreign travel in the late14th century. Then, with the decline of Majapahit, several of the riverine Muslim rulers expanded their holdings into considerable kingdoms and the advance of Islam was under its tortuous way to dominance in Indonesia. Only Bali remained outside their pale. As we have seen, the Balinese king Udayana ruled in Java in virtue of his marriage to the grand-daughter and heiress of King Sindok (died 948).Union was forged under their son, the great king Airlangga, but on his division of the kingdom and retreat in the late-1040s, his younger brother Anuk Wungsu ruled in Bali. After the obscure reign of Sri Walaprabhu (c. 1079–88), who adopted the Sanskrit title maharaja in place of the vernacular ratu, the names and titles of the rulers suggest new or renewed East Javanese links. Javanese chronicles record the invasion by the last Kadiri monarch, Kertajaya (1190–1222) but the island presumably took advantage of the chaos following his defeat and death at the hands of the Javanese opposition.The Singasari king reconquered it in 1284 and the Majapahit ruler asserted his claim in the early 14th century. Pushed by Islam in the 16th century, a remnant of the Majapahit court retreated to Bali with priests. Principal among the latter was Nirartha who is credited with reinforcing the impact of Hinduism first felt five hundred years earlier. 333

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

›1.162

P U R A M E N G E N I N G , founded 13th cen-

tury?: general view.

›1.163

B A L I N E S E E X C A V AT I O N O F T H E

11TH

C E N T U R Y : (a) Tampaksiring, Pura Gunung Kawi: view

1.163a

Animism and the ancestor worship derived from it were always to be potent in Bali. The infiltration of Hinduism had reached Lake Batur in the north-east of the island by the 9th century. However, even after the advent of the Majapahit court and Nirartha had added an official – even an intellectual – dimension to the island’s Indic heritage, it supplemented rather than supplanted the old beliefs in a new and more complex synthesis: it will be recalled that acknowledgement of traditional beliefs was the key to the success of the Buddha and subsequent religious reformers in India itself. The fecund, purifying spirits of the waters run as living streams through many Balinese temples but, most important, even Hindu shrines are conceived to accommodate divinity not as permanent residences occupied through an icon in a garbha-griha but rather as hostels for spirits and their entourage on periodic visits to festivals: thrones (padmasana) were provided for them and they were invited to descend to reinvigorate portable images. Those spirits are primarily identified with all three great gods of the Hindu trinity and their entourage but the supreme manifestation 334

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

to west range; (b) Bedulu, Goa Gajah, exterior of cave and overview of ceremonial bathing place. The twin series of ten excavations on either side of the Pakerisan River have been dated from lintel inscriptions identified as chronograms, one of which has been equated with 1079. As they are traditionally assumed to be royal tombs (but are more probably reliquaries), the exercise is attributed to King Anak Wungsu (c. 1050–78), the younger brother of the great Javanese king, Airlangga. Associated with a ceremonial bathing place, the cave with the kala-makara motif over its entrance was adapted as a Shaivite shrine, though it seems also to have enshrined an icon of the Buddha: a Shaivite inscription has been dated to c. 1000 but the work may have been begun earlier by Buddhists.

1.163b

of unity in the deity – analogous to the sublime principle of Vedic Om or the ultimate god-head of the Bhagavad Gita (see page 59) – is honoured as Sanghyang Widi. If the first great East Javanese king was imported from Bali, his original realm accepted its architectural inspiration in return – though the earliest substantial temple remains, associated with native Balinese cults, are terraces of undressed stone. With the descendants of a Balinese king on the thrones of a divided East Javanese kingdom there was rather more activity in Bali than in Java from the middle of the 11th century. Derivative in form if not always in medium, this ranged from ceremonial bathing places – such as the Goa Gajah by the Petanu River near Bedulu – to rock-cut candis. The Gunung Kawi complex at Tampaksiring consists of a series of cellular Meruvian candis cut from the rock. Of similar freestanding structure, little survives as Balinese Hinduism dispensed with a durable masonry candi equivalent to the mulaprasada: the stone prasada of Pura Mengening, clearly recalling the sculpted candis of Gunung Kawi, is exceptional.1.162, 1.163 335

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

The pura pedharman (or dadia or kawitan, depending 1 . 1 6 4 U B U D , PA L A C E , rebuilt after the earthquake of 1917: (a, b) outer compound gate and reception on the status of the lineage), dedicated to the ancestors, pavilion; (c, d) inner compound pavilions; (e, f ) audiwas always to be one of the two main categories of Bali- ence and shrine pavilions. nese temple.The other was the pura kahyangan, dedicated to an all-pervasive deity derived from the Hindu tradition. Though the dedication of these categories and their subdivisions may be indigenous or imported, a considerable measure of concordance has resulted from common origin in the residential prototype. The traditional house of the extended family – often embracing three generations – consists of several separate pavilions in a rectangular compound: the entrance from the street, off centre, is confronted by a blind wall (aling aling) to screen the interior and prevent the penetration of evil spirits who move only along straight lines. The family genealogical shrine (sanggah) has a compound of its own in the corner furthest removed from the entrances. Apart from bathing and cooking huts, the various sleeping pavilions (bale) are rectangular with steeply pitched roofs carried on posts proportioned in accordance with the stature of the patron: his bale, whose size responds to his status in society, is adjacent to the shrine and, equally naturally, the one for receiving guests is adjacent to the entrance. All ranks of society are similarly accommodated – as their means and status allow – but the residence of a king will have a square compound close to the centre of his square capital which, representing the mandala of the cosmos in accordance with the imported Indian shastras, will be quartered by perpendicular avenues orientated to the cardinal directions of space.1.164 As in the capital, in each village there is a bale agung for social gathering. And each village will have a triad of shrines (kahyanagan tiga) associated with the Hindu triad: the pura puseh for the ancestral founders, dedicated to Brahma, at the auspicious kaja end, facing a mountain; the 336

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.164a

1.164b

1.164c

1.164d

1.164e

1.164f

337

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

pura desa for the protective spirits, especially Vishnu, in › 1 . 1 6 5 K A PA L , P U R A S A D AT , 12th-century foundation, much rebuilt after 1917: inner compound with the centre; the pura dalam for the dead, dedicated to Shiva candi bantar (left) and masonry Meru beyond the seats and/or Durga, at the inauspicious kalod end facing the sea. of divinity (padmasana tiga). Many pura are public shrines to local spirits and, particu- The dynastic temple of the Mengwi kings, the complex is dominated by the eleven-tiered shrine of the larly, to those of the waters managed by co-operatives to ancestral spirits; in this rare structure the East Javan irrigate the rice crop (pura subak): the pre-eminent exam- Meru form of candi was taken to its apogee in brick. The ple of the latter is Pure Ulun Danu Bratan (Pura Men- three large padmasana face fifty-four smaller ones possibly set out in their serried ranks to accommodate a gening is also a venerable example).1.165, 1.166 In addition, legendary number of ancestors. Nirartha founded several sea temples to honour the gods who assisted the Majapahit passage across the waters and to invoke protection for their adopted realm: among the most significant are Pura Gede Perancak, enshrining the place where the sage landed,and the neighbouring Pura Rambut Siwi, which enshrines his hair. Above all, the

1.165

338

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

› 1 . 1 6 6 P U R A U L U N D A N U B R ATA N : shrine of Devi Danu. The site of the temple, maintained by a major irrigation co-operative, is the centre of ancient fertility rites: the eleven-tiered Meru on the inner islet is dedicated to the lake-goddess Devi Danu, a manifestation of the shakti of Vishnu invoked to sustain the flow of the waters to the rice fields.

mandala of the island as a whole has six great sanctuaries (Sad Kahyangan) in the auspicious north, east and centre. Of these sanctuaries, Pura Besakih, east-centre on the south slopes of Mount Agung, is pre-eminent.1.167, 1.168 The typical temple consists of a series of pavilions in a series of rectangular compounds, usually three in deference to the tripartite nature of the Hindu god-head and the three zones of the Meruvian cosmos (see page 8).Theory and practice converge imprecisely: the visiting spirit moves with his portable images in the upper zone, of course, evil is excluded from the outer zones by the aling aling but the laity, appropriately purified, may accompany the priests in progression throughout the compound. Orientation is ideally – though not invariably – on a

1.166

339

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.167a

mountain–sea (kaja–kelod) axis, with the most sacred structures in the furthest enclosure (jeroan), nearest to the abode of the gods on the mountain summit. Inclined sites will be terraced and the zones connected by monumental flights of steps but even on flat sites the zones will be distinguished by raised podiums. Entrance is usually from the kelod, never from the kaja: in general it is marked by an elaborate gateway before the aling aling. The posts of the outer gate may be split (candi bantar) or joined and flanked by the two parts of a candi bantar. The portal to the inner compounds (kori agung) is usually bridged with a tiered superstructure. Associated with the entrance in the lower zone there will be gamelan pavilions and a drum tower. In the upper compounds there will also be pavilions to shelter priests in prayer and repose, for offerings, for the preparation of ritual meals and for storing regalia. Especially in the south there will be many Merus – spirit houses surmounted by pyramids of multi-tiered roofs representing the cosmic mountain: the maximum number of tiers, 1.167c

340

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

› 1 . 1 6 7 P U R A R A M B U T S I W I : (a, b) general view from outside the compound and detail of high-relief embellishment; (c) drum tower in the outer compound; (d) portal to the inner compound comprising kori agung, aling aling and candi bantar; (e) inner compound and its padmasana.

1.167b

1.167e

eleven, is reserved for the supreme deity – Sanghyang Widi, occasionally associated with one of the three aspects of the trinity. Most important, however, is the padmasana, a raised stone throne for the accommodation of the patron deity on his seasonal visits: this will be triple (padmasana tiga) where Shiva, Vishnu and Braham are invoked together, double for the male and female representatives of ancestors. Prolix ornamentation is encouraged by the plentiful supply of easily worked volcanic sandstone (tufa) with which brick structure has invariably been capped – at least for the last century or so over which persistent deterioration has required constant replacement.The kala,the most striking motif, usually proliferates in superimposed tiers over portals and hardly less arresting is the karang bintulu, the all-seeing eye surmounting dentures terminating in fangs and supporting a Meru. Outside there are terrifying guardian figures in the tradition of the dvarapala and inside the aling aling is alive with demons equally ready to pit themselves against evil spirits. Corners are reinforced 1.167d

341

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.168a

with the avian monster karang curing but less fearsome › 1 . 1 6 8 B E S A K I H , P U R A P E N ATA R A N A G U N G , garudas abound elsewhere.Ingratiating,on the other hand, site active for two millennia, most structures 14th century, rebuilt after 1917: (a) terraces and steps leading to are the dancers and their accompanying musicians. Lush the candi bantar of the first enclosure; (b) kori agung creepers of padma origin ramp over borders and the con- and compound of second enclosure with the principal text of mythological or dynastic reliefs is invariably florid. Merus and the edge of the padmasana tiga. In a complex of twenty-three related sanctuaries The advent of the Majapahit court and the consequent honouring dynastic, regional and vocational associaHindu renaissance – or reinvigoration – prompted a mas- tions, Pura Penataran Agung is the largest and most sive campaign of temple building and rebuilding and that important. Megalithic foundations indicate the remote origin of the site’s animist sanctity: the earliest inscripis the basis of the island’s principal architectural heritage. tion recording Hindu activity dates from 1007 but it had The enormously prestigious state complex at Panataran become a major Hindu tirtha after the Singasari con342

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.168b

quest of 1284. Developed organically from the Majapahit as the state temple, it was extensively rebuilt after the earthquake of 1917. The padmasana tiga in the second enclosure accommodates all three members of the Hindu trinity though the principal dedicatee of the complex is Shiva: it dates from the Majapahit era, like the great Merus – though they probably originated under the Singasari.

343

may well have provided a prototype for the Balinese, not least for the type of the gapura bentar which once stood at Panataran and once again stands at Trowulan. On the other hand, it is in cross-reference to the Balinese practice of roofing stone cellas in multiple tiers of timber and thatch that the main shrine at Panataran is reconstructed. Indeed, the most pervasive image of the Balinese temple compound is of a forest of Merus and canopy shrines of the type once common in East Java but long ago consumed by woodworm and flame.1.157

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

›1.169

D E V A R A J A : (a) Suryavarman II (Angkor

Wat); (b) Jayavarman Guimet).

II

as Buddha (Paris, Musée

1.169b

1.169a

12 the advent of the khmer The subcontinental peninsula sometimes known as IndoChina – centred on the modern countries of Thailand and Cambodia, framed by Burma, Laos and Vietnam – seems first to have attracted immigrants from southern China pushed out by Mongolians.These Mon speakers were also host to or progenitors of the Austronesian Malay speakers who colonized the great archipelago. Doubtless there were indigenes but all the early inhabitants were animist 1.170a like early settlers elsewhere: they worshipped the spirits of › 1 . 1 7 0 T H E D E I T Y I N F U N A N , A N G KO R B O R E I trees, water, mountains, of ancestors and later particularly R E G I O N , c. 600: (a) Buddha head from Wat Romlok of their sovereigns,‘Kings of the Mountain’. Indianization (Phnom Penh, Cambodian National Museum); (b) came to them in at least three waves and, as in Java, Bud- Vishnu: icon from Phnom Da. Icons of Vishnu and his avatars, including the Buddhism joined Hinduism at the courts of ancient Cambodha, found in the hill near the Funanese capital (moddia’s kings throughout their several dynasties.1.169 ern Angkor Borei) initiate Cambodia’s superb legacy of The influence of Ashoka’s Buddhist missionaries spread sculpture: the Gupta morphology explains the precocious appearance of such accomplishment. From the south and east: so too, much later, did Hinayana and outset the Khmers saw Vishnu with four arms holding Mahayana sects and, finally, Tantrics. From time his attributes, or weapons: the conch, the club, the disimmemorial Indian traders had established colonies on cus and the sphere (see pages 58ff ). the Malay peninsula and around the Gulf of Thailand, as 344

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

in the islands of Indonesia. In the 8th and 9th centuries ce the power of Buddhist Srivijaya extended to Funan – the earliest Indo-Chinese kingdom – which was centred on Angkor Borei, straddled the Mekong in the south of modern Cambodia and Vietnam, penetrated upriver towards modern Laos and reached westward through modern Thailand even to the Malay peninsula.

FUNAN Funan is a Chinese name related phonetically – if tenuously – to the native term for ‘King of the Mountain’. According to Chinese sources, Funan was founded by an Indian prince about the time the Kushanas were establishing themselves in India. Styled ‘Chandan’, perhaps as relative to the Kushanas who bore that title, he became ‘Kaundinya’ or ‘Kambuja’ – hence ‘Kambujadesa’, from which ‘Cambodia’ is obviously derived. He married an indigenous naga princess, Soma, whose father, the nagaraja – king of the underworld, source of water and fount of prosperity – had drained the land for his agricultural devotees. As we have seen, the natives worshipped the spirits of the waters and the mountain, and an ambitious ruler of foreign origin would naturally seek to identify himself with such spirits, asserting his own divinity – and with control of the waters. To a Hindu pretender the waters would be identified with the primordial ocean from which the tree of life sprang forth through Varunya’s navel and to the floor of which Indra pegged his stambha to prop the sky from the earth. And the mountain would be identified with cosmic Meru, itself identified with that axis mundi. It is this imagery that provides the key to understanding the imperial buildings of Funan’s successors. They went further than the Indians who inspired them: the Khmer needed to construct models of the cosmos 1.170b

345

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

centred on Meru in distant Jambudvipa; the Indians built on Jambudvipa itself: and the Javanese moved Meru to their own island. The kings of Funan fostered trade as well as agriculture and prospered accordingly: like the contemporary Pallavas, they surnamed themselves varman (protector). They were predominantly Vaishnavite but the Buddha was venerated at their seat too.1.170 There were probably several lords of autonomous domains, each dependent on a riverine port. Intermarriage was doubtless common, merging dynastic lines, and some broadly acknowledged authority ran to instituting an integrated irrigation system, releasing large tracts of land from brackish swamp and seasonal desiccation. On a great alluvial plain, subject to enriching annual flood, the management of water was crucial and certainly the key to authority – or, rather, to the retention of power. The elaborate systems of reservoirs (baray) and canals built over half a millennium by the greatest lords of the area were certainly of practical necessity, providing for transport and fishing as well as the irrigation of the rice paddies which fed the court,its servants and the artisans who created its ambi1.171a ence. However, associated with the mountainous tomb of › 1 . 1 7 1 A N G K O R B O R E I , A S H R A M M A H A their builder, Meru reproduced in accordance with a cos- R O S E I , 7th century: (a) the image of Harihara from the mic mandala, they were endowed with the symbolism of sanctuary (Paris, Musée Guimet); (b, c) elevation and section (after Parmentier). the cosmic ocean. Masonry, unique in the period, ensured the extraorThe first of the few Funanese rulers known to history, dinary survival of this building. Advanced in its constyled Jayavarman (c. 478–514), sent an emissary to China struction, the form may be seen as primitive in its simplicity or sophisticated in its abstraction according to seek assistance in war with the neighbouring Chams – to whether it is viewed in the light of later Khmer or earwhose enmity would be perennially excited by the various lier Indian practice. A garbha-griha with pradakshinaCambodian potentates with expansive ambitions. His patha in a structural temple was novel even in India in the 7th century – as far as the accidents of survival tescapital on the lower Mekong, Vyadhapura (Angkor tify, though there were doubtless many such structures Borei), was central to the first generation of the canals in ephemeral materials. The tiered superstructure prewhich were to play such an important part in the economic cedes the earliest south-east Indian lithic examples but has the simplicity of superimposed eaves associand architectural history of Cambodia. He has no known ated with the Kadambas of the south-west coast and tomb. Indeed the earliest relic of building in the Angkor the Maitrakas further north – and with Khmer work 346

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

c. 800. Its principal feature moreover, the gavaksha portal front, recalls the motive with which western Indian traders would have been familiar since the era of the first Buddhist chaitya-grihas in the Western Ghats. All these had timber prototypes, of course. Influence could well have been transmitted from Malabar ports – via Palembang – and, apart from familiarity with once-ubiquitous timber and brick, a knowledge of Gupta buildings lost to us may be assumed: the serenity and slender grace of the Harihara icon, characteristic of the earliest Cambodian sculpture, are reminiscent of the Gupta style – if perhaps more naturalistic. Yet, of course, the figure is superbly hieratic: defining the syncretic ideal, it combines the attributes of Shiva and Vishnu.

1.171b

Borei vicinity long post-dates the last record of his successor Rudravarman in 539: a single-cell shrine preceded by a gavaksha portal and surmounted by a stepped pyramidal roof, all of masonry, the Indian credentials of this proto-typical Khmer vimana are immediately apparent – but somewhat surprising.1.171

ZHENLA Before the assertion of Srivijayan ascendancy, Funan was under pressure from all sides. Expansion beyond the Mekong to the east excited the Chams, whose realm was the hinterland of the modern central Vietnamese city of Danang. Taking advantage, perhaps, of the exhaustion of both sides in the opening phase of protracted conflict, a rival power from the north asserted itself in the middle Mekong and introduced the Khmers to the area’s history. Known to the Chinese as Zhenla (Chenla), it was subject to rulers who seem to have originated in the 6th century with a prince excluded from the succession at Vyadhapura: like the Funanese, the royal names assert protection in the Indian style and the animist tradition of descent from the union of an Indian prince with a naga princess was not forgotten. Naga legitimacy notwithstanding, the first great king of Zhenla, Ishanavarman (c. 610–28), was a devotee of Shiva and most of his successors were identified with the Maheshvara.However,there were to be great eras in which the incarnation of Vishnu and even the bodhisattva Lokeshvar reigned. Khmer religion was essentially syncretic: the complexity of Indian worship did not cross the seas but all three members of the trinity and the Buddha were revered together in many Khmer temple complexes, whoever was the prime dedicatee, and the Khmers enriched their rituals with anthropomorphic images of them all.1.172

1.171c

347

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.172a–c

Ishanavarman absorbed the rump of Funan and founded › 1 . 1 7 2 P R O T O - K H M E R I M A G E S O F D E I T Y : (a) his capital, Ishanapura, at Sambor Prei Kuk about half way the anthropomorphic Shiva (c. 700; New York, Metropolitan Museum); (b) Shiva linga from Takeo (7th cenbetween the Mekong and the great lake of Tonle Sap, tury; Phnom Penh, National Museum); (c) Maitreya, which was to remain the centre of Khmer power until Prakon Chai, Thailand (early 8th-century bronze and beyond its apogee at Angkor: here, above all, the king silver; Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum). The first material evidence of the dominance of Hinneeded to prove himself as a water conservationist. Unlike duism in the land that would be the Khmer empire is Vyadapura, enough remains of Ishanapura to trace the ori- the image of Vishnu from Phnom Da and, as we have gins of monumental architecture in the area. The princi- seen, the first image of Buddha is contemporary. The first such evidence of the predominance of Shiva is the pal building type was still the single-cella prasada-vimana: linga, the main focus of Shiva’s worship. In this manias in Java, it was dedicated to an Indian divinity incarnate festation, the square zone at the base of the linga’s in the ruler who was buried below. Unlike the most sub- shaft represents Brahma, the central octagonal zone Vishnu and, of course, Shiva is represented by the head stantial survivor at Angkor Borei – the Ashram Maha – usually with interpolated anthropomorphic visages Rosei which may, or may not, predate the absorption of (mukha, hence mukha-linga). The physiological anaFunan by Zhenla – the shrine remains recall the brick logy to the seeding, sustenance and stimulation of procreativity – the roles of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, buildings of the Buddhist holy land, particularly the given that life issues in death which is the precondition Mahabodhi at Bodh Gaya or the temple at Bhitar- for renewed life in the continuous cycle of existence – hardly needs elucidation. The earliest examples from gaon.1.173, 1.43, 1.44 348

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

Ta Keo in southern Cambodia mark the final triumph of Zhenla over Funan. Shiva was later to be represented anthropomorphically.

1.173b

1.173a

›1.173

S A M B O R P R E I K U K , S I , c. 630: (a, b) lintels with Indra on his elephant mount (recovered among the ruins of the southern group; Paris, Musée Guimet); (c) elevations of N18; (d–f ) elevation, section and general view of S1 (drawings after Parmentier). The definition of Cambodia’s premier Sambor style of architecture, which provided the basis for the Khmer tradition, derives from the site of the religious centre of Ishanavarman I (c. 615–35), presumably in or near the vanished capital: there are three main groups of shrines, all in square compounds enclosed by double prakaras. The most substantial remains, from the

E LE VAT I O N O F T H E K H M E R Ishanavarman’s heir was succeeded c. 650 by a matrilineal relative who held tenure of a domain to the north of Sambor, around modern Kompong Thom, known as Aninditapura. On his consecration he took the style Jayavarman in emulation of the great king of Funan. He asserted centralizing sovereignty north and south from his seat,Purandapura, which has not been definitively located. He was succeeded by his daughter Jayadevi c. 680: her reign lasted into the 8th century after which autonomy prevailed again. Few monuments survive from the era. A sacred site engulfed by the later earthworks in western Angkor, known as Ak Yum, yielded pillars with inscriptions variously dated between 674 and 717 which had apparently been reused in the later construction of a three-tiered temple mountain. There are several dilapidated shrines south of Sambor Prei Kuk, which may date from the reign of Jayadevi, more substantial ones at Kompong Speu and Phnom Bayang in the remote south. Of brick with sandstone door frames and accessory detail, all of these conform to the Sambor type but reflection of the late-Gupta style has ceded to the brilliance of contemporary Mahaballipuram – though it is unlikely that any one style prevailed absolutely even in the major royal domain. Dating is invariably guided by sculptural style – especially the treatment of the main portal lintel which,derived from the ubiquitous Indian makara arch, was always to be a field for rich development.1.173

1.173c

349

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.173d

southern complex, are walls (3 metres high) embellished with medallions carved from the brick and inscribed in fulsome praise of Ishanavarman and his alter-ego, Shiva. Establishing – or asserting – the norm, most of the shrines are small, multi-tiered vimanas with garbha-griha and antarala built of horizontal courses of brick, corbel-vaulted and once covered in lime plaster. The interior surfaces were usually plain, but polished. The typical exterior has a moulded socle inverted for the cornice, jambs incorporating cylindrical colonnettes to the eastern portal and the similar blind doors to the other sides, and gavaksha niches for devatas. The typical lintel has a a poly-lobed arch, with bejewelled and tasseled valence, sometimes emerging

1.173e

1.173f

350

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

from makaras as a rainbow encountering the stormand wind-gods of the empyrean into which the worshipper passes: other examples have a congress of gods in place of the valence. The main southern sanctuary is panchayatana: the subsidiary shrines are octagonal; the central one is rectangular (32 by 13 metres at base) with a five-tiered tower: it is unusual in the pilaster articulation of the walls of its garbha-griha but the devata frames which relieve the outside walls are typical in their representation of elevated prasadas: the similar motifs on the facets of the subsidiary shrines are sometimes better preserved. In addition, the Nandi pavilion is unique in containing a stone baldachino around which there was room for pradakshina.

1.174a

13 angkor The achievement of Jayavarman i’s reign (c. 657–c. 81) was to be the inspiration of later Khmer empire builders. Greater Aninditapura continued to expand, although there is later – and ambiguous – inscriptional evidence for reverses inflicted by Indonesian invaders. If so the situation was soon corrected by a prince who claimed descent from several Khmer royal lines and appeared at Vyadhapura c. 790 – which, certainly, had been lost to several generations of obscurity. Consecrated there as king, he styled himself Jayavarman ii and established his first capital c. 800 at Indrapura, which has been identified with Banteay Prei Nokor south-east of Kompong Cham. Initiating the great age of the Khmers with the absorption of Aninditapura early in a reign which was to last for half a century, he moved his seat north to Hariharalaya, in the Roluos area of Angkor, and then to the high ground of Phnom Kulen to the north-east which was identified with Mahendraparvata – Indra’s seat as king of the gods, Devaraja.There he was consecrated as King of the Mountain, Universal Ruler, chakravartin – king of the several related Khmer kings who were left in place in return for fealty – in 802. Jayavarman ii (c. 790–c. 830) is credited with initiating the formal cult of the Devaraja. Khmer textual definitions of the concept are elusive and modern interpretations are diverse. The word itself suggests either that the ruler was himself a god or that he was the instrument of a divine counterpart. The latter seems the most probable in the 351

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

absence of evidence that the Khmers worshipped – rather than venerated – their kings. Thus the Devaraja would be the divine alter-ego of the chakravartin:the ruler of heaven manifest incarnate as the ruler of the world, King of the Mountain. We have seen the concept of the ruler as an incarnation of Shiva, charged with maintaining the commonweal through the worship of the linga in a replica of Meru, well developed in Java: those who believe in a Javanese invasion maintain that it was introduced to the Khmers by the Shailendras – even that Jayavarman was indoctrinated in 1.174b exile at the Shailendra court. Java may well have been the › 1 . 1 74 T H E P R O T O - K H M E R T E M P L E : (a) lintel ultimate source but it hardly needed force of arms to trans- from Vat Eng Khna (Kompong Thom, c. 700); (b) Phnom mit such a pervasive ideal. Moreover, given the continuity Bayang, Shiva shrine (late-7th century), restored elevaof cultural development from Angkor Borei to Kulen, it is tion (after Parmentier); (c) Prasat Vat Kompong Preah, Kompong Speu (early 8th century); (d, e) Phnom Kulen, not unlikely that the elevation of the cult by Jayavarman Prasat O’Paong and Prasat Kok Kulen lintel (early 9th sustained an established tradition. Whenever it came – century). whatever it meant – the transfer of a divine mandate to the Dilapidation makes reconstruction of the superstructure at Sambor Prei Kuk difficult in detail. In later new king would be manifest in his victory. survivors the articulation of typical Pallavan elements It seems highly unlikely that Jayavarman left the initia- is clearer. The prasat at Phnom Bayang has a threetion of the temple-mountain tradition to his heirs:a much- storey vimana like the Dharmaraja Ratha but it is built over an oblong plan and consequently has a so-called denuded three-tiered platform on Mahendraparvata – keel roof, like the Bhima and Pidari Rathas: however, as where there are also several single-platform vimanas of the later at Kompong Speu, the kutas and salas on their tertype evolved over the previous century – is datable to his races are more complex – no less so, certainly, than in the Shore Temple. era. Founded much earlier, as we have noted, the Prasat Ak In the second half of the 7th century the makara Yum was developed as a three-tiered pyramid: the site, lost ceased to be the invariable progenitor of the lintel arch. to the later excavation of Angkor’s western baray, is not far At Vat Eng Khna a continuous band, incised with padma-lata, trimmed with pearls and overlaid with from Roluos where Hariharalaya, Jayavarman’s first and icons of the Hindu trinity (Shiva centre, Brahma and last seat in the north, is generally located. However, as Vishnu to his right and left respectively), issues from there is no evidence to connect the two nor to date Ak antefixes with Shaivite icons. In the 8th century, as at Vat Kompong Preah, the delicately incised band had Yum’s final form, it is impossible either to deny or to affirm become a heavy garland in an entirely foliate context. that the temple mountain – and therefore, presumably, the By the early 9th century the garland issues from the concept of the Devaraja – had appeared before the iconic seat of a deity to makharas. events of 802. The oldest of Angkor’s temple mountains to survive as 352

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

a clear manifestation of Meru was built at Roluos by Indravarman i, who succeeded Jayavarman ii’s son – the third of the name – in obscure circumstances c. 877. While the work was in progress he dedicated the Preah Ko – a complex of shrines on a single platform – to his ‘predecessors’. The veneration of ancestor spirits was fundamental and the precedent for erecting a multi-shrine complex in their honour may be traced to the Prasat Kroh Bei Krap on Jayavarman ii’s Phnom Kulen but time and decay may have deprived us of earlier examples.1.174 Whatever their antiquity, the two main royal temple types of future Angkor are fully established in the reign of Indravarman i: the vimana based on a single-plane platform, expanded horizontally to meet the special requirements of the multi-shrine ancestor complex, and the vimana raised on the multi-tiered sepulchral pyramid of the king’s own state monument. In both, as was to be the norm throughout the early Angkor period, brick was the main material but sandstone from quarries to the north of Tonle Sap was used for the doorframes and their superb lintels. Like the earliest temples, the shrines follow the late-Gupta model of garbha-griha with porch.The gavaksha is enhanced but, following the example set on Phnom Kulen – indeed as early as the Ashram Maha Rosa at Angkor Borei – the superstructure has become an exercise in architectonic abstraction which dispenses with the kutas and salas borrowed by the builders of Zhenla from their Pallavan contemporaries.1.164d

1.174c

1.174d

353

1.174e

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

The temple mountain itself, known as Bakong, was in the eastern sector of a large rectangular moated compound to the south of the huge Indratataka Baray – the third, but certainly not the least important, of the main royal building types – which was begun at the outset of the reign. 1.175a Beside the temple was the palace: usually in the northern 1 . 1 7 5 I N D R A V A R M A N I ’ S P R I N C I PA L W O R K S sector of the compound, Khmer palaces were invariably of I N T H E V I C I N I T Y O F A N G K O R (from c. 877): (a) timber and, hence, have left few traces above the founda- Prasat Kok Po A (Angkor, late-9th century) lintel; (b, c) Preah Ko; (d–g) the Bakong of Hariharalaya (Roluos), tions.The disposition of the complex as a whole conforms view from the approach, detail of subsidiary vimana, to ancient Indian precept and, in the absence of earlier evi- plan, detail of central vimana. dence, the terraced temple seems to have set the standard South of the Indratataka, the Preah Ko, dedicated in 879, was a complex of traditional towers that constifor the cosmological determination of the strictly regular tuted the largest Khmer work to date. There are three form of the state monument: if Preah Ko was modelled on enclosures (the inner one 58 by 56 metres), each with a the primitive form of Hindu temple, the residence of the gopura: the outer ones are of laterite, the inner one of brick. A single great platform, addressed by three repPurusha as prasada, the Bakong honoured the divine spirit resentations of Nandi, supported icons of Shiva to the of the Mountain King in terms of the residence of the front, Gauri to the rear and two rows of three prasats: the larger and more complex ones in the front row Purusha as Meru.1.175 accommodated the king’s father and grandfather to either side of Jayavarman II as Shiva Parameshvar (Supreme Lord, the king’s posthumous title); the second row was dedicated to their wives. Octagonal columns are introduced with a kalasha rather than kumbha capital. The lintel garland, supported by garuda, now issues in a spray of naga heads: undulating, it may also be gnawed by kirtimukhas: the foliage below may now metamorphose into nagas and devas and a major god may reappear presiding over all from the upper centre.

1.175b

354

1.175c

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.175d

Bakong Dedicated in 881 and presaging the later development of the building type serving the cult of the Devaraja, Indravarman’s conception realized the Kautilyan ideal of a moated rectangle intersected by two main arteries on the cardinal directions, with the main gate to the east and the main temple in the centre, adjacent to the palace. Underlying Kautilya’s prescription, of course, is the ultimate Vedic conception of Jambudvipa rising in the centre of the cosmic series of continents and oceans to the eminence of Meru, crowned by the palace of the gods: thus the mountain temple rises through its several terraces in a frame of moated compounds to the prasat of the king’s divine alter-ego, the palace of the Devaraja, on the plateau. Here in fact five tiers rise from a triple-walled, double-moated compound: that makes eight firmament zones of which six may be seen as representing the concentric continents, the seventh as Jambudvipa and the eighth, 1.175e

355

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.175f @ 1:1500

the apogee, as Meru with its crowning palace. Alternatively the five terraces may be seen as the five levels of Meru: that, of course, leaves the number of continents unrecognized. Beyond symbolic form, the scheme incorporates all the elements which were to be typical for half a millennium – causeways with naga balustrades, prakara, gopuram flanked by ‘libraries’, axial staircases and the terraces with subsidiary shrines. Little is left in the vicinity of the tiered structure: the outer moat, lost to rice paddy, was 800 by 660 metres, the outer wall 350 by 320 metres, the laterite wall of the main precinct is 160 by 120 metres – the divergence from the square, which was to remain typical, met the need to accommodate elongated ‘libraries’ in association with the main entrance to the central compound from the east. The gopura there, at the head of the main causeway, is matched in the west but the northern and southern ones, not served by causeways, are smaller. In addition to the ‘libraries’, storerooms, treasuries and stelae chambers, four pairs of subsidiary shrines are dedicated to aspects of Shiva represented in the niches by sadly decayed reliefs: built of brick reinforced with sandstone 1.175g

356

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

for the superb portals, they face east but flank the pyramid’s axial stone stairways. Lion-guarded, the steps of the latter are graded to enhance apparent height with precocious sophistication. The terraces (67 by 65 metres and rising to 14 metres) are faced with sandstone. Only the fourth terrace, embellished with the earliest Khmer narrative reliefs, has miniature shrines: the others have elephants in their corners. The summit shrine was rebuilt at the height of Angkor’s development in the 12th century in the florid style of that time, which contrasts with the architectonic abstraction of the subsidiary prasats. Like their predecessors, the shrines have open eastern doors, flanked by dvarapala, and false ghanadvaras to the other three sides: the outer jambs, framing colonnettes, are embellished with padma foliage and patra-lata. The lintels are particularly rich in stylized foliage-sprouting divinity. The pediments are either flattened gavakshas or undulating makaras symbolizing the fording of rejuvenating waters. All the main embellishment is, of course, iconic: symbolizing royalty, the lion guardian is an exotic import from India and further west; the Brahmanical niche images proclaim the divine lineage of the Indian prince, Kaundinya; the nagas of the causeway balustrades recall the native animistic spirit from whose union with Kaundinya the first Devaraja was born.

The cosmic ideal reasserted itself towards the end of the 9th century under Indravarman’s son Yashovarman i (c. 889–c. 910), who moved the capital to Angkor where it remained for half a millennium. The scale was unprecedented: the moated enclosure was the square of 4 kilometres – five times the length of the longest side of the Bakong’s outer enclosure. It was centred on the eminence of Phnom Bakheng which the king planned to augment for his alter-ego with a five-tiered temple.1.176 Indravarman had drained the Roluos into the Indratataka Baray – the artificial lake, known as Lolei, 3 kilometres long and 800 metres wide – from which canals took water to Hariharalaya and the surrounding fields. His son contributed the even bigger East Baray – 7 by 1.8 357

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

4i

4ii

4iii

1

4

5

2

3

1.176 @ 1:200,000

kilometres – to supply his Yasodharapura at Angkor. In › 1 . 1 7 6 A N G K O R , site plan with (1) East Baray and Mebon, (2) Yasodharapura with Bakheng, (3) Angkor these two reigns water management was achieved for the Wat, (4) Angkor Thom with (i) Phimeanakus, (ii) first time on an imperial scale by a chakravartin in virtue Baphuon, (iii) Bayon, (5) West Baray and Mebon. of the divine authority manifest in the mountain temple The ‘cities’, it should be noted, were precincts reserved exclusively for cult and court ceremony. The central to his seat. people lived beyond the walls and in the fields. The earlier baray was endowed with sanctity as a temple tank when Yashovarman built a shrine, inspired by the Preah Ko and dedicated to Shiva incarnate in his progenitors, on an island to the north of its north–south axis. He sanctified his own baray in the typical Khmer pantheistic spirit with shrines to the Hindu triad and the Buddha. At much the same time a temple to the divine trinity – Shiva, the god in the king, flanked by Vishnu and Brahma – on 1.177a Phnom Krom,overlooking the Tonle Sap way to the south, › 1 . 1 7 7 T H E P R I N C I PA L W O R K S O F YA S H O V A R was erected in honour of the sanctity of the great god-given M A N I AT A N D N E A R A N G K O R , from c. 890–920: reservoir as well. Meanwhile, the accommodation of the (a, b) Lolei, lintel and niche with deva; (c, d) the mountain temple on Phnom Bakheng, plan and view from the power behind all this was being prepared in the panchy- south-east; (e) the complex on Phnom Krom, general atana complex on the top of the Bakheng temple moun- view from the south-west; (f, g) Prasat Kravan (c. 920), tain: like Borobodur, the conception as a whole was of a view from the south-east and interior of central shrine. Like the Preah Ko, a single platform (90 by 80 peak rising majestically from foothills.1.177 metres) supports the vimanas of the Lolei complex: Yashovarman took the throne only after bitter struggles four were executed but six were probably intended as 358

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.177c @ 1:1500

with his brothers: to assert his imperium he erected stelae, tended by small religious fraternities, throughout the empire and they mark its extent from Phnom Rung in the Nakhon Ratchasima of south-eastern Thailand – where there are several 10th-century Khmer temple remains – to the sea and from Wat Phu in southern Laos along the 1.177b

1.177d

359

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.177e

Mekong to Phnom Buyang on the border of southern Vietnam – an area more or less coterminous with modern Cambodia. After his demise somewhat tenuous control was sustained over this domain by two of his sons in succession: Harshavarman i (c. 910–23) and Ishanavarman ii (c. 923–28). Only the older son left a monument, the unfinished Baksei Chamkrong pyramid by the north-east slope of Phnom Bakheng,but the complex known as Prasat Kra-

1.177f

360

the northern half of the platform is vacant. The lush lintel is depopulated but issues from a kirtimukha. The niche frame is doubtless an image of the now-depleted whole. The five terraces of the Bakheng in the centre of Yasodharapura were cut from a hill which originally rose only to 60 metres (from a largely unrelieved plane): faced with sandstone, they are based on the square of 76 metres in a compound bounded by a laterite wall 190 by 120 metres. They support the first in a distinguished line of panchyatana summit complexes dedicated to the Hindu trinity and the Devaraja with the ruler’s Shaivite alter-ego in the centre. The platform supporting all five shrines and the central shrine’s plinth increase the number of levels to seven for those who wish precisely to equate the composition with Vedic cosmology. Brick and sandstone, with laterite for the prakaras, remained the main materials. In addition to the five summit shrines, there were twelve on each of the lower terraces, two pairs framing the thresholds to the axial stairways at the base and seven similar ones framing each quadrant: 109 in all. On the extended eastern precinct, within the gopura, was a pair of ‘libraries’ for the temple records. The prasats further developed the cruciform type derived by the builders of the Bakong from Funan but the central one was open to all four sides: wholly of sandstone, its superstructure is lost and all four corner shrines, also of stone, have disappeared except for their bases; many of the subsidiary brick shrines are severely eroded but enough of the sandstone embellishment remains to indicate conformity with the precedents developed in the previous reign. Like those on the cardinal axes of the Bakong, the graded steps were

1.177g

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

guarded by lions. Gavakshas with multiple curves at Bakheng were anticipated at Koh Ker. Rich variations of the theme of metamorphosis continue to enliven the exquisitely worked lintels. The five cells of the Prasat Kravan, exceptionally fine in their brickwork, are aligned north–south and face east – contrary to the usual orientation of Vaishnavite shrines in later Angkor. In fact several of them housed lingam. In addition, the pantheistic exercise ran to splendid brick-cut reliefs of Vishnu in several guises on the interior walls of the central shrine and of Shri Lakshmi in the northern one. Abstraction has now affected the gavaksha, in so far as the motif is presented on the surviving superstructural levels without the animistic or floral Water Cosmology symbols usually associated with it by the Khmers. 1.178

›1.178

A N G K O R : B A K S E I C H A M K R O N G , from c.

920: general view from the south. Three plain laterite terraces support a single vimana on a moulded platform of the Baksei Chamrong whose foundation is generally dated to the brief reign of Harshavarman I: despite its form, it seems to have been conceived as a ‘progenitor’ temple.

361

van, east of Angkor, enshrines an icon of Vishnu dedicated in 921.1.178 After the obscure early demise of Ishanavarman ii the throne passed from the direct line through the late king’s sister to her husband, the ruler of the vassal kingdom of Koh Ker: assuming the title of Jayavarman iv, he chose not to move to Angkor but built an imperial baray and a vast complex of buildings centred on a seven-tiered temple mountain at his own ancestral seat. On his death c. 941 his son had to contend with other vassal kings to secure the succession and ultimately succumbed to a cousin, the quasi-independent ruler of old Chenla’s Sambor realm, who reigned as Rajendravarman (c. 944–c. 968). Abandoned by the powerful, isolated Koh Ker is a desecrated ruin known mainly from its fine pillaged sculpture.1.179 The new king faced vigorous opposition from his erstwhile peers, the rulers of the several realms whose allegiance to the supreme king had been relaxed in the late troubled reigns, and from the perennial Cham enemy in central Vietnam. Asserting his authority as the nephew of the great Yashovarman, he returned the seat of imperial power to prestigious Angkor. From there he waged internal and external war: reputedly rapidly, the latter

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.179a

culminated in the destruction of the Cham capital; the for1.179b mer, presumably in more extended campaigns, resulted in › 1 . 1 7 9 K O H K E R : (a) gopura of second enclosure the reduction of the dissident kingdoms to provinces. (after Parmentier); (b, c) Brahma and guardian figure Resident at first in Yashodharapura, Rajendravarman’s (c. 930; New York, Metropolitan Museum). first building project was the temple on the summit of the Baksei Chamkrong (c. 948) which had been left incomplete at the abandonment of Angkor after the short reigns of Yashovarman’s sons. He then founded his own seat to the south of the Eastern Baray, on its north–south axis: the substantial remains include his temple mountain, known as Pre Rup, and the panchyatana Mebon ‘progenitor’ complex of the planar type opposite it to the north, in the centre of the baray.1.180 The king’s ministers and confidants built too. One contributed a Buddhist complex at Bat Chum which marks 1.179c the ecumenical tolerance of the reign: it is a triad of traditional prasats and there were doubtless many similar › 1 . 1 8 0 R A J E N D R A V A R M A N ’ S P R I N C I PA L W O R K S AT A N G K O R , from c. 950: (a–c) Pre Rup, shrines but the stupa is not prominent among Khmer view from east, lintel and plan; (d, e) Eastern Mebon, building types – or remains. The principal representatives general view from west, detail of portal. of the form are sculptural models marking the corners of Pre Rup has five platforms, like its predecessors, but the lower two are extended to the east: the lowest is cut a sacred precinct, as in the Kbal Sre at Banteay Meanchey. short on the east to accommodate five or six shrines, Taking the Mahayana transformation of the Indian pro- unfinished but rivalling the one on the summit in scale; totype to an extreme, the diminution of the anda and the the second level has a pair of ‘libraries’ flanking the route from the main entrance and elongated storage exaggeration of the medhi element as the context for icons buildings whose alignment along all four perimeters anticipates the galleries introduced in the following of the Buddha are remarkable.1.181 362

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.180a

1.180b

reign. The corbel vaulting of ancillary buildings dictated narrow elongated spaces: lighting – if any – was through strip windows screened with balusters. The third and fourth levels have twelve miniature shrines like the Bakheng and, as there, the upper platform supports a panchyatana complex of brick and sandstone vimanas. They are closely parallelled at the Meubon. The work of this phase as a whole is noted for its severity, its classic clarity of line, simplicity of form and gravitas – especially in the distribution of the five shrines at the summit. A conscious archaism is apparent in the return to brick with reliefs coated in lime mortar and lintels which specifically recall work at Roluos: here it is crossed with a heavy garland issuing from Indra on his elephant. 1.180c @ 1:1500

363

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.180d

1.180e

364

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

Hardly less celebrated than the king’s great works – more so indeed, due to the exquisite refinement of its execution in gorgeous red sandstone and the integrity of its survival – is the miniature Hindu monastic complex at Banteay Srei: largely built under Rajendravarman ii but dedicated in the reign of his successor, it was founded by the brahmin Yajnavaraha who was tutor to both kings. In many respects the work is traditional – indeed there is conscious archaism – but there is novelty in the extended plan and in the multiplication of elements in elevation.Exceptional in its scale, the work may be taken as representative of the mature nonpyramidal temple.1.182

1.181

›1.181

B A N T E A Y M E A N C H E Y , K B A L S R E , late10th century: chaitya. The application to the medhi zone of icons of the Buddha accompanied by the grand bodhisattvas Avaloketeshvara, Prajnaparamita and Vajrapani establishes a Tantric presence but – as the Tantras did not obviate the Mahayana – it was not necessarily that the sanctuary was solely devoted to the ‘Way of the Thunderbolt’.

› 1 . 1 82

B A N T E AY

SREI,

MONA STIC

TEMPLE

C O M P L E X : (a) portal; (b) plan; (c) general view from

the south-east showing outer prakara; (d) inner gopura; (e) treasury; (f, g) main shrine from west and east; (h) details of pediments and lintels. 1.182a

365

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.182b @ 1:1500

B a n t e a y S re i Almost perfectly preserved, the platform temple type taken to miniature perfection here includes most of the features developed at Pre Rup – except, by definition, the pyramidal central structure which achieved that work’s sepulchral purpose. In plan, its series of enclosures – including a moat representing the cosmic ocean – is traditional but the eastern extension of an elongated access avenue anticipates works of greater scale, notably the temples at Phimai and Phanom Rung in Thailand, for example. The overall east–west axis is 200 metres from the entrance to the narrow, galleried forecourt (75 metres long) framing the causeway and

1.182c

through the three enclosures: the first, with its cosmic moat, is roughly 110 by 90 metres; the second is 42 by 38 metres; the inner one is the square of 24 metres but the height of the central prasat of its triplevimana shrine is under 10 metres. The prakaras of the outer enclosures are of laterite but brick was used for the innermost one and its western vimana: the other main structures are of sandstone but the libraries are vaulted in brick and the storage halls, which play the same framing role in the corresponding position at Pre Rup, are laterite. All six gopuram – the relatively grand one opening the eastern access avenue, two each for the 1.182d

366

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.182e

1.182f

first and second enclosures and one diminutive gem in the east wall of the inner sanctum – are essentially cruciform, the eastern ones most fully 1.182g

developed and elaborately embellished. The vimanas are entered only from the east and have ghanadvaras to the other three sides: dvarapalas flank the portal of the central shrine, devatas the side ones. The colonettes are mainly octagonal but the archaic cylindrical form is revived. Old lintel forms reappear too: the appeal of the Bakong, Preah Ko, Lolei and Pre Rup and even Sambor is apparent for division into quarters. There are two main types of pediment: the traditional gavaksha and the triangular form of Koh Ker, derived from the bargeboards protecting the timber truss of the pitched roof. The latter is restricted to subsidiary elongated buildings but the libraries have particularly splendid gavakshas: superimposition of undulating makara pediments is their principal characteristic and the makara is transmogrified into a multi-headed naga facing to the front and sides of corners. The relief figures in the niches are traditional but the splendid large-scale ecumenical narratives in the tympana are almost unprecedented. The style in general, highly sensuous in its intimacy, is exuberant despite its intricacy.

1.182h

367

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

Extension to the entrance sequence and rich multiplication of elements were to be typical of the later Angkor style.The stacking of gables over splendid narrative reliefs is particularly notable in this latter regard. After three centuries of development from the Indian prototype to the trilobe of two superimposed gavakshas, the form of the pediment achieved at Banteay Srei was definitive in its five naga undulations to each side, with new leaves sprouting from the outward curves of the intrados and an aureole of flame-like leaves to the extrados: from part to whole, the superstructure was soon to be similarly transformed. Before the completion of his guru’s masterpiece, Rajen1.183a dravarman seems to have succumbed to an internal revolt › 1 . 1 8 3 T H E W O R K S O F J A YA V A R M A N V AT c. 968 and his son’s accession as Jayavarman v did not go A N G K O R (from c. 975): (a) palace remains; (b, c) Ta uncontested. He was ultimately secure enough to expand Keo, general view from the east and plan. The panchyatana complex on a five-tiered pyramid into Thailand but the considerable period of peace over with axial gopura and stairs in a walled enclosure are which he was to preside seems to have begun no earlier standard but the material is predominantly sandstone than the seventh year of his reign, when he was able to and the composition is compressed to powerful effect (the base terrace is 110 by 100 metres but the last three attend to founding a new seat: the square was based on the terraces rise from a square of nearly 60 metres to nearly western end of the Yashodharatataka, its south-western 14 metres and the central tower originally rose some 23 corner overlapping the north-east corner of Yashodhara- metres from the top terrace): unprecedented in scale, the four cruciform corner towers are closely associated pura; twin landing stages on the baray’s bank served the with the even larger, vigorously indented central one palace, to the north of the central axis, and the three-tiered whose complex plan provides the earliest double Ta Keo mountain temple to the south. The reign saw the vestibules. The eastward extension of the lower terraces, initiated at Pre Rup, is sustained to accommodate completion of Banteay Srei and several other monuments a pair of ‘libraries’ but the elongated buildings aligned but, despite some twenty-five years of peace, the Ta Keo along the edge of the second terrace there have evolved into continuous galleries – with elongated buildings remained unfinished at its end c. 1000.1.183 The succession was again disputed and the late king’s parallel to them at the first and second levels. The galleries are strangely impenetrable and too restricted in line was terminated by usurpers. The main ones were internal space for human comfort. The libraries have a Jayaviravarman and Suryavarman who were both conse- tall core space buttressed by extensions to the mass crated in 1002 – the former in Angkor, the latter elsewhere. and clerestory-lit. The work retains some of the classic qualities which Suryavarman 1 had emerged supreme by 1010 and went on distinguish Pre Rup, notably the clarity of geometrical to reign for another forty years: regaining all the territory detailing in the elevation: this is perhaps enhanced by held by his predecessors, he asserted his dominion in the the blind fenestration of the novel galleries, perhaps by the work’s incompleteness. However, the gravitas of north with several temples in the Sakhon Nakhon and the earlier Pre Rup’s panchyatana distribution gives 368

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.183b

way to a dynamic generating the compression of taller, more complex forms on steeper terracing which might be defined as proto-baroque. The dating of the foundation to the last decade of the 10th century and its completion in the first decade of the 11th century is contested: some scholars place the whole exercise after the death of Jayavarman V.

1.183c @ 1:1500

369

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.184a

›1.184

O U T P O S T S O F E M P I R E U N D E R S U R YA -

V A R M A N I : (a–c) Preah Vihear, site section and plan,

1.184b

Nakhon Ratchasima provinces of north-east Thailand, most notably Prasat Preah Vihear, and westward as far as Lop Buri.1.184 At Angkor Suryavarman continued work on the Ta Keo mountain temple – if he did not initiate it – but left it unfin370

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

gopura and sanctuary (after Parmentier). The great ruler who took the name of Vishnu’s luminary Surya asserted the extent of his domains with several important monastic foundations: for this special purpose the state temple mountain becomes the mountain temple – at least in the premier example. Used to flat sites, artificially elevated, the royal architects were spectacularly successful in adapting the tradition they had inherited to the terrain of the Dangrek Mountains, now constituting the Thai border, at Preah Vihear. The sanctuary is sited on the southern fringe of the range above the steep descent into the Cambodian plain where a promontory dictates the dominance of the north–south axis and obviates the centralized plan of the typical Angkorean mountain temple: nevertheless the five traditional levels are marked by gopuram which punctuate the steps and

inclined causeways of the unique approach (rising through 1 kilometre to the southern apex). The causeways have naga balustrades. The four outer gopuram are cruciform, their pediments triangular stone interpretations of bargeboards in the style of Banteay Srei. Surrounded by galleries (barely large enough for normal human passage), the sanctuary is now a pile of rubble.

1.184c

ished when he moved his seat to the west of Jayavarman v’s complex and built his palace on axis with that of the late legitimate king, beyond twin long narrow halls known as the Prasats Kleung. Immediately to the west, at the junction of the north–south axis of Yashodharapura, he built the enigmatic stepped structure known as the Phimeanakas. Later endowed with a summit shrine as 371

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

›1.185

P R I N C I PA L W O R K S O F S U R YA V A R M A N

I A N D U D A YA D I T YA V A R M A N I I AT A N G K O R , first

1.185a

a palatine temple, if the Phimeanakas was originally conceived as a palace platform it is the earliest surviving example of the venerable Indian type whose oldest distinguished representative in the subcontinent is the 16thcentury Mahavamshi platform in the royal enclosure at Vijayanagar.1.64 Suryavarman’s project for his new capital was finally realized only under his successor, Udayadityavarman ii (1050–66). Partly replacing Yasodharapura on a reduced scale, Angkor Thom, as the walled new seat is known, was served by the largest of all Khmer tanks,the Western Baray centred on the stepped terrace of the Western Meubon. The Baphuon sepulchral temple in the centre, on axis with the Phimeanakas and the Bakheng, is usually attributed to him – though it is hard to believe that in forty years his greater predecessor did not conceive a temple mountain greater in scale than the Phimeanakas or the Ta Keo.If evidence were needed to justify the contention that the Khmer temple mountain is a reproduction of Meru, it is supplied by a 13th-century Chinese account of the Baphuon’s conception:‘seeing that the Golden Mountain, dwelling place of the gods, rose in the middle of Jambudvipa, [the king] had a golden mountain built in imitation at the centre of his city and on its summit he erected a golden temple shining with celestial radiance…’ 1.185

two-thirds of the 11th century: (a) Prasat Kleung (the north building, at least, possibly begun before the death of Jayavarman V); (b, c) Phimeanakas (probably completed in the early 12th century), general view from the south and corridor; (d–f ) Baphuon (founded 1060), plan, view of partially excavated remains and lintel. The two long buildings flanking the access to the new palace have been identified as sanctuary treasuries but the expansive – if screened – fenestration hardly suggests maximum security: the earlier northern one is 40 metres long and less than 5 metres wide with an interpolated central tower; the southern one appears to have been built later to establish a roughly symmetrical portal complex. The gopura beyond them, immediately to the west, penetrates a defensive wall which was unprecedented for a Khmer palace. It is also not clear whether ‘Phimeanakas’ (‘celestial palace’) relates to the raising of the king’s palace to the sky or the interment of the earthly remains of a heavenly being: a laterite stepped-pyramidal structure of three levels (on a base 35 by 28 metres) seems too small to have been the Devaraja’s mountain temple

1.185b

372

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.185c

373

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.185d @ 1:1500

1.185f

and, unlike the other examples of the latter, it is displaced from the town centre. Its single cruciform pavilion on the upper terrace was apparently built of timber and the edge of the top terrace was bordered by fenestrated galleries. Too small for comfortable passage, except by the most diminutive of figures, they presumably derive from the vernacular timber trabeated tradition of small rooms linked by narrow corridors – which are unlikely to have been exclusively religious. The southern perimeter of the Western Baray (8 by 2.2 kilometres) continues the east–west axis of the new square royal settlement centred on the Baphuon. Approached along a 200-metre causeway, the latter rises in three roughly equal tiers from a base 120 by 100 metres within an outer enclosure 425 by 125 metres: one of the largest, it is the most ruined of Angkor’s mountain temples due to its exceptional steepness and 1.185e

374

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

the consequent insufficiency of peripheral mass resulting from the incorporation of secondary tiers as extremely high bases for the inner two main levels. Each prakara has a gopura on both main axes: the eastern and western ones in the first prakara are cruciform, but those of the second level open directly to virtually unscalable stairways: according to one reconstruction of the plan, additional pairs of stairways rose to the corner towers. The lower enclosure has novel cruciform ‘libraries’ linked to the main access route by shallow causeways. Each level was entirely framed by galleries, as at the Phimeanakas, and on this scale these novel features could only have exacerbated the problem of structural stability. The summit temple consisted of a single cruciform shrine with a vigorously indented base and mass. Narrative scenes, recalling those of Sambor Prei Kuk, reappear in lintels, but now they fill the entire surface. Tympana are lush with padma foliage. The ascending dynamic of the Ta Keo, exceeded at the cost of stability, was channelled into the sculptural detail as well, effecting a vigorous fluidity on the small scale of the relief panels.

375

S U RYAVA R M A N I I Another period of internal dissent and strife with the Chams terminated in the advent of a new and obscure dynasty at Angkor. The first of the line, Jayavarman vi (1080–1107), seems to have been entirely preoccupied with reconsolidation which prepared for the apogee of Khmer power under Suryavarman ii (1112–52). He and his two successors – Yashovarman ii (1150–65) and Tribhuvanadityavarman (1165–77) – commissioned the greatest projects ever undertaken in Asia. The crowning masterpiece, which alone would justify that claim, is the temple mountain known as Angkor Wat, but the series also includes: the Beng Mealea planar temple dedicated to the Mahayana, east of Angkor under Phnom Kulen; the Shaivite Wat Phimai and Prasat Phnom Rung in southeastern Thailand; and numerous lesser works in Angkor itself of which the most significant are Preah Palilay, Preah Pithu, Thommanon, Chau Say Tevoda and Banteay Samre. In addition, ancient monuments were restored: the Bakong is the most significant. At the outset of his forty-year reign Suryavarman completed the reconsolidation of Angkor’s supreme authority over an empire which stretched west to Lop Buri. He pushed on further than any of his predecessors, as far as Burma according to Chinese annals.He turned east to deal with the traditional Cham enemy: initially successful, he imposed a client as king of central Champa but bitter resentment issued in the resurgence of a local claimant towards the end of the reign. Long before that reverse he exchanged embassies with the Chinese emperor as a power unprecedented in the region.1.186 With the huge resources of his vastly expanded domain, Suryavarman first rehabilitated Angkor Thom, the most substantial surviving representative of the ancient Indian ideal town, preserving the Phimeanakas in its centre.

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.186a @ 1:1500

›1.186

OUTPOSTS

OF

EMPIRE

UNDER

S U R YA V A R M A N I I , early 12th century: (a, b) Prasat

1.186b

Then, in the south-east quarter of old Yasodharapura – supplanted by the much smaller square of Angkor Thom – he defined the square of his new seat.The vanished palace was doubtless to the north of the north–south axis, in accordance with Khmer tradition and Kautiliya. At the crossing of that axis – the axis of state – with the east–west axis of devotion the supreme statement of the Mountain King’s cosmic ideal, Angkor Wat, was dedicated to Vishnu whose empyrean is illuminated by the king’s namesake. 376

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

Phnom Rung, plan, view from approach causeway; (c–f ) Prasat Phimai, lintel, model, sanctuary from south and north-west. The lesson in scenographic planning provided by the architects of Suryavarman I was not lost on his namesake’s servants. If less extended than at Preah Vihear, the approach up the steep slope of an extinct volcano to the sanctuary of Phnom Rung is hardly less spectacular: centralized planning was not impossible but the linear approach was preferred and again the ascent (rising more steeply than at Preah Vihear through 500 metres) is divided by gopura into five distinct levels and the naga balustrades of Preah Vihear reappear to great effect on the most extended lower one. Phnom Rung was a retreat for ascetics on the road to Phimai, north of the modern Thai border. It was developed at least as early as the 10th century, initially with three brick prasats, and then rebuilt in grand style by a retired general related to the king. Prasat Phimai may have been conceived as the ‘progenitor’ temple of Jayavarman VI whose family seem to have ruled the area as vassals. On a level site, the complex is unorthodox in its southerly orientation but more traditional in plan though the outer residential compound (1020 by 580 metres) is extended to accommodate the access avenue. Prophetic of the greatest works of the reign in Angkor, a platform with four pools defined by cruciform causeways effects transition from the second to the inner enclosure (274 by 22o metres and 83 by 74

1.186c

metres respectively). As in the smaller works of the reign in Angkor, the shrine is preceded by a rectangular hall instead of a mere vestibule. Equally prophetic, if more assertive, the splendid sandstone prasat superstructure has a gently curved profile and multiple foliate projections which mask the stepped ascent of the tiers to anti-architectonic effect. Phnom Rung shares all these features, though the hall in front of the shrine is cruciform. The primary dedication there is to Shiva. At Phimai the Mahayana dominates but in the ecumenical spirit of several Khmer rulers, Buddhist reliefs inside the sanctuary are supplemented by Brahmanical ones outside. The lintel represents the refinement of the Pre Rup type which was also characteristic of contemporary Angkor, along with the less supple arrangement of the swag to either side of an icon in an aureole, after the style of Bauphon.

1.186e

1.186d

377

1.186f

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.187b

1.187a

As befits a classic age, strict rectilinear geometry now governs all parts of the plan: symmetry is ubiquitous, even in the arrangement of mouldings about a central torus in the socle upon which the platforms rest. Cruciform gopuram are the norm on each axis, varied in size according to the orientation of the temple. Normally from the east, the main approach is invariably along the type of paved causeways introduced in the previous century and naga balustrades are the norm. Laterite was generally used for substructure throughout, sandstone for superstructure: brick is rare – except for the occasional gopura. Hardwood rafters supported ceilings below corbel vaults which, in consequence, were rarely finely dressed. Bases are now stellate and the vigorous indentation continues to the summit. As at Phimai – if not first in the exquisite Thommon at Angkor itself, which 378

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

may also have introduced the entrance hall – the stepped superstructure tends to be eclipsed by the elegant curve of the foliate aureole which develops the form of the gavaksha in three dimensions. The quality of the reliefs in lintels and frieze panels is unsurpassed.1.187 Apogee at Angkor The outermost enclosure of Suryavarman’s seat has largely been erased: it was the square of 1.5 kilometres. In the centre was the state temple known as Angkor Wat. To the east, at Banteay Samre beside the eastern shore of the Eastern Baray, and much further off to the north-east, at Beng Mealea under Kulen, are the reign’s supreme statements of the planar ideal. The latter has fared badly but its jumbled ruins suggest comparable quality, superficial area and quadrilaterally devolved plan to Angkor Wat. Banteay Samre, on the other hand, is well preserved: much smaller than Beng Mealea, it too is comparable in quality and form to Angkor Wat but has more affinity in its linear plan and scale to Prasat Phimai. Together these three works represent the major strands of Khmer temple architecture at the apogee but the towering masterpiece of Angkor Wat reigns S U R YA V A R M A N I I AT A N G K O R , first half quite supreme: never have colossal scale and intimacy of detail been so of the 12th century: (a, b) Thommon, general view of convincingly combined than in this stupendous sandstone complex. compound from south-east and detail of vimana; (c–p) The outer prakara of the temple compound (c. 1100 by 900 metres), is Angkor Wat, model, view of entrance range from west reached by a causeway over the moat (200 metres wide) from the west, over moat, Vishnu within central pavilion, plan, aerial view, (pages 382–383) view of main complex from south-west, interior of gallery and details of friezes, corridor and stairs to central terraces, top terrace gallery frontispiece, central vimana and details of embellishment; (q–s) Banteay Samre, detail of tympana, compound exterior, main shrine.

›1.187

1.187c

379

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.187d

1.187e

380

1.187f @ 1:1500

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.187g

381

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.187i

with its balustrade of demons holding extended nagas: the tripartite western gopura, with double gavakshas and towers over each opening, is incorporated in a gallery (230 metres long). Beyond this another causeway (350 metres long and 1.5 metres above ground likely to flood in the wet season) leads to a great cruciform biplanar platform before the slightly higher platform on which the three ascending precincts of the main complex are based. To all four sides, the base platform has cruciform porticoes in colonnaded galleries of the kind first encountered at the Ta Keo but facing outwards. Some 800 metres in extent, these shelter an astonishing set of friezes of Vaishnavite mythology and dynastic nar1.187j

rative mainly related in terms of the Ramayana and Mahabharata epics: the north-east ranges were not executed until the 16th century but the best of those carved in the original campaign must be ranked among the supreme masterpieces of world sculpture. Within the cruciform tripartite gate in the centre of the cloister’s west range, at a higher level, are a pair of ‘libraries’ and a square court divided by galleries. Issuing in three stairways (uniquely vaulted in tiered horizontal sections), this is the prelude to the median precinct, defined by a cloistered gallery fenestrated to the inside, with vimanas at the corners. East of the precinct’s centre, beyond a pair of ‘libraries’, the last two precipitous tiers of the mountain temple are crowned by five nine-tiered towers united by another, grander grid of cloisters lit from the outside by balustered widows. A veritable gallery of superb iconic sculpture in itself, the central peak soars through five stages to 65 metres at the culmination 1.187k

384

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.187l

of a progression of vimanas, similar in stellate plan and parabolic profile but graded in scale to enhance the impact of the central one: the aureole of antefixes – the most obvious distinguishing characteristic of the style of Suryavarman

II

– obviate the striation of the typical earlier Khmer

tiered tower to effect a vital concourse between horizontal and vertical. Originally open to all four sides from stepped portico and antechamber, ringed with columns above the stellate base, the garbha-griha enshrined the Devaraja as Vishnu below and above an extended shaft representing the axis of the world. The main spaces of this stupendous structure are external – courts and cloistered precincts. The internal spaces – the garbha-grihas and galleries – are restricted by the degree they can be corbelled in sandstone, and by a supreme exclusiveness. Columns are simple square posts carrying a corbel bracket to spread the load, but windows are screened by 1.187m

385

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.187o

1.187n

386

1.187p

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.187q

1.187r

elegantly turned slats. Gabled roofs, usually with a makara profile, are telescoped at the transition from one plane to another – indeed, the superimposition of multiple gables at a reduced scale was a major motif. Internal walls are plain, external surfaces are chiselled with exceptionally fine reliefs – including about two thousand apsaras of celebrated refinement. Colonnettes – some with as many as sixteen sides – are the most profusely decorated with intricate floral motifs of any at Angkor. The tympana reliefs may be unified or divided into registers within the trilobe arch framed with nagas issuing from makaras and resting on an embellished architrave: scenes from the great Indian epics dominate. The walls are incised with shallow relief like embroidery: apart from myriad deities in niches, apsaras and lotus foliage dance and ramp to unconstrained dominance in a repertory of motifs clearly related to the Indian Water Cosmology and, hence, readily recalling native animism.

1.187s

387

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

›1.188

T H E C H A M S A N D T H E B AT T L E F O R

A N G K O R : relief from the Bayon, early 13th century.

14 the cham and the late ascent of the mahayana at angkor The cost of Suryavarman’s wars, and his buildings, was enormous, and his era ended in disaster. The reign of the usurper Tribhuvanadityavarman (1165–77) was terminated by a Cham invasion force led by their king, Jaya-Indravarman iv: some divisions came by land, others by river to the Tonle Sap. Angkor was sacked.1.188

THE CHAMS Centred on the hinterland around modern Danang, ancient Vijaya, the kingdoms of the Chams extended at their fullest over most of modern Vietnam, a fertile but narrow coastal plain bounded by the forbidding Annamite mountain chain, prey in the north to the Annamite Viets and in the south to the Khmers. Unless weakness of the latter encouraged adventure up the Mekong, the only opportunity for non-agricultural enrichment was offered by the sea. Beyond agriculture and fishing, then, the Chams were sailors and their ports were entrepots of trade between China and Palambang and, ultimately, 388

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

India. With trade, of course, came ideas: with the stuff of commerce, India sent missionaries and the art to serve their faiths. For much of the 1st millennium ce there were several states to the south of the Viet domain – claimed by the Chinese emperor as his southernmost province – and north-east of Funan. First noted by Chinese chroniclers towards the end of the Han era (c. 200 ce) as Lin Yi, little even of the religion is known about this domain but it seems to have been the nucleus of a Cham state. Before the middle of the millennium it was denying imperial suzerainty. The emergence of a kingdom named Amaravati reveals the Indian identity which the nascent Chams opposed to the declining Chinese and that the Satavahanas were its primary exporters. However, as Buddhism had ceded dominance to Brahmanism under the successors of the Satavahanas, Shaivism was the state religion of central Champa by c. 400: in that year the ruler of Amaravati, Bhadravarman, dedicated a temple to his patron, Shiva Bhadreshvara (the Auspicious Lord), in My Son. That dynastic sanctuary never lost its prestige.1.189 With the ascendancy of Hindu Java coinciding with internecine strife in China before the advent of the Tang in the 7th century and the reassertion of effective Chinese suzerainty, trade had led the Chams to expand southward: Champa, embracing Lin Yi, is first mentioned in the reports of a Chinese force sent to reassert suzerainty in 605. Thereafter the kingdom seems to have been a confederation of principalities – Panduranga and Kauthara in the south, Amaravati in the centre and the northern domain which was to be known as Indrapura. Another dynastic sanctuary was founded at Po Nagar, in Kauthara on the central south coast. Buddhism staged a spectacular revival in 9th-century Amaravati under Indravarman ii and his new dynasty: 389

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

Dong Duong, south of My Son, was established as its centre but Indrapura, in the north, was founded as the political capital c. 875. The Khmer did not view these developments with equanimity but relations with Java – strained in the 8th century when the Chams pushed south into the vicinity of major staging posts on the Sino-Indonesian trade route – were consolidated on a friendly basis between prosperous maritime powers who shared Buddhism in the face of Shaivite neighbours. A Cham prince visited Sanjaya central Java early in the 10th century and marriage alliances were forged. Unrivalled as yet in the region, Javanese achievement naturally set the standard for emulation at the court of Indravarman – not least in architecture. Indravarman’s followers had reverted to Shaivism within a century and the last of them was killed in the sack of Indrapura by the Viets in 982. A new dynasty moved south and, claiming victory over central Champa in 1000, its king assumed the style ‘Vijaya’ and founded his ‘City of Victory’. Suryavarman ii’s disastrous attempt to smash the Chams had issued in a new dynasty and the resurgence of My Son and Po Nagar but Vijaya remained the political centre of Champa – despite further serious reverse at the hands of the Khmer – until it was destroyed by the Viets in 1471. Its site – south-central, in the vicinity of modern Binh Dinh – has yet to be precisely located. Indeed, none of the sites of the Cham capitals has been certainly located but a number of defensive enclosures, called citadels but large enough for towns, have been discovered about a day’s march inland from the coast in the central plain. The Chams drew direct inspiration – and textual authority – from India. They accepted the intermediacy of the Javanese but resisted the influence of China in their protracted struggle with the Viets and staunchly avoided the 390

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

example of the Khmers. Thus, though Shaivism was the mainstay of most Cham dynasties and the king was often identified with Bhadreshvara of My Son,they did not build temple mountains like the rulers of Angkor but did apply Indian theory with some knowledge of Javanese practice. The typical Cham shrine is a square vimana (kalan) with tiered superstructure usually incorporating miniature shrine forms with increasing abstraction as the tradition matured: an open door, sometimes preceded by a vestibule and porch, usually faces east and, as in the Javanese and Funanese type – sustained throughout the history of Angkor – the other sides are relieved with blind replicas framing devotional icons between paired pilasters. The rectangular compound is entered through a gopura and often contains at least one rectangular building of the type called ‘library’ in Angkor and several subsidiary kalans – indeed,a triad of similar shrines is not unusual.The invariable materials are brick for the sober mass and stone for the doorframes and pediment reliefs. Of the surviving monuments the kalans of Groups e and f at My Son are among the oldest: e1, inscribed for the then king at a date corresponding to 657, was a simple square cella with an atypical western porch and no blind doors on a socle decorated with truncated pilasters. As

1.189a

391

1.189b

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

Group F

1.189d

Group E

Group G Group C

Group B

Group A

1.189c @ 1:3000

392

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

›1.189

M Y S O N A N D I T S E A R LY R E M A I N S : (a)

Shiva; (b) pediment with Vishnu Narayana; (c) site plan; (d) pedestal of the central linga (from E1, late-7th century). There was nothing left above the shrine chamber of E1 at My Son when the building was first surveyed in the early 20th century but a related building in the later Group F retained several much-eroded tiers of a superstructure. Dynastic alliance during the reigns of the Cham king Vikrantavarman (c. 653–85) – whose inscriptions have been recovered from Group E – and the heirs of Funanese Ishanavarman I (616–35) explain the affiliation of these works with their pre-Angkorian contemporaries and, as there, the influence of Sri Vijaya is apparent. Lacking the full measure of Funanese finesse, the lintel with its flattened arcuate band is genetically related to contemporary pre-Angkorian work at sites like Vat Eng Khna.1.174a The linga pedestal, with its niches representing ascetics in their caves, stands for Mount Kailasa: superbly realized dancers assist ascent up the preliminary steps. Florid detail is already lavished not only on borders but on the architectural elements of the aedicules.

elsewhere throughout former Cham territory, the remains are limited by the nature of the predominant material and tragically depleted by Vietnam’s 20th-century traumas: often, however, stone decorative elements – the pedestals which once supported the major icons, lintels and tympana – survive as invaluable markers of stylistic development because they were removed to museums by the excavators.1.189a, b, d By the following century, at Hoa Lai in the south, the kalan had acquired the typical Javanese pilasters, assertive cornice mirroring the base, and projecting porches with superimposed gavakshas penetrating up into the lowest tier of a three- or four-storey shikhara.1.190 The process was furthered on a grand scale at the Buddhist site of Dong Duong where the great sanctuary is atypical of Champa

› 1 . 1 9 0 H O A L A I , N O R T H S H R I N E , 8th century: northern kalan. Given the accidents of survival – which includes little from the earlier periods of Cham culture – the triad of shrines including this work is taken as marking the emergence of the Cham kalan type under the influence of its essentially architectonic Javanese near-contemporaries. Several of the kalans at My Son were built after the completion of Complex E – square F1 and elongated C7, for example. 393

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.191a @ 1:1500

1.191d

›1.191

1.191b

not only in its Buddhist dedication, but in the scale of its formal plan. On a strictly sustained east–west axis, three enclosures were linked by a grand causeway (760 metres long) to a huge rectangular tank: within the eastern enclosure are the ruins of a long building on piles – derived from the riverine vernacular – which has been identified as a vihara; in the western enclosure, the most substantial remaining kalan conforms to the Hoa Lai type and is dated to 875. With the Khmers far from matching Sanjaya or Shailendra achievement as yet, the dominant influence is clearly Javanese but India is also distantly recalled.1.191 The Dong Duong site does not appear to have been active for long after 900 but the general form and decorative detail of the kalan were developed nearby at Kuong 1.191c

394

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

DONG

DUONG,

LAKSHMINDRA

L O K E S H V A R A (c. 875): (a) plan; (b) pedestal from main shrine (Danang Museum); (c) Buddha in the Amaravati style; (d) Dvarapala from the south gopura of enclosure 2; (e) detail of affiliated decoration (early 10th century, Khuong My); (f ) lintel with Dancing Shiva. The Dong Duong complex was virtually obliterated in the Vietnam War. Beyond its enormous gopura, the outermost enclosure was almost entirely filled by the vihara: as in Mahayana India, this was a subsidiary sanctuary rather than an exclusively residential building. Beyond this a smaller gopura – accompanied by boundary chaityas in the form of grouped columns (stambhas) as in the other enclosures – led to the intermediate zone with its library-like hall. Within the inner rectangular prakara, with shrines marking each corner and the centre of each side, a freestanding ante-shrine and the main kalan with its porch projecting to the east were aligned on axis with the magnificent gopura but flanked informally by eight structures of varied form. The most substantial remains are the pedestals from the vihara and the principal shrine. The latter, of two tiers surmounted by a majestic figure of the seated

Mai and then at My Son where the axial alignment of long hall, ante-shrine and kalan was sustained in the two principal complexes south-west of the river. The style of the latter, more profusely embellished than the earliest surviving structures at Hoa Lai, was to be dominant in the 10th century. It is distinguished by paired pilasters, incised with padmas of a Javanese strain supporting tiered cornices and framing devatas under filigree gavakshas or windows with balusters. The style is defined by the most spectacular work at the site, the great kalan a1, but spread to b, c and d. The dedications are again predominantly Shaivite but syncretic tendencies are apparent, especially at the related site of Tra Kieu.1.192, 1.193

1.191e

Buddha, has three steep stairways with figural balustrades flanked by relief panels depicting the life of the Buddha which occasionally relate to the corresponding scenes at Borobodur. In general the context is of dense floridity, often applied in the manner specifically associated with this site and identified as vermiculated. Between stairs with dvarapalas and devas, the vihara pedestal is embellished with jatakas in florid frames, interspersed with rampant lions not unrelated to those of Mahaballipuram. The incised vine motif in the pilasters at Khuong My is perhaps more refined than the Dong Duong equivalent but its Javanese origin 1.192b remains clear. Cham apogee

Dating at least from the 7th century, the pair of sanctuaries E, F, to the north of the site at My Son, appear to have been among the earliest. A and C – to the south of the main stream (in its original course) which divides the

site – have yielded sculpture datable to the 8th century. The A compound lacks the formality of Dong Duong and the extant Complex C seems to have been developed under the latter’s influence with a long hall on axis with a gopura and the main shrine (though the axis is not strictly parallel to the 1.192a

1.191f

395

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.192c

1.192f

›1.192

MY SON IN THE

10TH

C E N T U R Y : (a, b)

aedicule detail and overview of temple A1 (pre-World War II photograph); (c) general view with C1 left and B5 right; (d–f ) kalan C1, library B5 and hall wall details; (g) balustrade detail with polo players (Danang Museum); (h) model.

1.192d

1.192g

1.192e

396

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

compound walls). Further, still more strictly formal, development is represented by the distribution of the elements in B which was probably initiated after Dong Duong had reached its apogee: the style of ornament on the most substantial surviving structures (C1, B3 and B5) is transitional to the full flowering of My Son – like that of Khuong My. A1,

the grandest monument at My Son (destroyed in the Vietnam War

but recorded by Parmentier and in photographs), replaced an earlier kalan probably in the long and prosperous reign of Indravarman

III

(911–58): it was distinguished not only by its size – comparable to the main shrine at Dong Duong – but also by the elegant slenderness developed for the main kalan at Khuong My from a tendency already apparent in the later phase of Dong Duong. As there, the miniature shrines at the corners and centres of the three main tiers of the superstructure were clearly delineated as reduced models of the whole: the effect recalls the Loro Jonggrang at Parambanan though there the miniature elements were stupas. To a larger scale, the whole is again echoed by the projections to all four sides of the cella (open and extended to east and west, blind to north and south): flanking them, paired pilasters, projecting to 1.192h

frame aedicules with icons, were incised with florid ornament – as at Dong Duang – and the enhancement of the verticals is not countered by stringcourses – as at Parambanan. The style also informs the articulation of the library (B5) and the long halls (D1, D2) which precede Compounds B and C – following the example of Dong Duong. At Tra Kieu all that remains of a temple, contemporary with the main works at My Son but which collapsed before it was complete, are several sculptural elements of high quality. Of these the most important is a circular linga pedestal with padma mouldings in mirror image separated by a neck ringed with a sequence of the specifically Cham ‘breast’ motif. With Parambanese lions to its corners, the square base is embellished with Krishnayana reliefs affiliated to contemporary work in Java where that theme was particularly popular. The purpose, dimensions and original location of the so-called ‘dancer’ pedestal are unknown but the applied figures, stylized but varied in expression, exceptional in the supple grace of movement caught in a moment of tribhanga equipoise, are generally considered to mark the apogee of Cham art.

397

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.193a 1.193b

Largely shorn of the enrichment in plane and ornament › 1 . 1 9 3 T R A K I E U I N T H E 1 0 T H C E N T U R Y : (a) which characterized the style of Dong Duong and its linga pedestal, (b) Vishnu on Ananta, (c, d) apsara pedestal and detail. refinement at My Son, the traditional square-planned kalan subsisted in modified, stereotypical form in the era of Vijaya. The Binh Lam kalan and the principal kalan in the venerable complex at Po Nagar mark a transitional phase, largely 11th century. The Po Nagar structure retains more detail than is sadly usual in the remains of Champa’s brick buildings but the style is best identified with stone elements recovered from the transitory site of Thap Mam in lieu of the vanished capital itself: sculptural detail is more highly stylized, less anatomically plausible than heretofore but attention to detail in applied ornament is meticulous. The most substantial single architectural element is a pedestal which retains the Tra Kieu ‘breast’ moulding between rows of the specifically Thap Mam spiral leaf moulding.1.194 Before the end of the 11th century, the tentative infiltration of Khmer elements is apparent throughout the south: the garudas on the corners of the Thap Mam pedestal are 1.193c and d already Khmer in dress, at least. After 1190, of course, it is tentative no longer in the new age of subjection. Among › 1 . 1 9 4 T R A N S I T I O N T O V I J A YA ( B I N H D I N H ) : (a, b) Thap Mam, pedestal (c. 1100), Garuda and lion the most significant remains, the three survivors of a group telemons (12th century, flanking earlier Garuda tympaof five kalans at Quy Nhnon, on the coast to the south-east num from Tra Kieu); (c) Po Nagar (Nha Trang), northern 398

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

and central kalans (late-11th century); (d) Binh Lam (early 11th century). From the 3rd century CE Po Nagar was the centre of the southern Indianized region, later known as Kuthara, and of the Vaishnavite cult of Bhagavati. Rich in shrines rebuilt over a millennium and a half (at least) the site is exceptionally rich in stelae: the oldest (mid7th century) bears the earliest Sanskrit inscription sofar discovered in Vietnam. Style and inscriptions date several dilapidated remains to the end of the era of My Son A1. The most substantial relic, the principal kalan, is dated to c. 1100 on stylistic grounds. An inscription on the southern entrance to the compound records royal homage to Bhagavati c. 1183, and another on the northern entrance, c. 1250, records building – or perhaps rebuilding – work on a shrine identified as the Bhagavati Matrilingeshvar.

1.194c

1.194d

399

1.194a

of the dynastic seat, reveal the beginnings of Khmer influence in the tiered platform dressed from the hill on which it is sited but not in significant modification to the traditional Cham formula.These are the so-called Silver Towers. Nearby another three kalans, the so-called Ivory Towers, acknowledge the Angkor Wat style particularly in the faceted plan and the foliate form of the shikhara. The curved profile and antefixes of the kalan superstructures at Hung Thanh, to the near south of Vijaya, distantly reflect the same source. However, the square block lacks the incident which generates vitality in the superstructure where the tiers remain striated in the early Indian Negara manner. Moreover, the gavaksha motifs which project from all sides of the cella walls below are quite distinct from the mature Angkorean variety in their spearhead profile and triplication – as at Po Nagar. The prasada motif of the superstructure is at its most complex in the best-preserved

1.194b

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

kalan at the latter site with its echoes of My Son, but sim- › 1 . 1 9 5 L AT E - V I J A YA ( B I N H D I N H ) , K H M E R I N V A S I O N A N D D E C L I N E : (a, b) Po Kluang Garai plification of form in whole and part was to characterize (inscribed for Jaya Simhavarma II, c. 1287–1307, under what remained of the Cham future after the century of whom the Chams staged a brief resurgence), view and stagnation which followed the fall of Vijaya in 1190: the entrance front of main kalan with reused mid-12th century tympanum; (c) Shaivite aedicular figure (late-11th trend is represented by the late-13th century complex of Po century). Kluang Garai.1.195

1.195a

1.195c

1.195b

400

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.196b

1.196a

1.196 OF

J A YA V A R M A N V I I A N D T H E O U T P O S T S

E M P I R E : (a, b) sandstone portrait (c. 1200;

Bangkok, National Museum) and the imperial face of all quarters (Bayon, 13th century); (c) Lop Buri, Phra Prang Sam Yot, south-western view; (d) Sukhothai, Wat Phra Phai Luang. The compassionate ideal at the heart of Buddhism goes far in explaining the humanity and meditative humility which mark the portraits of this supremely powerful ruler: it is hard to parallel in royal portraiture – at least since 12th Dynasty Egypt or the touchingly realistic familial style of Akhenaton. Though joined by vestibules, the triad of shrines at Lop Buri represents a type that was widespread in Khmer-occupied areas of Thailand, sometimes varied

401

C H A M R E V E R S A L AT A N G KO R The Cham invaders of the mid-1170s were assisted by local rulers eager to throw off the imperial yoke.Among the dissidents was a Khmer prince of the legitimate line who had sought refuge from the usurper at the Cham court and doubtless helped instigate the invasion. After Tribhuvanadityavarman’s elimination, he seized the initiative, placed himself at the head of a Khmer force and turned on the invader: Jaya-Indravarman was killed in the occupied palace at Angkor and the victor took the throne as Jayavarman vii. It took him four years to reassert his authority but his consecration in 1181 initiated a glorious reign of more

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.196c

than half a century. It began with the crushing of the Chams: Vijaya was captured in 1190, the kingdom divided and reduced to a century of depredation in which the Khmers were followed by the Viets. Jayavarman vii’s power ultimately surpassed even that of Suryavarman ii and his building campaigns were hardly inferior in extent: astonishingly, however, he rejected the Brahmanical tradition of all his greatest predecessors and embraced the Mahayana as the incarnation of the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara (Lokeshvara). The main theme of the reign’s imagery is the conjunction of wisdom and 402

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

with a parallel row of two subsidiary shrines on the same platform (11th century examples are, respectively, Prasat Sra Kamphaeng Yai in Saket Province and Prasat Muang Tam in Burinam). Originally devised for the Brahmanical triad, the form accommodated the Buddha flanked by Lokeshvara and his shakti Prajnaparamita Jayavarman’s Buddhist foundations: the superstructures acknowledge the example of Angkor Wat rather than the anthropomorphism of Angkor Thom. That motif distinguishes the gopura at Chalieng which leads to a 15th-century temple built over Khmer remains.

1.196d

403

compassion, the preserves of that great bodhisattva and Prajnaparamita, as the essential precondition to the achievement of enlightenment – Buddahood.1.196 Jayavarman initiated his Buddhist building campaign with a monastery dedicated to Prajnaparamita: the Rajavihara, known as Ta Prohm, in the centre of a large square lay residential compound to the south-west of the Eastern Baray. The monks of Ta Prohm controlled the distribution of supplies to the extensive network of hospitals which the king – as the incarnation of the ‘Lord of Infinite Compassion’ – ordained throughout the empire. An equally extensive network of road and bridge building was crucial in maintaining them – and sustaining imperial power. So too were the interminable programmes of water contol. At Angkor the Eastern Baray must still have been able to serve the many inhabitants of Ta Prohm but it was not sufficient for the reign’s other capital works. The palace in which the usurper died was rebuilt as a monastic university, again in the centre of a lay compound: known as Preah Khan, its central shrine was Buddhist but the pantheism of the age demanded shrines for the major Hindu manifestations of deity as well. The many inhabitants of the complex were given a new baray, the Jayatataka, parallel to the old eastern one but less than half its length: its centre was distinguished by a pantheistic complex of shrines and tanks, prolix in its regular geometry, known as the Neak Pean. Its sanctity was asserted by the small Ta Som temple at its eastern end. Jayavarman vii installed himself in the palace of Suryavarman i, renovating it after its desecration by the Cham: little survives beyond the eastern terrace, remodelled as a court of appearances raised over a splendid frieze of elephants, except a platform to the north – presided over by Yama, the god of death, mistakenly identified as the ‘Leper King’ – which was the place of royal cremation. ›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

To protect his seat and the army of its servants, he forti- › 1 . 1 9 7 J A YA V A R M A N V I I AT A N G K O R , c. 1200: (a–d) Ta Prohm (dedicated 1186), inner court detail, fied Angkor Thom on the reduc ed square of 3 kilometres. general view from south, relief detail from east front, Addressing all four cardinal directions of space as the plan; (e–m) Preah Khan (consecrated 1191), plan, eastsuperstructure of the portals in the defence wall, colossal ern entrance, Shiva temple, main axis and detail, columned pavilion (possibly for the sacred sword, palheads of Lokeshvara proclaim the omniscience of the ladium of the monarchy), naga balustrade details; (n, Lord of Infinite Compassion. Archetypical of the era, the o) Neak Pean (consecrated 1191), central shrine and form first appeared in the gopura of Ta Som. It is reiter- plan of complex; (p) Angkor Thom, gate; (q–z) Bayon, (pages 410–411) general view from the south-west, ated in structures asserting the king’s imperium throughplan, outer gallery, central tower, subsidiary shrine out his empire, such as at Chialing from which the towers, reliefs, and elephant terrace of the Royal north-central Chao Phraya plain was administered, and Palace. in the vast remote northern Cambodian outpost of Banteay Chmar. Its apotheosis, representing the apotheosis of the king as the Devaraja Lokeshvara, was achieved at the central crossing of the axial arteries in the extraordinary anthropomorphic temple mountain known as the Bayon.1.197 J a y a va r m a n

V I I ’s

a c h i e ve m e n t : t h e l a s t o f p l a n e a n d

mountain Angkor’s last great builder’s initial exercise of the planar or platform type of temple complex was the Banteay Kidei built for the royal guru: emulating Angkor Wat in extent and complexity but not in elevation through ascending stepped terraces, it acquired its outer enclosure in 1191 and additional chapels linked by galleries c. 1220. The Ta Prohm, built in honour of the Queen Mother, followed a similar, if less protracted, course of development: relatively small (250 by 220 metres in superficial area), its plan incorporating lateral familial shrines is a highly complex variation of the biaxial planar theme developed at Beng Mealea. The Preah Khan, built in honour of the patron’s father – and possibly the royal residence while Angkor Thom was being rebuilt – was a more expansive, more complex variation of the Beng Mealea type but was built in one campaign. It was dedicated primarily to the paternal Devaraja Lokeshvara but there were many subsidiary bodhisattva shrines and also within the prakara there was a temple to Vishnu to the west of the central Buddhist group, another to Shiva to the north and, to the south, a complex dedicated to the 1.197a

404

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.197b

1.197c

405

1.197d @ 1:2000

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.197e @ 1:2000

Devaraja incarnate as the late legitimate king Yashovarman II. A peculiarity is the unidentified two-storeyed mandapa to the right of the northern portal of the triple eastern gopura. The motif of the triple gate first appears here at the head of the earliest-known naga balustrade supported by dvarapalas. Conceived in the last decade of the 12th century, the Neak Pean (‘Coiled Serpent’) temple rises like a lotus bud from a circular platform in the centre of a square pool from which four rectangular pools project on the cardinal axes: not without dispute, the scheme is seen as symbolizing 1.197f

406

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.197h

the cosmic lake Anavatapta from which the four rivers of the world flow and an inscription likening it to the ‘emergent lotus of the supreme god’ suggests the Vaishnavite interpretation of Varunya’s ‘Water Cosmology’ as Brahma rising from the navel of Narayana. The central shrine, around which the nagas are coiled like rope around the cosmic pestle, is 1.197g

1.197i

1.197j

407

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.197k

1.197l

embellished with figures of Avalokiteshvara. Shiva presides over the north arm (in the form of the linga), Vishnu over the west, the horse Balala stands instead of Brahma in the east and the south may have been devoted to previous incarnations of the Devaraja but the icon is indecipherable. The reconstruction of Angkor Thom, centred on the Bayon, expressed the moated citadel walls as the precinct of sanctuary in impressing the face of divine rule on the gates which open the main axes at the cardinal

1.197m

1.197n

408

1.197o @ 1:2000

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.197p

409

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.197r @ 1:1500

1.197s

1.197t

412

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.197u

points in its 3-kilometre-square perimeter. A fifth gate, in the east range, opened the route to the Phimeanakas. The peaked gates have been interpreted as representing the subsidiary range surrounding Meru, the axis mundi itself represented by the Bayon, and the moat as the primordial ocean – the Sea of Milk whose churning by the axial pestle, generating life, may be seen as re-enacted by the 108 dvarapalas hauling on the rope-like nagas along the causeways. There are temples to Lokeshvara at regular intervals within the walls. The final statement of the Khmer sepulchral mountain temple, the Bayon was dedicated primarily to Lokeshvara, like the Preah Khan complex which anticipates the plan at a reduced scale, but like the Preah Khan, too, it is a pantheon honouring the great Hindu trinity, past kings and all the empire’s other deities: the Lord of Infinite Compassion was also supreme in tolerance and his state temple was conceived to assert an ethos worthy of Ashoka. Sadly a later, inferior, age renounced the

413

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.197v

1.197w

ideal: the dedication of the temple was changed and the central icon of the Buddha as chakravartin was destroyed and thrown down the shaft of terrestrial axiality which linked the king’s subterranean sepulchre to the summit shrine of his alter-ego. The temple was built hurriedly, not well and with confusing later alterations, in three stages: first the outer prakara (160 by 140 metres and raised 1.5 metres above the ground), punctuated with its cruciform portals and cloistered to protect reliefs representing the triumph of the king over the usurper, the Chams and his other enemies as well as the benefits brought by his peace to the daily life of his people; then the inner cloistered prakara (3 metres above the first level) framing a cruciform platform (4.5 metres higher still) on which the richly diversified complex of structures includes the extended eastern vestibule flanked by twin libraries, perimeter galleries linking cruciform shrines in the corners and in triads on the axes, and the three freestanding axial sanctuaries to the gods of the Hindu trinity; finally the circular central stupa-like mass with its pradakshina-patha, eight radiating chapels dedicated to the gods of the imperial provinces and the vertical axis from the sepulchre to the elevated Lokeshvara shrine. To mark the triumph of Buddhism and the restoration of Angkor, the towers of the multiple subsidiary shrines were all crowned in the four-faced image of omnipotence like the central tower: the radiation of the Lokeshvara Dharmaraja’s ethos to all points of the compass is inescapable. 1.197z

414

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.197y

1.197x

After Jayavarman vii his exhausted realm lacked another effectively affluent ruler: his son Indravarman ii (1218–43) sustained Buddhism, despite his Brahmanical style, and the long reign of his successor Jayavarman viii (1243–95), who restored the supremacy of Shiva, saw the erosion of Khmer power beyond the frontiers of modern Cambodia. That king acknowledged the supremacy of the Great Khan in 1285 and a Chinese emissary to his successor describes considerable sustained magnificence at the Angkor court. The king may have turned back to Shiva but many of his subjects did not: Buddhism subsisted and disfiguring of Buddhist monuments suggests destabilizing dissension, instead of the traditional tolerance, as faith in the god-king and his elaborate Devaraja cult was lost to a primitive simplicity, essentially anti-monumental and Theravadin – or even animist.

415

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.200a

416

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.198a

15 mons and myenmar There is little information on the decline of Angkor from its Mahayana apogee in the early 13th century to its nadir c. 1431 when it was overawed by the Thais whose fortunes had waxed while those of their former overlords waned. That the Thai kings took some two centuries to turn their attention to the rump of the Khmer empire is due primarily to their preoccupation with a more pressing adversary further west, the Burmans.

T H E L A N D O F T H E I R R A WA D D I A N D T H E C H AO P H R AYA The first signs of civilization in the lands which now constitute Thailand date from the Bronze Age, c. 2000 bce. Agriculturalist and animist, the inhabitants of the Chao Phrya valley in that period have been related to the contemporary Indonesians, not without controversy as knowledge of them is elusive. How and when they were first invaded by foreigners is also unclear but sea-borne 417

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

Indian merchants were in the van: Indian influence – of fundamental importance in the development of Thai art and architecture as it was elsewhere in south-east Asia – is traceable to the middle of the 1st millennium bce. Two centuries later, Ashoka is credited with dispatching Buddhist missionaries to the area. Before the end of the last millennium bce other invaders of obscure origin, known as Mons, were infiltrating the central Chao Phraya valley. Of obscure origin, 1.198b they were probably from the east where the Funanese taste › 1 . 1 9 8 E A R LY B U D D H I S T R E L I C S : (a) Mahamuni developed. With Funan under pressure from the Chams, Buddha (date unknown); (b, c) stucco and stone Budthe first state in the Chao Phrya area appears in early 6th dha heads (7th–8th century; Bangkok, Suan Pakkad century Chinese records. Not entirely free of Funanese Palace Museum); (d) Lamphun, Wat Kukut, Mahapol influence, that was the Mon realm of Dvaravati which Chedi (Mon reliquary shrine traditionally dated to 755, restored in 1218). seems to have extended over much of the river plain from The great gilded bronze, the most venerable in Lop Buri to U Thong and the southern outpost of Burma, was reputedly modelled from life in popular Nakhon Pathom. Towards the end of the 7th century a belief but is somewhat less implausibly dated to the mid-2nd century CE – specifically to the reign of King Dvaravati ruler is reputed to have sent his daughter to rule Chandra Suriya who first fostered Buddhism in the land another Mon state in the northern district of La Na, to the south-east of Bengal. It was looted from Arakan – the province which had once been the rump of Chandra known as Haripunjaya. Suriya’s kingdom – by King Bodawpaya of Amarapura Haripunjaya prospered but before the 8th century was and installed in the temple built for it in 1784: after fire well advanced, southern Dvaravati was subjected to Sriv- destroyed that temple in 1884 it was moved to its preijayan hegemony. The sparse remains of their buildings in sent shrine in Mandalay. the Malay peninsula reveal influence from trading partners as far afield as north-east India, central Java and Champa. Under pressure then from the Cholas, Srivijaya lost what grip it had on the mainland and the forces of Angkor went some way to filling the void. While the native animism was never to be forgotten in the lands of the Mons, and Hindu traders by land had made their mark in the north, Dvaravati was officially Buddhist. The Theravada Buddhist tradition of Ashoka’s age had long been eclipsed by the Mahayana in India and the Mahayana was fostered by the Srivijayans. However, the Theravadins maintained a stronghold in Sri Lanka. 1.198c

418

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

Dvaravati kept close relations with that island of orthodoxy and it was with the aid of the Singalese that Mon craftsmen launched their tradition of Buddhist art – especially in architecture. The era has left few monuments other than the traces of simple arca-grihas, apparently Brahmanical, and several refurbished Buddhist chedis (stupas). In the Dvaravati heartland these are hemispherical, like the stupas of Anuradhapura but on a square base. In Lanna the most celebrated examples from the era, in Wat Chamatewi (Kukut) in Lamphun,are steeply stepped pyramids of the Polannaruva Satmahal type.1.198 Meanwhile, the Mons had moved west into the great river valley of the Irrawaddi, with its rich alluvial fields fringing a dry plain hemmed in by mountains. Beyond the sphere of the Funanese, they founded a kingdom east of the delta, at the head of the Andaman Sea, which probably predates Dvaravati. To the north, peoples of Tibetan origin had overcome the native Burmese and formed several states. Led by a tribe known as Pyu, they went on to establish a kingdom – rather a confederation of principalities – centred on Sriksetra near Prome (Pyay in the south of the central reach of the great river). Controlling the Irrawaddi, the northern invaders held the key to rice production and the trade route which linked China to India through northern Burma. Indian ideas came that way or by sea and through the ports of the great river. The natives found that the way of the Buddha, originally traced with the guidance of nature spirits native to the Ganges basin, could readily accommodate their own animism. The conquerors conformed and they accepted the Indian model for kingship. By the middle of the 1st millennium ce the essentially tribal Pyus had extended their confederation to the Mons but before the end of the 6th century the silting of the delta and its principal port, Thaton, led to rivalry for the island 1.198d

419

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

of Pegu which had emerged at the new mouth of the river. More solidly monarchical, the Mons won and went on to dominate the whole of southern Burma from Pegu. The Pyu retreated northwards and reconsolidated their position at Sriksetra.

P Y U LE G AC Y Little survives from the age of the Pyu: there are traces of the perimeter walls at Thaton and Pegu in the south and at the early Pyu capital, Beikthano, in the centre: the last is sufficient to demonstrate that Kautiliya was its founder’s guide to planning but elsewhere the remains record the empiricism admitted by the Maurya’s great chancellor. There is foundation evidence of stupas and columned halls but no clues to their elevations. The earliest remains of substance descend from Sriksetra. Apart from traces of a roughly oval perimeter, there are several well-preserved stupas: some are hemispherical, but the most prominent are the roughly parabolic Paya-gyi and Paya-ma with their circular platforms, and the partially void cylindrical Bawbaw-gyi with its five low circular terraces.1.199 In addition, several arca-grihas of doubtful date around 700, including one known as Lei-myet-hna (‘fourfaced’), anticipate the typical Baganese temple.1.181

› 1 . 1 9 9 S R I K S E T R A , 7/8th century: (a) Sri Lankan stupa type (terracotta panel, Pyu period); (b) Bawbawgyi Pay; (c) Bebegi . 1.199a

420

1.199b

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.199c

421

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.200b

F RO M S R I K S E T R A TO B A G A N Sriksetra had succumbed to invaders from southern China by 832.The vacancy left by the Pyu was filled in part by the leader of a related tribe who established his base at Bagan in 849 and accepted the help – or at least followed the example – of dispossessed Sriksetrans in its initial building campaign. From that strategic but inhospitable base in the exceptionally dry centre of the country – Tattadessa (‘Perched Land), or Tampadipa (‘Land of Copper’) – the country now known as Myanmar was unified for the first time by the area’s first great king, Anawrahta (1044–77). Anawrahta had absorbed his ecumenical but mainly Mahayana neighbours and conquered the Theravadin Mons but was overcome by their faith: he was converted by a monk from Pegu who had trained in Sri Lanka and went on the offensive to Bagan armed with the scriptures. Yet with no sense of inconsistency, he developed his polity under the guidance of Indian brahmins to the point where 422

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

›1.200

B A G A N : (a, pages 416–417) aerial view of the Shwe-zigon reach of the Irrawaddi; (b) central plain from the north-east with Ananda Pahto and Thatbyinnu Pahtos left and right centres respectively.

his successors, presenting themselves as dharmarajas, rather than devarajas, usually achieved the apotheosis of the chakravartin as bodhisattvas. The Baganese realm was heir to a process of Indianization diverted to suit Burmese ecumenical purposes but constantly refuelled by visitors from all parts of the subcontinent subscribing to all its faiths. However, after the acquisition of the Mon outlets, it was also open to direct influence from Sri Lanka with which it shared its orthodox, but tolerant, official sect: embassies, missions, sutras and princesses were exchanged. Despite this – again with no sense of inconsistency – Mahayana and even Hindu modes and motifs were borrowed and converted to Theravadin purposes and the vernacular devotion to animistic spirits (nats), accommodated in the precincts of the greatest of Buddhist monuments was never to be dimmed.1.201a

423

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.201a

B A G A N A N D I TS M O N U M E N TS Earning merit with all who assisted him, Anawrahta initiated the astonishing career of pious building works at his seat – Animaddanapura (‘City of the Enemy Crusher’) – and throughout his empire to assert the extent of his imperium.The effort was furthered by the kings of his line for two centuries: the expense ultimately exhausted the state.1.200 The site of Bagan’s ceremonial complex is defined by a quadrant bend in the great river: the natural defences are supplemented on the landward side by a bow-shaped wall and moat. The citadel and its vanished palaces apart, within the walls – and beyond them where most of the people lived – are more than four thousand shrines: the earliest date from the 9th century. Usually associated with a monastic complex, but rarely integrated with it along axial lines, there are two basic types: stupas (zedis) and temples (pahtos) and the former might crown the latter. Brick and stucco are the normal materials with sandstone for paving, columns – though timber posts are more usual – and structural reinforcement, particularly of portals.The pahtos are spatial. The zedis are essentially solid, though some have a warren of corridors linking true or false chambers claiming to enshrine a relic of the Buddha, if not a venerable image or script. 1.201 1.201b

424

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

425

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.201c

T h e g re a t s t u p a The typical tiered pyramidal form of the Baganese stupa, with multiple shrines on the terraces, ultimately emulated the cosmic mountain as analogous to the ascent to enlightenment in the ecumenical spirit with which many south-east Asians welcomed the teaching of the Master – despite

426

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

› 1 . 2 0 1 T H E B A G A N E S E S T U PA ( Z E D I ) : (a) NgaKywe-Na-Duaung; (b, c) Shwe-zigon and Shwe-hsandaw (c. 1060); (d) Seinnyet Nyima Paya (attributed to the 11th-century Queen Seinnyet but apparently rebuilt or transformed with new embellishment in the 13th century); (e, f ) Dhamma-yazika (late-12th century), elevation and plan; (g) Mingala-zedi (1274).

the prevailing orthodoxy of the Theravadin interpretation of his prescripts for attaining that enlightenment. The model is occasionally drawn from lost subcontinental Mahayana masterpieces like those of Nagarjunakonda or Amaravati: in the embellishment of its anda the Seinnyet Nyima Paya is a prime example; in general the didactic purpose of the Jataka reliefs on the tiered terraces of the most important works, reached by axial stairways, recalls Borobodur doubtless through generic relationship with lost prototypes like the great stupa at Nalanda. More usually the influence of orthodox Sri Lanka is acknowledged in the bell-shaped, sometimes bulbous, form of anda: this may well have come with reliquary caskets but there was a steady flow of monks between Hinayana centres. The characteristically Burmese permutation, with its elegantly splayed base even more elaborately tiered than the Sinhalese norm, has a richly incised anda over multiple ring-like medhis and an extremely attenuated chattravali rising from a lotus bud. Further diminishing rings support the characteristic Burmese metal crest (hti) but these are usually late additions. Bell-shaped or hemispherical, the evolution of the form over circular, polygonal or faceted square plans may be traced in endless variants at Bagan. Many primitive examples are encased in later ones. The earliest and simplest exposed examples are usually to be found among the myriad ex-votoes. The classic standard was established in Anawrahta’s inaugural reign by the Shwe-sandaw and Shwe-zigon Payas: the former was founded outside the walls, probably in the late-1050s, to commemorate Anawrahta’s conquest of the Mon capital Thaton; the latter was conceived at much the same time as a reliquary for the collar bone and a copy of the Buddha’s tooth enshrined in Kandy (Sri Lanka) but completed well into the reign of Kyanzittha. On five and three superimposed terraces respectively, the anda’s base is embellished with Jataka episodes in glazed terracotta panels, and four bronze images of the standing Buddha (4 metres high) which face the four staircases in the cardinal directions. The bell-shaped anda recalls the contemporary Sinhalese form. The transition from rectangle to circle recalls Borobodur but there is an intermediate octagonal zone. The elaboration of the base, the four staircases at the cardinal points and the superimposition of multiple rings over the

1.201d

427

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.201e

1.201f @ 1:1000

anda, perhaps in memory of the chattravali, mark the start of the evolution of the specifically Burmese zedi. With a more broadly based anda, the Shwe-zigon Paya – the main focus of pilgrimage to Bagan not least because nat shrines were accommodated in its precinct – is weightier in its monumentality than the elegant Shwe-sandaw Paya, but the future lay with the latter. There were variations in plan and elevation – notably the pentagonal Dhamma-yazika of the late-12th century – but the main line of development was well established by the culmination of Baganese building in the Mingala-zedi.

428

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.201g

As in India, the great stupas of Bagan dominated a monastic complex which naturally incorporated the equivalents of the Indian vihara and mandapa. As in India, the former is a complex of cells about an open court with a shrine in the central cell opposite the entrance hall. The assembly building, a terraced rectangular block originally preceded by a timber portico, has a vaulted space on one or two storeys: if the latter, the main volume has an ambulatory below the terrace which fulfils the same purpose on the upper level. In addition, the most important complexes had libraries and ordination halls with roofs carried on wooden columns: they also had pahtos though, like votive stupas,these might be found anywhere throughout the city and its suburbs. Devised for retreat and meditation leading to devotional ritual, the pahto is essentially an arca-griha but the word for its primitive Pyu form,‘gu’, betrays its origin in the cave – the womb-chamber, the mystical scene of the generation of grace foreign to light. Thus the idea ultimately descends from the pre-Buddhist animistic veneration of spirits, especially those represented by the nats and nagas from the netherworld of the ancestors. Tracing development is problematical as there are few contemporary inscriptions: conservatism and deliberate archaism obscure the lines of stylistic evolution and progression from simple to elaborate may not be assumed. Improved lighting through windows, rather than stone grilles, is characteristic of the transition from the early to the middle phase.The multiplication of tiered storeys with terraces is another guide. Though Mon works of Sri Lankan derivation – like the Vat Ku Kut at Lamphun – may have provided initial inspiration, the supreme products of the middle phase most persuasively recall the Indian prasada: the recollection is typically remote – and the detail often coarse – but at the very centre of the walled 429

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.202a

city is a facsimile of the Mahabodhi prototype. The ›1 . 2 0 2 T H E B A G A N A N D T H E PA H T O I N T H E Gangetic Buddhist holy land contributed much else too, R E I G N S O F A N A W R AT H A A N D K YA N Z I T T H A , 1044–1084–1113: (a) central axis of old capital from not least the stepped terrace and cruciform plan of Gaw-daw-palin (left), Thamya Pahto-thamya, NatNalanda and Pahapur or the voussoir arch of Bodh Gaya hlaung-kyaung and That-byin-nyu (right); (b–d) Nathlaung-kyaung (traditionally dated to 931 but probably and Bhitargoan.1.202–1.204 built, or at least reworked, a century later), plan, exterior, interior (with later icon replacing the Narayana; (e–g) Nanpaya (c. 1060?, sometimes identified as the

430

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

The Baganese pahto The basic and most common type has one entrance through a vestibule or hall to a single cella in which the statue was a reliquary. The earliest ones, like the Nat-hlaung-kyaung in old Bagan and the Nanpaya at Myinkaba, follow largely lost Pyu precedents indebted to the primitive Indian arcagriha: the portal of the former, with its precocious voussoir arch, was probably preceded by a timber mandapa and, in place of the vestibule, the form was translated into a hall for the latter. The only Hindu foundation in the vicinity, the former faces west in accordance with its original dedication to Vishnu but it is surmounted by a massive stupa. On the other hand, the east-facing Nanpaya – traditionally assigned to the Buddha despite its splendid and unique Brahmanical reliefs – is crowned with a shikhara of the contemporary Indian Nagara type: if dating from Anawratha’s era, like the four square piers which define ambulatory and sanctuary below, it is the first of many at the site. Beyond amplification of the arca-griha on a single axis, Pyu precedents were found for augmentation on the cross axis. And there were two contemporary alternatives: the complex with four entrances and four cellas linked by an enclosed ambulatory path might have a solid or a void central core (lei-myet-hna). Facing the principal entrance, the latter usually has a seated image, embellished ex voto. The four-faced type with a solid core devoted to relics usually has a standing manifestation of the Buddha applied to the wall opposite each entrance: a rare five-sided variant accommodated the major bodhisattvas, including Maitreya, as well. The types may be combined by projecting the eastern porch beyond a large shrine linked by a passage to smaller shrines on the other sides of the solid core: lit through perforated panels, didactic murals line the passages. The rational plan and the possibility it admitted for gradations of first freestanding gu at the site, unique in its stone construction and rich embellishment), plan, vestibule, sanctuary defined by square piers (with modern icon); (h–j) Pahto-thamya (before 1100), section, view from east, interior (k–m) Manuha Paya (1059?, probably reworked), plan, view from the south-east and interior of central Buddha chamber; (n–p) Gubaukgyi (dated by a related inscription to the early 12th century), plan, section, exterior of grille-lit ambulatory showing well

431

light suggest to some analysts that this type, popular from the 12th century when Theravadan orthodoxy was the rule of the realm, represents the triumph of enlightenment over animistic mysticism, of national aspiration over personal devotion. The mass is invariably of plastered brick – with the notable exception of the Nanpaya. The main spaces and the corridors are usually tunnelvaulted but flat domes are not unknown. Internal relief – rarely as profuse

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.202d @ 1:1000

1.202b

1.202c

1.202e @ 1:1000

as in the Nanpaya – is of stucco and stucco is the universal medium for external articulation. A moulded base usually incorporates a padma motif and sometimes extends to a socle with geometric patterns in filigree relief. Pilasters, with elementary torus and cyma recta capitals and bases, support the moulded frieze of kirtimukhas with patralata or mukta-sara and a cornice of padmas and kala masks. The plain surfaces are relieved with niches or, rarely, windows in aedicules. Echoing the doorframe on a smaller scale, the latter sometimes reproduce a temple elevation but most typically their pilasters support flamboyantly undulating naga or

1.202f, g

makara pediments. The superstructure at first rose from a pitched roof but increasing size and complexity of plan prompted the introduction of stepped terraces as on the Thamya Pahto. Still following the Pyu formula, that work is attributed to Anawrahta’s able follower Kyanzittha (1084–1113): the square 1.202h

1.202i

432

1.202j

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.202k @ 1:1000

1.202m

1.202l

preserved stucco embellishment; (q–s) Naga-yon and Abeyadana (c. 1100), view of former from north-west, view and south elevation of latter; (t–x) Ananda Pahto (founded c. 1090), section, plan, image chamber interior, exterior over tank, aerial view (pages 436–437) .

sanctuary, lit through miniature pahtos on the intermediate terrace and

1.202n, o @ 1:1000

1.202p

433

framed by an ambulatory lit through stone grills, is preceded in the east by a rectangular vaulted hall surmounted by a small shrine. The crowning element is a campaniform stupa. Stupa and sikhara appear in tandem for

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.202q

1.202r

1.202s

the Abeyadana and Naga-yon: built on neighbouring sites in association with Kyanzittha’s palace, they too are uniaxial. At much the same time, towards the middle of the reign, the biaxial type achieved its greatest complexity in the Ananda Pahto. Its cubical

434

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.202t

1.202v

1.202u @ 1:500

mass (53 metres square) has a solid brick core, four cellas and double ambulatories with arched vaults. Four colossal standing images of the Buddha face the cardinal directions from the cellas through the porches which extend the plan into the Greek cross. The brickwork is reinforced with stone, especially for the voussoirs of the arched vaults in the porches and ambulatories: the latter are graded in height, their gently 1.202w

435

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

›1.203

T H E B A G A N E S E PA H T O I N T H E R E I G N S

A N D N A R AT H U , 1113–1169– 1174: (a–d) Thatbyinnyu, section and half-plan, ambulatory, exterior from the south; (e) Shwegugyi (dated in inscription to 1131), view from north-west; (f, g) Dhamma-yangyi (attributed to Narathu), perspective (after Colesworthy Grant), and half-plan; (h–j) pahto of the Loka-hteik-pan type (mid-12th century), section, plan and view from south-east.

OF

AL AUNGSITHU

1.203a, b @ approximately 1:1000

curved profiles stepping up to the platform over the main central block. A Latina-type shikhara, gilded in 1990 to commemorate the 900th anniversary of the temple’s foundation, rises to 51 metres over a stepped pyramidal base: the shikhara is reproduced to a smaller scale on the four corners of the upper terrace but still-smaller stupas mark the corners of the lower zones. Accretion on the horizontal axis was next to be furthered vertically with superimposed central cells and an internal or external ambulatory connected by stairs in the thickness of the mass. The process began with the addition of a shrine to the roof of a single-storey hall to the east of the shikhara, as in the Thamya-pahto, and was furthered with the integration of shrine and shikhara. That was anticipated in the Manuha Paya, reputedly built in 1059 by the Mon king captured by Anawartha: a clerestorey accommodating the head of the colossal seated Buddha of the main shrine is expressed as a second storey. The potential of the development was fully realized under Anawartha’s great-grandson, Kyanzittha’s 1.203c

438

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.203d

impressive successor Alaungsithu (1113–67), in the exceptional Thatbyinnyu Pahto: it rises to 61 metres through two main storeys, each with triple terraces, and a shikhara shrine at the summit. Prasada-like, it has four Buddha images in cellas on the two main levels, with ambulatories surmounted by galleries inside and bordered with miniature shrines on the terraces. The Greek-cross theme stated at the Ananda is varied on an enormous scale under King Narathu for the Dhamma-yangyi and much more modestly for the Seinnyet Nyima Paya at a date traditionally – but unconvincingly – set a century earlier. By the middle of the 12th century moreover, a 1.203e

439

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.203h

1.203i@ 1:500

1.203f

1.203j

1.203g @ 1:1000

standard was reached in modest works like the Loka-hteik-pan for the unidirectional pahto with vestibule, hall and cella: it resembled the basic type of shrine achieved in Nagara India half a millennium earlier. In general in the plethora of works on a modest scale, the aspiration is towards the light – as distinct from the dark and the heavy – in the enhancing of tapering verticals and the opening of larger windows. The tradition was furthered in the late period, from the accession of Narapatisithu in 1174 to the death of Narathihapati in 1287, with ever better-lit, more aspiring, pahtos of the uni- or multi-directional type but especially with variations on the theme of the multi-storey prasada at the Sulamani, Gawdawpalin and Hitlominlo – the former setting a trend with its complex aisled entrance hall, massive core and inset shrines. Indian influence, specifically the inspiration of the Mahabodhi Temple at Gaya, is at its height under Nantaungmya (1211–34): the Mahabodhi Paya, 1.204b

440

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.204a

›1.204

T H E B A G A N E S E PA H T O in the reigns of Narapatisithu (1174–1211), Htilominlo (1211–34), and Narathihapati (1248–87): (a) typical elevation; (b) Sulamani (begun c. 1180), aerial view; (c) Gawdawpalin (founded under Narapatisithu, finished under Htilominlo), from the air; (d–g) Htilominlo, general view from south-east, façade detail, main east-facing image, southern ambulatory and image; (h) Wetkyi-in Gubyaukgyi (mid-13th century): view from the southeast; (i) Mahabodhi Paya (c. 1220).

1.204c

founded in the centre of the capital c. 1220, is one of several contemporary Burmese copies of the great Bodhi shrine at Gaya for the restoration of which the Burmese assumed responsibility at various reprises after the decline of Buddhism in India. It seems unlikely that they contributed the arches which reinforce the original Mahabodhi’s structure, uncharacteristically for India, but they could well have determined the form of the crowning stupa there. The Gubyaukgyi is a variant superimposing the prasada superstructure on a typical post-Pyu pahto.

441

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.204d

1.204e

442

1.204f

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.204g

1.204h

1.204i

1.205a

1.205b

›1.205

B A G A N , M O N A S T I C B U I L D I N G S : (a) Pitaka-thaik (traditionally dated to c. 1060, renovated 1738), elevation; (b) Upali Thein (mid-13th century, rebuilt c. 1700), elevation.

443

Most of the monastic buildings associated with the main stupas and many of the pahtos, built of the usual ephemeral materials, have disappeared. However, Anawrahta is reputed to have built the dimly lit Pitakathaik of brick on a square plan for the safe housing of the precious collection of Buddhist texts which he brought back from the capture of Thaton: near the site of the palace, the square building with its tiered superstructure survives though much renovated. A similar, but smaller, building enshrines an icon of the Buddha on the Mimalaung Kyanung terrace associated with a library attributed to Narapatisithu. Little survives of the monastic halls or cells but the brick-built Upali Thein, originating from the 13th century but rebuilt long after power had abandoned Bagan, is popularly taken as representing the type. And the Somin-gyi ok-kyang, of uncertain date, recalls the subcontinental type of vihara with cells on the east–west axis of a square court framed by cells.1.205

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.206a

A F TE R B A G A N Bagan was a major centre of Burmese civilization for four centuries; indeed, with the eclipse of the Sangha in India and the flight of scholars from Nalanda under threat from Muslim iconoclasm, it became the intellectual centre of Buddhism. However, its empire was overwhelmed by the Mongols from China in 1287 and numerous petty states supervened. Of these, Ava began its rise to supremacy within a century and was dominant in Irrawaddi trade and power by the end of the 16th century. However, as foreign trade and the Irrawaddi delta were controlled by Toungoo, Ava was eclipsed in the second quarter of the 17th century. The Toungoo moved their capital to the seat of their beaten rivals but Ava was sacked in 1752 by new forces from the south. The initiative and the throne were seized 444

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

›1.206

S T U PA P R O L I F E R AT I O N : (a, b) Amarapura (18th–19th centuries), collection of stupas in the early and late Sri Lankan styles.

by a servant of the old regime styled Alaungpaya. As maintenance of control by the south over the north and vice versa was problematical, Alaungpaya’s Konbaung dynasty was peripatetic.The centre of political gravity was in the vicinity of Ava, at Amarapura and Mandalay, but from the middle of the 18th century economic power was waxing at the great trading port of Rangoon which developed from a fishing village at the head of the delta. Within the century the British were established there: trade and the interests of India led them to conquest up country which they had largely accomplished at the expense of the Konbaungs by 1885. The main periods are identified by the name of the predominant city: Pinya in the 14th century, Ava in the 15th and 16th centuries, framing the Toungoo interregnum, Nyaungyan and Konbaung (17th–19th centuries) – but location is only marginally relevant to stylistic development. Buddhism persisted throughout and the legacy of Pagan was example in type and style founded on Indian or Sri Lankan models but distanced from them by the native facility for florid elaboration. As brick and timber remained the main materials, the course of development has been obscured by the depredations of time and man – especially as most of the main sites were to be inhabited and developed continuously, unlike Bagan.

T H E S T U PA The most substantial survivors of the centuries following the fall of Bagan in 1287 are the great stupas of Pegu, Prome and Rangoon: the efforts of the era were heavily weighted to enlarging venerable stupas and spangling the land with myriad new ones in and around every village.1.206 The new stupas reiterate the repertory of forms imported from Sri Lanka, the elegant bell with splayed base but also the most monumental of Anuradhapuran types: indeed, such works 1.206b

445

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

› 1 . 2 0 7 T H E G R E AT S T U PA A F T E R B A G A N : (a) Prome, Shwe-hsan-daw; (b–e; pages 448–449) Rangoon, Shwe-dagon pagoda and subsidiary shrines. At Sagaing the mid-15th-century Htupa-yon (badly damaged in the earhtquake of 1838 and inadequately restored) was close to the Bagan original in its bellshape anda but introduced circular terraces with niches in their walls – unlike the mid-19th-century Eindaw-ya at Mandalay which retains the square terraces. However, the Shwe-dagon in Rangoon apart, the most prominent ancient stupas enlarged in accordance with the revised proportions of the post-Bagan period are the Shwe-maw-daw in Pegu and the Shwe-hsan-daw in Prome – all of which were originally built by the Mons some time in the second half of the 1st millennium BCE

1.207a

as the Ruvanvelisaya, Abhayagiri or Jetavanarama, with which new Sri Lankan dynasties commemorated themselves, were the models for the huge Kaungmudaw Paya built at Sagaing in 1636 to mark the establishment of Ava as the royal seat. In general, however, the line of monumental development from the great example set by Anawrahta is clear. The main difference is in proportion, not scale. Descent from Anuradhapura may be traced in the persistent preference for the elegant bell-shaped form on a generous base. 446

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

to enshrine miraculously rediscovered hairs of the Buddha. The Shwe-maw-daw was razed by the earthquake of 1930 and rebuilt. The others date in their present form from the second half of the 18th century (though they have been repaired and regilded many times since, usually after earthquakes). The Shwe-dagon reputedly reached 90 metres, nearly its present height, in the 15th century when it seems first to have been gilded: it is now estimated to be sheathed in more than 50 tonnes of gold. Towards the southern side of its rectangular platform, surrounded by hundreds of other stupas and shrines, the 6.5-metre-high plinth is bordered with sixty small stupas and four larger ones marking the cardinal directions. Square with recessed corners, the plinth supports multiple octagonal terraces, contracted medhi rings, the much-diminished bell-shaped anda, a cone of further superimposed rings, lotus petals turned both up and down, a bud-shaped member and the stylized seven-tiered umbrella (hti) studded with diamonds. The square terraces and prominent drum impose a solidity on the Shwe-hasan-daw, at least at base, but Rangoon’s masterpiece rises from its octagonal stylobate, flaired through fine gradations, with supreme élan.

1.207b

1.207c

One of the principal contributions of the Baganese was the transformation of the basic platform by elevating it through multiple diminishing tiers. In the same vein, the subsequent trend was to terrace the medhi, diminish the anda and exaggerate the chattravali until they were assimilated into a continuum of rings with a conical profile sweeping up through the inclined sides of the tiered podium. The progression is marked from Sagaing, near Mandalay in the north, via Prome to Pegu and Rangoon in the south.1.207 1.207d

447

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.208a

T H E TE M P LE Ingenuity still delights in endless variation, even in the cross-fertilization of temple and stupa, but the norm is the basic arca-griha with a single porch and a cella with a superstructure derived from either the stupa or a broadbased, stepped pyramidal prasada motif (pyatthat). Deliberate archaism occasionally reproduced a Baganese masterpiece, particularly the Ananda, but the scale is not now usually large. Brick remained the norm but the voussoir cedes to the corbel as the scale of building decreases. Stucco was ubiquitous for revetment: Baganese mouldings subsist but decorative elaboration tends to prefer the superstructure to the walls. Native response to the flam-

›1.208

T H E T E M P L E A F T E R B A G A N : (a) Ava, stupa and prasada; (b, c) Amarapura and Thayetmyo, stupa-prasada hybrids (19th century).

1.208b

450

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.208c

boyant malleability of plaster – especially in porch pediments – is supplemented with the imitation of florid wood carving – especially in the multiple aedicules and miniature shrine forms incorporated in the prasada type of roof.1.208 451

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.209a

T H E M O N A S TE RY The somewhat stolid brick cubical assembly hall of the Bagan period cedes to an elegant, elongated wooden building on a balustraded terrace raised from the ground on stilts and covered by a dramatically curved pitched roof. Traditional in their trabeated timber form, the accidents of survival fail to offer specific pre-Baganese testimony to their evolution but the ubiquitous domestic vernacular is clearly the basic norm. The essential elements are standard: a balustraded terrace wide enough for pradakshina, a shrine chamber (psatthat hsaung) distinguished by a spire, and an assembly room (marabin hsaung) with its storage adjunct (baw-ga hsaung). The 452

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.209b

›1.209

T H E M O N A S T E R Y A F T E R B A G A N : (a–c)

Sale, Yoe Soe Kyaung (early 19th century and later on venerable foundations), Baw-ga Hsaung to Psatthat Hsaung, interiors of Marabin Hsaung and Psatthat Hsuang; details of reliefs with vernacular building (d–f ) Amarapura, Bagaya Kayang (mid-19th century), view,

1.209c

latter complex, separated from the shrine by a lower residential apartment building (sanu) for the abbot, is often roofed in tiers over clerestorey lighting and partitioned to accommodate rituals admitting and excluding the laity. Apart from the balustrades of the massive brick staircases which are a ubiquitous feature, stucco disappears but decorative elaboration continues rampant: plastic moulding cedes to filigree timber carving on the spire, the roof ridges, the gables, the multiple eaves, the frames of the openings and the balustrades, but the detail loses nothing of its former flamboyance in incorporating fauna as well as flora.1.209 1.209d

453

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.209h

1.209e

1.209i

terrace view, sanu hall; (g) Ava, Maha Aungmye Bonzan (brick interpretation of the traditional wooden forms built for chief royal wife of King Bagyidaw, 1818, restored 1873 after earthquake damage); (h–j) Mandalay, Shwe-in-bin Kyaung (1895), south flank with Psatthat Hsuang centre, altar and icon.

1.209f

1.209g

454

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.209j

1.210b

1.210a

›1.210

M A N DA L AY , PA L A C E , 1857, largely destroyed in 1945: (a, b) interior and exterior of audience hall of King Mindon removed to Shwenandaw kyaung (1880). Three concentric enclosures (the inner one c. 400 by 210 metres) protected the complex and its extensive gardens. In the centre was a vast masonry platform (2 metres high) with a main eastern staircase and subsidiary ones to the other sides. The palace on the platform consisted of eight pavilions for the public and private use of the king and the naturally more restricted appearances of his principal queen. Axially aligned, each had a throne chamber and ancillary service facilities. The first and most important structure, corresponding to the shrine of the enthroned Buddha in a temple, was the Hall of the Lion Throne: distinguished by the tallest spire and most lavish embellishment, inside it was partitioned like the main hall of a monastery so that the king could appear on the throne platform for public audience having prepared and mounted the stairs in the privacy of his withdrawing room.

455

T H E PA L AC E The materials invariably perishable and the seat of power always the prime object of destruction by invaders, there are no survivors of the type at Bagan, the earlier capitals or even Ava. Those surviving in part – or in photographs – from the Konbaung era at Mandalay (1860–85) perhaps go some way to fill the knowledge gap. Enclosure was, of course, always the norm and there are numerous traces of palatial compounds, often with masonry platforms from which the timber superstructures have long been lost. As in the indigenous Indian palace – on ubiquitous principle – the platforms accommodate distinct facilities for public and private audience, the king’s retreat and the seclusion of the royal women and children. Royal and monastic halls conformed to the same type and the best surviving representative of the former now functions as the latter in the Shwenandaw monastery at Mandalay: it came from the royal palace of King Mindon (1860–78) which itself incorporated important elements from the palace at Amarapura.1.210

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.211a

16 thais and their eastern neighbours In the last quarter of the 1st millennium ce south-east Asia received a steady stream of people identified as Thai from Yunan and neighbouring regions of south-west China. By the time of Khmer ascendency those who had settled in former Dvaravati, and who were to give their name to modern Thailand, had established several small states of which the most important were Lanna in the north and Sukhothai further south, in the centre of the present kingdom. Towards the end of the 13th century the Sukhothai ruler, Ramkhamhaeng (c. 1279–98) completed the process begun two generations earlier, when Khmer suzereinty was renounced, and took the central Thai kingdom to its apogee in his seat, at the nearby dynastic cult centre of Si Satchanalai and at provincial Phitsanulok and Kamphaeng Phet. Ramkhamhaeng reached an accord with a fellow Thai ruler in the north, Mengrai of the Ngon Yang principality in the Chieng Rai district, who conquered 456

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.211b

›1.211

THE BUDDHA IN THE LAND INHERITED

B Y T H E T H A I S : (a) the Walking Buddha, image from

14th-century Sukhothai (now in Wat Benjamabopit, Bangkok); (b) the Grahi image sheltered by the naga king Mucalinda, from Wat Wieng, Chaiya (dated from its Khmer inscription to 1183 or, more likely, 1291).

457

Haripunjaya in 1292 and founded the new kingdom of Lanna: Chiang Mai was its capital from 1296. Mengrai’s line ruled the area until 1556 when Chiang Mai fell to the Burmese: they were not expelled until the late-18th century and by then Chiang Mai had to be completely rebuilt. With subjection of the neighbouring Mon principalities and peace in the north secured by the accord with the new rulers of Haripunjaya, Sukhothai was able to take the offensive against the declining Khmers and pushed the occupiers back through the Korat Plateau and across the Dangrek range. Ramkhamhaeng’s successor, Loe Thai (1298–1347) seems to have devoted himself to religion and to the representation and accommodation of the Buddha. The state declined and in 1378 it was forced to acknowledge the suzereinty of Ayutthaya, the rising power to its south, but it subsisted until 1438 when it was finally annexed by its overlords. The Thais, like the Mons, sustained the ancestral animism of the people with whom they intermarried though they espoused Buddhism: indeed the Buddha himself had shown his followers the way to respect the spirits of the trees, the rocks and the waters – as we know. Rejecting the Mahayana of the invaders for the Theravidin way of the Mons, the new Thai kingdoms looked to Sri Lanka – after the example of Burma – for spiritual guidance as the Sangha had been crushed in India. However, they developed an idiosyncratic style of sculpture notable not least for introduction of the ‘promenader’ to the canon of Buddhist iconography at Sukhothai. Under Ramkhamhaeng Thai appears in script – adapted from Khmer – for the first time. An inscription datable to 1296 asserts the universality of Buddhism in the kingdom and the prosperity which just rule had brought: the humanity of a king who made no claim to divinity is clearly meant to contrast with the pretensions of the defeated Khmer.1.211

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.212b

›1.212

T H A I V E R N A C U L A R A N D M O N U M E N TA L

TRADITIONS AS REPRESENTED IN ICONIC ART:

1.212a

T H A I V E R N AC U L A R A N D M O N U M E N TA L T Y P E S As elsewhere in southern and eastern Asia where timber was the main building material, the importance of the domestic vernacular as the basis even of the most palatial form hardly needs stressing: the pavilions of Ramkhamhaeng and his predecessors have long vanished but their successors will prove the point. On the other hand, the major iconic forms of the imported religions were, of course,themselves imported.Keen as the Thai Theravadin regimes were to forge close relations with the scholars of Sri Lanka, they could hardly avoid the influence of the Khmer enemy – or, indeed, of their troublesome Burmese neighbours who provided well-established examples of the assimilation of Sinhalese influence. From this diverse inheritance the Sukhothai are generally credited with developing the forms, religious and secular, which were to be characteristically Thai.1.212 In and beyond the capitals and their palaces, the major centres of activity were monasteries (wats, entitled luang if royal, maha if housing a ‘great relic’) which, as in India and wherever its traditions prevailed, provided the focus of community life, particularly in its devotion, education, 458

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

(a) village scene; (b) palace (early 19th century frescoes from Wat Suwan Dararum, Ayutthaya).

charity and health. Of the buildings accommodating all this, the most important was the ordination hall (ubosot) invariably built to the east of the dominant shrine: it followed the form of the palatial audience hall – especially, of course, in the royal foundations. A reliquary or cenotaph, the latter may be a stupa (chedi) or a shikhara (prang) or a combination of both. The chedi is most commonly bell-shaped on a threetiered terraced platform with square harmika and ringed, conical chattravali, as in Burma after the Sinhalese fashion probably imported with reliquary caskets. However, the relic was sometimes moved from the harmika to a faceted medhi on a tiered plinth and the anda took on a lotus bud form tapering directly into the chattravali.A distinguishing feature of the Thai tradition, this assimilated it to the prang: a cella on a tiered and faceted socle and base surmounted by a tower of the cob-shaped profile which had begun its development away from the earlier Khmer conical form under Suryavarman ii at Prasat Phimai (prasat = prasada). Usually rising over a three-tiered terrace through seven tiers embellished in the flamboyant manner which reached its apogee at Angkor Wat, the prang rehearses the symbolism of Meru though the Sukhothais had no King of the Mountain to be commemorated by it.

S U K H OT H A I M O N U M E N TS Unlike its predecessors, which generally had curved perimeter walls, Sukhothai was rectangular with three concentric earthern ramparts separated by moats in the Khmer manner: indeed, it was probably based on a foundation of Jayavarman vii but, departing from the strictures of Angkor Thom, its centre was displaced from the Khmer state temple to a subsidiary monastic foundation which was converted for the Theravadins under 1.213a

459

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

Ramakhamhaeng’s predecessor as Wat Mahathat and › 1 . 2 1 3 T H E C A M PA N I F O R M C H E D I I N T H E E A R LY S U K H O T H A I P E R I O D : (a) Si Satchanalai, developed as the dynastic necropolis. Of several other Wat Chang Lom (variously dated between the 1290s Khmer foundations, Wat Phra Phai Luang, made over for and 1490s but a late-13th-century foundation embellthe Theravadins c. 1290, is of the triad type represented by ished in the late-14th century and restored in the late15th century – and later – seems most likely); (b–d) the Phra Prang Sam Yot at Lop Buri.1.196c Sukhothai, Wats Chang Lom (c. 1390), Sa Si (late-14th A subsidiary chedi and mondop to the east of the main century) and Sorosak (dated by inscription to 1412). shrine of Wat Phra Phai Luang are among the earliest The Sukhothai norm is a square plinth on a square tiered base. The Satchanalai work has an octagonal works attributable to the independent Sukhothais. Conplinth, four superimposed torus mouldings (the upper temporary is the chedi of Wat Chang Lom, the central one incised with padma motifs), the steep-sided anda, square harmika and tall, conical chattravali on a shaft with a frieze of walking Buddhas. A progressive steepening of the sides and flattening of the curve of the anda is apparent in the Sukhothai chedi. All have elephants emerging from the base, in full at Si Satchanalai, in forepart only at Sukhothai: elephants were present in the base of several Sri Lankan works from the Ruvanvelisya at Anuradhapura to the mid-14th-century Lankatilika at Gampola where the foreparts of the animals only emerge from the arcades.

1.213b

1.213c

460

1.213d

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

monument of Si Satchanalai, which was founded to house relics of the Buddha reputedly discovered by King Ramkhamhaeng at the nearby Khmer site of Chaliang in 1285: on a two-tiered square terrace, the lower one inset with life-sized supporting elephants, the upper one with Buddhas in niches which reveal no Khmer influence; it is of the bell-shaped Sri Lankan type with an elongated chattravali of numerous decreasing rings. It set the Sukhothai standard for chedi design though variations of proportion were to be admitted.Of several examples at Sukhothai,the most important are Wats Chang Rup, Chang Lom, Sa Si and Sorasak. The elephant base derives from the Ruvanvelisya Mahastupa of Anuradhapura which has subsequently been altered but is represented in its original form in miniature at the site.1.213 As at Bagan, hybrid forms were produced by superimposing a chedi on a cella in close association with an assembly hall – as in Wat Chedi Chet Thaeo at Si Satchanalai.1.214 The superimposition of forms and manipulation of proportions led to the most significant Sukhothai development in chedi design: the invention of ›1.214

H Y B R I D F O R M : S I S AT C H A N A L A I , W AT

T H A E O , mid-14th century: general view. Possibly the royal Sukhothai necropolis, the complex has nine rows of thirty-three minor chedis, various in form, flanking the main chedi and an associated mondop in the north-west sector. The complex is noted for the surviving fragments of its stucco embelishment. The enshrined relic might derive from the Buddha himself or a king as a bodhisattva. Its importance is conveyed in the name of the foundation: mahathat (‘great relic’), phra si mahathat (‘holy auspicious great relic’), phra si rattanamahat (‘holy auspicious jewelled great relic’), phra borommathat (‘holy supreme relic’). The name of this foundation, however, simply refers to ‘seven rows of chedi’. CHEDI

CHET

1.214

461

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.215a

462

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

the lotus-bud form under Lo Thai in the early 14th century. The ingredients are the prang and the stupa: the former retains its faceted elevation but acquires the chedi’s tiered socle and superstructure; the latter derives from the bell but its novel sensuality is produced by waisting it at base to accommodate the prang’s gavakshas, attenuating its summit and assimilating it with the chattravali through the intermediacy of interpolated rings. The form achieved prominence at Sukhothai in numerous works at new and established sites, most notably the renovation of the venerable Wat Mahathat, the royal necropolis: it was disseminated throughout the state in the assertion of the spiritual authority of the regime.1.215

1.215b

463

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.215c

Wa t M a h a t h a t The central monastic complex of the Sukhothai metropolis, the royal necropolis, was restored and enlarged by Lo Thai early in the 14th century to house relics of Buddha brought from Sri Lanka by a pilgrim monk. The scholar king seems to have expressed his trimondial (Traiphum) articulation of Meru cosmology in the three-tiered chedi with its lotus-bud abode of divinity: reflected in the cosmic waters represented by the lakes which immeasurably enhance the site, at the centre of the cosmic mandala reproduced in the town plan, stuccoed white and gilded at the summit, this was likened by the king to the gleaming snow-clad Kailasha which his cosmology located at the summit of Meru. The prestige of the work, admirably demonstrating the Thai facility for the production of hybrid variants on borrowed forms, set the standard for the future of Thai architecture. The promenading figures – microcosmic monks in a frieze on the base, macrocosmic Buddha in the niches of the subsidiary shrines rising on that base, mark the advent of the idiosyncratically Thai motif to a cardinal role in iconography. The central lotus-bud chedi, of the Si Satchanalai type but with upturned petals instead of rings interpolated to link anda and chattravali,

464

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

› 1 . 2 1 5 S U K H O T H A I : (a–h) Wat Mahathat, general views from east and west, central chedi from the east and detail of base, details of chedis flanking the central shrine, view of southern sector of compound with stepped pyramidal chedi known as Ha Yot, Phra Attharot shrine; (i, j) Wat Si Chum, shrine of the seated Buddha, exterior and detail.

1.215e

1.215f

rises on a three-tiered pyramid above multiple royal funerary monuments. The eight most important of these, on the embellished lower terrace, well illustrate Sukhothai eclecticism: all are prangs once crowned with chedis; those on the cardinals, especially the northern one, of laterite, retain the complexity of the Khmer prasat but substitute the Sri Lankan form of gavaksha frame, with its in-turned makaras for the out-turned nagas of Angkor; those on the corners, of brick, are simplified in the most abstract

1.215d

1.215g

465

1.215h

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

Baganese style except for the attenutated crowning chedi motif of which the lone survivor neatly marks the intermediate stage between the Sri Lankan bell and its native Thai lotus-bud permutation. It is supposed that Lo Thai employed Sri Lankan craftsmen: that would explain motifs like the in-turned makara frames to the gavakshas and, more significantly, the introduction in his reign of the elephants to the lower tier of the Wat Chang Lom in Si Sathanalai and the related monuments of Sukhothai. It would also explain the appearance of the shrine of the Phra Attharot (the ‘18-cubit’) type of standing Buddha image: a pair flank the central shrine at Wat Mahathat and there is another at Wat Saphan Hin; an equally impressive seated relative is still fully enclosed (but not roofed) at Wat Si Chum. The model of the standard type was the Lankatilaka at Polonnaruwa of the second half of the 12th century. The columned usobot and wihan are at their grandest aligned on the main east–west axis, east of the shrine. Here the columns, which once supported a tall pitched roof derived from the domestic vernacular, were of stuccoed laterite but the norm was brick or timber. There were no walls.

1.215j

466

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.215i

›1.216

467

A Y U T T H A YA : plan.

F RO M S U K H OT H A I TO AY U T T H AYA The polyglot state of Ayutthaya, whose forces overwhelmed Sukhothai in 1438, had been founded c. 1350 under obscure circumstances. The heartland, an alluvial plain still in the process of emerging from the sea to the south, was not a traditional centre of power.The first king, Ramathibodi i, settled at the confluence of the Lop Buri River with the Pasak and Chao Phraya after having united the domains of Lavo (Lop Buri) and U Thong (Suphan Buri) which had eluded the sovereignty – if not the nominal suzerainty – of King Ramkhamhaeng. Defended by a loop in the riverine system, the site’s protection was completed by a canal linking the streams to the north which converted it into an island. Ayutthaya’s power was based on the control of the rich rice-producing plain, and of communication along the river to the sea. It prospered greatly in internal and external commerce with the Portuguese traders who arrived in the second quarter of the 16th century and their Dutch successors. The recognition of commercial advantage, rather than force of arms, led the Ayutthayan kings to the formal – but politically ineffective – acknowledgement of themselves as tributaries of the Chinese emperor.1.216 On the offensive from the outset, the forces of Ayutthaya had subjected Angkor as early as 1352 and returned to destroy it after a rebellion in 1431, forcing the Khmer kings to return to the region of Phnom Penh – old Funan – where they were in a better position to seek renewed fortune in trade.The victors,asserting suzerainty over the former masters, acquired most of the Thai lands once ruled by the Khmers before absorbing Sukhothai.They asserted hegemony over Lanna, but failed to secure it despite recurrent warfare. They confronted Burmese incursion and countered with attempted expansion to the north-west at the expense of the Burmese: conflict was chronic here too

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

but Ayutthaya failed to take a major Burmese power base and, briefly occupied by the enemy in the middle of the 16th century, was ultimately destroyed by the Konbaung king Alaungpaya in 1767. The court then moved south to Thonburi near the river’s mouth. The greatest power in the region for most of four centuries after supplanting the Khmers, Ayutthaya had reached its zenith in the early 18th century when its capital – with a population in excess of one million – was one of the most magnificent cities of Asia. Its culture was essentially bifocal: Sukhothai provided native inspiration; alien Angkor provoked emulation. Unlike Sukhothai, it was ruled by a king with quasi-divine pretensions inspired 1.217a by the Khmer concept of monarchy – indeed, derived as › 1 . 2 1 7 A Y U T T H I A N B U D D H A S : (a) c. 1535, retrieved from incorporation in the colossal Phra spoil from the invasion of Angkor in 1352 but institutionMongkhon Bophit (Ayutthaya, National Museum); (b) alized definitively by King Boromma-trailokanat c. 1700, crowned Buddha (Bangkok, National Museum) (1448–88) after the final humiliation of the Khmer in the The development of the crowned and bejewelled Buddha responded to the commemoration of increasprevious reign. ingly opulent kings and members of their families as A divine alter-ego was no more proof against opposi- bodhisattvas. tion and even usurpation than it had been in Angkor: kings came and went in peace or violence but the rigorously hierarchical state was centralized under a resolutely professional bureaucracy and regulated by a strict code of law. From the consecration of the monarch to the legal code, much was of Brahmanical origin and overseen by brahmins, and there was a rich mix of all strands of Indic religion – Hinayana, Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism as well as the main strands of Hinduism – among the assimilated peoples and the immigrant traders. However, by the beginning of the 15th century, king, nobles and commoners had generally espoused Theravadin Buddhism in rapport with Sri Lanka. Nevertheless, the evolution of Ayutthayan art was along lines which could hardly have diverged more completely from the original ideals of the ancient masters.1.217 1.217b

468

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.218a

› 1 . 2 1 8 P R A N G P R O T O T Y P E S , usually dated to the early 14th century: (a) Lop Buri, Wat Phra Si Ratna Mahathat; (b) Sukhothai, Wat Si Sawai (foundation possibly Khmer). Lop Buri, long the western outpost of the Khmers, the first significant gain of the Thais, was the natural site for the first stage in the development of the Thai prang from the Khmer prasat.

AY U T T H AYA N M O N U M E N TS Emulating the Khmers as quasi-divine rulers, the kings of Ayutthaya sustained the tradition of the great Hindu Khmer monuments in preference to acknowledging developments in the Sukhothai realm of the essentially human King Ramkhamhaeng and his successors. There were to be several temple mountains at their principal seat but the ovoid island site did not lend itself to mandala planning like the royal cities of Angkor – or even the Khmer foundation of Sukhothai. Pragmatism ruled from the outset: the main royal palace was on the north edge of the island; the earliest wats were built across the river to the east rather than in the centre, but subsequently wats proliferated everywhere. Expansion to accommodate the flourishing population crossed successive walls and left multiple roughly concentric moats which facilitated transport. Emulation of the Khmer is immediately apparent,in the dominance of the corncob-shaped prang – rather than the Sukhothai lotus-bud form of chedi.The prototype for this most characteristic Ayutthayan monument, with its stellate plan and cob-shaped elevation through superimposed tiers of antefixes, was first provided in the second half of the 13th century at Lop Buri, where the Khmer models were at their most prominent. While the scale hardly matched that of Angkor and the materials were inferior, the form was at its grandest at Wat Mahathat, founded c. 1374, but it appears at the outset of the new regime in Wat Phutthaisawan (c. 1353) and then at Wat Phra Ram (c. 1369). The tradition was sustained in the 15th century, to which Wat Ratchaburana is usually assigned, and in which the form became the symbol of imperial power imposed on the main subject centres – most significantly at Phitsanulok, the last resort of the last independent Sukhothai king, and at Sukhothai itself.1.218 The pace of imperial prang building naturally flagged

1.218b

469

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

›1 . 2 1 9

A Y U T T H A YA ,

THE

E A R LY

PRANG

S H R I N E : (a) Wat Phutthaisawan (c. 1353), cloister; (b)

1.219a

in the catastrophic 16th century but was revived after the city’s revival early in the 17th century with Wat Chaiwathanaram.All these works are much renovated with evident respect for the original form.1.219–1.221

Wat Phra Ram (c. 1369); (c–e) Wat Ratchaburana (a recension of the Ayutthayan Royal Chronicles of 1680 attributed ‘Wat Ratchabun’ to the reign of King Borommaracha II, 1424–48, identifying it as a memorial to his dead brothers, and ‘Wat Ratchaburana’ was similarly attributed in a recension of 1795; in 1957 the monument was found to contain regalia and other rich royal relics together with coins and inscriptions dated to the early 15th century. Nevertheless the definitive form of the monument is dated by some scholars to the early 17th century – when an early 15th-century structure would doubtless have needed remedial work after Burmese depredations), south elevation of main shrine, wihan entrance and and plan.

T h e A y u t t h a y a n p ra n g Rising from stepped pyramids in walled and cloistered courts, the Ayutthayan prang was invariably a reliquary flanked, to the west and east respectively, by pitched-roofed ordination and preaching halls. Of stuccoed brick or laterite, it is taller, slenderer, more cylindrical than the Khmer prototype, rounded at the top and crowned by the five-pronged vajra: in later foundations the prang is progressively attenuated to effete effect. It rises through its graded tiers from cella walls which transmit the axial projections and intermediate faceted indentations from a base in which numerous horizontal slabs, separated by cyma-recta mouldings, are grouped into three distinct tiers. The base is invariably extended eastwards to accommodate a porch which is usually open to the north and south as well as to the rising sun: doubtless under the inspiration of a Sukhothai hybrid, the porch of Wat Ratchaburana is surmounted by a miniature stupa at the crossing. As there, in general in the early works the other axial projections have open portals rather than blind ghanadvaras: a cruciform plan supporting four porches, unique to the Wat Mahathat prang, may have been developed in the 17th century when all four portals received equal emphasis in the multiplication of ascending frames but one distinct porch had become rare. By the 17th century the increasingly 1.219b

470

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.219c

1.219d

471

1.219e @ 1:2000

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.220b

›1 . 2 2 0 THAN

THE PR ANG A S SYMB OL OF A ZYUT-

IMPERIUM

UNDER

KING

BOROMMA-

T R A I L O - K A N AT (acceded 1448, based in Phitsanulok 1.220a

numerous, and ever slenderer, subsdidiary prangs were often based on stepped pyramids in which the venerable tripatite division cedes to the regular repetition of tiers incurved in a manner reminiscent of furniture

from 1463–88 to conduct his campaign against Lanna): (a) Chaliang, Wat Phra Si Ratna Mahathat gopura; (b) Phitsanulok, Wat Phra Si Ratna Mahathat. Like the other works of imperial assertiveness, the Ayutthayan transformation may have begun under King Ramathibodi I (1351–69).

footings. From the outset, the Buddha chakravartin addresses all four cardinal directions but from niches, rather than the mass itself as at the Bayon – or the Chialing gopura. As at Sukhothai his abode rises as Meru from the foothills of a plethora of smaller shrines on superimposed terraces. The prasada of the king’s divine alter-ego, the form was the symbol of the quasi-divine Ayutthyan monarchy applied to all royal foundations throughout its empire in emulation of the Khmers.

472

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

›1.221

A Y U T T H A YA , W AT C H A I W AT H A N A R A M

(Monastery of Victorious Progress), 1630: (a–c) view, detail of stucco revetment on corner prang and plan. With its mandala centred on the quincunx of the royal reliquary prang and embracing six lateral Meru shrines of extraordinary form – chedis with telescopic superstructures rather than prangs – the Wat Chaiwathanaram surpassed its Ayutthaya predecessors in the scale and complexity of its Angkorean ambition.

1.221a

1.221b

473

1.221c @1:2000

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.222a

1.222b @ 1:2000

474

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

Emulation of Hindu or Buddhist Angkor notwithstanding, Theravadin affiliation with Sri Lanka ensured the proliferation of the campanulate form of chedi and, therefore, that the tradition of Thai eclecticism would be sustained. In the troubled 16th century, in fact, the form seems to have supplanted the prang in orthodox reaction against the latter’s Hindu associations – though continued dedication of Shaivite and Vaishnavite icons in official circles provides some colateral evidence of unwillingness to offend the great Hindu gods. As at Sukhothai, the bell-shaped chedi proliferates primarily for the ashes of kings: the chattravali is further attenuated, the harmika acquires a miniature colonnade and porches borrowed from the prang are applied to the tiered base to face the cardinal directions.1.222 The most prominent chedis in the original island city, beside the principal royal palace, are the three elegant late15th century royal cenotaphs which constitute Wat Si Sanphet: surmounted by miniature chedis, like the porch of Wat Ratchaburana,the eastern projection is open,the others blind. The substitution of an octagon for the usual square in the plan of the base is well represented by the chedis on the corners of the Wat Ratchaburana platform. Knowledge of developments in Haripunchaya was doubtless the inspiration as it was for the introduction of the redented base, occasionally elaborately chased as in the

1.222c

›1.222

A Y U T T H A YA N C H E D I : (a–c), Wat Si Sanphet, general view, plan of complex and socle fragment from the compound (late-15th century); (d) variations restored at Wats Maheyong (1, dated to the reign of Borommaracha II, 1424–48), Si Sanphet (2, reliquary of King Borommatrailokanat and his sons dated to 1492), Mahathat (3, restored elevation of faceted chedi dated to the reign of Borommaracha I, 1370–88), Worachet (4, early 17th century), Ratchaburana compound, faceted stupa shrine (5, early 18th century), Phukhao Thong (6, begun by the Burmese in 1569, completed by the Ayutthayans in 1592, renovated mid-18th century); (e) Maheyong, in the Sukhothai style with an elephant base, view from the west. Knowledge of stupa development at Bagan may have been as important as direct communication with Sri Lanka in the introduction of the campaniform stupa to Thailand. Later, the Burmese contributed Wat Phukhao Thong built on the Baganese model to commemorate their occupation of the city in 1548: begun in 1569 it was reputedly completed by King Naresuan to commemorate his victory over the Burmese invader in 1592.

1

2

3

1.222d

475

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

4

5

6

1.223a

›1.223

R E G I O N A L C H E D I V A R I A N T S : (a) Lop

Buri, so-called mango-seed faceted chedi in the compound of Wat Mahathat; (b) Phitsanulok, faceted chedi in the compound of Wat Phra Si Ratna Mahathat.

remains of subsidiary works in the Si Sanphet compound and, for instance, Wat Bang Kacha. In later stupa shrines, closely related to the prang form except for the chedi finial, the indentations are carried right up through the anda to the chattravali, as in Wats Worachet and Yanasen. Naturally elaboration increased with the opulence of the late17th and early 18th centuries.1.223

1.222e

476

1.223b

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

T H E AY U T T H AYA N LE G AC Y If not innovative in the forging of hybrids, the Ayutthyans were grand in scale and apart from the apotheosis of the prang in commemoration of the devaraja, their main contribution was to the development of the palatial and monastic hall. Built of timber supplemented by brick, as usual little survives of the palaces at Ayutthaya beyond their square compounds, the masonry footings of internal court walls and platforms which doubtless supported timber trabeated double-roofed halls like the typical ubosot or wihan. Rare survivals elsewhere are complemented by models and paintings.1.224a–c Something of subsequent grandeur is transmitted by the remains of the palace built at Lop Buri for King Narai (1657–88) and restored in the 19th century. It too consisted of a series of courts, increasing in their privacy, addressed by audience halls and residential buildings, all of which were rectangular walled structures with the ubiquitous double- or triple-pitched roof raised on timber columns over masonry platforms. The main audience hall was

1.224a

1.224b

›1.224

THE

PA L A C E

IN

THE

A Y U T T H A YA N

P E R I O D : (a, b) terracotta model of a palace pavilion

(early 17th century, Wat Mahathat Phitansulok), and fragmentary remains of such a pavilion from Sukhothai; (c) wooden model of palace pavilion (early 18th century; Ayutthaya, Chao Sam Phraya Museum); (d) Lop Buri, Phra Narai Ratcha Niwet, entrance.

1.224c

477

1.224d

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.225a

›1.225

T H E A Y U T T H A YA N L E G A C Y , U B O S O T ,

W I H A N A N D M O N D O P : (a, b) model from Ayutthaya

1.225b

partitioned to provide privacy for the king before mounting the throne – as in the typical Burmese palace but with an upper level and a window of appearance in the king’s part.1.224d By the end of the era the monastic compound, usually defined by a prakara with galleries (phra rabieng) sheltering multiple Buddha images or painted epic narratives, is often replete with ad-hoc accretion but not with the living quarters of the monks. Beyond the gopura and bell to wer, its main structures are rectangular halls (mondop = mandapa) aligned with the chedi or prang on the east–west axis until the late-Ayutthayan period when the prang ceased to be central to the conception. Orientated to the east on consecrated ground defined by eight lotiform or bodhi-leaf stones (bai sema) and entered up naga-bound stairs, the principal hall (ubosot) is a strictly conventional ‘basilican’ structure dedicated to the assembly and ordination of the monks. Distinct from these and admitting variations of design and orientation, are the preaching halls for the congregation of monks and laity (wihan = vihara, but the type is not residential).There 478

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

and remains of the ubosot of Ayutthayan Wat Kuti Dao with concave-curved base; (c) ubosot on axis with the prang in the Mahathat compound, Lop Buri; (d, e) exterior of ubosot with concave base, exterior and interior of wihan, the latter on axis with the chedi in Ayutthayan Wat Suwan Dararam (18th century, restored, frescoes repainted 1931); (f ) mondop enshrining the miraculous footprint of the Buddha, Phra Phutthabat (Ayutthayan original destroyed by the Burmese in 1765, reconstructed and restored).

1.225c

1.225d

1.225e

is invariably a library of the basic rectangular type and often a raised model library symbolizing the supremacy of scripture in the canonical tradition of Buddhism. For special royal relics there may be a square or cruciform pavilion (prasad) with a pyramid of tiered roofs terminating in a spire (mongkut). There are also open-sided pavilions (sala) where the monks receive alms and pilgrims may shelter. Except the last, all these structures shelter images 479

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.225f

of the Buddha as if enthroned in an audience hall; all have doors carved in low relief with dvarapala figures or, later, vines with birds and animals; and all have lavishly gilded tympana in which the most popular motifs are the peacock and Garuda. Typically open trabeated timber structures with steeply pitched roofs, like the vernacular house, few early monastic buildings survive.Those that do have often been rebuilt, at least partly of masonry:stoutly battered walls were introduced as much for protection as for solidity and were whitewashed outside, embellished with Jataka murals inside. Always primarily carried on posts with lotiform capitals and naga-form eave brackets, the tiled roofs have a concave upper profile.The ridge projects into a wing-like finial (cho fa), incorporating Garuda and nagas, beyond elaborately chased bargeboards (pan lom) which terminate in stylized naga heads and, indeed, occasionally undulate like the naga throughout their descent from the ridge.In accordance with the Thai distaste for the strictly rectilinear,ultimately the roof curve was reflected in the podium – perhaps to represent a ship carrying the faithful to salvation, as in Wats Kuti Dao and Suwan Dararam.1.225 480

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

›1.226

M O D E L A C T O R S O F T H E R ATA N A K O S I N

S C H O O L I N R A M A YA N A S C E N E S (Bangkok, Suan

Pakaad Palace Museum).

481

E A R LY B A N G KO K On the destruction of Ayutthaya and the elimination of its king by the Burmese in 1767 the surviving claimant to the throne, King Taksin, moved briefly to Thonburi on the west bank of the Chao Phraya estuary.There in 1782Taksin lost his throne to his general,Phraya Chakri.The new king, who ruled as Rama i (1782–1809),abandoned Thonburi and founded his Chakri dynastic seat on the east bank of the estuary in conscious emulation of the grandeur of Ayutthaya.The site, on a bend in the river, was not dissimilar to that of the lost capital and, as there, the digging of a canal made it an island: the conch-shaped Ratanakosin. The canal system, developed as Ayutthaya expanded, was foreseen at the outset of the new riverine settlement and the regularity of Meru cosmology – foreign to the ethos of the new ruler – contributed little to the conception. Meru as a multi-tiered, parasol-like prasada was to be ubiquitous,however,from the crowning element of cruciform halls in royal palace or monastic foundations to the crown of the king himself and its imitation in the headgear of ritual players on the stage of the great Vedic epics which were to be as perenially popular in Thailand as in Indonesia.1.226 Several entire buildings were salvaged and moved down river from the ravaged site.1.227 Otherwise, multiplied to a standard formula there, the traditional forms were retained as the first three Chakri rulers sustained the obsession with the glories of the Ayutthayan past. Thereafter the monarchy turned its attention to modernization on European lines. Constantly inhabited and never ravaged by invaders, Bangkok preserves much that was conceived at the outset – particularly the nucleus of the grand palace and a plethora of royal wats. The first royal foundation is the principal temple of Tonburi, Wat Arun, founded to house the Emerald

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

›1.227

B A N G KO K ,

A Y U T T H A YA N

PA L A C E

PA V I L I O N S : (a) early 19th-century representation of

a palace in the style transmitted to Ratanakosin from Ayuttahaya by the early Chakris (Bangkok, Wat Phra Kaeo); (b) late-18th-century timber palace pavilion in the current Ayutthayan style (Samran Mukkhamak; Bangkok, National Museum); (c, d) Lacquer Pavilion of the late-Ayutthayan period (moved from a site to the south of the old capital and re-erected in the grounds of the Suan Pakaad Palace), exterior and interior. The main hall of Wat Po was moved from the Ayutthayan Wat Bodharam for Rama I in 1789 but it was rebuilt in the middle of the 19th century.

1.227a

1.227c

1.227b

Buddha by King Taksin on his arrival from Ayutthaya but raised into its present form by Kings Rama ii and iii (1809–24–51): of the venerable type evolved in emulation of the Khmers, its central prang reiterates Ayutthayan faceting from base to summit.1.228 It was to be exceptional: 1.227d

482

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

›1.228 east.

483

T O N B U R I , W AT A R U N : view from the

following the example of late-Ayutthaya, virtually all the royal foundations across the river in Bangkok were disposed with the usobot in the centre and the subsidiary buildings set beside it rather than on its east–west axis.The prang was retained with the chedi for cenotaphs and guardian spirits: they abound within and before the contemporary walled precincts of Wat Phra Kaeo (Temple of the Emerald Buddha), associated with the palace, and the neighbouring Wat Po which harbours the cenotaphs of the first three Chakri rulers.1.229

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.229b

4 2

3

5 1

8

7 6

1.229c @ 1:5000

486

1.229d

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.229e

›1.229

B A N G K O K , T H E R O YA L C O M P O U N D O F

W AT P H R A K A E O : (a, pages 484–485, b, c) general

view from the north-east, view from the west and plan with (1) Wat Phra Kaeo Ubosot, (2) Phra Mondop, (3) Prasat Phra Thep Bidon, (4) Phra Sri Ratna Chedi, (5) Phra Thinang Phaisan Taksin, (6) Phra Thinang Amarin Whinitchai, (7) Chakri Maha Prasat, (8) Dusit Maha Prasat; (d) general view within compound showing bai sema pavilion; (e) grand ubosot; (f ) Dusit Maha Prasat. The ubosot of the royal palatine temple was built by Rama I (1782–1809) to house the Emerald Buddha (Phra Kaeo Morokot, a jade statuette first recorded in 1434). The gilded Phra Sri Ratna Chedi of 1855 (centre

487

T h e p r i n c i p a l roy a l w a t s a n d t h e g ra n d p a l a c e On moving his seat across the river from Tonburi in 1782, the first of the Chakris first founded a new wat for the Emerald Buddha. The king established himself in the western part of the compound while the great usobot was under construction and the Grand Palace developed from his initial work, the Amarindraphisek audience hall. That was destroyed by fire in 1798 and replaced with the Dusit Mahaprasat, the associated Aphon Phimok pavilion in which the king would prepare for entry, and Amarin Winichai where the king resided and held private audience (Chakri Maha Prasat). The latter is T-shaped. The former is cruciform, with its pitched

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

foreground), was modelled on the classic Ayutthayan examples of the Wat Phra Sri Sanphet. Prasat Phra Thepidon, the cruciform building crowned with a prang (left background) was built by Rama IV (Mongkut, 1851–68) and converted into a pantheon for statues of the Chakri dynasty by Rama V (Chulalongkorn, 1868–1910). Between the chedi and the prang rises the spire of the Phra Mondop library built by Rama III (1824–51).

1.229f

roofs ascending through four recessed tiers to the crossing: the crowning element is not the prang of divine significance but a spire-like mongkut modelled on the multi-tiered umbrella which, like the chattravali itself, is the prince’s due honorific. On the outer edge of the palace platform a lavish sala by the entrance overlooks the later garden. Its sacred site marked by bai sema protected by their own gorgeous mondops, Wat Phra Kaew was completed and the Emerald Buddha installed in 1785: though setting a standard of opulence which it was unpropitious to surpass and exceptionally large (55 by 24 metres), its form was endlessly influential. Orientated to the east, it has more generous windows than heretofore and three doors with porches to each end under tympana enriched with Vishnu (Phra Narai in this context) on Garuda: an external colonnade protects the walls but there are no internal supports: the verticals are elongated, the multi-tiered roofs are steeper than at Ayutthaya and seem to float over walls whose weight is denied by glittering tile, mirror or mother-of-pearl revetment between gilded windows and doors. Interior mural embellishment provides valuable evidence of the palatial types inherited from, but destroyed at, Ayutthaya. To the north of the great ubosot is the Prasat Phra Thepidon, the pantheon of the Chakri dynasty: gilded and tiled predominantly in blue, but 1.230a

488

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.230b

› 1 . 2 3 0 B A N G K O K , W AT P H R A C H E T U P O N ( W AT P O ) : (a) detail of cenotaphs; (b, c) views of compound; (d) interior of ubosot.

1.230c

489

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.230d

490

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

with red detail, it is crowned with a mongkut spire in the style of the royal crown or multi-tiered umbrella. To its west, on axis, is the Prasat Mondop which holds a recension of the sacred Tripitaka: it is matched only by the library of Phra Buddhabbat at Saraburi. To the east of the pantheon is the great gilded Phra Si Ratna Chedi built on the model of Wat Chedi Si Sanphet at Ayutthaya. South of Wat Phra Kaew, in a compound of its own, is Wat Phra Chetupon (Wat Po). The central ubosot was moved from Wat Bodharam (Bodhi Tree) at Ayutthaya and re-erected in the decade from 1789: rising from a podium embellished with masterly epic reliefs, it is the finest surviving witness to the style of late-Ayutthaya. To its west are four tiled and revetted chedis built as reliquaries commemorating the first four Chakri rulers. To the west of these is the library and to the north of that the pavilion added by Rama

III

to shelter a colossal statue (45 metres long, 15

metres high) of the reclining Buddha. The galleried prakara, on which a network of inner enclosure depends, is punctuated on the cardinals with gopuram in the form of wihans; beyond is a secondary enclosure with corner wihans.

Increased wealth as the 19th century unfolded promoted prolixity in both the palace and temple compounds and within the prakaras of myriad monastic foundations in Bangkok. As in the Grand Palace – most prominently – European ingredients were added to the traditional Thai eclectic mix but of the native elements, simple circular forms gave way to ever more elaborate faceting, plain plastered or gilt surfaces to rich carving, polychrome tilework or inlaid fragments of mirror, and most vertical surfaces were covered with intricate relief or mural painting. Roof was superimposed on roof, as in a pagoda but over plans of all shapes, and when they were gabled they were fringed with intricate bargeboards stamped with the iconography of the ancient Water Cosmology inherited by Buddhism with the yakshas and nagas so sagely wooed by Siddhartha Gautama. 491

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.231a

LANNA Invariably of teak,most of the monastic buildings in Lanna have been many times rebuilt in the low-slung, widespread multi-roofed style of the region and in the process most of the chedi have been renovated.One of the few monuments in Chiang Mai which was not transformed in reconstruction after liberation from the Burmese is the huge Wat Chedi Luang: built c. 1400, it was split by an earthquake and never restored. However, there is one other survivor of special significance: the Viharn Maha Pho in Wat Chet Yot which pays exceptional homage to the Mahabodhi temple at Gaya – like the Mahabodhi Paya at Bagan.1.204i Reputedly built in 1455 for the reception of the 8th Buddhist World Council, its stucco embellishment of seated 1.231b

492

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.231c

›1.231

C H I A N G M A I , W AT C H E T YO T : (a, b) Viharn Maha Pho from the south and detail of stucco embellishment (c. 1475); (c) chedi of King Tilokaraj (1487).

493

Buddhas in pilastered bays is the most extensive and refined to survive from Lanna’s golden age. In the compound are several funerary chedi, notably the Baganese exercise commissioned by the monastery’s patron, King Tilokaraj.1.231 After the Burmese interregnum, during which local patronage was insignificant, comprehensive reconstruction followed traditional lines – though in the 20th century durable concrete was often to be substituted for perishable timber to no aesthetic advantage. As elsewhere in the modern kingdom, the main rebuilding effort was concentrated on the monastic complex. In accord with the Thai norm, as at Lamphun, the main building types were the reliquary and the trabeated, pitched roofed hall – apart from the cellular residential quarters. Of massed brick and inherently stable in its conical form, the chedi usually survived time and the Burmese but was often recased to an enlarged scale. The stepped pyramidal form inherited from the Mons was retained for several works at Lamphun, Chiang Mai and Chiang Saen. On the other hand, the principal chedi of Wat Phra That Haripunchai in Lamphun, Wat Phra That Lampang Luang and Wat Phra Keo Don Tao in Lampang are prominent early witnesses to the influence of Sukhothai: the indented octagonal base is characteristic of Lanna, higher than in the south, but the superstructure is campanulate in the Sri Lankan manner transmitted via the central Thai kingdom. In sharp contrast, the mondop to the south of the Chedi Phra Boroma of Lampang marks the much more recent Burmese intervention. The campaniform chedi remained dominant in Chiang Mai despite a tendency – marked in the maturity of Sukhothai – to extend the graded projections of the tiered base into the zone of the anda. In the 19th century, when Burmese cultural influence was sustained in relative peace

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.232a

and prosperity, the anda tended to be diminished below an attenuated,spire-like chattravali and the enlarged base was extensively splayed through an elegant concave curve in the manner of Prome and Rangoon.1.232 Entered from the east opposite the main icon,the viharn usually establishes the principal east–west axis of the complex which culminates in the chedi. Of the trabeated open hall type, the grandest viharns are roofed in flared tiers rising in three telescoped stages from the portico at each end to the centre: below the eaves, the outer colonnade or wall is characteristically much lower than in central Thailand but the clerestorey zone between each roof tier is greater. The Wihan Luang in the Lampang compound, dating from 1476, claims to be the oldest example of the kind in Thailand: it shelters the most spectacular surviving example of the indigenous altar shrine type, derived from the prang, known as ku.1.232b The ubosot is usually parallel to the viharn to its south: 1.232b

494

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

› 1 . 2 3 2 H A R I P U N C H A I : (a–d) Lampang Luang, Wat Phra That chedi (definitive form, 45 metres high, achieved in 1496), Wihan Luang, exterior and interior with ku, Wihan Nam Tam interior and exterior; (e–h) Lamphun, Wat Phra That Haripunchai (a royal foundation possibly of the 9th century, chedi built to the order of King Tilokaraj in 1448, all the other main elements variously rebuilt), plan with (1) ho trai, (2) Viharn Luang, (3) Wiharn Phra Put, (4) Viharn Chao Lawo, general view of chedi with Viharn Phra Put, Suwanna chedi (1418), ho trai, stupa, Suwana chedi and library; (i) Wat Phra Kaeo Don Tao, (reputedly founded c. 1300 by the first Mon king of Haripunchai, Mangrai, raised to national significance as the shrine of the Phra Kaeo Morokot, the royal palladium ‘Emerald Buddha’, from 1436–68), chedi (c. 1400, restored) and Burmese mondop (1909).

1.232c

1.232d

495

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

4

2

1 3

1.232e @ approximately 1:2000

1.232g

1.232f

496

1.232h

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

unlike the latter, it is invariably walled. Raised on a tall podium or piles to protect its precious contents from damp and pests, the library (ho trai) is a miniature variant of the ubosot type. Like many later viharns, the typical ubosot and ho trai have axial stairs with naga-makara balustrade. In all three types the triangular tympana of the steeply pitched roofs may be divided tectonically but usually have intricately carved valences whose fretwork tendrils issue in at least one florid pendant and the arrangement is

1.232i

497

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.233b

1.233a

498

1.233c

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.233d

› 1 . 2 3 3 C H I A N G M A I : (a, b) Wat Chiang Man (the city’s oldest, reputedly founded by Mangrai in 1297), ubosot and hybrid chedi with Lanna-style anda and tiered medhi zones on an elephant base derived from Sri Lanka via Sukhothai (15th century, restored 19th century), interior of northern viharn with ku enshrining two venerable icons (of which the most important is a 10th-century gilded stone relief of the standing Buddha reputedly from Bihar); (c–e) Phra Singh (founded 1345) chedi with three diminishing medhi and campaniform anda on an elephant base (centre, 1345, rebuilt c. 1800), ubosot (right, unusually inserted between viharn and chedi), Viharn Lai Kham (left, 1345 renovated c. 1800), naga portal to ubosot, interior of viharn; (f ) Phra Boromath Doi Suthep (founded 1371), chedi with diminutive anda on stepped-pyramid of polygonal medhis over an indented base, all gilded (definitive form c. 1500), viharn; (g, h) Phan Tao, viharn (converted from the palace pavilion Chao Mahotra Prathet of King Chao Mahawong, 1846–54), from the south and detail of gable. The Lai Kham Viharn of Wat Phra Singh may be considered archetypical of the Lanna style with its flaired,

499

1.233e

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.233f

1.233h

1.233g

echoed over the half bays to either side. The framing bargeboards, usually in the form of nagas, terminate in highly stylized finials where they meet at the ridge: the Lanna imagination resorts to a fantastic bestiary here but most usual is an abstraction from the Garuda. Except for the finial, the monastic assembly hall is indistinguishable from the royal audience hall. In at least one celebrated case, indeed, a palace hall was moved to a monastery for reuse as a viharn: this is the Chao Mahotra Prathet of the mid-19th-century Chiang Mai ruler Chao Mahawong in the Wat Phan Tao. This, however, is more typical of central Thailand than Lanna in the elevation of its panelled walls. From myriad possible examples, Chiang Mai’s premier surviving representatives of the specifically Lanna hall type, rebuilt or restored in the early 19th century and again from the 1920s, may be found in the Wats Chiang Man, Phra Singh and Phra Boromath Doi Suthep, which also admirably represent the range of variations in chedi design.1.233 500

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

low-slung triple-tiered roof and exceptionally fine geometric panelling in the gable. The Wat Phan Tao viharn is atypical in its high, panelled walls and high, steeply pitched roofs and is celebrated for the lavish representation of a peacock in its entrance front gable. PostBurmese Chiang Mai is noted for the intricate but florid gilt and inlaid fretwork of the gables, like those of the viharns of Wat Phra Boromath Doi Suthep.

1.234a

501

1.234b

LUA N G P R A B A N G Across the Mekong from Lanna, the kingdom of Luang Prabang was one of four realms established early in the 18th century and sustained under French protection until extinguished by communist insurgents in the 1970s. Before the division, the realm of the Lan Xang (1353–1707) had been centred on Vientaine for 150 years and Luang Prabang – then called Xieng Thong – was neglected. Before that, as the dynastic seat for two centuries it saw the monumental legacy of the Khmer – who had ruled various parts of the area now known as Laos from the era of Zhenla – eclipsed by the elevation of the vernacular tradition of the timber trabeated hall under the influence of Lanna. As in Lanna, inevitably, little survives from before the 19th century when brick supplemented and even supplanted timber as the primary building material but the ancient foundations have been constantly augmented despite official atheism and the destruction of the monarchy.1.234

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

›1.234

LUANG

PRABANG,

MONA STIC

AND

C O M M E M O R AT I V E B U I L D I N G S : (a, b) Haw Pra-

bang (2000) in the grounds of the Royal Palace Museum, exterior and throne for the Standing Buddha; (c) Wat Wisunalat (1503, destroyed 1883, reconstructed from 1898), That Pathum (Mak Mo, the ‘watermelon stupa’); (d) Wat Pa Huak, sim (18th century); (e–h) Wat Xieng Thong (1561, enlarged in modern times), sim exterior and interior detail, shrine of the reclining Buddha, general view with stupas and sim and interior (1560); (i–l) Wat Mai Suwannaphumaham (reputedly founded in 1796, inaugurated 1821), sim with unique lateral entrance portico, detail of gilded portico reliefs, interior and icon detail; (m, n) Wat Phra Mahathat, sim exterior and porch detail (early 20th century); (o) That Luang, royal funerary stupas (19th and 20th centuries); (p) That Chomsi (1804, restored 1914) on Phu Si.

1.234c

The temples of Luang Prabang are usually dominated by a rectangular, aisled assembly hall (sim = viharn) enshrining the major icons and dedicated to both ordination and general assembly unlike their Thai counterparts: the principal axis culminates in a reliquary stupa and there will be many subsidiary reliquaries, chapels and libraries but a separate ubosot is rare. Carried on brick piers with lotiform capitals in place of the original timber posts, the earliest surviving sims are distinguished from their southern contemporaries in particular by the low-slung breadth of their splayed, concave, tiered, tiled roofs, tiered in response to the internal division of space and rising in three telescoped stages from end to centre – as in Lanna. As at Chiang Mai, decoration is primarily in carved and gilded wood but the brick-built tradition admits of considerable detail in stucco too. Eave brackets and bargeboards usually undulate as nagas, the tympana are relieved with tectonic panels or entwined vines over peaked 1.234d

502

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.234e

1.234f

1.234h

503

1.234g

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.234i

1.234j

1.234k

1.234l

504

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.234n

1.234m

valances. One feature not usually found in northern Thailand is the motif modelled on Meru rising from the centre of the roof ridge. Also characteristically Lao is the framing of openings in masonry walls with representations of reliquaries in substantial stucco (or even cement) and, in general, the revetment of walls in gilded low-relief stucco depicting Jataka or Ramayana narratives played out in a context of many varied building types. On the other hand, naturalistic motifs drawn from the local flora and fauna are often distributed somewhat whimsically over walls in deference to age-old animism. Though virtually all Luang Prabang’s viharns have been renovated or rebuilt in modern times, as at Chiang Mai, many of the stupas retain their original form. Representative examples of the viharns have been taken from Wats Wat Xieng Thong, Mai Suwannaphumaham, Phra Mahathut and That Luang.The Sri Lankan campaniform stupa is represented in the oldest foundations,such as That 1.234o

505

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

Pathum (Mak Mo, the ‘watermelon stupa’) of Wat Visun (1503, destroyed 1883, reconstructed from 1898) or Wat Xieng Thong (1561,enlarged in modern times),or Wat Mai (1796). Alternatively, in Luang Prabang as in the national shrine in Vientiane, a bulbous, baluster-shaped spire rises from a square tiered base – as in the royal cenotaphs in the compound of Wat That Luong, numerous less eminent examples and the most prominent one on the summit of the Phu Si hill.

PHNOM PENH The style of Ayutthaya, in its Bangkok permutation, asserted itself in Phnom Penh as the style of Angkor had once asserted itself in Ayutthaya. In their palace/temple compound on the west bank of the great river, the Norodoms built in a style clearly related to that of the Chakris, if not to the same scale, and the elements correspond, if not in their prolixity. The Ayutthayan style of palace hall and mondop was a wooden one and so too was the style of Phnom Penh – until concrete was introduced pragmatically, for security. Wood had always been the material of palaces, anyway, and stone was not readily available in the alluvial plain of the lower Mekong. Well before the departure of the monarchy from Angkor, however, stone had given way generally to wood: there had been no resource – or taste – for grandiose monumental masonry after the gloriously ruinous reign of Jayavarman vii. Little of significance in any medium survives there from the two lame centuries that supervened before the final catastrophe. But at Phnom Penh in the embellishment of triangular tympanum and naga-bargeboard, column capital, finial and spire, the motifs translated into stone by the masons of Angkor reappear in their proper medium.1.235 As in a Bangkok wat, the centre of both the palace and 506

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

1.234p

› 1 . 2 3 5 P H N O M P E N H : (a) Royal Palace, throne hall (founded 1865, rebuilt from 1907); (b) Wat Peah Keo (built from 1902), general view. The original palace, from which the new capital developed, was built in the traditional timber trabeated manner: King Sisovath (1904–27) rebuilt the venerable forms with masonry – and concrete.

1.235a

the adjacent temple is taken by the great hall: their roofs, like those of the sala by the palace gate and the palatial National Museum, telescope into one another as they ascend from the sides to the high central crossing; there the verticals, enhanced by the tympanum of transept or portico, are resolved in the elegant royal crowning motif of the mongkut. In the temple compound, the oldest of imported Indian monumental forms, the stupa, rises predominant from the plethora of monastic facilities in Phnom Penh as in Bangkok – to commemorate royal cremation in the one as in the other – and it takes its place beside the even older form of the mandapa sheltering the image of the deity and the person of the king in similar style – as it always had in India. 1.234b

507

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »BUDDHIST AND BRAHMANICAL

P A R T 2 H E AV E N ’ S E M PI R E S

2 . 1 C H I N A A N D I TS O R B I T

2.1

510

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

1 the generation of conservative traditions From the Pamirs to the estuary of the Yangtse in the China Sea,China’s maximum width is 4400 kilometres,and from the headwaters of the Hielongjiang in the north to the central reaches of the Mekong (Lancangjiang) at the border of Laos in the south is some 4100 kilometres: more than 9.6 million square kilometres, of which only oneeighth is arable. There are vast steppes and deserts, lush jungles, broad loess plateaux once heavily forested and the ‘ten thousand rivers and one thousand mountains’ of poetic legend. Of the mountains, those in the west are the highest in the world but the extraordinary topography of many of those forming the backdrop to the central and southern heartlands of dense habitation has traditionally been the main inspiration of the native landscape painter and gardener. Of the riverine systems, two fed from the Tibetan ‘roof of the world’ are among the world’s greatest, the Huanghe (Hwangho or Yellow River), which waters the great plains of the north, and the Yangtsekiang (Changjiang, Blue River), which waters the centralsouthern fifth of the country. There are numerous ethnic groups with very different vernacular traditions responding to very different climatic and geological conditions: in the dry west, the hottest place on earth in high summer, there was only mud or rammed earth or, ultimately, brick for building; in the east from north to south-east, ranging from bitterly cold in mid-winter to hot and humid all-year round and subject to plentiful rainfall in season, there was timber or bamboo; in the alluvial centre both mud for bricks and timber.Thus China’s traditional building ranges from the mural in the west to the trabeated in the east and to the combination of the two in the alluvial centre. The synthesis prevailed: the Han progenitors of the overwhelming majority of 511

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

Chinese moved south from the banks of the Huanghe to › 2 . 1 Q I N G M I N G F E S T I V A L O N T H E R I V E R , detail with gate of the Northern Song capital, Kaifeng the great Yangtse and beyond, creating Chinese civiliza(Dongjing; c. 1300; Beijing, Palace Museum). tion and its predominantly trabeated architectural tradition within the walled compounds of their houses, their palaces and their empires.2.1

2.2a

O P E N I N G H I S TO RY China’s recorded history goes back to the mid-2nd millennium bce. However, one of the seminal civilizations of the world was evolving on the banks of the Huanghe, Yangtse and Zhuhe well before that time. Its Neolithic progenitors (6000–2000), identified as Yangshao after their painted pottery, developed in agricultural communities growing millet on loess terraces in the Huanghe and Wei valleys before the 6th millennium was out. By then, too, rice cultivation had been invented in the central Yangtse valley. Pigs and dogs were already domesticated in both areas and sheep, goats and oxen were shortly to 512

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

›2.2

T H E C R A D L E O F C H I N E S E C I V I L I Z AT I O N

A N D T H E E A R LY H O U S E : (a) the loess terrain; (b)

the primitive post-and-beam structure of the dry northwest; (c) reconstruction of semi-subterranean Banpo house with inclined ramp access and circular hearth (after Liu Xujie in N. Steinhardt (ed.), Chinese Architecture, hereafter referred to as CA); (d) primitive southern riverine village on stilts. The earliest houses so far recovered from the 4th millennium BCE settlement at Banpo (near Xi’an), were circular and probably derived from the tent – though built of wattle and daub over pits. Later ones at the same site were rectangular, south-facing and built on a timber frame.

follow. Its peoples, organized in clans, emerged from the caves or subterranean retreats of their ancestors to live at least partially above ground in timber-framed huts with walls of rammed loess: by 5000 – at Hemudu in Zhejiang – binding had ceded to mortice and tenon at the junction of post and beam. The Longshan culture, which knew the wheel at least for the black pottery after which it is named, developed from the Yangshao c. 3000 in the east – from the north to the south-centre. The timber-framed houses, entirely above rammed-earth footings in the north and even on stilts in the river valleys of the south, were still varied in shape – at Banpo, Shaanxi, from c. 3000, for instance.2.2 In the Yangtse valley the largest rectangular ones were partitioned for the accommodation of the extended family within the clan and – at Shijiahe, Hubei, for instance – ranged symmetrically in rectangular, well-drained compounds. Orientated north–south and walled with impacted mud, the compound extended to the primitive town. The timber frame, the rammed-earth base, the axial organization and the defensive wall are the basic terms of the Han tradition which was to dominate the history of Chinese architecture: the evidence for their Neolithic origin is archaeological; considerably later graphic verification is etched or moulded on the astonishingly accomplished bronze vessels of China’s first historical dynasty. The clan-dominated Neolithic fades into China’s semilegendary era of the Xia, which is supposed to have flourished between c. 2000 and 1600 in the east-central Yellow River valley. The regime is shadowy but under it the clan seems to have ceded to the state based on effective water control and the expansion of agriculture. From the shadows, the Shang emerged to the north of the Yangtse in the 16th century bce: they absorbed the Xia heartland and

2.2b

2.2c

2.2d

513

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

extended west, north and south. The rulers hardly yet constituted an imperial dynasty holding sway over the territory now thought of as China, but they exercised authority strong enough to organize labour for irrigation and the expansion of agriculture on a great scale. The authority of the Shang rulers was essentially sacerdotal: they arrogated to themselves the sole right to perform the sacrificial rituals with which the ancestral spirits were gratified and their oracles were broadcast far and wide with the invention of writing in standardized characters. In political practice, however, their regime was feudal: their sanctity underlay their claim to suzerainty over many princes who – clan chiefs no longer – held their principalities on fief in return for the provision of tribute and troops. Walled towns, centred on the granaries in which the tribute was stored, were the bases of diversified power. Thus, though agricultural, Shang society was town-based and the idea of the walled enclosure – both protective and › 2 . 3 S H A N G B U I L D I N G : (a) Anyang, reconstruction of Shang palace hall; (b) bronze vessel with stylprestigious – was to dominate in Chinese architectural ized trabeation, including projecting beams, history. Equally significantly, early literature describes culminating in a complete building with deeply overdetached palaces in park or countryside where the ruler hanging eaves. could escape the cares of state. The sites of Xia centres are elusive but – doubtless indebted to them – the Shang built rectangular urban seats on a north–south axis dominated by palatial buildings at several sites in Henan. They rammed earth for the perimeter walls and the podiums of the palaces. They made extensive use of brick in walling the superstructure but the main support system for the heavily tiled pitched

2.3a

514

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.3b

roof was a timber frame: the earliest remains of such a palace hall have been recovered from the site of the Shang capital at Yin (modern Anyang).2.3a Evidence that the load was spread by a putative mortice and tenon bracket system, with interlocking rectangular block (dou) and curved arm (gong), is provided by engraving on bronze.2.3b The Shang were masters of bronze casting for tools, weapons, armour and ritual vessels, many of which were interred with sustenance in tombs. Equipped with chariots, horses, dogs and armies of sacrificed human retainers, the royal tombs were associated with the reproduction of ramped palace platforms and were clearly designed for eternity. Belief in the eternal existence of the soul prompted ancestor worship to protect authority in its hierarchical gradations from the father of the state to the father of the nuclear family – and to ensure generation. There was also a primitive animism devoted to the spirits of mountains, rivers and other natural phenomena which were ultimately subsumed into the divine force of nature on whose sufferance man was constrained – hence sacrifice and the recording of oracles. The belief that all creation, even the apparently inanimate, is a living organism – that man and nature are integral – is ageless in Chinese culture: as man and nature are integral, his welfare depends on attunement to the one great force which animates that organism,in particular the comprehension of the complementary principles of the yin and yang on which equilibrium depends. Man must therefore seek the course of its currents and plug into the points of its issue at their fullest intensity. The detection of those currents, the designation of those points, the devising of the means to manipulate the sites of man’s exposure to them to maximize the flow of the vital force is the art of feng shui (‘wind and water’). 515

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

›2.4

I M P E R I A L S Y M B O L S : (a) jade ritual disc (Eastern Han, 2nd century CE); (b, c) details of emperor’s robes (Qing, 18th century). The form of the dragon is abstracted for a character in the earliest surviving proto-Chinese inscriptions and the motif itself evolved across the Shang period – often in pairs flanking the characteristic zoomorphic mask – and approximated definitive form in the Zhou era. The origin of the five-peaked motif is lost in the mists of time: it recurs in 8th-century Tang funerary ceramics and it is not hard to see it in one of the earliest surviving landscapes, also Tang.2.25

2.4a

Ageless too is the symbolic representation of the vital force as the major motif of supreme authority on earth, whose conduct must undeviatingly be aligned with the cosmic order: the dragon represented as conducting the vital current (yang) over the cosmic ocean (yin), usually in positive and negative pairs revolving about a sphere representing the cosmic order. Symbolism begets symbolism: as the dragon symbolizes the conduct of the vital force, its undulating body may be seen in the mountain range, its scales in the waves of the sea, its innate vital essence in the river. And that essence, which motivates the cycle of the seasons, gives the dragon the green of new life on its emergence, the yellow of lightning at the peak of its potency and ochre red on its re-entry into earth.Yellow is the colour of the emperor, sovereign over land and sea, conductor of the vital essence from the heavens to his celestial kingdom on earth.2.4 516

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

The axis mundi, the cosmic pivot, is represented as a mountain peak – Meru’s equivalent – rising from four lesser peaks. These, of course, are the five cardinals of space: the centre of the terrestrial square (yin) and the sentinels at its corners below the circular (yang) canopy of heaven. The ruler, sent from the latter to the former via the central peak, is the equivalent in the affairs of men of the axis mundi which is invariably depicted behind his throne. But this display anticipates empire and in the full Chinese sense that was far from having been achieved by the Shang.

ZHOU As usual in feudalism, the Shang regime was undermined by rivalry among its feudatories. It was supplanted by the Zhou dynasty, propelled from the west by better cavalry. They established their capital near modern Xi’an and ruled most of the north from the mid-11th to the beginning of the 8th centuries bce. They penetrated west into Gansu and north into Mongolia in an attempt to repel the nomadic mauraders who were to present a threat to the stability of east-central Asia and beyond for millennia. Exhausted from constant conflict, they abandoned their western provinces c. 770 but staggered on in the east until c. 476. The three centuries of the Eastern Zhou have acquired the poetic name of ‘Spring and Autumn Period’. Thereafter, the ‘Period of the Warring States’ lasted for some two and a half centuries. The Western Zhou sustained Shang beliefs, but established the law of primogeniture to stabilize the succession and to bind it to ancestor worship. Shang practices were sustained too, including flood control and water conservation, and water-borne transport was developed. Agriculture expanded in consequence, especially after the introduction of iron led to the mass production of efficient

2.4b

2.4c

517

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

tools. With the development of manufacturing and trade › 2 . 5 T H E Z H O U I D E A L : (a) ‘Wangcheng’ (illustration to a Qing recension of the ‘Record of Trades’ in the in the produce from a flourishing countryside, the cities Rituals of Zhou); (b) the tomb of Zhongshan (bronze grew in importance and a monetary economy emerged. plate engraved with the plan of a cinquipartite plan, But with the expansion of agriculture went an extension dated to the late-4th century BCE). Within a complex based on the supremely auspiof the fief system and the inevitable weakening of central cious number nine, the emperor’s palace is central, as control was, of course, the condition for the failure of resis- the sun of heaven is central to creation. The description tance to the encroachment of the nomads. Forced to aban- is presented in terms of the work of the master craftsman in the ‘Record’: this may have been an interpoladon their capital, Xi’an, the Zhou moved east to Luoyang. tion in the Rituals but is not usually considered to be If not Luoyang, the ideal royal seat, ‘Wangcheng,’ was remote from the original composition of the late-Eastthe subject of a treatise (Kao gong ji) incorporated in its ern Zhou period. Archaeology has found no confirmation that the formula was followed in precise practice: original form in the Rituals of Zhou (Zhou li):it was a walled the ideal is most nearly approximated in the Zhou founsquare with three gates to each side linked by triads of dations at Qufu, the capital of Lu where Confucius was avenues forming a grid. The imperial audience hall was to born, but there were eleven gates. Archaeology has substantiated the Zhou ideal of the the fore (i.e. south), backed by residential pavilions (to its three-court palace, the outer one separated from the north) but, as imperial power was by nature centralized, inner by the main hall: the most significant site is at later interpreters have placed the palace in the centre.The Fengchu, Qishan, though the recovered complex there may be a temple. Excavation has also revealed that Temple of the Ancestors was to its east; the Altar of Earth there was usually a verandah to all sides of a palatial to its west; the market to its north.2.5a hall, trabeated internal structure and timber-framed walls with mud-brick infill supporting tiled roofs. The tomb of Zhongshan was evidently planned as a complex of five palatial buildings, aligned east–west, for the ruler (centre) and his named wives and concubines: there is evidence that the structures were executed but the pit of the ruler is accompanied by that of only one royal lady. Elsewhere Zhou tombs vary: pits lined with wood and buried under tumuli were not uncommon; approach ramps were the right of feudal lords.

2.5b

2.5a

518

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

Feudal lords began to mark their graves with mounds approached by ramps, but the ideal tomb – realized by the greatest of Zhou rulers – was still distinguished by a reproduction of the deceased’s palaces. Material possessions were interred with the dead ruler but the Zhou substituted ceramic figures for the humans sacrificed by the Shang.2.5b

CO N F U C I A N I S M A N D DAO I S M Nearly two centuries of ‘Spring and Autumn’ turmoil naturally produced diversity, in particular of custom, economy, measurement, money, script and schools of thought. The most important of the last in shaping Chinese civilization ever after were the complementary philosophies of Confucianism and Daoism. Their teachers, Kong Fuzi (whose name was Latinized by the Jesuits as Confucius) and Laozi (if, in fact, he existed), were born in the last century of the Zhou era, when the political situation was already confused. Striving to cope with the confusion and to restore order, Confucius recalled a golden age of orthodox authority. The Daoists, on the other hand, sought escape from society in a mystical union with nature.2.6a,b Confucianism Governed by propriety in the Confucian golden age, the individual’s place in society was recognized as one of subordination to authority – servant to master, woman to man, all to the head of the family and beyond to the head of the state whose legitimacy was sustained by virtue of morality (de) and its inspiration, not observance of ritual or resort to coercion. The supreme authority was the will of heaven (Tian-dao) manifest on earth through primogeniture – but in moral force rather than mere genetics – in the Son of Heaven, the king. The supreme virtue, exemplifed by the worthy ruler for society as a whole, was humanity (ren, which goes beyond love and kindness to propriety via respect, filial piety, reliability and loyalty). The king held the mandate of heaven, to cultivate morality and material prosperity, in perpetual harmony with the Tian-dao: out of harmony, he lost the

519

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

mandate as any man out of tune with nature failed in his purpose. Hence, in the aura of benign authoritarianism, the importance of feng shui, harmonization with nature. Central to the Confucian ideal were the elevation of society through virtue and its regulation through ritual (li). Virtue, conferred by heaven, and ritual, derived from the ancients, effected government by ethical example and were cultivated by ‘the gentleman’ (junzi) in his commitment to morality – not to gain access to heaven but for their own sake on earth. The gentleman, thus, was defined not only by his qualities – benevolence and responsibility, righteousness and respectfulness – but also by the courage and erudition cultivated in sport and study. If the golden age set the example, education was the means for its emulation, and examination was the ordeal to be undergone by those fit to serve the ruler, the servant of virtue endowed with the mandate of heaven to regulate the lives of men. The followers of Confucius, then, were conservative, authoritarian and rational: veneration for precedent, excellence and hierarchy perfectly recommended their way as the orthodoxy of bureaucratic imperialism. Committed to the power of learning in the formation of ren, Confucius claimed only the transmission of the lessons of history – particularly the decline of the Zhou from their original moral superiority – and left no scripture: his disciples compiled a compendium of his ‘Discussions and Sayings’ (Lunyu = Analects) shortly after his death. The Analects include apocrypha and little reasoning. The first Confucian philosopher to leave an ordered corpus of thought on human nature – as inherently partaking of heaven-sent goodness but in need of moral exemplars – and humane government – as necessarily promoting physical well-being for itself and to condition moral cultivation – was the 4th-century Mengzi (‘Master Meng’ = Mencius) whose legacy was ultimately accepted as Confucian orthodoxy. Neither Mencius nor Confucius purported to establish a religion. However, Mencius’s definition of ultimate self-knowledge as cognizance of heaven-sent goodness issuing in the realization of the cosmic force for good, takes on a religious dimension in promoting the ideal equation of microcosm and macrocosm. Those who achieve the equation are sages whose example inspires the full realization of their natures by their devotees, furthering the ideal of assimilating heaven and earth.

520

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.6a

›2.6

T H E W A Y S O F C O N F U C I U S A N D L A O Z I : (a)

the master teaching (Ming painting; Qufu Cultural Relics Administration); (b) the Daoist immortal Li Tiekuai sleeping (Qing painting; Tianjin Museum of Art); (c, d) Confucian hierarchical order and the Imperial City, wilderness and the country retreat of the Daoist (Ming scroll paintings; Beijing, Palace Museum). Devoted to the study of history and ancient ritual, Confucius (c. 550–479 BCE) started a school of government (personal and political) when he was 22 years

old. For thirty years he continued to study and teach in private, attracting many disciples until he was called to public service where he rose to high office, reputedly banishing crime and strengthening the ruler at the expense of his feudatories. Undermined by foreign agents, he went into self-imposed exile and wandered from state to state looking for a prince who would accept his guidance for the right ordering of his kingdom. He returned home disappointed when he was 69 years old and declined office to perfect his teaching which was based largely on history and the rituals at the base of order in antiquity. Laozi was reputedly born in 604 BCE and to have sustained himself through some two centuries through his mystical accord with nature. The ideal and the way to it were conveyed in the Daodejing, traditionally attributed to Laozi.

2.6b

Daoism Like Confucius and his disciples, Laozi and his followers aspired to the ideal of rapport between heaven and earth and sought it in the perfection of humanity. However, to the latter the failure of institutional enlightenment in the late-Zhou era was due not to the ignorance of history’s lessons in propriety but to loss of harmony between the realms of man and nature. Indeed, to them the problem was not the abrogation of the rules of society but society itself: man was a social animal against his nature. Anti-rational and anti-authoritarian, the followers of Laozi were obsessed with the concept of the dao – the ‘way’ of life as of nature whose force (de) – essential rather than moral in the Confucian sense – is generated by the interaction of the polar opposites, yang and yin (male and female, active and passive, changing and constant, ineffable and phenomenal, or the spiritual and physical constituents of man, etc., none of which is exclusively Daoist). It is inapprehensible as the ultimate principle of the cosmos, but the individual could comprehend harmony with it through physical and emotional suppleness. That could be developed only through withdrawal from society and its evils to inactivity in nature’s

521

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

realm. Thus, in contrast to the public service required of the Confucian gentleman, Daoism promoted a self-centred passivity (wuwei). That meant refraining from the wilful deflection of the natural course of events, rather than doing nothing: intuitive response was admissible, not the deliberate attempt to manipulate what we can apprehend only in minor part. As for man so for the state – which should be small in extent, large in self-restraint, the province of sages attuned to the natural order and motivated by spontaneous response to it. In accord with the universal principle of the dao – and the Yijing (the ‘Classic for Change’), first among the texts prescribed by Confucius for the edification of the junzi – in practice the ideal life combined both yang and yin, that is a career of public service during one’s prime and relaxation in one’s informal town-house garden out of hours – and passive retirement to a country villa for the cultivation of harmony with the dao in old age. Offensive to Daoist harmony, coercion was foreign to both as the craving which prompted it was the source of suffering: enlightenment was not the Buddha’s alone in the East’s early quest for a solution to the problems of society. The transformation of an ideal for living in harmony with nature into a religion was contrary to the spirit of Daoism but the process was furthered when Laozi was canonized by the Tang emperor Gaaozong (650–84) a millennium and more after his supposed demise. Those who achieved the ideal harmony with nature passed on to the realm of the immortals whose cause was harmony between heaven and earth. Of the eight principal immortals, Li Tiekuai lost his body when on prolonged sojurn with Laozi in spirit and found only a sleeping beggar to inhabit instead: the allegory could hardly be more transparent. Neither Confucius nor Laozi offered consolation to the soul facing the uncertainty of death. Indeed, Confucius spoke of ‘heaven’, not ‘god’, and declined to speak of death in man’s imperfect knowledge of life or of the world of spirits while that of man needed attention. However, he did condone ancestor worship, though it followed from a belief in the continued existence of the soul after physical death and the distinction between good and evil spirits – those honoured or neglected by their descendants – who could intervene positively or negatively in the lives of men.

522

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.6c

2.6d

TO W N A N D CO U N T RY PL ANNING The ideals of Confucius and Laozi are reflected in the traditional Chinese approach to town and country planning respectively. The earliest recorded Chinese garden, Lingtai, was laid out by the Zhou about the time of Laozi, but the earliest images of houses related organically to nature – in poetry and painting – are much later. As we have seen, the earliest record of Chinese town planning is also Zhou: the description of Wangchang. Contrary to the centralized nature of the square, however, feng shui dictated a southerly aspect to houses, 523

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

palaces, temples and, therefore, to the town. Feng shui, the prescription for rapport with nature, took on the mystical dimension of geomancy as natural phenomena and human behaviour – cosmic force and the imperial performance above all – were seen as interlinked. Worship of the spirits of natural phenomena naturally led to belief in the auspiciousness of topography and to the evolution of complex formulae for its divination, especially when concordances were discovered between the form of physical features and the configuration of the stars which governed the affairs of men. Nevertheless, feng shui is essentially practical: in China the north is the source of evil in the form of both rough weather and even rougher invaders, so the ideal site for town and building was south-sloping, exposed to the sun and drained to a protective river at its base, with an arc of hills to the north. Hence the axiality of Chinese planning.Hence,too,the invariable wall: around house,palace, temple, town, China. Laozi inspired resignation to the incomprehensible irrationality of nature, but Confucius promoted harmonization with the order of nature. In harmony with this order, everyone in Confucian society recognized his place as one of subordination to the continuously ascending line of authority culminating in the emperor, the instrument of heaven’s will whose residence dominated the central axis of power. And in accord with the linear hierarchy of state, as with feng shui, the principal elements of town, temple, palace and house naturally would be aligned on a south–north axis in ascending order of importance – as in the image of the imperial palace which incorporated the portrait of Confucius.2.6c That postdates the sage by two thousand years, but the principle is represented by the Shang character for ‘palace’ ( ), if not quite so clearly by the remains of the south-facing palace halls in their seats near Luoyang, Zhengzhou and Anyang. The south524

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

facing palace in Luoyang, which Confucius visited in his peregrinations, evidently consisted of several pavilions ranged in order of importance – though the excavators of the site, which was occupied for more than five hundred years, have not revealed a city quite as regular as the Kao gong ji ideal.

2.7a

THE QIN AND THE HAN The Warring States had succumbed to the Qin (from whom the name China is derived) by 246 bce: exposed on the north-west frontier to the pressure of nomadic tribes, the victors had been hardened in the constant conflict and doubtless owed their devastating cavalry to superior horses won from the enemy.2.7 Ruthless in his determination to eliminate all opposition and to assert his authority, the king of Qin abolished the Zhou feudal order and the states that had emerged from it,defined thirty-six provinces governed by his delegates and in 221 proclaimed himself the first emperor of China as Qin Shi Huangdi. Qin’s state was founded on the idea that order depends on law rather than on moral responsibility.The state’s code 525

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.7b

of law was draconian and standardized throughout the › 2 . 7 T H E N O M A D I C E N E M Y A N D T H E H O R S E : (a) bronze figure of a flying horse from Gansu (Eastern empire, and any work promoting the idea that order might Han dynasty); (b) encampment of a tribal chief of the derive from morality, custom – widely varied in the Han confederation known as Xiong-nü (scroll painting; domains constituting the empire – or any source other Boston, Museum of Fine Arts). than the law was burned. As further instruments of unifi› 2 . 8 T H E G R E AT W A L L , N E A R B A D A L I N G : the cation, coinage and measurements were standardized and earth core has been exposed by dilapidation of later a single script imposed on the many languages spoken in revetment. Following the example set by the Zhou, most of the the conquered lands. A network of roads and canals was warring states built sections of wall against the also consolidated. Not least as a symbol, defining the bor- nomads – and against one another. Qin’s amalgamders of the empire at their most vulnerable, Qin built the ation produced a wall c. 10,000 li in length – which gave it its traditional name, Wanli changcheng (The EverlastGreat Wall – or rather consolidated and extended existing ing Great Wall). Built largely of rammed earth with 2.8 ramparts of impacted earth for c. 5000 kilometres. stone revetment on high ground for maximum surveilQin’s capital, Xianyang on the north bank of the Wei to lance, reinforced with towers, the wall reached most of its definitive length under the Han in the last two the north-west of modern Xi’an, reputedly contained a centuries BCE. By then it was patrolled by troops palace for each of the states bound to the empire. Three stationed in border garrison towns accommodating the complexes, including the emperor’s ceremonial quarters, district administration, or forts which usually guarded gates as checkpoints. have been excavated in an inner enclosure to the north of the north–south axis of a rectangular city. However, the first emperor began a new palace city to the south of the old one, avowedly adopting the centralized ideal of Zhou Wangcheng for it as a badge of imperium – and the point was certainly not lost on most of his successors. Little 526

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.7c

527

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

more remains than the great rectangular palace platform › 2 . 9 Q I N L I N G ( Q I N ’ S T O M B ) : (a) trenches with the terracotta army; (b) the imperial carriage. with its several granite column bases: that, however, is Although legendary for his cruelty, Qin retained the enough to demonstrate that the typical components of surrogates for sacrificial humans introduced by the Chinese building – the masonry platform, the timber Zhou – except for his wives and the workmen who knew the secrets of access to the burial chamber. As his army frame and, by implication, the canopy roof were already – especially his cavalry – had been his power base on staple. Qin also provided himself with one of the world’s earth, his tomb had to be vast enough to contain some 9000 life-size terracotta models of its personnel and most amazing tombs.2.9 their horses to sustain him for eternity in the palace – Hardly had Qin been interred in 210 when the weight of 1700 metres to the west of the three pits containing the its oppressiveness brought the regime down in peasant army and still 350 metres wide and 45 metres high after insurrection. By 206 power was in the hands of the Han at 2000 years. The palace itself was below a terraced pyramidal mound (350 metres square and 76 metres Chang’an (Everlasting Peace). The empire was rebuilt on high) south of centre on the north–south axis of a vast Qin’s foundations but, moderating his system, the Han walled compound (2165 by 940 metres to the outside). gave China its model imperial edifice. The centralized The subterranean structure seems to have been of wood: brick vaults were introduced to the tomb chammonarchy was consolidated, but it was not long before the bers of his Han successors.

2.9a

528

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

The emperor was peripatetic, of course: on his incessant tours of inspection he was accommodated in a caravan palace of great splendour, at some 700 stagepost palaces (‘travelling places’) and in the palaces of crushed kings at the regional capitals. The main northern palace complex at the imperial capital, containing the emperor’s ceremonial and private halls until it was superseded towards the end of the reign, had two perpendicular wings on two levels. According to a chronicle of Qin’s reign (Guanzhong ji) the new southern palace, linked to the northern one by a corridor bridge across the Wei, extended to the equivalent of 1350 metres east–west and 400 metres north–south and could accommodate 10,000 people: archaeology has largely substantiated the dimensions. The northern palace was much more modest: excavation has revealed remains of the east–west wing of the upper level extending to 60 metres and those of the north–south arm extending to 45 metres.

529

2.9b

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

fief system was revived for members of the imperial family. And it was the Han who determined that their power was to be exercised through a bureaucracy established on Confucian lines: indeed the great emperor Wudi (141–86 bce) decreed that the teachings of Confucius alone should be revered.Moral responsibility supplanted Qin’s ‘legalism’ as the basis of order. In complement, however, Wudi also retreated into Daoism which, by his day, had embraced the ancient shamanistic pursuit of immortality. Public works were sustained. Chang’an ultimately surpassed Xianyang in magnificence. Qin’s Great Wall was extended to nearly twice its length and its width was doubled in part, but effort was also concentrated on roads and waterways, flood control and irrigation, which were seen as beneficial by the vast mass of the people pressed into building them. The emperor Wudi strengthened the Great Wall and extended it to Jiayuguan to protect the western trade route from the virulent nomads, especially the Xiongnu. But Wudi looked beyond the defining line and the empire was extended into central Asia to control the route at the cost of involvement with the nomads. China was held to be largely self-sufficient but it sought jade, with its mystical powers of preservation, and the fast, strong horses of Ferghana.2.7 In return, the main export was silk, and trade in this Chinese speciality ultimately linked Chang’an with Rome – where the taste for silk was

›2.10

C H A N G ’ A N O F T H E W E S T E R N H A N : plan. Han Chang’an, modern Xi’an beside devastated Xianyang, had three gates in each of four walls, nine east–west arteries and eight parallel to the central north–south axis of power. This recalls the Zhou ideal but the reality was altogether different: only the east wall was straight; the northern and western ones followed the River Wei and existing palaces obviated axial development in the south except in the suburb where square ritual compounds were disposed symmetrically. Emperor Wudi added a complex, square in a circular moat, for the ritual associated with the regulation of time. As at Xianyang, the sanctuary for sacrifice to the ancestors was within the city walls but it was later moved to the imperial necropolis.

.

2.10 @ 1:10,000

virtually insatiable by the end of the reign of Augustus in 14 ce. Much other than silk flowed through Asia with trade, of course – above all ideas. And for the widespread dissemination of ideas and imperial edicts there was paper 2.11 @ 1:100,000 – a by-product of silk – whose manufacture was well devel› 2 . 1 1 L U O YA N G O F T H E E A S T E R N H A N (after oped by the end of the Han era. Wang Zhongshu): plan. Expansion of the empire and its infrastructure had its Han Luoyang was built with a canonical north–south cost: the winning of territory boosted military power; axis through rectangular northern and southern palace compounds within near-rectangular walls – deviations increased taxation impoverished the peasants whose land responded to auspicious siting between the Mang was lost to the vast estates of magnates; concessions to Mountains to the north and the Luo River to the south. secure the allegiance of the magnates sapped the power of Instead of the square ritual compounds to the south of Chang’an, there was a circular altar dedicated to the centre. Under increasing pressure from the nomads, heaven beyond the walls to the south and a square one excited by the route to the west, the Zhou precedent was to earth in the north. followed in the second quarter of the 1st century ce with Beyond the capital and provincial administrative centres, prosperity prompted the proliferation of the relocation of the capital from Chang’an to towns: though prosperity usually follows from security, high walls punctuated with towers were ubiquitous. Luoyang.2.10, 2.11 530

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.12a

›2.12

H A N B U R I A L S : (a) horse trampling barbarians (from the Tomb of the Han general Huo Qubing near Xi’an); (b) imperial jade suit (2600 plates with silver thread; Nanjing Museum); (c, d) Dahu-ting (near Zhengzhou), tomb of an official, Zhang Boyan. The earliest complete jade suit derives from the 2nd-century BCE tomb of the Han prince Liu Sheng but

records which are taken to refer to similar suits date from the period of the Warring States before the unification of China under Qin.

2.12b

531

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

HAN BURIAL The Western and Eastern emperors and empresses were all buried near their capitals in separate tombs below rectangular stepped pyramidal mounds – though the Western sites have yielded far more evidence than the devastated Eastern ones. There was no single plan formula: a Zhou precedent for this individuality is likely but has yet to be determined. Most Western Han tombs were associated with extensive funerary settlements including housing for relocated people as well as administrative facilities, palace buildings and sacrificial halls.2.12 From a date as yet to be determined, the approach road to the royal tomb complex was lined with symbolic animals. That the practice was current under the Western Han is demonstrated by the remains of the tomb accorded by the emperor, Wudi, near his own tomb, to the phenominal Huo Qubing who had decisively routed the Xiongnu before he died aged 24.2.12a Lesser mortals were accommodated in a variety of tombs ranging from pits to caves and subterranean pillared halls.

2.12c

2.12d

532

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

›2.13

EASTERN

HAN

POT TERY

FUNERARY

M O D E L S : (a) multi-storey building (from Fucheng,

Hebei); (b, c) courtyard house and fortified clan tower house (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art). The entrance to the courtyard house, guarded by a dog, is overlooked by a watchtower (left), the tallest structure in the complex. The accommodation block, with open-fronted kitchen attached, is at the head of the court (background). The eastern range (right) consisted of a latrine above a pigsty, and a two-storey granary (almost as high as the watchtower). Inscribed

2.13b

PA L AC E S A N D H O U S E S The southern development of Chang’an was deflected from the axis by the Changle palace built for the first Han emperor, Gaozu, on the ruins of one of Qin’s detached palaces. In 198 bce the emperor moved his ceremonial quarters to the Weiyang palace on the other side of the new city’s main north–south route. Emperor Wudi added palaces in the northern sector of the city and also commissioned detached palatial villas – often on Qin sites – for communion with spirits in Daoist sylvan retreat. The incorporation of two palaces at Luoyang is atypical: as the northern one was celebrated for its natural features and gardens, it presumably fulfilled the functions of a detached villa. Little survives of any of this – other than the enclosures and rectangular podiums of impacted earth – but there are literary descriptions, images in relief of palace halls and models of courtyard houses and towers backed by archaeological evidence. The literature is often concerned with scale but gardens are extolled for their wayward variety and, specifically, the contorted rocks which would be 2.13a

533

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

prized by Daoist nature worshippers throughout the history of Chinese landscaping. On the other hand, reproducing the forms of the palace in miniature, the models demonstrate that the principal concern of Chinese architecture is the formal organization of elements in a walled compound. Thus the main pavilion, sometimes multistoreyed like the watch towers (lou), is typically centred to the north of a court flanked by smaller pavilions east, west and south and framed by linking verandahs. Even at the popular level Confucian influence is apparent in the hierarchical ordering of domestic forms, and the microcosm of the house reproduces the macrocosm of the city.2.13 Vaulted tomb corridors and pictures of arched bridges make it clear that the Han were masters of the voussoir. However, the models and reliefs of habitable structure confirm the inference drawn from the Qin podiums that the timber frame did in fact support an assertive roof – high pitched and of tile – over crossed beams and struts (tailiang).The funerary relief also demonstrates that transition from the support to load was effected with a system of interlocking brackets.2.14 The principal distinguishing feature of Chinese trabeation, this system is called dougong after its two main elements:the rectangular block (dou) at the top of the column and the curved cross bar (gong) supporting the beam. This usually carries additional blocks (sheng) on which the beam rests.2.15 The dougong system and its context were to endure throughout the history of Chinese traditional building. Moreover, the precision of traditional joinery – the planing of parts to fit perfectly, without nails or glue, effecting flexibility – ensured the endurance of the individual product in face of earthquake or climate fluctuation, changed circumstance or wear – but, of course, not through fire or time or the malevolence of enemies. 534

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.13c

bricks from early Han tombs in Shandong give a clear picture of double-courtyard houses. The earliest Chinese calligraphy suggests that the courtyard plan was known as early as the Shang, and it is easily envisaged under the Zhou as responding to the Confucian precepts of the hierarchically ordered extended family, but there is no archaeological evidence predating the Han. Popular as status symbols, towers were built for additional accommodation attached to houses and as observation posts – freestanding or as part of a complex for military and purely aesthetic purposes: square in plan, they probably had no more than five storeys – decreasing in size with height, apron-roofed at the intermediate levels, pyramidal at the top. The models show that the typical Chinese trabeated structural system, incorporating brackets, was familiar to the Han.

›2.14

H A N PA L A C E H A L L W I T H W I N G S A N D

T O W E R S : Eastern Han funerary relief (New York, Met-

ropolitan Museum). A two-storey palatial hall is shown in several Han reliefs, the upper level for the lord, the lower for the servants. Note the brackets above the columns and the straight ridge of the hipped roof. Houses of any stature, as here, seem also to have had matching wings (called ‘xiang’ in contemporary records such as the Shi ji, written by the court historian of Emperor Wudi). These were linked to the short sides by bridge-like galleries. Beyond them were towers, either for defence or for emblazoning with the insignia of the lord – or both.

CO N C LU S I O N Though Chinese civilization is venerable and its architectural tradition one of the world’s longest living ones, few Chinese buildings are very old. Reliefs and the clay models interred with the dead record the domestic types of the Han, but their buildings are now lost.Though often based on stone and walled in brick, perishable timber was the main material – and the buildings have suffered no less than others with the fortunes of their patrons. Age was not in itself venerated and buildings were readily destroyed or rebuilt on a grander scale as the regime’s favour fluctuated. If not the material substance of buildings, however, the form of Chinese architecture descends intact – or without fundamental change – from time immemorial. The conservative order of the Confucian tradition, materialized largely by anonymous builders in accordance with manuals, ensured this. And fundamental to order in Chinese building was its trabeated structural system with standard parts, dictated by physical necessity but defined by mathematical ratios, determining standard units of space and volume. Multiplied, these usually constituted a hypostyle hall scaled in accordance with the rank of the 535

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

patron.The structure needed protection from the weather and dampness: hence the raised masonry podium and overhanging timber roof – both also strictly graded in height in accordance with the patron’s position in the Confucian hierarchy of rank. The earliest traces of a timber hypostyle hall on a brick and stone podium, at Shang Anyang, imply standardization in the conception of space but they leave definition by mathematical ratios only to be surmised. Likewise, the form of roof may also only be guessed at there but, when it does appear in the embellishment of bronze vessels and, later, in Han images and models, the traditional form recalls the tent from which building often takes its departure.2.7b ›2.15

536

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

PRIMITIVE DOUGONG.

2.216a

2 interregnum and the impact of buddhism After the move to the east the Han survived for another two centuries until c. 200 when, eclipsed by the magnates and ridden by factions manipulated by concubines and eunuchs, its corrupt court fell prey to a rabble army of dispossessed peasants. Lacking leaders able to construct a new imperial regime, the rabble – and the empire – dissolved into chaos and confusion. The concept of dao may be seen as central to both Confucianism and Daoism: it was the way of nature to the latter and of the ideal society to the Confucianists.It implied order and, in accordance with the yang and yin of the Yijing, that order was both static and dynamic.The combination of complementary principles is the essence (qi) of all things: body and soul, the ethereal and the substantial (hun and po), make man. Separated at death, hun rises to the ether as shen and joins man’s myriad ancestors, decaying po emits a wraith gui. Only their honouring by 537

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

each generation of descendants will keep the shen and gui › 2 . 1 6 A M I TA B H A A N D T H E PA L A C E O F T H E P U R E L A N D O F T H E W E S T E R N PA R A D I S E : (a) of their forebears contented: vengeful haunting is the conLingqiu, Jueshan Temple (916–1125), detail of main hall trary consequence.The distinction between ancestral spir- (rebuilt 1885); (b) altarpiece, gilt bronze (584; Xi’an its and gods – who respond to all aspects of life ranged in Cultural Relics Bureau). The sutra of the Western Paradise – with its evocahierarchical order from the spirit of the hearth to the Jade tion of gorgeous palaces, fragrant gardens and limpid Emperor, Lord of Heaven – was virtually obliterated in lakes to which the pure devotees of Amitabha could the need for succour and reassurance which attended a aspire – had been known to Chinese theologians for several centuries before its popular appeal was widechaotic age: both were then shen and amenable to benespread in the 6th century. The palace imagery responds volent intercession in the affairs of the devotees at their to the royal (and Western) origins of Siddhartha Gaualtars and in their temples. Confucius was central to the tama: it reproduces the type, illustrated in Han reliefs, with a central hall linked to wings by bridge-like galimperial cult developed under Han Wudi and in the Han leries. eve even Laozi made the transition from sage to deity as an incarnation of the dao: ideally the object of meditation, on the popular level his return was foreseen as opening an era of supreme harmony in the guise of the Yellow Emperor (Huangdi). The salvation ideal of Buddhism made tentative inroads before the fall of the Han but not yet at the popular level: the earliest tangible evidence is provided by rock-cut images like those of Mount Kongwang in Jiansu but the focus of worship was the stupa repository – the putative pagoda. Devotion first focussed on Shakyamuni but over the post-Han centuries pilgrims returned from India with sutras, Hinayana and Mahayana. Avidly translated, their doctrinal profusion was daunting and many were the lines of approach to distillation, many the Chinese interpretations and schools. Beyond the development of both the Madhyamika and Yogacara (the latter by the priest-pilgrim Hsuan-tsang who described the sites of the Buddhist holy land in their 2.216b prime), the most important schools in the high Tang era, Chen-yen and Hua-yen, were developed respectively from interpretations of the Mahavairocana (‘Great Brilliance’) Sutra – the prime Tantric text – and the Avatamsaka (‘Flower Adornment’) Sutra which, claiming finality 538

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

as the word of the Buddha at the moment of enlightenment, offered ultimate truth. Chen-yen and Hua-yen were both obsessed with cosmic forces but whereas the former was bent on manipulating them to propel the adept along the fast track to liberation, Hua-yen devotees were content with meditating on their infinitely complex web of interactions embracing every speck of creation: to this,naturally,Vairocana – the ‘Illuminator’, the Dhayani of the vertical axis of space – was central. Hua-yen emerged from India but had less impact at home, where there had been centuries of doctrinal gestation, than abroad, where a plethora of texts was introduced and guidance through them was keenly sought. Both had imperial converts. Both declined with the declining dynasty – Chen-yen being subsumed, ultimately, by Lamaism. Fa-hua, the school developed by the monk Zhiy-i (538–97) was of lasting importance in the orbit of China and, especially, in Japan. In meditative retreat on Mount Tian-tai (south-east of Hangzhou), maintained at imperial expense, Zhiy-i accepted the premise that the Buddha had conceived the full complexity of dharma at the moment of enlightenment but had delivered only a simplified version at first. Denying the pretension of the Avatamsaka school to finality, however, he countered with the Saddharma-pundarika (‘Lotus Sutra’) as the Buddha’s ultimate dictum. Reviewing all other teaching as preparatory,he developed a synthesis in which the key concept was of ‘suchness’ (shenru) as the mean between self-existence and non-existence: everything is essentially empty but is perceived to have identity and ‘exists’ in virtue of that illusion; these two states are dependent on one another – meaningful only if taken together – and therein lies shenru. Thus the Avatamsaka’s complex web is delusory: as all is one in the identity even of opposites, equal in senshu, all 539

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

is the unity of the tiniest molecule or the merest instant of thought. Rather than fathoming complexity, therefore, Zhiy-i’s Tien-tai school advocated intense concentration on the eradication of all thought extraneous to that instant, 4 for there, in the resolution of all potential, lies enlighten7 5 ment – for all. Quite contrary to a synthesis of many words, even those 6 conveying the illusory to the unity of senshu, was the concept of the Chan, the sect which takes its name from 3 2 channa, the Chinese transliteration of Sanskrit dhayana – meditation. The fundamental belief is that truth can be 1 comprehended by intense mental concentration on selfknowledge: this will conclude in ‘no-self ’ distinguishable from the ineffable essence of being.Moreover,the enlight2.217 @ 1: 100,000 enment thus intuitively attained – and attainable even by › 2 . 1 7 L U O YA N G , 3rd–5th centuries: plan with (1) south gate of old town, (2) ancestral sanctuaries, (3) the illiterate – may be transmitted mind-to-mind without altars, (4) treasury, (5) armories and stores, (6) gate to words. Non-intellectual, the sect resorted to the age-old huangcheng enclosures, (7) outer ceremonial zone yoga of meditation to counter convoluted philosophizing of huangcheng dominated by Taiji-dian (principal hall of audience), (8) inner private residential zone of – in particular obsession with the Avatamsaka and Sad- huangcheng. dharma-pundarika sutras. The secondary importance of Under the first rulers of the revived Wei, from c. 220, scriptural study was admitted as an aid but the teacher was the remains of the Han southern palace compound were suppressed and the northern palace was rebuilt primary: Linji Yixian was celebrated by some for offering to a larger scale. The old southern palace compound, violence as a means of shocking the pupil out of derivative assigned to the administration and partly ceded to a thought; his younger contemporary Dongxuan Lianjie new ancestral sanctuary, had dislocated the main axial route to the west of centre: this axis governed the align(807–69) headed a more orthodox school. ment of the main halls of the inner compound when the In society at large, on the other hand, the offer of salva- tripartite enclosure was developed for the tion through the intercession of bodhisattvas on behalf of huangcheng. To either side of artery and palace – as usual – a grid of streets defined numerous wards. the faithful proved irresistible: puja supplanted meditation After 494 the Northern Wei retained the tripartite and the image hall supplemented the pagoda.Zhiyi’s more huangcheng but altered the subdivisions. The residenpopular contemporaries identified their chaotic and con- tial districts beyond the old walls were vastly expanded: the new, more nearly rectangular perimeter fused age as the final phase of Sakyamuni’s Buddhist cycle of 10 by 7.5 kilometres contained some 220 wards when enlightenment was elusive and salvation lay only in according to the description of 547. The expansion was Grace: well before its end, many Chinese had succumbed needed in large part to accommodate the Buddhist community and its monasteries which had proliferated to the appeal of the Amitabha (Amituo), the Lord of the under official patronage. Pure Land of the Western Paradise (jingtu),and to his min- Jiankang was modelled on 3rd-century Luoyang, but 540

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

with a strictly rectangular perimeter, and development ultimately produced three enclosures for the huangcheng. Within the inner enclosure the first court of the palace was dominated by the great audience hall (Taiji) and its flanking pavilions; the residential middle and northern courts respectively enclosed the emperor’s Shiqian hall and the empress’s Xianyang. In turn, the Northern Wei at Luoyang adopted this arrangement but increased the number of principal halls to five: the first for great audience, the second for select affairs of state, the third for the emperor’s residence, the fourth for the empress and the fifth for the emperor to consort with his concubines.

istering angel,the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara personified in shakti terms as Guanyin. And general was the belief that Manjusri (Wenshu), the bodhisattva of transcendent wisdom, had established his Pure Land of the Eastern Paradise on the Wutai-shan in northern China to further his vow to help the Chinese in their struggle against ignorance and to compensate them for Sakyamuni’s origin in India.2.16 In the light of the transformation of the Buddha from great teacher to god and under the inspiration of ancestor worship, Confucius and Laozi were gradually seen at least as quasi-divine. Faith in any one of the three was deemed compatible with faith in the others.

T H R E E K I N G D O M S : M OV I N G C A PI TA L S The Han empire broke into three main kingdoms. In the north was Wei, taken by a Han general who established his capital at Ye (near the border of Hebei and Henan) but also claimed the rump of the Han empire, with Luoyang, as his legacy. In the centre-south was Wu with its capital at Jianye (later Nanjing). In the south-west was Shu. The leader of the Han tribe of the ancient fiefdom of Jin, who called himself Jin Wudi, united the three kingdoms in 280 and re-established Luoyang as an imperial capital but his ‘Western Jin’ state did not long outlast his early death in 290: it fell to nomadic invaders in 317. The ousted Jin ruler retreated south and installed himself in Jianye: his ‘Eastern Jin’ followers lasted until 420 when they were dispatched by a warlord after whom the ephemeral Qi, Liang and Chen dynasties supervened at about forty-year intervals. Chaos reigned in the north – in the period of the ‘Sixteen States’ – until 386 when the Tabgatch (‘Toba’ to the Chinese) tribal invaders established a power base at Datong, which was strategically placed for 541

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

control of the territory between the parallel ranges of the Great Wall. By 439 they had reunifed most of northern China which they ruled as the ‘Northern Wei’: they moved to the old imperial capital, Luoyang, in 494. After the division of this putative empire in 534, dynastic confusion reigned throughout most of China until the advent of Yang Jian (540–605), founder of the Sui dynasty. The several capitals of the contending states conformed, more or less, to the rectangular norm. Garrisoned Datong – as regular in its geometry as any of its Roman counterparts – emulated the Zhou idea. Zhou practice was recalled at both Ye and Luoyang by confining the imperial urban palaces to a walled compound (huangcheng) in the northern sector but the compound was divided into parallel zones. At Ye the division was north–south: the king lived and governed in the eastern half and the west was reserved for court ceremonial. At Luoyang there were three enclosures: the outer one was for offices and services; the middle one for official business involving the emperor; the inner one, subdivided east–west, for imperial ceremonial to the south and residence north. The lateral division 2.18a › 2 . 1 8 D U N H U A N G , M O G A O , E X C A V AT E D B U D of the inner city accorded with the Zhou principle that the D H I S T M O N A S T I C C O M P L E X , mid-4th century: (a) ceremonial buildings are advanced, the residential general view from entrance; (b) detail of frescoes from retreated, and in its centrifugal context it set the pattern Cave 428 (before 580). The remotest of Han provincial outposts in an oasis for the future. Importing no tradition of monumental on the Silk Road at the edge of the southern extension architecture, the invaders adopted the system developed of the Gobi Desert, Dunhuang was the first Chinese setby the Han on ancient precedent – the more readily to tlement to support Buddhist monks in considerable numbers. Excavation of living rooms and shrines began mask the void in their legitimacy.2.17 soon after the mid-4th century and continued until the In this first era of official Buddhism, some 1300 monas- end of the 10th century. Simple cells at first, generally teries were reputedly founded in Luoyang alone under the with tent-shaped roofs, they were later filled with icons primarily in fresco but also in sculpture (mainly stucco) Northern Wei.At the basic level,just as the Indian monas- – some colossal, as at Bamiyan (west along the great tic prototype was secular – the cluster of huts around a vil- trade route, in modern Afghanistan). The Wei embelishlage green – so too its Chinese counterpart owed much to ments in both media are among China’s oldest masterpieces: they are rare survivals of the depredations the traditional native courtyard house, not least because of the anti-Buddhist, 9th-century Tang and then of many domestic complexes were donated to the fraternity more than a millennium of oblivion. And documents 542

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

in the first place. At the highest level, outstanding was the Yongning-si: its rectangular compound had a gate for each cardinal direction, the triple-storey southern one modelled on the gate to the imperial city; in the centre was a timber pagoda of nine storeys rising from a square plan and aligned on the north–south axis with the Great Buddha image hall modelled on the principal hall of the palace. All has vanished but the excavated works near both Wei capitals – furthered under later dynasties – constitute the greatest legacy of the age.

2.18b

recovered from special repositories include the world’s earliest surviving printed ones. The later screen (peifang) marks entry to a sacred site here, but it could be used before palaces and for commemoration in a secular context.

543

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

T H E O R I G I N O F T H E TE M P LE When Buddhism arrived from India it naturally brought its architectural tradition with it: assimilated by the Chinese, the imports enriched, but did not supplant, the native tradition. The first and most spectacular manifestation of Indian influence,translated into Chinese in context, is the excavated shrine. Like the Buddhist images of Jiangsu, the caves developed as shrines at Mahao, Sichuan, date to before the fall of the Han,well before official patronage of the Buddhists by several of the powers contending for empire thereafter. Excavation of shrines and monastic facilities proliferated across China in that confused era:among the most important are the first shrines of the series at Dunhuang in remotest Gansu, on the great trade route along which Indian Buddhist missionaries penetrated east, and at Yungang near Datong, which was still the base of the Northern Wei. And soon after that regime relocated its base to Luoyang in 494, the most spectacular examples of the type appeared at nearby Longmen.2.18, 2.19, 2.23 Indian influence is apparent immediately in the basic conception of the rock-cut monastery, the chaitya-griha with portico and the vernacular of the Buddhist homeland is represented especially by the gavaksha motif.

2.19a

However, the native Chinese trabeated structural system › 2 . 1 9 Y U N G A N G , late-5th–early 6th century: (a) Shrine 13, colossal Amitabha and prasada wall; (b) is dominant in all its parts: the podium, the posts defining Shrine 12, images in trabeated halls; (c) Shrine 39, regular bays and supporting beams with the intermediacy pagoda model. of dougong alternating with intermediate v-shaped struts, Excavation in the sandstone cliff of Tianlongshan – some 16 kilometres west of Datong – began c. 450 the double rafters and even the steeply pitched, tiled roofs under the patronage of the Northern Wei, and it with their curved finials are graphically represented on reached its peak just before the emperor left Datong for Luoyang in 494. Work rapidly declined thereafter, but it internal and external façades. seems to have ceased altogether only c. 525. Roughly The earlier excavators provided for ritual circumamburectangular, most of the so-called caves have a wealth lation around a central figure of the Buddha. Later works of scenes from the life of the Buddha, bodhisattvas and were occasionally centred instead on a many-tiered, other attendants carved into their walls – many betraying Hellenistic ancestry like those of Afghanistan and many-niched tower of the type known as the pagoda. Gandhara (the heartland of the Buddhist Kushan The form is sometimes thought to derive from the cross- empire in modern Pakistan). 544

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.19b

The representation of the structural prototype as a façade, common in India, distinguishes the main shrine at Tianlong shan (Heavenly Dragon Mountain, c. 560). It combines traditional Chinese trabeation with the Gangetic ogee arch. As often in Mahayana India, too, a columned portico and contracted vestibule lead to a square hall with images in niches on the three inner sides.

2.19c

545

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.20b 2.20a

546

fertilization of the multi-tiered stupa type developed in › 2 . 2 0 T H E P R I M I T I V E B U D D H I S T T E M P L E : (a) Gaochang (6th century?), partial reconstruction; (b) Gandhara with the native Han tower; the sculpted mod- stone shrine (late-6th-century Sui?; New York, Metroels at Yungang suggest, rather, that the Indian stock was politan Museum). the prasada prototype of the Mahabodhi at Gaya – The Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang stayed in Gaochang on his way to India in 630 and returned by it though that was an arca-griha at base.2.19c, 1.9, 1.44 sixteen years later. The repository for sutras or relics of a prominent propo- Other surviving examples of freestanding stone nent of the faith,the hub of circumambulation as a chaitya, shrines, such as one on Mount Fang, have tiered roofs like miniature pagodas. doubtless appeared in China with the earliest Buddhists – or rather with their disappearance – and the rock-cut › 2 . 2 1 S O N G S H A N : (a) Songyue-si sutra pagoda, prasada had its contemporary structural equivalents. (traditionally dated to 523); (b) Shaolin ‘forest of pagodas’ with reliquary stupa right (Tang to Qing). Inevitably, survivors are rare. Among the remains of the The twelve-sided, 39-metre-high Songyue-si, long-abandoned desert city of Gaochang, well to the west whose curve anticipates that later developed in the of Dunhuang on the Silk Road in central Xinjiang, is a Indian prototype and the typical Khmer form, has been identified as the oldest surviving freestanding strucbrick temple with raised base and walled compound pro- ture in China. The brickwork of plinth, drum and fifteenviding for ritual circumambulation (pradakshina) about a tier superstructure was probably plastered and niched tower. This recalls Indian prototypes both in gen- painted predominantly in creamy white. There is a chamber inside. Most other early pagodas have six or eral distribution and in the particular form of the multi- eight sides. storey residential block. Deeper into China, the earliest surviving freestanding Buddhist shrines are rare stone cells with sculpted slab façades representing the primitive vernacular structure of the Buddhist homeland.2.20 ›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

Apart from stone-cut works and perhaps the brick temples of Xinjiang, the oldest buildings in China are several brick pagodas on the holy mountain of the He’nan Song Shan. The Chinese, like many others, felt nearer to god on a mountain – especially as ‘god’ meant ‘heaven’ in the mainstream of the Confucian tradition. As we know, moreover, Confucius was as dedicated to the authority of feng shui, of order in submission to cosmic forces, as Laozi was resigned to its irrationality in wild nature. Buddhists were diverse enough to acquire the yen for both as the main strands of Chinese belief were interwoven. The oldest of the Song Shan pagodas is generally thought to be the Songyue-si (Song Peak) built under the Northern Wei c. 523 to house sutras brought from India. Polygonal, this form of pagoda approximates the circular form of the stupa in plan but might be seen as analogous to the primitive Indian faceted shikhara – if that was known to have appeared by the early 6th century. However generated, the precedent was most commonly followed under later dynasties, elaborated in timber but also with simulated structural detail in masonry.2.21a The multi-storey (louge) type is characteristic but not invariable in China. The type with multiple superimposed cornices (miyan) is common and sometimes the cubicle has only a stepped pyramidal roof: a prominent early example of the latter, datable to 611, is the four-entry (simenta) pagoda of the Shentong-si, Shandong. And, as a reliquary preserving the holy remains, the pagoda naturally became the most common form of Buddhist funerary monument. Raised on a plinth and overhung with a pavilion roof, the form may be square, circular or polygonal. Of myriad examples, the stunning collection on Song Shan may be singled out as representative of the earliest survivors.2.21b

2.21a

2.21b

547

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.22

548

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

3 middle age, sui, tang and song There were, of course, many contenders for pre-eminence – north and south – and the subsequent reunification of China under the shortlived Sui (589–618) and the Tang (618–907) echoes the history of the Qin and Han: a brutal determination to construct – or to reconstruct – the empire, followed by moderation in running it. While Qin Huangdi was obsessed with throwing the Great Wall around his empire to assert its integrity, Yang Jian, the first of the Sui, expended millions of lives on the equally gargantuan task of extending the Grand Canal to bind the empire within. And the renewed imperial ideal was nowhere more splendidily evoked than in the construction of new Daxing, 10 kilometres south of Chang’an, and the rehabilitation of old Luoyang as dual capitals. A peasant revolt followed the humiliating defeat of Yang Jian’s son on his attempted conquest of Korea. As usual the peasants produced no leader but Li Yuan, a magnate, capitalized on the situation to claim the mandate of heaven – and he won popular support with the equitable redistribution of land. Emulating Han achievement, his Tang dynasty was to take Chinese civilization to its apogee.The bureaucracy was restored and refined, and its growth was not inhibited by the invention of printing. To the east, Korea was finally conquered and even Japan succumbed to Tang cultural hegemony, much in which was Buddhist. Buddhism flourished under official patronage in the first two centuries of the era and in its service the arts emulated the achievements of the Guptas two centuries earlier in India.2.22, 1.31, 1.37 To the west, where the Tibetan peoples in their high plateau had achieved a measure of linguistic consistency and national identity by the 6th century, accord was 549

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

initially reached with the putative monarchy of Songtsen › 2 . 2 2 L O N G M E N : Juxian (Honour to Forebears) shrine, 672. Gampo (c. 620–50): princesses were exchanged and, as we The sequence of excavations begun under the Wei at have already noted, the Tibetans achieved a similar accord Longmen was furthered with great resource under the with Nepal. After the installation of these princesses from Tang. The 17-metre-high image of Buddha Vairocana in the centre of the Juxian shrine (where there was once a Buddhist realms,Lhasa’s first temples were founded under wooden hall), flanked by the disciples Ananda and their patronage and Buddhism was launched on its career Kasyapa, bodhisattvas and guardians, is unsurpassed as the state religion of the new empire – assisted by the in China – and represents the high point of Tang monumental stone sculpture. sage identification of the king as an incarnation of the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara but resisted by shamans of the ancient native Bon-po animism – as animism was honoured by the Sage himself under the Bodhi tree at Gaya (see page 13). Peaceful links with the Tang court assisted Tibetan unification initially. However, hostilities with China were resumed in the 660s, primarily over control of the central-Asian trade routes, and lasted until the destruction of the monarchy in the mid-9th century by magnates opposed to the state sponsorship of increasingly affluent and arrogant Buddhists.2.23 › 2 . 2 3 L H A S A : Songtsen Gampo in his cave-temple, By the early 9th century the Buddhist orders rivalled Chakpori Palha Lupuk. the magnates in the amassing of great estates and diversion of wealth to maintaining monks in magnificence was perceived as a major cause of instability in the imperial economy. The interested influence of the magnates was another cause but the monasteries were suppressed by the emperor Wuzong in 845 when the economy was on the verge of collapse. Daoism was promoted officially and it took on more of the nature of a religion, but Buddhism did not lose its popularity. Even Islam, imported with the merchants of the Silk Road and well established in the major trading cities by the 9th century, was not a significant threat to Buddhism or to traditional beliefs in the domain of the Son of Heaven whose centre was the greatest city on earth.2.24

550

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

6 5 4

3

2 1

1

2.24a

› 2 . 2 4 T H E TA N G AT C H A N G ’ A N : (a) Emperor Taizong (626–49); (b) plan based on archaeological evidence with details from a stele of 1080 with (1) markets, (2) Xingqing-gong, (3) imperial city, administrative zone, (4) Taiji-gong, (5) imperial garden, (6) Daming-gong; (c) Taiji-gong, plan with (1) Taiji-dian (Great Ultimate Hall), (2) Liangyi-dian (Hall of Heaven and Earth), (3) Ganlu-dian (Hall of Sweet Dew), (4) S u i C h a n g ’ a n a n d t h e Ta n g Founded in 582 to the south of Han Chang’an, where central Xi’an is now,

4

Sui Daxing was unprecedented in its obsessive order. Luoyang, in its most recent permutation under the Northern Wei, was the model for its internal 3

distribution. But Luoyang, irregular in its perimeter unlike new Daxing, was itself remodelled c. 605 within regular rectangles divided by the River

2

Luo. There the imperial compound was to the west of the northern zone and the grid of streets dividing both zones into wards – differentiated in

1

size and position in accordance with social hierarchy – was far from regular. Daxian was strictly symmetrical. The new capital (84 square kilometres in area) was defended by a rectangular perimeter wall with three gates symmetrically disposed to the south, three pairs aligned east–west and three to the west of centre in the north. It was dissected by the imperial axial artery (155 metres wide)

2.24c @ 1:2500

551

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.24b @ 1:10,000

which connected the central south gate – reserved for the emperor – with the imperial compound to the north. One hundred and eight districts were defined by eleven north–south avenues and fourteen east–west streets (mostly 100 metres wide for ease of policing): walled for control, each had its internal grid of alleys. They were graded in size according to 2.24d

the occupation of the occupants – which included the emperor Xuanzong, who inserted the Xingqing-gong in an enlarged ward by the main east gate of the urban complex in 714. Even the eastern and western markets (the latter specifically for foreign traders plying the Silk Road) were matched in site and scale to a new degree. Never had the axis of power been more assertive nor the discipline of the grid clearer: only the lake of Fuyong Yuan (Imperial Peony Garden) in the south-east corner pushed the perimeter wall beyond a pure rectangle. The main artery extended north to the broad prospect (220 metres wide) before the lateral wall which divided the imperial city into an outer administrative zone and the inner residential paradise shared by the emperor, the empress and the crown prince. This lateral subdivision of the imperial compound – known as the ‘Forbidden City’ – was inherited from Luoyang but innovative was its assertion with a broad prospect between administration and residence. There were several other palace compounds, varied in the detail of distribution, but archaeological evidence and later representations on scrolls show that all had great halls aligned on the north–south axis.2.24 Dominating the city from its central position with its back to the northern wall, the principal Sui palace complex, Daxig-gong, was rebuilt by the Tang and renamed Taiji-gong. Reviewing the example of the Northern Wei – who had divided the quasi-concentric plan of the huangdong at Luoyang into four largely longitudinal sectors – the Sui produced a tripartite compound with two north–south parallels: the emperor occupied the centre, of course; the crown prince was to his east; the palace household and supply to the west. The emperor’s zone (nearly 2 kilometres square) was also divided longitudinally into the imperial core flanked by administrative sectors and, like its Wei predecessor at Luoyang, the core was divided laterally into the usual three zones: the southern one for imperial ceremonial, the middle pair for residences of the emperor and

552

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.24e @ approximately 1: 3000

outer garden; (d, e) Daming-gong, elevation and plan of Hanyuan-dian.

empress and the northern one for retreat. The central triple gates in the walls of each sector were, of course, aligned throughout; the Taiji-dian, before which the emperor held open court on the first and fifteenth days of each lunar month, was flanked by twin pavilions; the halls for select audience in both the imperial residences (the emperor’s Liangyi-dian, the empress’s Gan-luian) were flanked by pairs of twin pavilions. The most northerly zone was the private court garden. There was an additional enclosed garden beyond the north wall of the city and to the east was a park, both laid out for the Sui. The new Daming-gong was developed from 634 by the third Tang emperor, Gaozong, in the park beyond the city wall to the north-east. This was the emperor’s main seat from 663 until it was destroyed by fire at the end of the 9th century. At the head of a vast forecourt (500 metres from the south gate which opened in the north-east range of the city wall) the main ceremonial hall, Hanyuan-dian (58 metres wide with a verandah of thirteen by six bays), was raised on a double podium with central ramp: with L-shaped wings terminating in tripartite pavilions and walls to either side, it doubled as a monumental gatehouse to the inner sanctum. At the head of the second court (300 metres long and flanked by office courts) was the Xuanzheng-dian for the bimonthly imperial appearance. The third court was select audience and the emperor’s personal accommodation (Zinchen-dian). Beyond was the nucleus of the women’s apartments ›2.25

TA N G

LANDSCAPE

AND

GARDEN

PA L A C E S : (a) ‘Spring Travellers’, (detail of copy after

(the empress’s Penglai-dian). Finally the pond garden contained an informal banquet hall (Linde-dian, also with extended L-shaped colonnades

Zhan Ziqian, 7th century; Beijing, Palace Museum); (b, c) Jiucheng, detached palace (details of scroll paint- terminating in pavilions), several detached pavilions for withdrawal (such ing on silk, 1691; New York, Metropolitan Museum). as Taihe-dian) and two Daoist temples (Dajiao-guan and Sanqing-dian).

The Sui and Tang emperors also had country retreats of great magnificence – known as detached palaces because they were beyond the urban seats. Among the most celebrated was the Jiucheng-gong, founded by the Sui and rebuilt by the Tang, in which the dominant element was a great hall with colonnaded l-shaped wings terminating in pavilions. In the Buddhist art of Tang China, the Pure Land was usually represented as the Palace of the 2.25a

553

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.25b,c

Western Paradise in allusion to the royal origin of the Buddha, and the model was surely the emperor’s palaces. The Daming-gong Hanyua-dian and the principal element of the Jiucheng-gong conform to the type most commonly represented in the Tang frescoes of the Buddhist grottoes at Dunhuang, with a great podium supporting a central hall linked to side pavilions by colonnaded galleries.2.25 554

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

›2.26

CHANG’AN, QIANLING OF THE GAO-

Z O N G E M P E R O R , 650–83: (a) drawing of double-

walled complex with spirit path, natural hill and associated tombs (14th-century, based on an 11thcentury survey for the Song Chang’an zhi, ‘Record of Chang’an’); (b) general view along spirit path to mound; (c) sectional perspective of tomb of Crown Prince Li Zhongrun associated with the tomb of his father, the Gaozong Emperor. The choice of a site with a natural hill was first made by the third Tang emperor, Taizong: thirteen of his successors followed the precedent. The norm, best represented by the Qianling in a foothill of the Liangshan range, was a double enclosure centred on the subcolline burial chambers and orientated to the cardinal directions, the inner one 1.5 kilometres square with a gate terminating the principal axes named after its mascot (Green Dragon east, Red Oriole south, White Tiger west, Black Warrior north). The principal line of approach from the south to the Red Oriole Gate, the extended ‘spirit path’, was lined with pairs of symbolic animals and officials. Officials also attended in effigy at the entrance. Within was an offering hall but entry through the gate was forbidden to the populace at large. To the south-west, the reproduction palace was detached from the enclosure central mound – rather like the preferred residence of the emperor.

2.26a

555

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

TO M B S In the period from the fall of the Han to the rise of the Sui, tombs – mostly single or double brick-lined chambers with corbel vaults under mound or hill – were relatively modest.The most common type was the tumulus with one or more underground chambers – brick-lined, corbelvaulted and in distribution often simulating houses – for the sarcophagus surrounded by all the treasures and necessities of life to sustain the soul of the deceased throughout eternity. As these were places for worshipping ancestors, there was usually a succession of pavilions for offerings, prayer and inhumation ceremonies but no vast palace superstructure. However, the tumulus may be reached along a spirit path: the best surviving examples, which included commemorative columns and stelae in addition to the heraldic beasts which had first appeared in the lateHan era, distinguish the tombs of the rulers of eastern territories beyond the reach of the Northern Wei but there are references to the motif in contemporary descriptions of the Datong necropolis. Stability and the prosperity which came with it in the long reigns of highly sophisticated emperors produced tombs which emulated those of the greater Han, if not of Qin Huangdi. The old formula was retained, including a subterranean palace, but the greatest of the Tang emperors selected sites with natural mounds and formed their several vaulted chambers with brick, like many of the Han. Most impressive is the Qianling of the Gaozong Emperor and its ‘spirit way’.2.26 Interments of members of the imperial family and honoured officials were associated with each imperial tomb. Otherwise tomb design and construction were strictly regulated in accordance with eight gradations of rank in the upper echelon of society: for instance, the higher the rank, the lower the vaulted brick burial chamber, the

2.26b

longer the access ramp, the greater the number of its ventilation shafts and the more extensive the fresco cycles recording the entourage, environment and achievements of the deceased.

2.26c

556

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

TE M P LE S A N D M O N A S TE R I E S By the Tang era the proliferating monasteries were graded in accordance with the status of the founder and their construction conformed to the approriate standards – doubtless defined by the Sui. The principal monasteries were imperial or official foundations in the major cities of the realm: ideally they emulated the imperial palace which, as we have seen, was the iconic setting for Amitabha’s Western Paradise. Records of the monasteries of Luoyang in the early 6th century, when it was the Wei capital, and many more of the Sui and Tang imperial seats tell of palaces converted into monasteries, of image halls moved from imperial compounds for conversion and of image halls purposebuilt to the standards of imperial audience halls. Just as in the palace, too, halls were multiplied along the north– south axis – or axes. In addition, there was invariably a pagoda aligned with the main image hall in a regular walled compound with double- or triple-height gates to each side – like the imperial enclosure, though the pagoda was a foreign element. And in accordance with the original meditative Buddhism which entered China before the full panoply of the Mahayana, there were still compounds centred on a pagoda alone. The rectangular form of pagoda, translating the Mahabodhi into Chinese terms with varying degrees of homage, was also prominent under the Tang in both its louge and miyan forms. The latter is represented by the Xiaoyan-ta (Small Goose Pagoda) of the Jianfu-si. The Dayan-ta (Great Goose Pagoda) on the main axis of the Dacien-si at Xi’an is the greatest example of the louge type – or the greatest survivor as many of its contemporaries were built of timber. Embellished solely with the representation of trabeation, it marks the apogee of classical order. Sutra pagodas were invariably associated with prayer halls in 557

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

› 2 . 2 7 X I ’ A N : (a) Jianfu-si (Commending Happiness Temple), Xiaoyan-ta (Small Wild Goose Pagoda, c. 684); (b, c) Dacien-si (Temple of Great Goodwill), Dayan-ta (Great Goose Pagoda, c. 700, heightened from five to seven storeys in 766) of the general view and relief of a temple hall (from a lintel on the groundfloor). The monastery, founded in 648 by the future emperor Gaozong, became one of the empire’s most important seats of Buddhism: its ten courts extended over half an urban ward. The pagoda of the louge type, built to house documents brought from India by the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang in 652, was rebuilt with seven storeys in 701 and further modified in 766: rooms on the upper levels allowed for storage of perishable documents away from the dampness of the ground. The Jianfu-si, also a foundation of the Gaozong emperor, was endowed c. 707 with the fifteen-storey pagoda of the miyan type, built to house documents collected by the pilgrim monk Yi jing (who visited India from 671 and returned via Sri Vijaya). The ground-floor chamber preserves contemporary inscriptions and reliefs.

2.27a

temple complexes: the hall of the Dacien-si has gone but its image is preserved inside the pagoda.2.27 The combination of single-storey hall and multi-storey tower reproduces the Indian palace of the gods, of course, but in general the Chinese Buddhists built in the secular tradition – as we have noted. Apart from pagodas, little survives from six or seven centuries of unimpeded growth in adherents and wealth of the faith to which a vast amount of building was dedicated. Indeed, the dissolution of the monasteries at the instigation of the emperor Wuzong in 845 – known as the Huichang Persecution after the reign title – involved the destruction of almost all the prayerhalls from the period in which architecture was brought to a peak of refinement. 558

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.27c

If not the oldest image of a temple hall, the early 8thcentury Tang relief in the Dayan-ta of the Dacien-si is the most comprehensive early record.2.27c On a rectangular podium, the trabeated hall has five bays defined by six columns and is backed by a wall.Intermediate columns appear at the sides, implying the doubling of the bays in depth, but are omitted from the interior to accommodate the Buddha and his entourage. ‘Lost column’ plans were characteristic of Chinese halls. Equally characteristic is the widening of the central bay of the longitudinal range and the standardization of the others. Incidentally, though the main entrance was generally through the central bay of the court, it was not stressed in any way other than widening – apart from the name tablet.

E LE M E N TA RY S T RU C T U R E In the Dacien-si relief the back wall may have shared in bearing the load but that was not its primary role: as distinct as skin and bone, in principle the wall was protective, the column supportive. In this the latter was assisted by the bracket, the principal distinguishing feature of Chinese trabeation. In the dougong system the rectangular block at the top of the column (dou) and the curved 2.27b

559

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

crossbar (gong) supporting the beam now carry additional blocks (sheng) on which the beam rests. By the time of the Tang relief, the width of the duo provided the module (cai) for the standardization of measurements throughout: Tang builders used eight sets of ratios graded in accordance with the hierarchy of building uses – and the rank of the patron. Systemization and standardization admitted prefabrication. The hipped roof with its slight curve, shown in the Dacien-si relief as at Yungang nearly two hundred years earlier but not yet in Han reliefs, is typical of the main hall of surviving temples and palaces – lesser halls had gabled ends or gables rising from half hips, greater later ones had double hips. The tent-like form followed from the flexible structure of superimposed beams, diminishing in length and separated by vertical struts, which supported the purlins, rafters and tiles. As the main elements were stepped horizontals, the structure could readily be extended not only in length but also in width and height – as with the pagoda.The curved roofs were primarily aesthetic but they assisted in throwing water clear of the timbers. The scale of the roof relative to the other two parts of the building was to become much greater in later eras. The apex finials (chiwei) were commonly fish tails, later dragons, and the plants rising from the ridges were supplemented by creatures symbolizing water as protection against fire. Under the Tang, temple builders – like the ruling classes – were allowed to elaborate their roofs to achieve daringly cantilevered eaves. Providing shade in the summer but allowing light to enter from the lower sun in the winter, these protected the structure and increased the amount of covered space. Counterbalanced by the main roof structure, the eaves depended on brackets superimposed at right angles to each other to transmit the load of the pro560

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

jecting beam ends bearing the outer purlins. Multiplied with the width of eave overhang, typically the dougong is reiterated to distribute the load over all points of support and, ultimately, between them. The elaboration of the dougong into identified formulae is the key to the definition of the building – its Order named after the particular bracket formula adopted for it. Structure and decoration were integral in the system but multiplication was to lead to decorative elaboration and, ultimately, to loss of structural significance. The process began with the introduction of smaller intermediate clusters, borne by the beams, continued with the assimilation of these secondary clusters to the primary ones, borne by the columns, went on to the interpolation of still more, the extension of some on the diagonal and their reduction in scale. Indeed, the degree to which decorative elaboration departed from structural necessity distinguishes the eras of later Chinese architectural development.2.28 D O U G O N G : diagram from the Yingzao fashi (a manual of building standards published early in the 11th century; the illustration comes from a later edition). The manual’s exhaustive coverage – comprehensively and innovatively illustrated with plans, sections, elevations and details – ranges from surveying and construction techniques for all types of building, military, civil and religious, to materials and techniques for dressing stone, moulding bricks or carving wood, to decorative painting and to standardized weights and measures.

›2.28

Building standards Building standards were defined in the Yingzao fashi which actually dates from the Song period but is assumed to relate the norms of the late-Tang era. Commissioned by the emperor to regulate practice throughout the industry, but especially to improve efficiency in public works, it is perhaps most celebrated for its modular standardization of all the elements of structure in accordance with a strict eight-tier hierarchy matching the stratification of imperial society.

561

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

It differentiates two basic plan types in terms of the concentric (hui) or striated (ri) arrangement of their major divisions and naturally it canvasses different ways of ordering a complex in accordance with the immutable hierarchy of building types in a strictly stratified society. Equally naturally accounting for all the detail, it differentiates four ranks of timber structure (tailing) with three distinct zones, the basic grid of columns, the roof frame and the transitional bracket system at eaves level) in descending order: diantang (with columns in parallel rows delimiting inner and outer cao), tingtang (small enough not to need internal supports), yuwu (service buildings or adjuncts, differentiated in accord-ance with their relationship to the main structure) and tingxie (pavilions). It stipulates that column height must not exceed the width of intercolumniation (greater in the centre) but in practice the ratio of column height to total building height over podium varies from 1:2 in tinxie,

› 2 . 2 9 W U TA I - S H A N , N A N C H A N - S I , dated to the 8th century by an inscription recording repair in the 3rd year of the Jianzhong reign, which corresponds to 782: (a) main hall entrance front; (b) eaves detail. The main elements of the Nanchan-si compound are aligned north–south. The gatehouse leads to a sunken court flanked by pavilions of unequal extent and overlooked by a terrace also flanked by disparate pavilions. The main hall, on the highest level, has only three bays to each side (10 by 11.75 metres as the central one is wider) and no internal columns: the central podium supports a seated image of the Buddha attended by sixteen other figures, including the bodhisattva Manjusri. The structure is of the type represented in the Xi’an Dacien-si relief except for its half-hipped roof: the deep eaves are supported by triple dougong clusters rising only from the columns which were square in section before 1086 when extensive refurbishment was recorded in an inscription.

yuwu or even lesser tingtang to 1:3 in the grandest diantang. It enumerates means of correcting optical illusion – including entasis (juansha), battering (cejiao) – and other aesthetic devices such as roof curvature, ceiling coffering, door panelling and screening in standard geometric patterns. Prescribing modular design (cai-fen), it determines the basic measure (cai subdivisible into fifteen fen) as the section of the gong in the dougong system appropriate to each of eight ranks of patron. Building strictly in accordance with set formulae – which might be transmitted orally – obviously obviates both architect and structural engineer. 2.29a

E A R LY N O RT H E R N WO R K S The oldest surviving timber buildings in China, of the type represented in the Dacien-si relief,2.27c are found in Shanxi at Wutai-shan – the northern Buddhist holy mountain dedicated to Manjusri. The small main hall of the Nanchan-si (Southern Meditation Temple) dates from before 782 and the grander great hall of the nearby Foguang-si (Temple of the Buddha’s Glory) – facing west, exceptionally, in accordance with the nature of its site – was built in 857. They represent diantang and tingtang structures respectively and it is their correspondence with 562

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.29b

› 2 . 3 0 W U TA I - S H A N , F O G U A N G - S I , founded in 471, destroyed in the mid-9th-century suppression of the monasteries, completion of reconstruction of main hall recorded in an inscription of the 11th year of the Dazhong reign, or 857: (a) plan; (b) view from the gatehouse to the Eastern Great Hall with Manjusri hall (left) and sutra column (centre); (c–e) Eastern Great Hall, section, front elevation and interior, (f ) founder’s tomb. The Foguang-si gatehouse to the west leads to a sunken court, as in the Nanchan-si, but there is one large gable-ended hall dedicated to Manjusri (1115) to the north and several small pavilions to the south. Ascending terraces, the lower one flanked by matching pavilions, culminate in the podium of the Eastern Great Hall. The latter has seven by four near-square bays (34 by 17.7 metres): the five wider central ones are screened on the west front, the rest are walled in whole or part. There are two full rows of internal columns, and intermediate ones to each side of the image platform which covers slightly more than half the inner area. The eaves of the hipped roof – projecting to 4.2 metres – are carried on purlins supported by doubled diagonal lever beams (ang) which, butting into and counter-balanced by doubled horizontal ones also supporting purlins, penetrate four tiers of dougong over each column. 2.30a @ 1:2000

2.30b

563

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

the Yingzao fashi which promotes the assumption that the latter is essentially Tang.2.29, 2.30 Survivors from the 10th century are almost as rare as their predecessors. The most notable examples are the

Three-tiered intermediate dougongs resting on the main longitudinal beams carry secondary longitudinal beams. Latticed ceilings, common before the full elaboration of coffering, are carried over rainbow beams and V-struts in the inner and outer zones. In the centre of the lower court and before the steps of the Eastern Great Hall are octagonal pillars inscribed with sutras between a lotiform base and a tessellated canopy capital: the upper one at least, contemporary with the hall, is the earliest-known survivor of a type devised to assert the faith. To the hall’s right rear is the tomb of the founding abbot: it conforms to the type represented in 2.20b.

2.30c

2.30d

564

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.30f

2.30e

main halls of the Zhenguo-si (built in the middle of the Northern Han’s brief epoch, 951–79) and the Hualin-si (built under the Wu-Ye who ruled in Fujian for much of the 10th century). Provincial, neither is canonical in terms of the Yingzao fashi: in size they are tingtang, like the main hall of the Nanchan-si,but they are diantang,like the main hall of the Foguang-si, in dougong complexity. 565

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

E LE M E N TS Like the one in the relief, the main halls in all these complexes have three distinct elements: podium, columned structure and pitched roof. The base, which protects the timber structure from damp, was neither exaggerated nor elaborated – as it was later to be – but its height was graded in accordance with the importance of the hall and the need to counteract the size of the roof visually. If not yet quite as overwhelming as it was to become, the cantilevered roof is already the dominant element in these works: it is notable that the complex hip and gable form was used on the humbler building and that the relatively simpler hipped form was deemed to enhance the monumentality of the grander one. In the central zone there was always an odd number of bays (jian) defined by posts and partitioned by screens. In the earliest examples, of three and five bays, the timber trabeated system is fully developed with all the parts both strictly functional and decorative in effect. CO LO U R Apart from a section revealing the roof structure, the main dimension missing from the relief was colour. Temple roofs were normally of blue-glazed tiles, like the Foguang-si, but if a shrine was endowed by a prince or an emperor it may have had the distinction of green or yellow roofs like those of noble mansions and imperial palaces respectively. It may be assumed that the columns were protected by coats of lacquer and dyed black with iron sulphate or red with cinnabar – as they are in the Foguang-si, and in many later temples and palaces. The beams, too, were doubtless picked out in multi-coloured patterns, as shown even as early as the Yungang shrines.2.19 Walls vary in substance, texture and colour, but if painted they are usually red. 566

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

F RO M TA N G TO S O N G The Tang demise also followed the Han pattern, but the role of the monasteries was as significant as that of the magnates – as we have seen. Only about another sixty years after the dissolution, the imperial regime was confronted with resurgent monasticism and, overawed by the great landlords, was destabilized by popular unrest. The chaos of contention among aspirants to power, north and south, was relatively short-lived before the emergence of the Song (960–1274), a brilliant, largely unmilitaristic dynasty which reinvigorated the economy, rural and urban, reformed taxation and land tenure, promoted education, especially to inform a scholarly bureaucracy on Confucian lines, and furthered Tang achievement in the arts. Their northern seat was Dongjing (Kaifeng).2.1 The Song empire was never as extensive as the Tang. 2.31a

2.31b

567

2.31c

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

They controlled the centre but unsuccessfully disputed the north with the Khitan Mongols whose Tangut – or ‘Western Xia’– rivals had taken the western provinces and Tibet. The Khitans had established their peripatetic Liao dynasty before the middle of the 10th century but were overwhelmed by the Jurchen Tartars early in the 12th century. Taking the old name of Jin, the latter defeated the emperor, Huizong (1101–27) – despite the Chinese invention of gunpowder – and devastated Dongjing. One imperial prince escaped the disaster, fled south and founded a new capital at Hangzhou. Having lost control of the great western trade route to the Mongols, the Southern Song were well placed to develop maritime links with their south-east Asian neighbours – until all was lost to the Mongols in 1279. Temperamentally inclined to Daoism, the Song brought garden design to unexcelled heights in the retreats 2.31d from their southern seats. Like the northern capital, › 2 . 3 1 T H E S O N G A N D P L A N N I N G : (a) Emperor Dongjing (which was largely lost to the development of Huizong (1100–26); (b, c) palatial complex (mural of c. Kaifeng after the Jin), these honoured the ancient Confu- 1167, attributed to the court painter Wang Kui, in the cian planning tradition if only in the breach. There was a main hall of the Yanshan-si, Fanshi, Shanxi); (d) Suzhou, plan (rubbing from a stone engraving of 1229 dominant axis in both the town and the imperial palace after a map drawn by the geographer Huang Shang in enclosure. A grid of major avenues still ordered the town 1193; London, British Library). but there were diagonals as well as waterways. The Song Hangzhou (Lin’an) was uncanonically sited with Phoenix Mountain to its south, irregular in perimenclosed ward system was abrogated to the encourage- eter, wardless, served by waterways as well as orthogment of fluidity – especially in commerce.2.31d In the lat- onal and diagonal streets and centred on the business ter, halls were aligned north–south in parallel rows but district: as the palace was on southern high ground the axis ran north. Much here has also been obscured by there was considerable development off-axis, especially in continuous development but the main lines of the incised plan of Pingjiang (Suzhou), a provincial capital gardens.2.31 The Song were noted for their sensitivity to landscape favoured by seekers of retreat from affairs of state, may still be traced on site. but they were not the only contemporary gardening Founded in the 6th century BCE, more than a millendynasty: emulating the Tang in this as in every other aspir- nium later Suzhou was the centre of the silk industry ation to comparable glory, the Jin did too. Nor did the and the hub of China’s waterway system at the junction of the lower Yangtse and the Grand Canal. The perimSong indulge their taste for gardens only in the sultry heat eter walls (rectangular except for three canted corners) of their southern capital after 1127. Their most celebrated were breached by five gates that were doubled for land568

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

and water-borne traffic. The canonical grid, depending on three gates to each side of a square, is consequently impractical, and the walled districts disappear, but order subsists in the alignment of all the main arteries (streets and canals) to the cardinal points. Further, in consequence of the pre-eminence of the south-western gate and the arteries running north from it, unmatched to the east, the innermost rectangle of the imperial enclosure is dislocated to the south-east of centre.

›2.32

works in the genre were there – and were said to eclipse the natural beauty of Hangzhou’s site – but the Song emperors are reputed to have laid out one hundred and fifty gardens in Kaifeng: several developed the themes of the Tang lake-gardens but the most important, devised to complement ‘Longevity’ Peak and its varied foothills with natural and naturalistic cascades, was completed just before the highly cultured Huizong emperor met his tragic end. The gardens may be lost but there are still many contemporary paintings of the landscapes which inspired them.2.32

SONG LANDSCAPE.

The word for landscape painting, shanshui, encapsulates its two dominant complementary subjects, ‘mountain’ and ‘water’ – the yin and yang and of elements or of elemental force and essence – and as the one derives from heaven to bring vitality to the other, earth, each work is a cosmic diagram in which man is dwarfed but self-assertive. As gardening is the most ephemeral of arts, the best testimony to Huizong’s achievement is provided by the painters of his time. Painters planned gardens under the Southern Song (and later dynasties) and their work has not proved entirely ephemeral in either medium: as we shall see, there are many gardens to the south of the Yangtse (the area known as Jiangnan) and several Song gardens survive in essence, rehabilitated. Beyond that, there is specific account of the detached palace on rising ground to the south of the Southern Song capital: the nucleus of several separate imperial gardens there was the ‘Little West Lake’ linked to the palace by a colonnade. In all the gardens there were exotic trees and flowers, usually selectively planted to lend identity to particular glades. Whether to concentrate on detail or view the entire prospect, there were pavilions decorated in a relaxed court style and rustic ones with no decoration at all.

2.32

569

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.33 XIN’AN (HENAN), NORTHERN N O N - I M P E R I A L B U R I A L C H A M B E R : vault.

SONG

The affluent subjects of the Southern Song adopted a variety of shapes for their tomb chambers and lavished resources on simulating architecture in them and their several adjuncts.

TO M B S Grouped more closely together in a necropolis than the tombs of earlier dynasties, there are twenty-nine imperial Song tombs – the founder’s father, seven emperors and twenty-one empresses – associated with those of numerous relatives in the vicinity of the Song Shan. The southern emperors and their families were buried in modest ‘temporary’ tombs pending the recovery of their lost dominions and the Gongxian necropolis of their ancestors. The usurpers followed imperial precedent – above ground, at least – but many were interred in accordance with traditional nomadic rites. As with the Tang, the nucleus of the typical Gonxian tomb was a terraced burial mound in a walled compound with four gates, corner towers, an offering hall and other palatial pavilions. Again following Tang example, a spirit path to the south was lined with human sentinels and heraldic beasts. Below ground, at differing levels, was the complex of the ‘underground palace’. None has been opened except that of the Guangyi empress (died 998): her circular burial chamber had been robbed but in general the carved and painted embellishment remained to show that the context of interment was a simulated structural palace and its life. Several excavated non-imperial tombs are comparable in style – if not scale.2.33 570

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

›2.34 WANRONG (EARTH-GODDESS

(SHANXI),

HOUTUMIAO

TEMPLE):

stele of 1137 inscribed with bird’s eye-perspective view. Founded under the early Western Han, the complex was rebuilt in the first decade of the 11th century when its ritual was accorded the highest rank: its five precincts, culminating in the court of the fully imperial Kunrou-dian, have been renovated many times. The stele is the earliest known record of a temple – other than those included in the engraved images of Tang Chang’an.

›2.35

T E M P L E I M A G E R Y : (a) Heavenly King; (b, c) Heng and Ha; (d) Guanyin (northern Zhou, c. 580; Boston, Museum of Fine Art). 2.34

RELIGIOUS BUILDINGS AND THEIR DISTRIBUTION In the eclectic context of the Song era it is convenient to distinguish between monasteries and temples – though the former contain the latter. Buddhist or otherwise, however, all major religious complexes continued to follow the form and distribution of the palace with a series of rectangular gates and halls ranged hierarchically on the north–south axis with cloistered courts between them. If the institution was one likely to be visited by the emperor, like the temple to Confucius at the sage’s birthplace in Qufu, Shandung, or the Houtumiao (Earth-Goddess Temple) in Shanxi, the complex lacked nothing of the magnificence of the Son of Heaven’s seat: most of the Song components of the former have been replaced; the definitive Song scheme of the Houtumiao was recorded on a stele of 1137.2.34 2.35a

571

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

An entrance screen (peifang), labelled with a calligraphic panel (like all Chinese buildings), usually defines the boundary between the sacred and profane – and may recur between increasingly sacred zones of a precinct.2.18 The main entrance is invariably a gatehouse (shanmen) guarded by the fierce warriors Heng and Ha who must be passed before the worshipper is admitted to the first court.2.35b,c Here is the stele pavilion recording the dedication and foundation of the temple, flanked by twin towers for the bell and drum which signal the stations of the devotional day. Beyond, usually to the north, is the first building of the main sequence, the Tianwang-dian, the Hall of the Four Heavenly Kings who rule the quarters of the universe and protect the three jewels of Buddhism: the Buddha, the law and the order of the faithful.2.35a These are often represented by an image of the Buddha as Maitreya (Lord of

2.35b

572

2.35c

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.35d

› 2 . 3 6 W U TA I - S H A N , TA Y U A N - S I : library interior with sutra case (Tang?, Ming work on the building has subsequently been restored several times). The device of the revolving sutra case, ascribed to a mid-6th-century monk, was deployed many times. The twenty-tier hexagonal one in the Tayuan-si library was noted by the Japanese pilgrim Ennin, who visited Buddhist holy sites in China between 838 and 847: presumably then, as now, it rose through a double-height space.

the Future) flanked by the kings, as the deity is central to the universe. Possibly from the Tang era, commonly under its immediate successors, there may be a sutra library in a double-height pavilion and an increasingly elevated image of Guanyin may be accommodated in a multi-storey pavilion (ge).2.35d, 2.36 There may be other gates, courts and halls, but the climax in size and position is the Daxiongbao-dian (Trea573

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

sure Hall of the Great Hero) enshrining the main icon of › 2 . 3 7 PA G O D A S : (a) Hunyuan (Shanxi), Yanjue Pagoda (Jin, restored Ming); (b) Chifeng, ‘White the Buddha – often Sakyamuni flanked by his youngest Pagoda’ (Liao, 1049); (c) Bianjing (Kaifeng), ‘Iron and oldest disciples Ananda and Kasyapa, compiler of the Pagoda’ (actually tile-covered brick) in the compound scripture and custodian of the tradition respectively. In of the lost Youguo-si (‘Protect the Realm’ Temple of the Northern Song, 1049). addition, there may be twin buildings dedicated to major bodhisattvas flanking the main axis before the main hall. Pagodas are either single, on axis, or paired in front of the main hall – sometimes in courts of their own. Most of the survivors, naturally, are built of masonry with or without solid cores but there are exceptional examples in metal and timber. Not without exception, of course, the northern dynasties preferred the miyan type.2.37 The

2.37a

574

2.37b

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.37c

Southern Song experimented with the louge, characteristically developing a hybrid with doubled eaves separating the storeys – often with doubled walls enclosing stairs to galleries with windows and/or exterior timber balconies. Song eclecticism prompted accretion to the traditional repertory of building types.The proliferation of collegiate complexes – including the civil service academy in the imperial compound – responded to the renewed emphasis on Confucianism and education. Scholarship was directed to the codification of tradition: we have already encountered the product of prime concern to builders, the Yingzao fashi which was commissioned by the last emperor in Kaifeng, Huizong, at the outset of his reign. On the other hand, enhanced official interest in Daoism promoted the proliferation of gardening and informal retreats of quasi-religious significance – if Daoism may be so defined. The Chan sect of meditational Buddhism also originated in this period in mountain retreats near both the northern and southern capitals: the earliest works are lost but contemporaries describe numerous courts and halls aligned rigorously on the north–south axis despite the terrain. The Liao – who laid the foundations of Beijing as their southern capital – were advanced builders too and particularly adept at innovative carpentry. Sustaining the traditional arrangement of the Buddhist monastic compound with a single pagoda on axis to the south of the image hall – or, occasionally, between two halls – their activity is represented by several of the most important Buddhist survivals of the era – most notably pagodas in both timber and in masonry with simulated trabeation for decorative relief. They were also major contributors to the monastic complex of timber pavilions rising through several storeys to accommodate standing images of Guanyin. 575

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

7

6 2.38b

›2.38

5

4

8

5

3

ZHENGDING

(HEBEI),

LONGZING-SI,

founded under the Sui, endowed by the Song emperors Taizu (960–75) and Shenzong (1067–85) achieved definitive form under the early Jin: the Shan-men is Jin, the Moni-dian – seven bays square with porticoes to each side – was built in the 1050s and the three-storey Debei-ge, with its 24-metre-high statue, founded in 971, is the oldest building on the site though reconstructed 1942: (a) plan with (1) gatehouse, (2) Monidian, (3) altar of abstinence, (4) sutra pavilions, (5) stelae pavilions, (6) Dabei-ge, (7) Mituo-dian, (8) monks’ quarters; (b) 0verview; (c, d) section and general view of Moni-dian, (e) Dabei-ge.

2

2.38c

1 2.38a @ 1:2000

576

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.38d

N O RT H E R N S U RV I VA L S Masonry pagodas apart,remains are sparse until the Ming, when monasteries were built or rebuilt in great numbers. The 10th century is best represented by the Longxing-si (Temple to the Dragon’s Prosperity) at Zhengding, built under the Song from 971,and the Dule-si (Temple to Pleasurable Solitude) of Jixian, built under the Liao from 984:

2.38e

577

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

both are distinguished by multi-storey timber halls sheltering colossal statues of Guanyin.2.38, 2.39 The 11th century is best represented by the superlative timber pagoda of the Fogong-si (Temple of the Buddha’s Glory, 1056) at Yingxian, the magnificent Shengmu-dian (Sage Mother Hall) of the ancestral Jin-si at Taiyuan (1023-32), the relatively humble halls of the Daoist Yuhuan-guan ( Jade Emperor Temple, 1079) and Erxian-guan (Two Immortals Temple, 1107) at Jincheng.2.40, 2.41 Scaled to the size and import of each hall, the roof is now clearly the dominant element. The Guanyin-ge at Yingxian has the gabled roof usually reserved for the lessimportant halls flanking courts. So too does the Guanyinge at Jixian, but that was usual for multi-storey buildings, while the gatehouse has a hipped roof. Not dedicated to the Buddha but consistent in form with Buddhist sanctuaries and lightly curved in the manner characteristic of Song survivals, the Shengmu-dian in the Taiyuan Jin-si has the half-hipped roof that was the norm for multi-

2.39a

578

2.39b

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

›2.39

J I X I A N , D U L E - S I , before 986: (a, b) Shanmen exterior and interior detail with guardian; (c, d) Guanyin-ge, lateral section and interior The dedication stele of 986 records a ‘restoration’ of the temple. As the detail, especially on the gatehouse, resembles surviving Tang work, it is presumed that the main buildings followed Tang prototype: the principal Dharma hall is lost. The Shan-men (gatehouse) is hip-roofed over three bays, like the Nanchan-si at Wutai-shan, but is only two bays deep and divided longitudinally by a row of columns to provide a central barrier. The rectangular Guanyin-ge has an outer colonnade of five bays by four and an inner cao of three bays by two: rising from this basic trabeated structure (supplemented with corner struts in the Qing era) are three floors – or, rather, two tiers of outer columns, separated by a mezzanine over the deep ground-floor eaves. The upper galleries return across the corners to form an octagon. Outside, the second level of columns is masked by eaves protecting the lower ones, as the main roof overhang protects the upper ones, and a balcony projects from the second gallery level. There is a wide variety of bracket clusters. The purlins of the lower eaves are carried on a four-tier dougong over each of the outer base columns and three-tier intermediate ones. The purlins of the upper eaves are carried on projecting horizontal and diagonal beams supported by a two-tier dougong. The balcony is carried on nearly uniform brackets.

2.39c

2.39d

tiered forms. The contemporary Bojiajiaozang-dian at Datong has the half-hipped roof appropriate for a subsidiary building. Inside, sutra cases lend invaluable substance to knowledge of the secular tradition. 579

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.40b

›2.40

YINGXIAN,

FOGONG-SI,

S A K YA M U N I

PA G O D A : (a) elevation detail, (b) section.

The pagoda, built from 1056 in the centre of the complex, is an octagon 30 metres at base that rises through five storeys (each with a blind mezzanine and central shrine) to more than 67 metres. Unlike the typical masonry pagoda with its load-bearing walls and central piers or stairs, the structure depends on two concentric rings of columns at each level: each of the tiers is stepped back from the one below like the sections of a ship’s mast – hence the storeys diminish progressively to both structural and aesthetic advantage. The ground floor is embraced by a verandah, the upper ones by cantilevered galleries. Flexible joints in the major and minor members of the timber frame throughout have obviated destruction by earthquake.

2.40a

580

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.41a

Ta i y u a n , J i n - s i First mentioned in literature from the period of the Northern Wei, the grand complex at Taiyuan was founded to commemorate the Zhou prince Shu Yu, the semi-legendary progenitor of the Jin state. The area was devastated c. 980 when the Song were attempting to consolidate their hold, but the temple was refounded in the early 11th century when the worship of Shuyu’s mother began to eclipse that of the prince. Orientated to face the rising sun, the main axis culminates in the earliest surviving works. Beyond the Ming gate (an earlier gate is off-axis to the north) is a Ming stage for the performance of festival plays, the Shuijing-tai (Water-mirror Platform). Further, beyond a bridge over the stream that flows through the compound, is a platform with much-recast Song figures in iron, then the three-by-two-bay Xi’an-dian added under the Jin, then a spring-fed square tank spanned by the cross-shaped Fei-liang (Flying Bridge). Immediately to the east of the bridge is the Shengmu-dian. Of seven by five bays, this is the earliest surviving major diantang with a two-tier, half-hipped roof – the lower tier covering a verandah ambulatory consistent in detail with the main structure (and 11th-century work elsewhere). The Yingzao fashi recommends a standardized dougong and one cluster over each intercolumniate beam except in the case of wider central bays (which need two): here there is one in each bay and they are all similar in size to the ones over the columns. Though this approaches

581

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.41b

the Song norm, Song consistency is not achieved in detail – perhaps due to the many phases of restoration. For example, some of the diagonal beams still butt up against horizontal beams, some support purlins at both ends. The two inner rows of columns are deleted to house the Song icons of the holy mother and her retinue. The dragons coiled around the outer columns were added in 1087.

582

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

›2.41

TA I Y U A N , J I N - S I : (a) entrance screen to main precinct with drum tower and Xi’an-dian (Hall of Offerings, background, 1168); (b–d) Shengmu-dian (Hall of the Holy Mother, 1023–32, restored under the Yuan and Ming in sympathy with the original), east front, elevation and detail of verandah with guardian.

2.41c

2.41d

583

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.42a

By the end of the first quarter of the 12th century, columns › 2 . 4 2 D AT O N G : (a–d) Huayan-si (early 11th century, have incised decorative relief, as on the front of the Zusi- burned during the sack of Datong at the end of the Liao dynasty (1122), rebuilt by the Jin in its two present comdian at Shaolin,and decorative play is apparent in the radial pounds, extended by the Ming and largely rebuilt by disposition of the brackets in Jin works like the Sansheng- the Qing): lower compound, Bojiajiaozang-dian dian (Hall of the Three Sages) of the Shanhua-si (Temple (Library Hall, 1038), exterior, interior and detail of sutra cases in the form of a model palace, upper compound, of the Great Transformation) at Datong. The Daxiong- Daxiongbao-dian (Powerful Treasure Hall of the Great bao-dian (main Buddha Hall) there provides the immedi- Hero,1140) interior; (e, f ) Shanhua-si (founded under ate precedent in monumentality for the ultimate hall of the Tang c. 740, the temple was rebuilt by the Jin, 1123–43, and restored under the mid-15th-century Datong’s Upper Huayan-si: both with vast hipped roofs, Ming): Sansheng-dian, interior and overview from these are distinguished by a weighty consistency of brack- south-west. eting which matches Song both in the assimilation of the The complex is orientated to the east, reputedly in accordance with the devotion of its original Liao primary and secondary clusters, and in the shape and scale patrons to the sun. The Library Hall in the lower comof the parts. Further, these buildings exhibit a new gravi- pound – the sole survivor from the Liao period – has five tas in the revision of the ratio between column and roof bays by four, enshrining thirty-one icons. The dougong system accords with Yingzao fashi prescription – and height which anticipated Ming monumentality without the original work in the Shengmu-dian at Taiyuan – and resorting to the doubling of the eaves.2.42 preserves traces of blue-green colouring. Its back and 584

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.42b

side walls are lined with thirty-eight sutra stacks in the form of the Palace of the Western Paradise. Most notable is the central hall on a bridge connecting it to side pavilions. The earliest-surviving three-dimensional representation of a Chinese palace, its resemblance to the Tang Hanyuan-dian2.24d,e is striking. In the models, as on the exterior of the library itself, bracketing approaches mature Song gravitas. The lattice screens and the coffered ceiling well represent the era’s experimentation in woodwork decoration. The main hall of the Huayan-si upper compound has nine bays by four on a 4.5-metre-high platform: the sole survivor of the Jin period at the site, it is the largest surviving hall from before the Ming era when there was a proliferation of the double-eave roof. To house the huge Buddhas (1427) there are two, not four, rows of internal columns inset from the ambulatory dougong. The result is garandeur of space unprecedented in a temple hall – insofar as the accidents of survival testify. In the Shanhua-si complex, the Shan-men, with Ming guardians and the first prayer hall, Sanshengdian, with Jin figures of the Buddha flanked by the bodhisattvas Manjusri (wisdom) and Samantabhadra (benevolence), seem to have been rebuilt from 1123: the central columns in the back row are dislocated to accommodate the icons. The innermost court is flanked in front by the twin Manjusri and Samantabadhra-ge pavilions (1123, the latter lost, the former rebuilt 1953 as Puxia-men). Beyond is the Daxiongbao-dian of seven bays by five of 1123 (but with Liao icons of the Dhayani Buddhas displacing several of the back range of columns). The Samantabhadra pavilion is a ge of the type of the Dule-si at Jixian: with its twin dedicated to Manjusri, it was originally attached to a colonnade which surrounded the main courts of the complex but is now lost.

2.42c

2.42d

2.42e

585

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.42f

586

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

587

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

S O U T H E R N VA R I A N TS In the hot and humid south of the country ventilation was a major concern of builders. The upward-curving corners of eaves, left open between the dougong, were clearly devised to catch the air – but the flair with which they did so was equally southern in its appeal. Thus, elegant in line › 2 . 4 3 S U Z H O U : (a) Yunan-si pagoda (959); (b) Beisi (Northern Temple) pagoda (mid-12th century, restored late-19th century); (c) Bao’en-si (reputedly founded by a mid-3rd-century ruler of Wu, the temple was destroyed in conflict between the Song and Jin in 1130 and rebuilt under the Shaoxing emperor, 1131–63). The pagoda, rising through nine storeys of brick and timber to a height of 76 metres, provides the focus for the celebrated ‘borrowed view’ from the Zhuozhengyuan (Humble Administrator’s Garden).

2.43a

588

2.43b

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.43c

589

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

rather than severely monumental in their mass, the south- › 2 . 4 4 F U Z H O U , YO N G Q U A N - S I , founded in 908, ern temples were no less rigorously axial in distribution restored under the Song, destroyed by fire in 1542 and definitively rebuilt under the Qing from 1627: Tianthan their northern counterparts – unlike the capitals of wang-dian (Hall of the Heavenly Kings). The scale of the three main halls aligned on the printhe Southern Song. cipal axis (the Tianwang-dian is nearest the spring) The most prominent Song foundations in Hangzhou suggests a Song date at the earliest. were destroyed with much of the city during the Taiping rebellion (1860–62). In Suzhou, however, the Bao’en-si (Temple of Gratitude), with its great pagoda, survives in its southern Song form – if much restored. Further south, in Fuzhou and Xiamen respectively, the Yongquan-si (Temple of the Gushing Spring) and Nanputuo-si (Southern Temple of the Putuo Sect) well represent the southern style of numerous foundations in the rump of the empire: the latter has the fluidity and floridity of a late epoch, but the main hall of the former, at least, retains its Song character despite extensive renovation.2.43, 2.44 590

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

›2.45

K U B L A I K A H N (1215–94), first emperor of

the Yuan dynasty.

4 the yuan interregnum and tibet The Mongols triumphed under Genghis Khan’s grandson, Kublai, in a variation of the usual pattern of change, and subjected China to their regime, known as Yuan, from 1279 to 1368.2.45 The subjection entailed a new stratification of four estates: first, the Mongols; then related ethnic groups from central Asia such as the Tibetans;third,the Han Chinese; fourth other ethnic groups domiciled in China. The western provinces, always prey to the nomads – if not actually their domain – were part of Kublai’s inheritance and the old, lucrative trade route to the west flourished once more to the benefit of the Chinese merchant – and, of course, the imperial economy. By land and sea, Western travellers – like the Polos – succeeded in making the return journey with fantastic tales of the land of the Great Khan. And Kublai extended his domain to Tibet where two centuries of chaos had followed the destruction of the Lhasa monarchy. 591

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

TIBET AND THE EMERGENCE OF L AMAISM A century before the eclipse of imperial Lhasa, a century after the adoption of Buddhism by Songtsen Gampo, the king Trisong Detsen (755–97),ruling from the tower palace of his ancestors,2.46 reinforced the dissemination of Buddhism in Tibet against the vigorous challenge from Bonpo devotees.Sages were introduced from China and India. The most important of the latter were the orthodox academic traditionalist Shantarakshita and the heterodox mystic Padmasambhava, emanation of a giant lotus fertilized by the Amitabha Buddha as Amitayus (the Buddha of Infinite Life) and instrument of Avalokiteshvara, whose magical powers were needed to overcome the local demons inimical to Shantarakshita’s effort.2.47, 2.48 With the Indians came much that was endemic to Indian civilization, especially monasticism. From Samye, the premier monastery founded by the king, Padmasambhava, Guru Rinpoche (‘Precious Master’) introduced Tantrism whose magical formulae were by no means foreign to animists. And the struggle against the latter was furthered under the auspices of Avalokiteshvara who was believed to have taken the specific vow to help Tibet emerge from barbarism and ignorance into the bliss of wisdom and compassion.Thus the kings and queens had been recognized as incarnations of Avalokiteshvara and the greatest Lamaist sages sustained the line of Manjusri. With the abrogation of royal patronage, both Buddhist missions lapsed – or, rather, the ground they had prepared fell fallow. In the middle of the 11th century, after a semblance of order had been re-established, an Indian missionary known as Atisha set out to reignite the faith. From the obscurity,a Tibetan scholar known as Rinchen Sangpo emerged on pilgrimage to the Buddhist heartland. Others followed, notably Atisha’s disciple Dromton Gyalway 592

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.46a

2.46b

2.46c

›2.46 0N

T H E R O O F O F T H E W O R L D : (a) the ver-

nacular; (b) Lhasa, royal castle on Marpori; (c) Zongshan Castle, Gyangze. On Marpori in Lhasa excavation has revealed traces

of the original nucleus of several dynastic strongholds. The latter are invariably hill-forts whose organic development was dictated by the nature of the site. Enough survives even at base level to indicate courtyard buildings with battered load-bearing external walls of stone or adobe: there is no reason to assume that they did not rise through several storeys to flat roofs, like their replacements, or that the internal structure was not of timber. The agglomeration of multi-storey blocks, developed in accordance with the contours of rugged sites, was the enduring characteristic of the native tradition.

› 2 . 4 7 V A J R A B H A I R A V A , 17th century gilt bronze (Boston, Museum of Fine Arts). The Diamond Terrifier, also known as Yamantaka (the Vanquisher of Death), is Manjusri (Lord of Wisdom) in the aspect he acquired for his visit to the hell of Yama (Lord of the Dead) in his quest for infinite knowledge: to confront Yama, Manjusri equipped himself with the eight visages of cosmic awareness in addition to Yama’s own buffalo image, thirty-four arms wielding invincible implements and sixteen legs to straddle the sixteen voids between heaven and hell. One of Yama’s demons, Mahakala, was tamed by Manjusri and adopted as a protector of the faith.

593

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

Jungnay, who founded the Kadam (‘Oral Instruction’) order, and the lay-master Marpa who enrolled at the Tantric school of the Great Adept Naropa in India and returned to amass a huge following which constituted the Kagyu (‘Oral Tradition’) order. Marpa taught from his home, rather than a monastery, but the second generation of his disciples initiated a series of foundations of which Pakmodru ultimately gained precedence: the Kagyu also instituted the practice of recognizing the reincarnation of leading lamas in a newborn child. Monasteries, founded or refounded both by Indian missionaries and returning pilgrims, proliferated, schools flourished again and the sangha was soon restored to prominence throughout Tibet. Among the most important monasteries founded to define dogma and regulate the institutions of revived Buddhism at this time was Sakya of Konchok Gyalpo who traced his descent from one of Padmasambhava’s disciples.2.50 With the destruction of Buddhism in India following the Muslim invasions of the late-12th century, many refugees took their beliefs, practices and documents to Tibet. There, under the auspices of Manjusri through whose transcendent wisdom alone the great bliss of total samsara is to be attained, scholarship was devoted to the systematic analysis of the imported texts rather than to the production of specifically new Tibetan doctrine. Yet, as these texts came from all the major Indian schools – orthodox and heterodox – a peculiarly Tibetan synthesis was emerging by the time of the Mongol ascendancy. However, the syncretism was not the product of mere conservatism. Recognition of the different needs of each individual aspirant to Nirvana prompted admission of the worth of all three major ways to enlightenment mapped in the first Buddhist millennium: Hinayana, Mahayana and Vajrayana. In addition, the central element in the

2.48a

2.48b

2.48c 2.48d

amalgam of the foreign and the native is the shamanistic › 2 . 4 8 T H E M A N D A L A A N D T H E E A R LY T I B E TA N M O N A S T E R Y : (a, b) Samye (founded c. 775, much magic of the native bon-po animism. rebuilt), overview and plan; (c, d) cosmic model and From the ferment, the masters (lamas) in their monas- Kalachakra (wheel of time) (Paris, Musée Guimet). Dedicated to Padmasambhava and a major object of teries (lamaseries) distilled several orders of Lamaism but pilgrimage, the premier monastery of Tibet is in the primacy was retained by the Nyingma (Ancients) of form of a vast mandala with the central Grand Temple Samye and their relatives at Sakya. Claiming descent representing Meru and subsidiary temples marking the from Padmasambhava, they promoted the Vajrayana as cardinal directions of space: Tibetan records refer to the fast track to enlightenment but recognized that only Bihar as the source of inspiration. Pradakshina is defined by the circular compound but there is specific the select few were capable of following it. In the late- provision for it within the mass of the Grand Temple: Yuan era they too built monasteries and their greatest the largest space, for assembly, is the precinct for the lama, Longchen Lodro (1308–63), who was recognized as principal shrine dedicated to Padmasambhava. A secondary entrance serves the shrine of Avalokiteshvara. an incarnation of Manjusri, produced a synthesis of all 594

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.49a @ 1:2000

2.49b

Buddhist scholarship. Traditionally embracing all who had followed the ways of the first missionaries throughout the centuries of persecution and dispatching ‘treasure seekers’(terma) to recover the lost seminal documents,the sect was particularly strong in Bhutan, where many monks had fled in the 9th century.2.48 Sectarian distinction naturally had a political complexion. Lhasa, eclipsed politically, was generally acknowledged as the national religious centre because of the venerable Jokhang and Ramoche temples founded by King Songtsen Gampo’s Nepali and Chinese wives.2.49 Interschool debate there was essentially benign even though the schools took their identity from the domains of rival lords. Inevitably some sects acquired more

2.49c

2.49d

595

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.49e

2.49f

596

2.49g

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.49h

2.49i @ 1:2000

› 2 . 49

L H A S A , T H E P R I M A R Y T E M P L E S : (a–g) Jokhang (founded mid-7th century, amplified 13–14th century and later), plan, late-17th century overview (Potala Palace, Lhasa), interiors with Padmasambhava and Maitreya, overview of forecourt and assembly hall roof, court and eaves details; (h) King Songtsen Gampo (16th-century gilt bronze; Bombay, Prince of Wales Museum); (i, j) Ramoche, plan and court front (completed 17th century). In the aftermath of the 11th-century Buddhist renaissance, the court of the original Jokhang foundation1.45 was enclosed in a colonnaded gallery (Tibetan kora) defining pradakshina but probably extending around a new forecourt to the west. In the Yuan era two storeys were added over the original cells and the open court bounded by them was transformed into a hypostyle assembly hall under a Chinese roof. Similarly the Ramoche shrine, originally a cell with kora, was greatly augmented on the east–west axis with a hypostyle assembly hall – the outer kora and front portico were added in the 17th century when much else was refurbished. Like the Jokhang, the earliest temples were usually formally planned complexes with galleried courts centred on the sanctum: orientation east–west and dependence on Indian prototypes, particularly those of the Palas, has already been noted (see page 88f ). The Tibetan grid reflects some familiarity with the Chinese modular system but the earliest form of trabeation – especially the column in several faceted sections – recalls the Indian approach even after its translation into stone. Later cylindrical columns and cantilevered tie-beams or brackets follow the Chinese norm and the decorative motifs are of Chinese derivation. The typically Chinese open pavilion, with high-pitched roof and curved eaves carried on a flexible system of cantilevered beams, rises over the native flat roof as a permanent canopy sheltering the most sacred of relics.

597

2.49j

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

prestige than others but the tangled web of religious and secular authority subsisted in central and eastern Tibet without major trauma until the advent of the Mongols in 1207.No one Tibetan ruler could challenge Genghis Khan and no united front could be invented in time: vassalage was accepted. Failure to pay due homage to the Mongol Khan, partly due to failure of responsibility in a divided land, invited reprisal in mid-century. By then the most prestigious order in Tibet was the Sakyapa: its chief lama, Sakya Pandita (‘Scholarly Sage’) Kunga Gyaltsen, was called to account at the Khan’s camp and brought his nephew Pakpa. So impressed was the Great Khan with his spiritual qualities that he converted to his faith and sent Pakpa back as viceroy with overall authority:that was henceforth exercised by the Sakya hierarchy in Tibet’s thirteen provinces. So successful was the arrangement in pacifying Tibet that Kublai Khan defined the relationship between China and Tibet as a personal bond between himself and the chief of the Sakya.

2.50b @ 1:4000

›2.50

2.50a

A N E W G E N E R AT I O N O F LAMASERIES As the monarch had been eclipsed by the monk in the 11th century in central Tibet – later in the west – there was, naturally, a renewed impetus to Buddhist patronage. Diverse doctrinal schools in the fragmented former realm, assuming authority in their area, produced complexes which combined monastery, school and administrative centre. Replacing the local representative of royal authority, they usually occupied the main local eminence and the order of the earliest monasteries ceded to the organic distribution of the royal hill-fort. The different schools seem to have promoted no marked divergence of style: the formal Indian concentric mandala type of temple, admirably represented by Samye, was supplemented by the hypostyle hall, as at Sakya.2.50 As religious and secular works were assimilated in the walled complex, court and hall suc-

S A K YA : (a) 17th-century perspective, (b)

plan, (c) Assembly Hall, detail. The monastery was founded in the 11th century as a power base by the noble Khon family who were allied with the Sakya sect in the governance of the area. The order reached its apogee with the Pandita’s nephew Pakpa who, on his return from the Khan’s court with temporal authority and great riches in 1265, began the work of transformation of the complex on a north– south orientation as the capital of Tibet. The Grand Temple, in a square walled compound with corner towers and fortified gates, is a synthesis of Tibetan military forms, the residential vernacular and Chinese ceremonial grandeur: beyond the central square court, within a massive block with battered walls and strictly limited fenestration, the vast assembly hall (of nearly 6000 square metres and 16 metres high) is roofed in the Chinese manner over forty columns of which the largest – at the entrance from the court and in the centre – were given by Kublai Khan.

2.50c

598

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

›2.51 SHALU (XIALU) OF S H I G AT S E ( X I G A Z E ) , founded 1040, greatly expanded from 1320: (a) plan; (b) entrance to Grand Temple. Towards the end of the 13th century the monastery, built by the Che noble family as a seat of provincial power, passed by marriage to the Sakya who retained it as their principal political base after their elevation to power over Tibet by Kublai Khan. Che Dagpa Gyeltsen paid homage at the court of the latter’s successor and on his return instituted the work of transformation incorporating Chinese elements with finance from the Yuan emperor. Embellished under the direction of the Budan Renqinzhu lama (1290–1364), who was appointed abbot in 1320, only the central block, Serkhang chenmo (Golden Temple) survived the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

ceeded one another in alignment, if not strict axiality, and hierarchy is expressed in the Chinese manner by size, structural formula, embellishment, roof-form and colour. Promoted by the Sakyapa and financed by the emperor, the Chinese contribution to Tibetan eclecticism was waxing by the beginning of the 14th century: in particular the age-old orientation, which Tibet had shared with India from time immemorial, ceded to the north–south axis, the flexible Chinese type of roof emerged predominant and the hierarchical distinction of roof-tile colours, bracketcluster types and planning formulae was increasingly rigorous. The Jokhang and Sakya were transformed with the insertion of hypostyle halls, the former in the court of the 7th-century building commissioned by King Songgtsen’s Nepalese queen and preceded by colonnaded forecourt. The transformers of Jokhang and founders of Shalu, moreover, first effect the superimposition of flexible Chinese trabeation and its elegant roofline over the severe battered mass of the Tibetan vernacular.2.51

2.51a @ approximately 1:4000

2.51b

599

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.52a

L A M A I S M AT DA D U Kublai invited debate between Christians, Muslims, Chinese and Lamaist theologians. So impressed was he with the Sakya lama Pandita that Lamaism,elevated into a spiritual ideal for the disparate Mongolian tribes, was adopted as the official religion of the Yuan state and a Tibetan monument was erected over the new capital, Beijing.2.52 600

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

›2.52

Y U A N B E I J I N G ( D A D U ) : (a) ‘White Pagoda’ of the Miaoying-si (Temple of the Miraculous Response, 1272); (b) plan with (1) palace city enclosure, (2) imperial residence, (3) imperial gardens and garden palaces, (4) Confucius Temple (5) Temple of the Imperial Ancestors, (6) Buddhist temple. A brick reliquary stupa of the Tibetan bulbous form (51 metres high), with high faceted podium, the socalled ‘White Pagoda’ is the major surviving monument of Kublai’s reign – indeed of the whole Yuan period of building in Beijing. It is credited to Kublai’s Nepalese mentor Anige who had studied in Tibet. The monastic buildings associated with it were destroyed in the troubles which marked the advent of the Ming in 1368: the new regime rebuilt the monastery as the Miaoying-si. The form of pagoda was often followed under both Ming and Qing.

4 6

3 3

5 1 2

3

2.52b @ approximately 1:10,000

The northern capital: inception The capital was moved to the north-eastern site of Dadu (the old Jin seat of Zhongdu which the Liao called Yanjing, the future Beijing), nearer Mongolia. The scheme, on which work began c. 1267, was rather stricter in conformity to the tradition descending from the Zhou than the laxer Song cities of the south. Open to well-watered plains to the south and encircled by hills to the north – as feng shui requires – the site was settled at least as early as the Zhou and was developed as the capital of one of the Warring States (as Yanjing, ‘Capital of Swallows’). A trade centre and base for expeditions against Korea from the Han to the Tang, it fell to various nomadic tribes before the Yuan took it from the Jin and established it as a base (Khanbalik, 1215), not least because of the amount of water introduced by the ci-devant rulers to their lake gardens from neighbouring hills. Enclosed in a perimeter wall of some 28.5 kilometres – including an extensive grazing area for horses – the later Yuan capital was longer on the north–south axis than east–west (rather than square in accordance

601

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

with Zhou prescription) and there were eleven rather than twelve gates (only two to the north). Defining wards in the pre-Song manner, the main streets (25 metres wide) linked opposite gates except where the impenetrable imperial compound interposed itself. Because of the position of the Jin lake – but as at Hangzhou – this was south of the centre but its main gate was aligned with the central gate in the southern wall, and the two were linked by a particularly grand ceremonial avenue (28 metres wide). This extended north to the bell and drum towers which the Yuan introduced to mark time and announce danger. Only the Mongol ruling class and their clients were allowed within the new imperial city: the Chinese were confined to the southern site of old Zhongdu – which they restored from the devastation of its fall. 2.53a

The Grand Canal was extended to Dadu for the benefit › 2 . 5 3 R U I C H E N G ( S H A N X I ) , YO N G L E - G O N G , of inland control, transport and trade but the Great Wall mid-13th century: (a, b) frescoes of the dedicatees Lu Dongbin and Wang Zhe, a congregation of Daoist to its north and west was not considered relevant to the immortals; (c) plan with (1) gatehouse, (2) Wuji-men, defence of a pan-Asian domain. Within the city walls, the (3) Sanqing-dian, (4) Chunyang-dian, (5) Chonyanggreat Khans built in the grandest tailing manner defined dian; (d–f ) Sanqing-dian, section, elevation and interior detail; (g) overview. by the Yingzao fashi but little of their work survived the Founded in the early Yuan era at the reputed birthradical redevelopment of the site under the later dynasties. place of Lu Dongbin, one of the Daoist Eight Immortals For themselves, moreover, the Mongol rulers continued to (Baxian) whose legend is celebrated in the fresco cycle of the Chunyang-dian, the complex was moved from prefer tent palaces and unmarked desert graves to the Chi- Yongji in 1957 to escape inundation in an irrigation pronese imperial norms of residence in this life and the next. ject. Its Daoist sect, founded by Wang Zhe whose career Lamaist temples and monasteries proliferated through- is celebrated in the frescoes of the Zhongyang-dian, is out Yuan domains but other Buddhist sects were not denied official patronage. Indeed, the legendary savagery of the Mongols was somewhat moderated by the influence of Buddhism. Moreover, the faith was reconsidered consistent with both Confucianism and Daoism. Again, little more survives from the Yuan era than from its predecessors and – the Miaoying dagoba apart – that is generally remote from the centres of power and Lamaist or Daoist.2.53

2.53b

602

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

5

4

2.53d

3

2.53e

2.53f

2

1 2.53c @ 1:2000

noted for its syncretism: Sanqing-dian, the first hall of the series, is embellished with incomparable pantheistic frescoes. The latter, a diantang of seven bays, has a hipped roof and coffered ceiling with three semiconical motifs over the central bays: the three-tiered dougongs supporting the roof structure are carried on the columns and in pairs on the primary beams. The halls of the dedicatee and founder are of five bays, with hip and gable roofs. 603

2.53g

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

5 ming and the qing: longevity and sclerosis The insult of foreign dominance was, of course, intolerable to the proud Chinese, and tribal dissension among the second generation of Kublai’s successors opened the way for the inevitable peasant revolt. This time, uniquely, the peasants produced a leader, Zhu Yuanzhang, capable of assuming the mandate of heaven: he reigned as the Hongwu emperor (1368–98). Most of the Mongol ruling class retreated back to their northern wastes but Zhu rejected their Dadu for Nanjing 604

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

›2.54

N A N J I N G : section of Ming wall. The southern capital’s defences were the most impressive to date in China. A wall of stone and brick (the world’s longest at nearly 40 kilometres) enclosed the inheritance from the past and a new imperial city, itself walled of course. It was atypical in conforming to the hilly contours of the site rather than to the rationalist ideal. There were thirteen gates, all of them with towers and those on major lines of approach defended with barbicans.

›2.55

T H E YO N G L E E M P E R O R , 1402–24 (Beijing,

Palace Museum).

605

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

as his Han support was strong in the south.2.54 Moreover the former capital of the Jin and Liao at the confluence of the Yangze and Qinhuai rivers was best placed for communication with the rest of China and, protected by mountains to the north as well as water to the south, satisfied the ideals of feng shui – if not those of order prescribed by the Zhou.2.54 Zhu Yuanzhang had appointed his son Zhu Di viceroy in the north, with his headquarters at the former Yuan seat. Well-equipped to protect the empire from any revived threat from beyond the Wall, Zhu Di built a considerable power base there from which he successfully challenged his nephew who had acceded as the Huidi emperor on the death of the patriarch in 1398. The new Yongle emperor re-established the imperial capital at his northern base in 1403, renaming it Beijing (‘Northern Capital’). As in the south, the indigenous Chinese tradition of architecture had not ceased to flourish there – though much of the Yuan city was razed in 1368 – and the new Chinese rulers built on the native urban foundations laid for their alien predecessors.2.55 Assuming the epithet Ming (Bright), the dynasty followed the usual pattern of national renewal, redistributing the land, reforming the tax system, purging – but not constraining – the bureaucracy, renovating the roads and canals to facilitate internal and external commerce. It developed seaborne trade, which had not been neglected by the Song but was naturally alien to the Mongols. Against the latter, it reasserted authority in central Asia and strengthened the Great Wall. It reinforced both the garrison towns and the defences of the major provincial centres, such as Chang’an (Xi’an), and promoted advances in techonology – notably, insofar as the building industry was concerned, in the production of bricks and tiles.2.20, 2.56, 2.57

2.56b

› 2 . 5 6 T H E G R E AT W A L L : (a) Ming revetment at Jinshanling; (b, c) Jiayuguan fort (1372), inner court with watchtower and overview . At the western extremity of the Great Wall, guarding part of the Gansu Corridor (the narrow pass into which the province of Gansu extends westwards), the fort at Jiayuguan has a series of courts covering 33,500 square metres, enclosed by earthworks up to 10 metres in height and overlooked by watchtowers (renovated from 1988). Its complexity and size notwithstanding, the descent of the form from the prototype of the Han courtyard house2.13b could hardly be clearer – nor could its further expansion to the scale of the walled city with its towered gates and, above all, its drum and bell towers.

2.56c

608

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.57a

›2.57

X I ’ A N : (a) bell tower (foreground) and drum tower; (b) section of wall. The wall at Xi’an gives perhaps the best image of the massiveness and inexorability of Ming urban defences. From the era of the Yuan, every major Chinese city had a drum tower to mark the hours of day and night, and a bell tower to announce the opening and closing of the city gates and to alert the population at times of danger. These recall the walled Han courtyard house with its watchtower.2.13b

2.57b

609

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

›2.58

Q I N G E M P E R O R S : (a) Kangxi (1662–1722);

(b) Qianlong (1736–96).

2.58a

2.58b

F RO M M I N G TO Q I N G The Ming conformed to the usual pattern of decline and fall too, though now the stultification of the bureaucracy through the arch-conservatism of the examination system was a key factor. An effete court controlled by corrupt and rapacious eunuchs, bankrupted by land and tax concessions to the magnates, was again toppled by peasant revolt. And the peasants lost the initiative in the usual way. Filling the void, the Qing – the ‘Pure’, the last of China’s imperial dynasties – descended from Manchuria to rule first from Shenyang in Liaoning (from 1624), then from Beijing (1644–1911). Ethnically related to the Mongols, they remained aloof from their subjects but they appointed Han Chinese to important government posts, restored Chinese institutions and avidly acquired Chinese civilization: indeed, they were obdurate in sustaining the traditional belief in the superiority of all things Chinese. Syncretic in aspiration, they were tolerant of all the faiths 610

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

›2.59

W A L L A N D A R C H : (a) Jincheng (Shanxi), Erxian-si (Two Immortals Temple), main hall; (b) Biyun-si, Xianshan (Beijing), bell tower with arcaded masonry supporting trabeated roof. The Erxian-si may be dated as early as 1107: timber was doubtless in short supply for small-scale provincial building as early as the period of the late-Northern Song.

2.59a

2.59b

611

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

current in China and revived Yuan patronage of Lamaism from conviction no less than political ambition in Central Asia. Like the Ming, they produced several effective emperors who presided over a long period of expanding prosperity and devoted great resources to reasserting Chinese authority wherever it had been exercised before.2.58 Their humiliation in the 19th century at the hands of the Europeans and the accession of nationalist, socialist and communist regimes in the wake of popular uprisings at the beginning of the 20th century are beyond our scope. Even less innovative in the arts than their conservative predecessors, the Qing devoted their most significant efforts to restoration and rebuilding on a grandiose scale. However, the proliferation of traditional building exercises – at all levels of patronage – in the prosperity of their 18th-century high noon depleted timber resources. The problem was partly met by lashing small sections of wood together, or laminating them, and – more significantly – by reducing the size of bracket clusters or dispensing with them altogether in favour of tenons. The pteron of columns was retained for the grandest buildings, the side and back bays in-filled with brick,but lesser buildings were often walled in brick to back and sides, revealing the internal trabeation only in a front verandah. Beyond that, the resort to masonry naturally tended to enhance the aspect of building which would formerly have been considered essentially defensive.2.59 At the apex of traditional patronage, secular and religious, the Ming and Qing eras saw the amplification and elaboration of form, and a preference for gravitas over elegance: in particular, roofs ceded the élan of curved line to weighty mass and, with the decrease in the size of the dougong relative to the height of the column, roofs no longer seemed to float beyond structural reality. On the other hand, the grand buildings of dynastic China’s last

›2.60

L O N G Q U A N - S I , TA I S H A N

( TA I Y U A N ) :

conical vault with tenon joints – and models with dougong.

half-millennium are distinguished by the degree to which the elaboration of their brackets departed from structural necessity and to which that elaboration is enhanced by an extended palette of colours. Despite depletion of timber supplies, wood carving is prolix elsewhere too: notably in the perforated screens of doors and windows, in their frames, in timber ceilings and vaults and, of course, in furniture.2.60, 2.61 Elaboration and enhanced colour may be apparent in the comparison of the survivors of the Tang period at Wutai-shan2.29, 2.35 with the Song pavilions at the Taiyuan Jin-si2.40 and,further,the Jin buildings of Datong – in so far as the leached remains of those eras preserve any 612

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

›2.61 (SMALL

XIXIAN

(SHANXI),

XIAO

XITIAN

W E S T E R N PA R A D I S E ) , 1632: gallery fur-

niture evoking the Pure Land.

original paintwork at all.2.41 Now the repetition of the accumulated and intricately embellished dougong – carried largely on the beams spanning the forest of columns rising from the multi-tiered base – provides a dense but intensely chromatic bolster for the enormous double roof characteristic of all imperial building types after the advent of the Ming. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Forbidden City of Beijing which, sustained and extended by the Qing, was created by the Ming on Yuan ground and inaugurated with a Buddhist shrine inspired by the Mahabodhi Temple at Gaya.1.44, 2.62, 2.63 613

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

B e i j i n g : M i n g a n d Q i n g d e ve l o p m e n t Inheriting a site again devastated in the struggle with the Yuan, the Ming pruned the northern districts of the Yuan enclosure, with their protected grazing areas and Mongol wards. Thus they reduced the extent of the wall and the number of gates (to nine), made the north–south axis shorter than the east–west one, and placed the Imperial Palace enclosure closer to the centre. As the remainder of the city, beyond the imperial gardens, was primarily governmental, a new commercial and industrial suburb was needed: in accordance with the general move south this was built around the compound of the Tian-tan which – conforming to venerable tradition – had been located in that quarter by the first of the site’s aspirants to imperial prestige. The city, extended in the mid-16th century, consisted of four distinct walled areas: the ‘Forbidden City’ where the emperor lived and held

2.62

court; the inner city where the most important organs of government

›2.62

were protected; the outer northern city of officials, official temples, col-

T R U E E N L I G H T E N M E N T ) : entrance front (1473).

leges and their support (23.5 kilometres in perimeter); and the southern commercial city (22.5 kilometres in perimeter), where most of the general populace lived to either side of the great imperial altar compounds. At 23.5 kilometres, the perimeter of the northern city – a moated brick wall with corner fortresses and nine towered gates – was 1 kilometre longer than that of the south – though, of course, the latter was far more heavily populated. The central axis was 8 kilometres long from the central gate of the southern suburb to the north gate of the northern town. The Qing

2.63a

614

BEIJING,

ZHENJUE-SI

(TEMPLE

OF

The temple was founded to house five golden statues of the Buddha and a model of the Gaya Mahabodhi Temple presented to the Ming Yongle emperor: as on the Indian original, a major shikhara rises from four smaller ones. Tang precedents for this relatively late work have been detected in the ruins of Jiaohe (near Turfan, Xinjiang).

›2.63

B E I J I N G : (a) model of defences and waterway connection; (b) block tower; (c) plan (from a 19thcentury engraving); (d, e) Forbidden City, overview and

2.63b

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.63c @ approximately 1:6000

615

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

increased the residential area within the northern city at the expense of government offices and military compounds: the beneficiaries were Qing

13 12 11 10 9

princes, officials, religious foundations and their servants; the ethnic Chinese were largely confined to the southern city – until the prosperity attendant upon security prompted considerable expansion of habitation

15

beyond the walls.

8 14

7 6 5 4

3

2 1

2.63d

T h e Fo r b i d d e n C i t y In the walled rectangle of the northern sector of Beijing is the Imperial City: few exercises in axial planning have rivalled it. Once walled and entered through the great Tianan-men (Gate of Heavenly Peace), originally at the head of a relatively narrow avenue, now addressing the vastness of Tiananmen Square, this inner city contained administrative offices, ministerial residences, imperial factories, parks and the palace compound. North of Tianan-men, flanking the axial route to the south gate of the palace compound, were the temples to compounds of the ancestral temple (east) and the altars of soil and grain (west): in these the emperor performed rites asserting the legitimacy of his authority and the universality of his dominion. Still stoutly walled and moated, the palace compound (750 by 960 metres) is the innermost nucleus, the Forbidden City, the residence of the emperor and the seat of government – and entry beyond its Wu-men was forbidden to all except the imperial family and those on imperial business (who were admitted only to the outer zone).

616

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.63e @ 1:1500

plan with (1) Wu-men, (2) Court of Golden Stream and Dragon Bridge, (3) Taihe-men (Gate of Supreme Harmony), flanked by the Zhaode-men and Zhendu-men (Gates of Luminous Virtue and Correct Conduct) to ceremonial zone, (4) Taihe-dian, (5) Zhonghe-dian (Hall of Perfect Harmony), (6) Baohe-dian, (7) Qianqing-men (Gate of Heavenly Purity) to private zone, (8) Qianqinggong, (9) Jiaotai-gong (Palace of Prosperity), (10) Kunning-gong (Palace of Earthly Tranquillity), (11) Kunning-men (Gate of Earthly Tranquillity), (12) Yuhuayuan, (13) Shenwu-men (Gate of Martial Spirit); (14) Yangxin-gong (Palace of Mental Cultivation); (15), Yongshou-gong, (16) Ningshou-gong; (f ) Wu-men (Meridian Gate to outer zone of the Forbidden City); (g–i) Taihe-dian (Hall of Supreme Harmony); (j) foreground, Zhonghe-dian (Hall of Perfect Harmony);

(k) Qianqing-gong (Palace of Heavenly Purity); (l) Yuhua-yuan (Imperial Garden); (m), Yongshou-gong; (n, o) Ningshou-gong (Palace of Peaceful Longevity).

The Yongle emperor is reputed to have impressed up to 300,000 workers in the construction of his new palace in the new northern capital from 1407. Covering 7.2 square kilometres, it took fourteen years to realize the basic conception which greatly exceeds the prescriptions for the palace laid down in the Zhou treatise on imperial planning, Kao gong ji. That required a succession of five gates for the increasingly exclusive compounds, a succession of two zones for the public ceremonial and private residence, and a succession of three great halls for the functions of state. Reflecting the Tang perfection of the successive exercises in palace distribution begun by the Qin and furthered by the Han, here the two zones embrace five major courts and six major pavilions, one for each function of the imperial life – apart from nearly nine thousand subsidiary spaces. The yellow roofs of the grandest timber halls the world has seen – the Taihe, Zhonghe and Baohe – dominate the outer zone of public ceremonial though the residential halls of the emperor and empress in the private inner zone – Qianqing, Jiaotai and Kunning – are scarcely less impressive. The five-arched Wu-men (1417, restored in 1647 and 1801) is unique for its massive three-winged base: from the central pavilion imperial

2.63f

617

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

proclamations were read and the Qing emperors reviewed troops and prisoners of war. Beyond, the first court of the palace (surrounded by galleries and storerooms) is cut by the Jinshui (Golden Waters) crossed by the Long qiao (Dragon Bridge) – the five bridges represent the Confucian virtues: benevolence, propriety, righteousness, reliability and wisdom. Beyond, guarded by twin lions (non-indigenous but ubiquitous symbols of royal power) is the Taihe-men (early 15th century, last rebuilt in the late-19th century) leading to the court of that designation, where the emperor held court daily. To the north is the three-tiered, elaborately balustraded podium (7 metres high) that bears the three pavilions of the outer, ceremonial zone. The central flight of steps is divided by a marble ramp reserved for the passage of the emperor in his palanquin and is, therefore, embellished with his dragon symbol. The tripartite composition of the three ceremonial pavilions has been amplified on a truly imperial scale with higher, steeper roofs: these are less flared in overhang, more rigid in line, less dynamic, more crushingly monumental than anything encountered before. Imperial too in their sumptuousness, the structures that support the roofs have 2.63g

been elaborated – especially with the repetition of bracket clusters unsupported by posts – to the point where richness obscures function. The eleven-bay Taihe-dian (64 by 37 metres) is the largest of all the imperial two-tiered, hipped-roof halls: finished in 1417, burned and rebuilt in 1421 and 1557, it has been renovated several times since. It was used for imperial enthronement, to celebrate the imperial birthday, the winter solstice and the new year, for major audiences, and for the issue of major instruments of state. On his screened throne, below the dragon emblazoned on the central canopy of the coffered ceiling, the emperor would be attended by the imperial family and senior administrators within, by the vast army of court and government officials in the great court without. Columns and screen walls are red, the multiple brackets and beams are multi-coloured (predominantly green and gold), and the roof tiles are yellow, as propriety requires for imperial buildings. The main roof ridges terminate in dragon acroteria 3.4 metres high, and the diagonal ridges have twelve symbolic creatures (the highest number on any Chinese building). 2.63h

618

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.63i

619

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.63j

The Zhonghe-dian and Baohe-dian which follow the Taihe-dian on the triple platform are square and rectangular respectively: the former (with a pyramidal roof ) was where the emperor prepared for ceremonies in the main hall; the latter (repeating the formula of the Taihe-dian to a reduced scale but with a hip-and-gable roof ) was where imperial banquets and triennial examinations for the imperial administrative service were held. Beyond another staircase divided by the largest marble ramp in the whole complex, the outer and inner zones are separated by a court and linked by the Qianqing-men, guarded by another pair of lions. On a single terrace and reproducing the outer complex on a smaller scale are the three halls (1417) of the imperial residence. The dragon-embellished

2.63k

Qianqing-gong (thrice destroyed before its final rebuilding in 1797) was the emperor’s reception hall and bed chamber until the Yongzheng emperor moved out in 1723. It is flanked by the imperial wardrobe, study, secretariat and school room; the square, pyramidal-roofed, phoenix-embellished Jiaotai-gong was where the imperial seals were stored and where the empress received homage. The hip-roofed Kunning-gong was where the empresses slept and received the emperor until 1723 when it was devoted to the esoteric religious rites favoured by 2.63l

620

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

Mongols and Manchus. All the pavilions of the complex are divided only insofar as their colonnades form ambulatories or distinguish the central throne area, but the Kunning-gong is partitioned into rooms for private purposes. To its east and west are the rooms which once housed the imperial concubines. Beyond the Kunning-gong, the gate of the same name leads to the Yuhua-yuan which terminates the main axis in the north. To the west of the inner zone are the former apartments of the empress dowager (Cining-gong and Xian’an-gong), the relatively modest Yangxin-gong (to 2.63m

which, from 1723, the Yongzheng emperor and his successors resorted for affairs of state instead of the Qianqing-gong) and Buddhist and Daoist temples. In the corresponding part of the eastern zone were the palaces of the heir apparent (Ruiben-gong) and his entourage, and the ancestral temple (Fengxian-dian). In place of the former and much else, the Qianlong emperor built the Ningshou-gong – with a central hall emulating the Baohe-dian, if not the Taihe-dian – for his retirement (1796). In the southern sectors are shrines, service buildings, including a library, a printing press, guard accommodation and an archery ground. 2.63n

2.630

621

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

4 1 5 2 3

2.64c @ 1:1000

›2.64

2.64a

2.64b

622

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

B E I J I N G , T I A N - TA N : (a, b) Qinian-dian

exterior and interior; (c) plan with (1) imperial entrance, (2) Huangqiong-yu (Imperial Vault of Heaven), (3) Huangqiu (Altar of Heaven, (4) Qinian-dian (Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests), (5) Zhai-gong (Palace of Abstinence); (d, e) overview and axial view from south; (f ) Huangqiu; (g, h) Huangqiong-yu, interior and exterior. The precinct is just over 1.5 kilometres square and the north–south axis, as established by Emperor Jiajing, is 360 metres. Throughout the scheme the principal dimensions are multiples of three – or nine, the imperial number. The emperor entered from the west but otherwise access is from the north: this follows the Zhou prescription that the Tian-tan should be to the south of a city. In agreement with the invariable ritual to be performed there, the complex is rigorously axial in the alignment of its principal elements in an extensive cypress glade. Circular in accordance with their heavenly dedication, these are: the three-storey Qinian-dian (originally Dasi-dian in 1420, renamed Daxiang-dian after redesign for Jiajing, restored and definitively named in the mid-18th century); the two-storey Huangqiong-yu (housing the tablet of the God of Heaven, devised for Jiajing, restored several times by the Qing); and the unroofed three-tiered platform of the Huangqiu (rebuilt entirely in marble under Qianlong) on its square (earthly) base. To the south of the Qinian-dian is the ‘Gate of Prayer for a Prosperous Year’ (built for Jiajing). To the west, between two gates, is the Zhai-gong (also from the Shizong era) which, representing the earthly abode of the Son of Heaven, is rectangular.

2.64e

The axial route led south from Tianan-men, through the southern suburb, to the Altars of Agriculture and Heaven (Tian-tan). The sanctuary was established in 1420 as the Temple of Heaven and Earth but assigned exclusively to the former after the Ming Jiajing emperor (Shizong, 1522–66) concluded that the duality was contrary to the association of heaven with the south, and earth with the north, according to the Rituals of Zhou. Thus he decreed the establishment of separate sanctuaries for the sun, moon and earth (in the eastern, western and northern suburbs respectively). Dedicated to the supreme expression of Confucianism, but reflecting celestial and terrestrial symbolism in its form, the Tian-tan (Temple of Heaven) was the Celestial Empire’s most important altar. The ultimate descendant of the age-old sacrificial platform, open to the sky, 2.64d

2.64f

623

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.64g

dedicated either to the spirits of the heavens (thunder and rain as well as sun,moon and stars) and of the earth (mountains, lakes and towns as well as grain and crops), its combination of circular and square elements symbolizes the conjunction of heaven (yin) and earth (yang). The emperor went there each year at the winter solstice to render an account of his stewardship over the past year and to be associated with the imperial ancestors in the invocation of heaven’s favour for the year to come. On the day before the solstice, entering by the northwest gate, the emperor first went to honour the tablets of the God of Heaven and of the previous Sons of Heaven (in the ‘Imperial Vault of Heaven’, Huangqiong-yu). Then he retired for a night of meditation and privation (in the ‘Palace of Abstinence’, Zhai-gong). On the solstice day, accompanied by the tablets, the emperor proceeded to the Altar of Heaven (Huangqiu) to sacrifice animals and to render an account of the past year directly to heaven. He returned to the precinct in the first month to pray for heaven’s favour in the coming year in the ‘Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests’ (Qinian-dian), again accompanied by the tablet.2.64 624

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.64h

The circumferences of circles of the Huangqiu’s tiers and the height of their drums are all divisible by three – or nine. The Qinian-dian – 30 metres in diameter and 37.5 metres high – with storeys clearly differentiated in width, is not constructed on the principle of the stepped mast first encountered at the Fogong-si at Yingxian:2.40 twelve outer columns support the roof of the lower storey. Twelve inner columns support the roof of the second storey, four rising 18 metres from the ground, and eight from circular beams carried by crossbeams resting on the outer colonnade. The top roof is carried on twelve more, smaller, columns supported on the brackets borne by the ones below and counterbalanced by the eaves – but most of this is concealed by the coffering of the second-storey ceiling. The number of revealed columns relates the building to the heavenly cycle, governing life on earth: the outer twelve represent the months, the inner ones the twelve ‘hours’ into which the day and night were traditionally divided, and the four main ones the seasons.

›2.65

N A N J I N G , Cia-ling (Filial Tomb) of Zhu Yuanzhang, the Hongwu emperor (1368–98) and his wife, Empress Ma (died 1382): spirit way. Beyond a pavilion sheltering the stele inscribed with the emperor’s titles (and borne by a tortoise, representing longevity), the spirit way is circuitous to deter evil spirits who can only travel in straight lines: it leads between symbolic beasts to an avenue, lined with civil and military officers, aligned north–south with the axis of the tomb. Five bridges over a stream (satisfying the requirements of feng shui) lead to the second element of the complex, the square platform that supported the prayer and obsequie halls preceding the circular mound. The main hall replicates the great ceremonial hall (Fengtian-dian) of his Nanjing palace. The tomb of the crown prince Zhu Biao, who predeceased his father in 1382, is to the east.

625

2.65

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

TO M B S The Mongol emperors were buried in the desert wastes of their ancestral roaming. The Ming and their Qing successors sustained the tradition of burial under a fenced tumulus in a simulated palace (digong) preceded above ground with a palatial complex for obsequies and offerings. Varied in size, the Ming tombs are consistent in form. There were still three main elements: the spirit path (shendao), the area for the rites of obsequy and the tumulus.The first of these, lined with monumental stone pairs of heraldic beasts backed by images of civil and military officers, was not repeated for each tomb: it followed the lie of the land as the main artery serving all the tombs in the necropolis. The second element, the zone of obsequies, consisted of several courts with halls and gates, as in the earthly palace: the outer court had accommodation for guards and visitors; the main hall, associated with an altar for sacrifice to the buried emperor and empress, dominated the second court beyond kitchens and slaughter houses flanking its gate. Finally the tumulus was ringed with a palisade (baoshancheng, ‘precious mountain wall’) breached under through a ‘spirit tower’ (fengsheng min-

› 2 . 6 6 B E I J I N G , C H A N G P I N G , Tianshou-shan (Heavenly Longevity Hills) Ming Tombs: (a, pages 626–627, b) Chang-ling of the Yongle emperor (1402–25), Ling’en-dian (Hall of Offerings), Minglou; (c) Jing-ling (Scenic Tomb) of the Xuande emperor (reigned 1425–35). The Beijing site replicates the main elements of its Nanjing predecessor but on a larger scale and in greater numbers in whole and in part. The main hall of the Chang-ling, on the earliest of the imperial threetiered marble podiums and under an awesome twotiered hip roof, is the precedent for the palace halls of the imperial capital and is only slightly smaller than the largest of them. Only one Ming tomb, the Ding-ling of the Shenzong emperor (Wanli, 1573–1620), has been opened: its stone digong consisted of a vaulted main hall flanked by two chambers between two courts.

2.66b

glou): new to the funerary complex, the latter obviously had its origin in the tower of the city gate. Reflecting sacred geometry, the court containing the halls for living worshippers and earthly obsequies was square – at least in principle – whereas the mound representing the eternal abode of the departed Son of Heaven was circular. And the dictates of feng shui were paramount: the prescriptions for harmonization with nature on welldrained ground, facing south and protected by hills to the north may have been practical in origin, but aspiration to rapport with the spirit of the site in the disposition of the tomb attained the transcendental domain of geomancy. Zhu Yuanzhang’s Xia-ling is situated on the outskirts of his capital, Nanjing, but the Yongle emperor and a dozen of his Ming successors were buried in a beautiful southfacing arc of hills at the base of the Tianshou-shan to the north-west of Beijing. After a quintuple entry screen (pailou) of 1540, the spirit way begins at a pavilion sheltering the tortoise-borne stele inscribed with the titles of the emperors interred at the site, as at Nanjing. It then leads 628

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.66c

north (for more than 1 kilometre) to the quintuple Longfeng-men (Dragon and Phoenix Gate,the dragon for the emperor, the phoenix for the empress). Some 5 kilometres beyond the latter, three bridges mark the entry to the Yongle’s Chang-ling (Long-lasting Tomb) and the divergence of the paths to the other parts of the necropolis.2.65 Like Yongle’s Chang-ling, the grandest Ming tombs have three courts: a yellow-roofed gate (with three doors, the central one for the departed emperor, the left one for his successor) leads to the outer court and its stele pavilion. A second gate, the Ling’en-men (Gate of Heavenly Favours), leads to the court and hall of the same designation, in which the emperor’s forebears were honoured and his own birthday remembered. Another triple gate leads to the third court with its central altar table bearing carved replicas of the implements used for the obsequies. Beyond is the towered gatehouse (Ming-lou, with the stele of the interred emperor in the upper chamber) of the circular compound containing the pine-covered burial mound with its excavated corridors and chambers.2.66 629

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.67a

2.67b

630

2.67c

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

The Qing are buried at six sites of which the most important – the Eastern Tombs – are on the south-facing slopes of the Changrui-shan, east of Beijing, at Zunhua (Hebei) in a setting as beautiful as that of their Ming predecessors. The main tombs are those of the Kangxi emperor and his grandson, Qianlong, but the spirit way leads only to the initial tomb, the Xiao-ling of Shunzhi, and then paths diverge. All are similar in constitution to the Ming tombs, though there are usually more ceremonial structures along the spirit path and more side pavilions (some Lamaist) in the palatial complex above ground: typically too, the underground ‘palace’ of Qianlong’s Yuling is embellished with exceptionally rich reliefs of Buddhist (specifically Lamaist) and imperial symbolism. Contrary to usual Ming practice, there are separate tombs for empresses, among which the tomb of the notorious Empress Dowager Cixi is notable for its excess.2.67

2.67d

›2.67

CHANGRUI-SHAN,

DONGLING,

QING

T O M B S : (a–e) Yu-ling (Fortunate Tomb) of the Qian-

long emperor: exterior, Long’en-dian, interior of tomb chamber, gate and altar before Minglou, view back from Minglou. The Shunzhi, Kangxi, Qianlong, Xianfeng and Tongzhi emperors, their empresses and concubines, are buried at the site. The alternate Yongzheng, Jiaqing, Daoguang and Guangxu emperors are buried with their wives and concubines beside them in the second most important site, on the southern slopes of Mount Yongning to the west of Beijing. As at Zunhua, the spirit path is punctuated with numerous ceremonial structures and leads to the initial tomb, the Tai-ling of the Yongzheng emperor.

2.67e

631

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.68a

TE M P LE S Both dynasties maintained a high regard for Lamaism but all the other sects of Buddhism which had emerged over nearly a millennium were sustained in harmony with Confucianism, Daoism and even Islam.The Ming programme of temple reconstruction and augmentation was immense and by the height of the Qing era hardly a complex of any faith was left untransformed to a new scale of grandeur

2.68b

›2.68

BEIJING

BUDDHIST

TEMPLE

COM-

P L E X E S : (a) Tanzhe-si (Temple of the Pool and Mulberry); (b–e) Biyun-si (Temple of the Azure Clouds), views along main axis from pailou to Diamond Throne Pagoda, miyan reliquary, Luohan-dian and repository. The Tanzhe-si is the oldest Buddhist foundation in the Beijing area, reputedly dating from the Jin era c. 300, but the extant buildings were rebuilt under the Ming and restored under the Qing: the suite of halls originally included one for the Three Sages as well as the Heavenly Kings and another for Vairocana. The triple-arched entrance gate typifies the introduction of masonry to the temple compound in the Ming era. Arcaded masonry plays a prominent part in the Biyun-si compound, too: reputedly a Yuan foundation, it was amplified in the early 16th century and mid-18th century. The Jin’gangbaozuo-ta (Diamond Throne Pagoda, 1748), with which the complex culminates, varies the Mahabodhi theme in white marble.

› 2 . 6 9 H O N G TO N G ( S H A N X I ) , G UA N G S H E N G S I : (a) main court of upper precinct; (b, c) Feihong (Flying Rainbow) Pagoda and detail (1515). The lower sector of the hillside complex preserves Yuan halls, Daoist and Buddhist. The octagonal brick pagoda of the louge type – glazed in a rainbow array of 2.68c

632

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.68d

2.68e

and opulence. Confucianists and Daoists, Lamaists and their virulent Muslim opponents, all adapted the traditional Chinese columned hall to their purposes after the pattern set by the early Buddhists and subsequently elaborated for the numerous sects. To the traditional Buddhist range was added the Jinggang-dian (Diamond Hall) and Tianwang-dian (Divine Kings’ Hall), between the entrance gate and the Daxiongbao-dian which itself was often doubled or tripled.

2.69a

633

2.69b

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.69c

yellow, blue, green, brown and white – rises through thirteen storeys (to over 47 metres) in the upper sector where simplified trabeation, with tenon joint in place of dougong, constitutes the main hall and its adjuncts.

›2.70

TA I Y U A N ,

CHONGSHAN-SI

(VENERA-

T I O N O F G O O D N E S S ) : Guanyin-ge, (a) exterior, (b)

interior. Song in inception, refounded in 1381 by the son of the Hongwu emperor, the monastery was largely destroyed by fire in 1865 but the Dabei-dian (Hall of Great Compassion) survived: in a structure which effects the transition from the Jinxi Shengmu-dian to the imperial grandeur of the Beijing palace halls, the statue of Guanyin (8.5 metres high) is flanked by Manjusri to her right and Samantabhadra to her left. 2.70b

2.70a

634

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.71a

2.71b

›2.71

W U TA I S H A N , J I N G E T E M P L E : Guanyin-ge (Golden Pavilion) exterior and interior. The temple was founded in 627, tiled in gilded bronze to the order of the Daizong emperor in 770, and recorded by the Japanese pilgrim Ennin (in China 838–47). The extant building (restored 1980s) houses the statue of Guanyin (17.7 metres high) cast to the order of the Ming Shizong emperor in 1558.

635

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

Strict axiality ruled and whereas their predecessors allowed some flexibility in the disposition of internal columns, Ming builders were rigid in respecting the grid. If not in grand imperial buildings, moreover, post and beam were joined with tenons in place of dougong into a compact, less flexible structural grid. The Lamaist works are best viewed against the Tibetan background. (Chinese mosques will be included in aic 3, islam.) The options provided by the traditional faiths are legion. Here the Buddhists are represented by Tanzhe-si and Biyun-si (Beijing), Guangsheng-si of Hongtong (Shanxi), the Chongshan-si of Taiyuan, the Jin-ge of Wutai-shan and the Nanputuo-si in Xiamen.The Confucian examples are the temples in Beijing and at the sage’s birthplace, Qufu. The Daoist Wudang-shan and Chunyang-gong in Taiyuan are complemented by the extraordinary, syncretic Xuankong in Hongyuan.2.68–2.74

16

16

15

10d 14

13 10c 10b 12 10

11

10a

9

8

8 7

2 6 4

2.72a

3

3 3

3

2

6 5

2

2

1 2.72c @ 1:5000

› 2 . 7 2 Q U F U , T E M P L E O F C O N F U C I U S ( KO N G M I A O ) , traditionally founded in 478 BCE on the site of

2.72b

The grandest Buddhist temples – and many others – retained the peripteral colonnade but halls of lesser importance often had brick side walls – especially in the south where the street pattern dictated party walls for temples as for houses. Naturally, the temples of Confucius in 636

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

Confucius’s house, enlarged under the Han and succeeding dynasties, destroyed by lightning 1499, rebuilt in imperial style early 16th century, renovated several times thereafter: (a) veneration hall; (b) engraved overview (19th-century ); (c) plan with (1) peifang, (2) gates, (3) Ming stelae pavilions, (4) drum tower, (5) bell tower, (6) abstinence pavilions, (7) Star of Literature Hall (Kuiwen-ge which survives in its original Ming form), (8) Jin stele pavilions, (9) Yuan stelae pavilions, (10) Great Achievement (Dacheng) compound with gate (10a), school (10b), veneration hall (10c) and sleeping hall (10d), (11) poetry and ritual hall, (12) music hall,

(13) Sage Enlightenment Hall, (14) ancestral temple, (15) sacrificial services, (16) shrines. Built on an imperial scale with seven courts aligned on the north–south axis (some 650 metres in length). As only in the imperial palace, the first five zones are forecourts with gates named in reference to Confucian aphorisms. The first of the two great halls, the seven bay, double-height Kuiwen-ge (Star of Literature Pavilion, 28 metres high) first built under the Song, was rebuilt in its present form in the original Ming campaign of c. 1500: the lower storey is for ritual preparation, the upper level houses a library. Like royal palace defence walls, the inner compound, entered through the Dacheng-men, has a tower at each corner. The whole scheme culminates in the nine-bay Dacheng-dian (45.5 metres wide and 24.5 metres high) which emulates the imperial ceremonial hall on its two-tier marble platform and its yellow-tiled roof (the original green was superseded in the Qing era): it enshrined the tablets of Confucius and his fourteen major followers. As in the imperial palace, the great hall is succeeded by a residential pavilion – here dedicated to Qiguan, Confucius’s wife .

›2.73

BEIJING, TEMPLE OF CONFUCIUS.

First built in the Yuan period (1279–1368) to house the ancestral tablets of Confucius, this was the scene of special ceremonies attended by the emperor on the birthday of the sage.

2.73

› 2 . 74 TA I Y U A N , C H U N YA N G - G O N G ( D A O I S T ‘ P U R I T Y O F YA N G ’ T E M P L E ) , c. 16th century: overview from the simulated mountain. Now part of the provincial museum, the temple was a mansion dedicated under the Ming Wanli emperor (1573–1619) to the Daoist sage Lu Dongbin. Beyond the three-bay Lu-dian (Hall of the Daoist Immortal Lu), adapted from the main hall of the house, it was extended under the Qianlong emperor to the inner courts with the three-storey pavilion and its satellites. Daoists habitually sought secluded sites amid nature of exceptional beauty or particular difficulty – areas that are not urban, by definition. Thus, where a great master was to be honoured in the place of his urban existence, the ideal was to be simulated. Contrary to the axial norm, a mountain of contorted rocks

637

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

Beijing and Qufu are archetypical in their palatial axiality.2.72, 2.73 Even Daoists may follow the Confucian rules, as at Taiyuan in the Chunyang-gong (Purity of the Yang Temple), but urban sites were not their natural choice and required modification with an asymmetrical eminence – as here. Real mountains were preferred, of course – in the Ming era especially Wudang-shan where immortality was attained by the Daoist ‘Perfect Warrior’, Zhenwu, to whom the Yongle emperor attributed success in his campaign to secure the north. Quite exceptional – if representative of the Daoist ideal – is the Xuankong-si (Suspended Temple) of Hongyuan, a Daoist foundation dedicated to accord with Buddhism and Confucianism in a unique syncretism.2.74–2.77

2.74

was raised to the side of the forecourt before the main gate to the original mansion, and a great deal of rockery was distributed throughout the inner courts.

›2.75

W U D A N G - S H A N : general view.

› 2 . 7 6 H O N G Y U A N , X U A N K O N G - S I (Suspended Temple): (a) general view, (b, c) galleries, (d) Buddha flanked by Confucius and Laozi. First constructed under the Northern Wei, the socalled suspended monastery’s site could hardly better represent the Daoist ideal. The syncretic shrine is the top-most one. › 2 . 7 7 X I A M E N , N A N P U T U O - S I : (a) outer court with Qin-dian, twin pagodas in the southern Song tradition and bell tower (left, date unknown); (b) Dabai-dian enshrining a statue of Guanyin; (c) Daxiong Bao-dian (Precious Hall of the Great Hero), interior with the Buddhas Shakyamuni, Yaoshi and Amitabha. 2.75

638

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.76a

2.76b

639

2.76c

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.76d

2.77a

640

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.77b

2.77c

641

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.78a

›2.78

HO CHI MINH CIT Y, HOI QUAN THIEN

H U A (Daoist Jade Emperor Temple of the Cantonese community), 19th century: (a) entrance portico; (b, c) outer court and prayer hall portico.

2.78b

S O U T H E R N S T Y LE A B RO A D Cultural hegemony and trade ensured the proliferation of Chinese temple building abroad. Early survivals are rare and the proliferation of Chinese building throughout south-east Asia from the Ming era, when trade was promoted assiduously, perhaps gives a distorted image: that is predominantly of the florid, curvaceous southern Chinese style with which the overwhelming majority of migrants would have felt at home. From the vast range our token examples include Buddhist, Confucian and Daoist complexes in Vietnam, the Zen Sofuku-ji and the Confucian Koshi-byo in Nagasaki.2.78–2.80 2.78c

642

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.79a

›2.79

2.79b

H A N O I : (a–c) Van Mieu (Confucian Temple of

Literature, reputedly founded in the 11th century but extant construction began after the advent of the Le dynasty in 1428), stele gallery (with records of scholars dating between 1442 and 1779), Dai Bai Duong (Great House of Ceremonies), exterior and interior with image of the sage; (d) Dien Huu, the ‘One-Pillar Pagoda’ (first built in 1049, restored).

2.79d

643

2.79c

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.80a

2.80c

›2.80

N A G A S A K I : (a–c) Sofuku-ji (Obaku Zen tem-

ple, founded 1629), Daiyuho-den (main hall accommodating Sakyamuni), exterior and interior and the Maso-do (subsidiary hall dedicated to a Chinese seadeity; (d–f ) Koshi-byo (Confucian temple, 1893, refur2.80b

644

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.80e

bished 1967), entrance, court with sages, main hall interior. The community of Fukien Chinese merchants imported prefabricated elements and Chinese craftsmen skilled in tenon joinery from their homeland for the Sofuku-ji complex.

2.80d

645

2.80f

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.81a

TO W N H O U S E S Housing in China – ranging from the circular communal complexes of Fujian or the square ones of Yunnan to the so-called ‘cave’ dwellings of the several provinces between Shaanxi, Gansu and inner Mongolia – is as diverse as its many ethnic groups. However, as the vernacular is regrettably beyond our scope, the basic metropolitan type of the Han majority – the siheyuan with its nuclear court which

2.81b

646

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

› 2 . 8 1 C O U R T YA R D H O U S I N G : (a) Tang era (from Dunhuang fresco); (b) Xi’an, north of the Drum Tower; (c–g) Beijing, north-west of the Imperial City (extra buildings were inserted in the courtyards when this type of house was assigned to multi-family occupation on the advent of Communism), plan of typical twocourtyard complex with (1) entrance, (2) ante-space before (3) inner door, (4) first (reception) court, (5) main hall, (6) service courts, and overview, street entrance, outer court and service court.

6

6

5

2.81d

4

3

2

1 2.81c @ approximately 1:1000

2.81e

647

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

proliferated all over China as the inevitable consequence of unity under the centralizing Ming and Qing regimes – will be the subject of this section. Down the social scale, housing conformed to the courtyard type, organized on Confucian lines, wherever the Han penetrated in China. By the Ming era its particular expression was strictly regulated in accordance with ever more intricate social stratification: in a walled compound court succeeds court, with the number of pavilions aligned on axis, the form of their roofs, the number of their bays, the configuration of dougong, permitted colours, etc., all responding to the social status and economic resources of the extended family – usually parents, unmarried children, married sons, additional wives, spinsters and servants.The nature of the form is introverted, with light, air, circulation and reception space provided by the court, but feng shui dictates a north–south axis: walled from the evil of the north, the trabeated structure of the main pavilions is open to the sun and all the good of the south.2.81, 2.82

2.81f

Typically, as with the Ancient Roman house (see Origins, aic1, pages 541–545), the door to the first main space is on axis, but as with the Ancient Greek house (see Origins, aic1, page 483) the street entrance is usually to the side of the virtually blind outer wall. In Beijing, typically, it faces the blind masonry enclosing an ante-space before the axial inner door to preserve the privacy of the interior from the view of passers-by – and to prevent the entry of evil spirits. Not invariable, especially in the south, this is contrary to the norm for temples and palaces, where entrance to the public zone (at least) is on axis, but the portal of the grandest houses is preceded by a screen – as 2.81g

648

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

› 2 . 82

S O U T H E R N E L E V AT I O N : (a–c) Xixian (Anhui), double-storey house, section and interior views of upper gallery; (d) Wuxi (Jiangsu), two-storey house with landscaped court; (e) typical reception hall. After the precedent as old as the Han, when space was at a premium in town or on awkward terrain, amplification of the street entry house extended to an inner court surrounded by rooms on several levels.

before a temple or palace.The main south-facing pavilion not only houses the tablets of the ancestors and the altar of the family’s patron deity, like the Roman tablinum, but it also accommodates the senior males. The side pavilions of the simplest houses are for male servants as well as junior members of the family, the inner courts of the richer ones are for the female members of the family and children, and the rear courts are for retainers, female servants, kitchens, laundries, baths, etc.

2.82a

2.82b

2.82e

649

2.82d

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.82c

2.83a

As in Ancient Rome, the density of urban development › 2 . 8 3 S U Z H O U ( J I A N G S U ) : (a) block housing in often prompted the integration of shops, contraction of the Beisi district; (b) decorative window from the garden of the Surging Wave Pavilion. the court and addition of storeys – especially in the south Popular with retired officials and scholars and merand beyond in south-east Asia, to which the Chinese chants – the latter often native, the former mainly immiexported their traditions, where ventilation was needed grant – Suzhou offers a wide spectrum of housing. The ones illustrated here, with access directly from the more than exposure to sun and rain. In the south, in fact, street and a yard (rather than a court at the back), are of other types were developed – or inherited from pre-Han a lowly rank. inhabitants: in particular, rooms were doubled and superimposed in compact blocks addressing the street in front and a yard behind. Naturally, these depended on stout masonry walls rather than trabeation, though outer walls were generally thinner in the humid south; larger spaces required inner columns, and roofs were supported by the superimposed beams of the Chinese norm.2.83 650

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.83b

P R I VATE G A R D E N S , T H E I R H O U S E S A N D R E T R E ATS According to the oldest-known treatise on gardening, the early 13th-century Japanese Sakutei-ki based on a lost Chinese original, the purposes of the garden were sixfold. Three of these are specifically Japanese,and we shall return to them in context. The other three are of universal relevance: to dispose symbolic forms in evocation of the ideal context for the sustaining of youth; to transpose those forms from nature to represent that ideal (as the Pure Land of the Western Paradise when Amitabha was in the ascendant under the Tang and simply as the wilderness free from the corruption of society under the Daoist Song); and thus to provide the physical context for meditation in the spiritual quest for enlightenment. According to the Chronicles of the Famous Luoyang Gardens of the 11th-century Chinese poet Li Gefei (Wenshu), professor at the Song Imperial Academy in Kaifeng, the perfections of the garden were also six: art and age, expansiveness and seclusion, space and abundant water. 2.88a

651

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.84a

Responding to the way of the Daoists, back to nature – › 2 . 8 4 W U X I , J I C H A N G - Y U A N ( G A R D E N O F T H E L O V E O F AT TA C H M E N T ) , early 16th century on a away from the yin of the town, back to the yang of the wild Yuan foundation: (a) view to the south-east with a ‘bor– the garden in China is the source of life where the flow rowed view’ of the Longguang (Dragon Brilliance) of the vital force which identifies man and nature is unin- Pagoda; (b) lakeside gallery; (c–e) external and internal portals and simulated mountain chasm. hibited by inauspicious phenomena. In it that force is manifest in the distribution of the natural elements and the constitution of the artificial ones – most graphically in the patterns left by geological evolution in the veins of lithic strata, sectioned for display in the panels of walls or furniture, and above all in the contorted form of the specimen limestone boulders – the sculpture of the vital force – whose main source was Tai-hu, the freshwater lake at the centre of Jiangnan (the area ‘south of the Yangtse’). Lake Tai yielded specimen stones to the Tang court.The Northern Song court nearly ruined itself with the cost of its exploitation and the transportation of its products to Kaifeng. Conveniently near the Southern Song capital, its 652

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.84b

2.84c

653

2.84d

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.84e

2.85a

products survive in abundance in the main concentration of traditional Chinese gardens in and around Suzhou. Near lakes and mountains, the inspiration and source of the two principal features of the garden, that provincial city was a centre of gardening from the 10th century at the latest: it was raised to imperial significance in the 12th century by mandarins and scholars from nearby Hangzhou seeking a relaxed suburban context in which to satisfy the claims of Daoism when off-duty. The great age of its gardens was that of the Ming.2.84–2.88 Like their peers at Wuxi, Yanghzou and elsewhere, the gardens of Suzhou are essentially theatres where life is enacted in the sets of celebrated landscapes, real or literary or painted, re-evoked in the clear suspension of

7

6

5 4 3 2 1

2.85b @ 1:2000

654

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.85c

›2.85

SUZHOU, WANG SHI-YUAN

(‘RETIRED

F I S H E R M A N ’ S G A R D E N ) , developed on an old site

towards the middle of the reign of the Qing emperor Qianlong (1736–95) and renovated in the early 19th century: (a) view west to the Gazebo for Catching the Breeze and Contemplating the Moon; (b) plan (after Tong Jung, Records of Gardens of Jianganen) with (1) entrance to courtyard house, (2) entrance to garden, (3) Xiaoshanconggui-ting (Hall of Small Mountains and Osmanthus Spring), main garden reception gallery, (4) Zhuoying-ting (Pavilion for Contemplating the Water), (5) Yuedaofenglai-xia (Gazebo for Catching the Breeze and Contemplating the Moon), (6) Kansongduhua-ting (Verandah for Gazing at the Pines and Studying Paintings), retreat for study, (7) rear entrance; (c–f ) view south-west to the Pavilion for Contemplating the Water, elevation, section and interior.

2.85d

2.85e

655

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.85f

2.86a

656

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

disbelief: though in town, life may be pursued there as if in seclusion in the wild. Not surprisingly, their authors were often painters – like the late-Ming Ji Cheng who compiled the Yuan Ye (Garden Building). Like the paintings and poems that inspire them, their essential characteristics are variety and irregularity, mystery and originality. They embrace the natural topography of mountain, lake and river where possible, especially in distant view, simulated otherwise no matter what the scale. Their elements are both natural and man-made: earth and rock, water and plants, sculpture and the buildings needed for rest, observation and contemplation. Indeed, the integration of the natural and artificial is the major achievement of the Chinese gardener, his prime objective being complete harmony with the spirit of the wilderness for passive contemplation of the relationship between man and nature – not least his own. Usually attached to a suburban or country house, sometimes to a particularly grand town mansion, essentially informal architecture defined the context and provided the accommodation in the garden. Catering for the yin and yang of community and individuality, they range from the formal to the whimsical: loggias and reception halls (ting and tang) for social life placed to command the principal scene but open to all four sides when the expanse of site permits; galleries, corridors and covered passages (lang) linking the major buildings and garden zones with studied informality; secluded belvederes set on the slopes of the ‘mountain’ – and complementing its contours – or rising through two storeys (lou or ge) for distant or secondary views; ‘lounges’ and ‘landboat’ pavilions (xuan or xie and fang) set low for reflection by the waters of the nuclear ‘lake’, the organizing principle for the domain of escape from the organization of everyday life. 657

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

›2.86

SUZHOU:

ZHUOZHENG-YUAN

(‘GAR-

D E N O F T H E H U M B L E A D M I N I S T R AT O R ’ ) , devel6

5 1 4

3 2

2.86b @ approximately 1:100,000

Walls – or lang – enclose the site and subdivide it into principal and secondary zones in which the buildings are scattered apparently at random but actually with careful calculation to frame and enjoy views. Between them are closed courts for intimate display of nature in miniature –

oped from a temple garden in the reign of the Ming emperor Zhengde (1506–21), renovated and expanded in the mid-20th century: (a) view east through the middle zone to the Wuzhuyoujut-ting (Retreat Among the Bamboos and Parasol Trees); (b) plan with (1) entrance and inner gate, (2) Yuanxiang-tang (Distant Fragrance Hall), (3) Xiangzhou (‘Fragrant-Isle Landboat), (4) 36Yuanyang-guan (Thirty-six Mandarin-Duck Hall; the name, derived from the fact that ducks habitually swim in pairs, refers to the internal division of this pavilion type to provide north- and south-facing halves for use in summer and winter respectively), (5) Yushuitongzue (With Whom to Sit Pavilion), (6) Daoying-lou (Inverted Image Two-Storeyed Building); (c–e) fanshaped With Whom to Sit Pavilion, view, section and plan; (f–h) Fragrant-Isle Landboat, section, elevation and view; (i) view west through the moon-gate between the two main zones; (j) peripheral court; (k) Distant Fragrance Hall, interior; (l–n) Thirty-six-Mandarin-Duck Hall, elevation, section and interior detail; (o) tang interior. Planning usually started with the placing of the main reception pavilion (ting), usually open (or at least

2.86d

2.86e @ 1:200

2.86c

658

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.86f

2.86i 2.86g

2.86h

fenestrated) to all sides and normally to the south of the main body of water. The other garden building types, the gazebo (xia or xuan) for contemplating a view or a particular feature of the garden and the retreat for study in the most secluded part, follow the disposition of the natural elements – real or contrived.

659

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

or simply as the void complementing an illusion of content nearby.Varied windows, usually screened with lattices limitless in the variety of their tracery, frame ‘living pictures’ and provide visual links between zones not immediately accessible from one another. And where there is accessibility, continuity and disjunction, rational geometry and whimsical arbitrariness complement one another in the means of passage: verandahs and open galleries, straight or curved or zig-zagged, circular moon-gates and doors of every conceivable shape and the rough tortuousness of the cave or chasm where, naturally, one is fully exposed to the vital forces that shape macrocosm and microcosm. The two major naturalistic features, the pool and rockery representing lake and mountain, will of course be simple or complex according to the scale of the garden.Where there is scope, there is physical reproduction of all the elements of classical paintings: precipices, ridges, ravines, gorges, caves, paths and waterfalls as foils for the main peak. Rocky promontories, islands, bridges and causeways

2.86j

2.86k

will cross and diversify the unifying water course as it passes into and out of the different scenic areas with apparent naturalness. Small scale will be countered by a uniform sheet of water and monumentality of massing may depend 660

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.86l

2.86m

2.86n

2.86o

661

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

solely on a model arrangement of specimen stones in a sep- › 2 . 8 7 L U Z H O U , L I U - Y U A N ( G A R D E N F O R L I N arate confined space or on the planting in which stunted G E R I N G ) , originating in the reign of the Ming emperor Jiajing (1507–67) as the Xi-yuan (the western part of a trees may well be crucial: the Chinese gardener was a mas- dual complex), it was restored and enlarged in the ter of scenographic illusion through the manipulation of reign of the Qing emperor Guangxu (1875–1908): (a) scale and perspective in sequential elements and the specimen stone known as Guanyuan Feng (‘Cloud-topping Peak’, the largest specimen stone in Suzhou); (b) counter-opposition of contrasting forms. view east over the lake; (c) collection of miniature Two types of view, fixed and moving, underlie the dis- mountain peaks and stunted trees. junction and the integrity of the garden in its essentially asymmetrical distribution: beyond the opening fixed view from the main accommodation, around the ‘lake’ and through the ‘mountains’ it is sequential rather than panoramic but a whole superior to the sum of its parts. On and beside the two great elements, planting and building provide a succession of incidents awaiting discovery in circulation, a kaleidoscopic variety which defeats any sense of command of the whole. They also stand as witness to the force of nature and the cult of collecting ever more bizarre examples. The uncontrollable, recalled by the distant view of an eminence beyond the garden’s confines, is most potently manifest to the promenader in the contorted specimen stones so prized by the patron as the product of natural forces. The sequence of the seasons is elucidated in the planting through the reality of fruition in the colour seen as dominant in each season – green in spring, yellow-red in summer, white in autumn and black (or deep purple) in winter – and in the complementary literary convention which identifies Spring with the peach-blossom, summer with the lotus, autumn with the chrysanthemum and winter with the plum blossom. The ultimate sophistication is in the choice of the stones used for building the context for shapes representing the dragon, the representative of the vital force (see pages 514–515) in its aspects of emergence, peak and decline. And, transformed in the timeless opposition of the vital force to inert matter which the 2.87a

662

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.87b

worldly see as reality, the stones assist the contemplative viewer in the ascent to comprehension of the universal truth that yang and yin are one in relativity. Cultivated by the Song, revived by the Ming and restored under the Qing, representative examples of these phenomena include the intimate Wangshi-yuan, the intense Liu-yuan and the expansive Zhuozheng in Suzhou, the Yu-yuan at Shanghai and the Jichang-yuan in Wuxi. The Qianlong emperor visited several of them and so particularly admired the Jichang-yuan that he had its views painted and reproduced as the Xiequ-yuan (Garden of Harmonious Pleasure) of the Summer Palace at Beijing.2.89f, g 2.87c

663

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.88a

›2.88

SHANGHAI,

YU-YUAN

(GARDEN

OF

C O N T E N T ) , 1560s: (a, page 651) moon-gate between

courts; (b, c) middle and end zones with river and collection of contorted rocks (the central exemplary specimen was reputedly destined for the Northern Song Huizong emperor, but its barge foundered en route); (d) window framing a ‘living picture’ and an internal ‘borrowed view’.

2.88b

664

2.88c

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

›2.89

I M P E R I A L R E T R E AT S W E S T O F B E I J I N G :

(a) Yuanming-yuan (Perfection and Brightness Ga rden, 18th-century overview); (b–e) Yihe-yuan (Preservation of Harmony Garden), general view, detail of Foxiangge, corridor and plan with (1) palace complex and (2) lakeside gallery, (3) Zhihuihai-si (Sea of Wisdom Temple), (4) Foxiang-ge and its precinct temple, (5) Xiequ-yuan (Garden of Harmonious Pleasure, 1751, renovated 1811), and general view with Wanshou-shan (Ten-thousand Longevities Hill, right) and Kunming-hu (Vast Bright Lake) with Zhihuihai-si (c. 1750, top right), Foxiang-ge (Pagoda of the Buddha’s Fragrance, late19th-century replacement of a smaller, mid-18th-century structure, centre) and, rising from the edge of the lake, the roofs of the main palatine temple, Paiyun-dian (Hall that Dispels Clouds), internal view below Foxiangge from Paiyun-se, lakeside gallery; (f–g) Xiequ-yuan. Incorporating the gardens of the Kangxi (1662–1722) and Yongzheng (1723–35) emperors, the Yuanmingyuan in the eastern part of the site was most celebrated in the accounts of 18th-century European travellers. Appended to it were the Changchun-yuan, developed from a Ming official’s garden and expanded soon after the accession of the Qianlong emperor to include the neighbouring Yichun-yuan cluster of private gardens: from 1745 the north-eastern fringe was endowed with six bizarre baroque pavilions designed by Italian Jesuit missionaries. No overall plan was imposed on the area to mask the consequences of amalgamating several once distinct gardens in three zones ad hoc, the source of delightful surprise. However, unity was provided by carefully controlled sightlines not only embracing planting and pavilions in several zones but extending to the prime natural elements of lake and hill. In the west of the site, the Yihe-yuan was developed c. 1750 for the Qianlong emperor on the north bank of an expanded lake (hence Kunming), and the southfacing slopes of a hill renamed in honour of the sixtieth birthday of the emperor’s mother (hence Wanshou). To the north of the relatively small East Palace, where the emperor held holiday court, the Xiequ-yuan (1751) was modelled on the Jichang-yuan at Wuxi. It survived the ravages of 1860, in the main, but most of the buildings of the Summer Palace and its adjuncts were rebuilt in 1888 (with navy money), to celebrate the sixtieth birthday of the Dowager Empress Cixi. She lived there for twenty years until her death in 1908. 665

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.89a

I M P E R I A L G A R D E N R E T R E ATS Around the three lakes to the west of the imperial city, the Ming emperors developed summer retreats and they form the most popular parks of today’s Beijing. The Qing emperors used them too, transforming the naturalistic landscape inherited from the Ming into a virtual detached palace and adding the assertive White Pagoda of the island monastery in the north lake as an emblem of the eminence of Lamaism. However, they resorted to the hills outside the city walls, to the north-west, and developing an extremely extensive range of gardens dependent on water from the Yu and Chang Rivers, improved flood control and the capital’s water supply. The several summer palaces are set in numerous lake gardens to the north-west of the capital developed from the 1680s by the Kanxi emperor and his son, the future Yonghzheng emperor. The most extensive and varied of these is the Yuanming-yuan centred on terrain of varied elevation with a patchwork of individual garden areas

2.89b

2.89c

666

2.89e @ 1:10,000

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

3

4 2

5

defined by various lakes and waterways: the flattest land to the south-west was endowed by the Yonghzheng emperor with a detached palace much used for affairs of state from the 1720s.2.89 To the south-west of the Yuanming-yuan, the Yiheyuan complex – generally celebrated as the ‘Summer Palace’ – was developed by the Qianlong emperor from the several amalgamated gardens on the northern shore of Kunming Lake below Wanshou-shan (Longevity Hill). Splendidly integrated with its natural setting in emulation of the Song palace gardens at Hangzhou, it has two main zones: the complex of the audience and residential halls to the east, where the main entrance is located, and the main garden kiosks in the centre of the site between hill and lake. To the north of the former is the emperor’s most private retreat, the Xiequ-yuan (1751). On the hilltop further west is the four-storey octagonal Foxiang-ge (Fragrance Pavilion), the climax of the north–south temple zone, which dominates the whole West Lake paradise with its many island pavilions served by marble bridges. The entrance sequence of the Summer Palace and the imposing central temple zone are symmetrical (about axes perpendicular to one another) in accord with Confucian precept and connected by an extended lakeside gallery. However, the contours of the site control the

1

2.89d

667

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.89f

2.89g

distribution in the main: in partial contrast to the gravitas › 2 . 9 0 C H E N G D E ( H E B E I ) , from 1703: (a, b) curwhich characterizes the monumental halls of the great rent and 18th-century overviews, (c) Shangdi-lou (Tower of God Pagoda) in the park. urban compound, a delight in waywardness enhanced by Avoiding ostentation as a matter of policy, and fruvibrant colours distinguishes these holiday buildings and, gal by nature, the Kangxi emperor made do with a beyond axial organization where imperial propriety miniature version of the Forbidden City incorporating nine courtyards and the six pavilions of the outer and required it, the principal organizing agent is again the line inner zones. Like the others, the main hall, the Danboof sight – most notably to the borrowed view of the Jade jingcheng-dian (Hall of Serene Frugality), is of unpainted cedar (whose fragrance, therefore, is Spring Hill Pagoda to the west. unmasked) and is roofed with unglazed blue-grey tiles. The Kangxi emperor (1662–1722) resorted further, to The Qianlong emperor added a parallel range for his the Bishu-shan Zhuang (Mountain Hamlet for Escape mother (Songhezhai, 1749). Parallel to the latter, furfrom Summer Heat) at Chengde in northern Hebei, on ther east, is the banqueting hall and court. The palace is to the south of the park (5.5 square the border of his ancestral Manchurian homeland, as a kilometres, enclosed by a wall 10 kilometres long) base both for hunting and for maintaining the close rela- which extends across a serpentine lake and its islands tionship with the Mongols on which Manchu power to hilly ground to the north. The Kangxi emperor and his grandson each designated sets of thirty-six vantage depended: it was frequented until c. 1820. Beyond the points in the park inspired by beauty spots in the heartnorthern gates of the palace compounds is a complex of land of the Southern Song. Neglected after the Jiaqing warm lakes fed by a stream sourced from hot springs – emperor died there in 1820, few of these survive: the most notable are Shangdi-lou (built on an artificial hill making the site viable for much of the year. Beyond the devised to recall the Jin Shan-si on the Yangtze) and the lakes is the vast park. Temples built on the slopes around Shui Xin-xie (Three Pavilions in the Heart of the Water). the imperial enclosure, and aligned with it on radial axes, catered for the esoteric beliefs of the tribesmen: the Qianlong empreor added the main ones, several of which were Lamaseries – as we shall see.2.90 668

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.90a

2.90b

669

2.90c

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

›2.91

T S O N G K H A PA with (a) the model of his reliquary stupa at Ganden and (b) his Yellow Hat followers.

6 himalayan theocracy and imperial lamaism

2.91a

T I B E T A F TE R T H E Y UA N The Yuan ideal of unified authority administered by the chief Sakya lama faded as the lamas of rival sects reasserted themselves: provincial authority had been exercised by the Sakya hierarchy but sometimes the administrative centres belonged to other orders, notably the Kagyu. By the mid14th century the zealously anti-Mongol leader of the Kagyu Pakmodru monastic sect, Jangchup Galtsen (1302–64), was in the ascendant and displaced the Sakya in supreme authority over an independent realm in 1358, when the Yuan were losing their hold on China. The vanquished had laid the foundations on which Tibetan theocracy was to be built and the victor’s line of rulers worked on the edifice for a century of relative peace. Over that period, too, in which the Ming emperors bestowed gifts but failed to assert sovereignty, native patronage fostered national identity and vernacular scholars under Indian 670

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

tutelage furthered the evolution of Tibetan Lamaism. Meanwhile an ascetic Kadampa scholar known as Tsong Khapa (1357–1419), appalled by the mundane concerns and mystical masks of politicized sectarianism,dedicated himself to the reform of Lamaism through the revival of the moral philosophy which had originally advanced the cause of the Buddha. He won Lhasa and set up three monasteries there dedicated to exhaustive study of the sutras under strict discipline: Ganden at his hermitage (1409),Drepung and Sera (1410, 1419 respectively) which grew with his Gelukpa (‘Virtuous’) sect of Yellow Hat lamas into the world’s largest religious retreats. Identified with Manjushri as Je Rinpoche, he was the object of a cult after the interment of his remains in a great stupa at Ganden.2.91 The probity of his subsequent reincarnations gained considerable prestige for the Gelukpa.Tsong Khapa’s disciple Gendun Drubpa founded Tashi Lhunpo at Shigatse in 1447 as a base for spreading the reformatory cause way beyond Lhasa but reformatory zeal was naturally anathema to the establishment and the Yellow Hats were proscribed.Tsong Khapa’s third reincarnation,Sonam Gyatso (1543–88),resorted to the Mongol leader,Altan Khan (died 1584), who saw the advantage of reviving the type of relationship with a Tibetan lama which his great ancestor, Kublai Khan, had described as personal. The khan converted to the Yellow Hat sect on behalf of his tribal followers and endowed his guest with the title Dalai (‘Unbounded’or ‘Oceanic’) Lama – which was applied retrospectively to his two predecessors as head of the order. After Sonam Gyatso’s reincarnation was recognized in the Altan Khan’s family line (as the fourth Dalai Lama), the spiritual ascendancy of the Yellow Hats was backed by Mongolian force and opposed within Tibet by a representative of the old establishment who identified himself as the Red Hat Lama. After some vicissitude, turning on

2.91b

671

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

›2.92

T H E F I F T H D A L A I L A M A A N D M A I T R E YA

(Sera, Seraje datsang).

a change of leadership in Mongolia, the challenge was defeated and the old establishment undone in 1642. The following year the new khan, who proclaimed himself king and protector of Tibet, installed the fifth Dalai Lama, Losang Gyatso (1619–83) as spiritual head of government, assisted by a chief administrator.2.92 The unity of Tibet was pursued from the Sechuan frontier to the borders of Ladhak by the khan’s forces: Ladhak, Nepal and Bhutan eluded them. District definition and government were reorganized at the expense of the lay magnates. The Gelukpa rule was imposed on all the monasteries in the land. Power thus consolidated, the sole 672

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

›2.93

L H A S A I N T H E L AT E - 1 8 T H C E N T U R Y :

Potala centre, Jokhang lower right, Ramoche centre right, Drepung, Sera and Ganden ranged across the top from left to right, Samye (?) displaced several hundred kilometres to bottom left (Tangka; Paris, Musée Guimet).

673

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

capital was established at Lhasa – the ancient spiritual centre of the plateau – and the ‘Great’ fifth Dalai Lama proved a most effective ruler from the new Potala palace on the hilltop site of Songsten Gambo’s seat, Marpori on the western edge of Lhasa, to which he moved from the Drepung accommodation of his predecessors.2.93 In practice, if not in theory, the ancient monarchy had been revived over an area matching its greatest extent: its ceremonies were revived too and a great palace was begun. Hardly more than a decade elapsed before the Dalai Lama was received as an independent ruler by the new Qing emperor: the Manchus were certainly not blind to the benefit of stability in a vast tract of central Asia secured by the reciprocal arrangement in which the Dalai Lama exerted spiritual authority over the Mongol tribes and the Mongol Khan offered military protection to Tibet. The Qing did not long remain content: the succession of the sixth Dalai Lama without his knowledge offended the K’angxi emperor but, more importantly, the MongolTibetan pact was proving ineffective at containing the aggressive ambitions of the new chief of the Dzungar tribe in western Mongolia. The khan was persuaded to reassert his rights as king in Tibet – unexercised by his predecessor – and replace the Dalai Lama – whose conduct was highly unorthodox – with his own candidate in 1705. The Gelukpas objected and recognized an alternative reincarnation. The Dzungars intervened, ostensibly to support the Tibetans, met and killed the khan in battle and occupied Lhasa in 1717. The Qing then sent an army to evict the intruders and replace them with an imperial resident and garrison. After initial reverse, the emperor assumed the patronage of the Tibetan ruler – as the Great Khan had done – and also found it politic to promote an alternative line of reincarnations, the Panchen Lamas of Tashi Lhunpo, as a check.

2.94a

2.94b

T I B E TA N B U I L D I N G The reunification of Tibet under the Dalai Lama once again meant resources for monumental building, especially at Lhasa – there are few substantial earlier remains except for stelae, commemorative columns, the nucleii of the most venerable temples and stupas.2.94, 1.45, 2.48 Unity naturally also meant consistency of style throughout the vast plateau.That was still eclectic and in the mix the Chinese elements, superimposed on or enclosed by the towering battered Tibetan walls, remained as significant as they had been in the era of the Yuan: indeed standardization of the elements and their relationship was pressed further – as far, indeed, as the courses of dressed stone. And, with one order dominant, the assimilation of the religious and secular was also taken to its logical conclusion throughout the plateau. The most important Gelukpa monasteries, Ganden, Sera, Drepung and Tashi Lhunpo, grew into veritable urban complexes, organic in their development along the contour lines of elevated sites but formal in the order of the most important buildings at their heart. The constituent elements, invariably, were a hierarchy of shrines 674

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

›2.94

V E N E R A B L E S T U PA S : (a) Kumbun Gyantse

(consecrated 1427); (b) Lhasa. The Gyantse stupa constitutes the three-dimensional mandala (32 metres high) of the Buddha Vajradhara: of Pala inspiration, the plan form is distantly related to several works at Pagan and to the great stupa at Borobodur. The cosmic number 108 is the tally of the openings in the nine levels, including the doors of the four chapels which address the cardinal directions of space from the unusual cylindrical anda and the eyes of omniscience on the four sides of the harmika. Above that, below the chatravali, is the chapel of Vajradhara, the supreme essence of all Buddhas, progression towards whom is symbolized by ascent through the stupa’s nine levels. The stupas incorporated in the Lhasa West Gate (Bargo Kani), probably built in the mid-17th century as an adjunct to the developments on adjacent Marpori, represent the dominant Tibetan type.

›2.95

D R E P U N G , 1416: (a) general view from Loseling to Goman and Deyang Datsang; (b) Loseling Datsang porch; (c–e) Grand Assembly Hall, entrance front, interiors; (f ) Ngagpa Datsang, residential wings with Grand Assembly Hall in the background. Founded by one of Tsong Khapa’s disciples, the Gelupka complex developed into Tibet’s largest monastery accommodating 8000 monks at its apogee. The Dalai Lamas held its abbacy and its nucleus, the

2.95a

culminating in the main temple with an assembly hall as its adjunct, the palace of the head monk, the offices of his administration, the accommodation of his subordinates, teaching facilities, festival courts and storehouses. The major example is Drepung, the residence of the Dalai Lama before he moved to the Potala.2.95 Though its elements were aligned north–south, the nuclear Gelukpa temple was not unrelated to the bipartite form evolved for the Jokhang under the Yarlung dynasty. Like the Indian mandapa, the first of the two elements, the assembly hall, entered through a porch, was broader but lower than the more remote element containing the

2.95b

675

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.95c

2.95d

Palace of the Tushita Paradise (Ganden Phodang), was their main official residence before the fifth pontif moved to the Potala in the middle of the 17th century: thereafter it was maintained as a secondary residence. Amplified while the Potala was under construction, it was renovated by the thirteenth pontif apparently with respect for the 17th-century work. On a steeply sloping site, it has two courts. The second court is addressed from the north by the main block which contains the Dalai Lama’s apartments and throne room above the main assembly hall of the ruler’s personal monastic community (Namgyel Datsang). North of the Ganden Phodang, the Ngagpa Datsang was the Tantric college enshrining the icon of Vajrabhairava, the Diamond Terrifier, consecrated by Tsong Khapa: the latter is also represented (reputedly by a self-portrait) and so too is the fifth Dalai Lama together with Gelukpa lamas and numerous protective bodhisattvas. To the east, south of the shrine to Manjusri converted from the founder’s hermitage, is the grand assembly hall: 2000 square metres in area, it was built to accommodate the congregation of monks at its maximum extent in 1735. Its central shrine and its icons of the past, present and future Buddhas date from the 15th century – as do the several statues of the major 2.95e

676

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.95f

bodhisattvas. There are also many statues of Dalai Lamas and other Gelukpa lamas. The main chapel on the second floor enshrines a colossal statue of Maitreya, flanked by the funerary chapels of the monastery’s founder and of the second Dalai Lama which are themselves flanked by the chapels of the third and fourth pontifs. Apart from the primitive Ngagpa Datsang, there are three more colleges to the east of the main assembly hall: Loseling, dedicated to logic and dialectic; Gomang, which catered for students from the Mongol tribes; and Deyang for other outsiders. All are similar in disposition and in the range of their icons.

677

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

sanctum. Like the Indian vihara, the hall was bordered by cells and chapels: the denizens of these would always include Sakyamuni and Maitreya – often represented on a colossal scale – as well as the most venerable members of the order.2.96, 2.92 Like the Indian prasada, the second element rose through several storeys: the sanctuary in the centre was double height at least. The superstructure accommodated the chief monk in cells around superimposed halls: it was covered by a terrace centred on a pavilion with a gilded Chinese-style roof sheltering the lightwell of the abbot’s apartment. By the early 15th century when Tsong Khapa founded

his three monasteries – doubtless already when Songtsen Gampo took up residence on Marpori – the chief characteristic of architecture in this harsh region of climatic extremes and ample rock but little timber was gravitas. As at Sakya or Shalu,the typical masonry mass is a trapezoidal block, symmetrically articulated under an assertively horizontal dentillated timber cornice but asymmetrically assimilated into a complex. Accretive on both the vertical and horizontal planes, its origin is the modest, singlestorey courtyard house – rural and, later, urban – with masonry or adobe load-bearing walls and timber internal supports for the cornice and flat roof. The former is rough and plain in main part but washed in red, white or ochre according to the status of the patron: openings, stacked and trapezoidal to protect and limit lintels in massive load-bearing walls, but enhanced in apparent size by black frames and generous curtained awnings, are generally limited to the upper storeys as much to admit the maximum amount of sun or breeze as to obviate intrusion. Despite the predominance of massive walls, the Tibetans did not use the arch. Their tra- › 2 . 9 6 beated system defined a grid of square bays determined by the mean length of timber readily transported across mountain passes (about 2 metres). Squat, the columns were generally dressed from single trunks or clusters of saplings, and supported stepped brackets to spread the load of the beams: the latter was of Indian rather than Chinese derivation. In many residential buildings the link between outside and inside is enhanced on upper levels by a central spine of superimposed glazed loggias in which the light timber structural system of the interior is brought forward to breach the heavy masonry. Except for the deep purple friezes of religious buildings – the benma of tamarisk stalks bundled and stacked with the cut section exposed – exter678

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

S H A K YA M U N I (Seraje datsang).

nally varied colour is generally limited to these loggias, to the trabeated porch and to the external curtains and awnings which recall, perhaps, the tents of the Tibetans’ nomadic ancestors.The interior enjoys the embellishment of the timber posts, brackets and beams with carvings and which are painted in symbolic bright primary colours. Nothing better illustrates these characteristics than Tibet’s most spectacular building, the Potala.2.97 Po t a l a Named after the holy Mount Potalaka in southern India, the sanctuary of Avalokiteshvara incarnate in the Dalai Lama, the astonishing complex which overlooks Lhasa from the west was begun in 1645 on the site of the 7th-century royal citadel by the fifth Dalai Lama as his seat incorporating his Namgyal monastery. Its grand assembly halls catered for ceremonies of state and religious convocations: its chapels are legion. It accommo2.97a

dated the administration, the treasury, stores, a prison and a college dedicated to training monks for the administration. A necropolis too, it was designed to enshrine the first five Dalai Lamas and continuously augmented to provide for their successors in similar majesty. There are a thousand rooms around two major and two minor courts and many levels, few continuing in a single plane throughout the complex. Composed of contiguous towering blocks seemingly fashioned from the summit of its eminence, the complex is clearly of the type represented by the Marpori castle which it replaced and surviving feudal fortresses like Zong-shan in Gyangze.2.46c South-facing over a walled precinct, like other strongholds, it is divided into two main parts. The White Palace (Potrang Karpo, occupied 1648) to the east provided the accommodation and reception halls of the Dalai Lama. In the centre and to the west the Red Palace (Potrang Marpo, furthered after the death of the founder in 1682) was built around a cave shrine associated with King Songtsen Gampo and contains monastic prayer halls and multiple shrines to the Buddha and past Dalai Lamas. The monumental steps from the compound, which rise steeply from the road to the town to the south, penetrate the massive substructure and divide to provide the principal access 2.97b

679

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.97d

2.97e

2.97f

to each part – the west fork leads directly to the Red Palace through a central cryptoportico, while the east fork leads to a circuitous interior passage and thence to the forecourt of the east-facing White Palace. The potent verticality of the battered masses is complemented by the extended horizontals of the trapezoidal windows – incessant in their repetition – apparently in the instinct of balanced asymmetry, perhaps in accordance with unfathomed medieval rules. Though the planning too is generally organic, each main part is penetrated by an axis of order. This is truncated in the White Palace, where two roughly square 2.97g

682

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.97h

›2.97

P O TA L A : (a, b) guardian and main southern entrance; (c, pages 680–681) general view from the west; (d–g) Red Palace, roof views, upper court gallery and commemorative stupas; (h) general view from the south-east; (i) plan with (1) main southern entrance, (2–4) White Palace court, antechamber and main hall, (5–7) Red Palace entrance at fifth-floor level, Great West Hall, funerary chapel of the fifth Dalai Lama, (8) King Songtsen’s cave, (9) funerary chapel of the thirteenth Dalai Lama, (10) northern entrance; (j–n) White Palace, entrance front, porch detail and vestibule, detail of mural in the Dalai Lama’s personal apartment and throne room.

10 8 4 9 7

3

5 2 1

2.97i @ 1:4000

683

6

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.97k

2.97j

antechambers give public access from the east to the south-east corner of the main assembly hall. A suite of halls to the latter’s south is aligned east–west with the Red Palace assembly hall and its adjuncts but access from the one to the other is blocked by a stout party wall: a ceremonial link is established in plan but denied in elevation and the main entry to the Red Palace is from the exterior to the south. In the seven-storey White Palace, the assembly hall fills the fourth floor over structural and access layers. Above it is a triple-height court surrounded by administrative offices and the grander rooms of the Dalai Lama’s personal apartment at the top. In the nine-storey Red Palace, the Great West Hall fills the fifth floor over structural layers. It is flanked and surmounted by many chapels: most notable are the shrines on various levels commemorating venerable reliquaries in the Buddhist holy land or containing the richly embellished stupas of eight Dalai Lamas. Of the latter, the most magnificent, itself rising through several storeys from the elongated room to the west of the hall, is dedicated to the founder. 2.97l

684

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

If the vibrant colour of a Tibetan interior seems to reflect Chinese practice, it is in part because the common use of timber invited a common approach – but also because most of the colour of early Indian interiors has been lost. The relation of the primary and main secondary colours to the elements is probably native, though it has obvious parallels elsewhere: blue represents air (or sky) and is consequently used for ceiling beams; red represents fire (destruction and purification, war and security, power and protection) and hence is used for the main supporting members of structure, though external walls are commonly the yellow ochre of earth and so too is the traditional clay floor. White represents pure void and is specially significant in the Buddhist context of aspiration to nirvana: its combination with red on the walls of the Potala is supremely important, of course, and its interpretation, inevitably, is not beyond dispute. All these colours are combined in the ornament applied or incised to enhance the trabeated structure: each motif in the complex pattern is, of course, symbolic and is coloured in accordance with its elemental significance. Like the greatest monasteries, the Jokhang developed into a town within the town as the town itself developed around it.The new town had official buildings and the official will to centralize required magnates to build mansions in their vicinity. All building types, religious and secular, derive from the courtyard house which predated urban agglomeration and the social hierarchy dictated that new Lhasa would develop with a range of these matching varied resources: only the poorest failed to distinguish in height between residential and service areas; the most affluent would usually have a forecourt, flanked by modest service buildings,to the south of the multi-storey building in which the accommodation of the patron and his family was ranged around private inner courts.2.98

2.97m

2.97n

685

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

4

2 1

2

2

2

3

2.98a

2.98b

686

2.98c

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.98d

› 2 . 9 8 L H A S A , O L D T O W N : (a) plan (Aufschnaiter, 1948) with (1) Jokhang, (2) Barkor, (3) Shatra mansion, (4) Ramoche; (b) Jokhang entrance front on new square; (c) Barkor; (d–f ) Shatra mansion (c. 1800), view over court, plan of ground floor (left) and first floor (right), and portal. The Shatra mansion, the property of a former prime minister, is now communal housing. The main block, facing south over the court and essentially formal in plan, housed the patron and his family: their main reception rooms, lit by skylights and heated only with braziers, were in the centre of the first floor; to the west the chapel rose through two levels. The bedrooms were on the second floor around and between roof terraces.

2.98e @ 1:1000

687

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.98f

2.99a

688

B H U TA N Buddhism and the monastery were introduced to Bhutan by King Songtsen Gampo in the 7th century. In the next century Tantrism emerged dominant after the intervention of Padmasambhava, who is known in Bhutan as Guru Rinpoche (‘Precious Master’). Obscurity follows the suppression of Buddhism in 9th-century Tibet but Nyingmapa refugees are thought to have sought sanctuary in Bhutan and found hiding places for sacred texts in the remote valleys. The 11th-century revival of the faith ›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.99b

›2.99

2.99c

B H U TA N E S E I M A G E S O F B U D D H I S M :

(a) Vajradhara (Jakar Dzong); (b) Amityas or his emanation as Guru Rinpoche (Tankhaby Gompa, 16th century, restored); (c) rock paintings. The winged heruka – heroic male deity – with three faces and six arms is the quintessence of Buddhist enlightenment in Lamaist Tantrism: the Vajradara manifestation is deep blue to indicate total communion with the body of ultimate truth into which all Buddhas merge. The virile embrace of the all-comprehending god with his shakti, consistent with the age-old mithuna theme of grace generation but shocking in the esoteric Way of the Thunderbolt, symbolizes the union of compassion with wisdom – of the pure energy body and the pure wisdom mind – essential for progress along the fast track to enlightenment.

689

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

was furthered by tertons (‘treasure seekers’) dedicated to recovering the sacred deposits – and leaving their retraceable marks.2.99 Nyingmapa dominance persisted until the late-16th century when the initiative was seized by an asylum seeker from Tibet, Abbot Ngawang Namgyel (1594–1651) of Ralung, the pre-eminent monastery of the Drukpa order which had originated in central Tibet at the end of the 12th century. Worsted in factional dispute at home but backed by a force strong enough to overawe his rivals in Bhutan, he was accorded the title of Shabdrung (‘At Whose Feet One Submits’) well before he retired in 1651. He died within the year but his subordinates completed his work in 1656 with the extension of Drukpa authority to the central and eastern valleys of the Nyingmapas. Establishing a new state order for Bhutan, the Shabdrung divided religious and political authority between two administrators known respectively as the Je Khempo and Desi: equal in rank, they were subject to him alone.

The division, reflected at provincial and district level, was manifest in the citadels (dzongs) – formidable garrisoned compounds protecting a towering monastery which staffed administrative offices – built at strategic points throughout the land as the bases of governors (penlops).2.139, 2.40 The system was sustained for half a century, during which the Shabdrung’s demise was concealed while his reincarnation was sought and fiercely contested.Before the 2.100 18th century was well advanced the doctrine of triple rein›2.100 VILLAGE NEAR WANGDUEPHODRANG. carnation – body, speech and mind – had been elaborated All but the poorest rural houses have at least two to mollify important contenders. Only the Mind Reincar- storeys: the lowest is for stores and animals; the next nation could operate as head of state but the force of has the main living room; a third level in the more affluNgawang Namgyel’s extraordinary character was looked for in vain. The provincial governors gained power at the expense of the bifurcated centre. And the dzongs, built to enforce unity, became the bases of disruptive ambition. Flawed though his provisions thus proved, the Shabdrung’s system of religious and secular diarchy re-established the principle of lay authority which his rivals in his homeland might have observed to the future advantage of Tibet. The process of reforging civil unity in Bhutan extended over a century, until, in the late-1860s, the penlop of Trongsa asserted dominance and secured it in assisting the British in India with their overtures to the Tibetans. His heir, Ugyen Wangchuck, dispatched the Shabdrung but retained the Je Khempo who recognized him as king in 1907.

B H U TA N E S E B U I L D I N G In general Bhutanese buildings share with their Tibetan counterparts thick, battered, masonry external walls and trabeated timber internal structure. The Tibetan and Bhutanese approaches to the embellishment of the latter are closely related but there are significant differences in 2.101a

690

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

ent town houses is partitioned to form several rooms of which one is the household shrine. The ratio of void to solid naturally increases with height, the upper windows consisting of triads of trilobed frames floridly embellished and closed only with wooden shutters until glass was introduced in the 20th century. The upper floors are generally timber-framed, with bamboo lathes and plaster between the windows; the base walls are built of rammed earth in western Bhutan but stone is increasingly common towards the east. Plain surfaces are almost always whitewashed and embellished with devices potent against evil.

› 2 . 1 0 1 T H E C H O R T E N : (a) the Druk Wangyal Khangzang complex of 108 shrines in the Bhutanese idiom at the pass at Dochula; (b) riverside Bhutanese and Tibetan examples.

fenestration and roofing derived from the vernacular. Most notably, the ample rainfall of Bhutan obviated the open terraces of dry Tibet: a pitched roof is raised over a flat ceiling on all types of Bhutanese building, leaving an insulation zone useful for storage.2.100 Nothing built in Bhutan before the 15th century is known to survive in its original form.Thereafter the kingdom is rich in reliquary stupas (chortens), temples (lhakhangs), monasteries (gompas) and fortresses (dzongs) – preserved, renovated, rebuilt and extended in various reprises.The dzong will have a gompa, the gompa a lhakhang and all will have at least one chorten. The chorten is characteristically cubical with a low pyramidal roof but the bulbous and hemispherical forms typical respectively of Tibet and Nepal are certainly not foreign to Bhutan, singly or in combination with the local variety: all are whitewashed.2.101 The lhakang is usually small, with a walled court before the main structure of one or two storeys: it is often distinguishable from

2.101b

691

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

a substantial house only by a frieze of red paint over its whitewashed walls and gilded copper finials.2.102 The typical gompa is a loose agglomeration of domestic and service buildings in a walled precinct with one or more lhakeng at the centre: incorporating porch, assembly hall and superimposed shrines, the latter will be a substantial, four-square structure with whitewashed battered walls clearly related to, but usually less severe than, its Tibetan counterpart. Like the detached variety, of course, the gompa lhakang is distinguished by a red band and gilded copper finials: inside the walls are covered with paintings of the Buddha, his manifestations, bodhisattvas and gurus.2.103–2.105

2.102a

2.102b

›2.102

T H E L H A K H A N G (a) Bumthang valley ver-

nacular; (b) Paro valley fort style with distant echo of the great Tibetan stupa at Gyantse.

›2.103

2.103a

2.103b

692

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

T H E E A R LY G O M PA ( B U M T H A N G ) : (a, b) Tankhaby (15th century with later renovations, including glazing), exterior, upper shrine with multiple images of tertons; (c–g) Tamshing (founded 1501, restored late-19th century), exterior, porch, interior of assembly hall, water-driven prayer-wheel pavilion and wheel detail. Limited, but largely unoccupied, accommodation in the Tankhaby lhakhang block – as well as in outbuildings – distinguishes this complex as the minimal monastery. At Tamshing the porch serves an ambulatory around the assembly hall and sanctuary shrine dedicated to Guru Rinpoche: the latter is surmounted by the shrine of Buddha Amitayus. The founder was the Nyingmapa monk Pema Linga (1450–1521) who was recognized as a reincarnation of Guru Rinpoche: he devised the iconography of the celebrated murals in the porch and ambulatory which may be the oldest in Bhutan as the lhakhang is one of the earliest extant. The 19th-century restorations seem to have been carried out by Pema Linga’s eighth reincarnation, the abbot Kunzang Tenpe Nyima (1843–91).

2.103c

2.103d

2.103f

693

2.103g

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.103e

› 2 . 1 0 4 ( PA G E S 6 9 4 – 6 9 5 ) T H E K U R E J G O M PA , 17th century and later: view from the west. A site of meditation by Guru Rinpoche, who tamed the local demons and planted his staff as a cypress tree, Kurej is among the most venerable in Bhutan. The oldest extant building in the complex, the four-square, triple-height lhakhang enshrining the saint’s rock, dates from 1642: it was commissioned by the penlop of Trongsa to house a colossal image of the saint over the rock and the Buddha triad in an upper shrine. To the west, within the roughly circular gompa precinct, a similar lhakhang was added in 1900 by the penlop of Trongsa who later became the first king. A third lhakhang in the line was added in 1990 by the Queen Mother.

› 2 . 1 0 5 T H E TA K T S A N G G O M PA : view from the west.

(TIGER’S

LAIR)

Guru Rinpoche is reputed to have converted the Paro valley, overcoming its demons, after meditating for three months in a Taktsang cave to which he ascended on a flying tiger. From the 9th century the site was visited by the guru’s disciples and many Tibetan sages but it is not known to have been endowed with buildings until the advent of a small community of Nyingmapa lamas from Tibet in the 14th century. The Nyingmapa were constrained to surrender the complex to the first shabdrung, Ngawang Namgyel, in 1645: the complex was rebuilt by the new central authority c. 1690 and rebuilt to the same form after a disastrous fire in 1998.

2.105

Nothing seems to have approximated the scale of the more important Tibetan works until the first shabdrung initiated his programme of dzong building to enforce unity. Nothing compares with the Potala – in Bhutan or, indeed, elsewhere – but, despite specific differences in roofing and fenestration, there is an obvious genetic relationship between that amazing work and the greatest of its 696

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

›2.106

T H E E A R LY D Z O N G : (a–d) Simtokha (early 17th century), exterior, details of galleried precinct, porch and wall of central detached keep. The first to be fortified by Shadrung Ngawang

2.106b

Bhutanese contemporaries with the battered white and red walls of their complex courts and towering shrines enhancing the imposing eminence of their sites.2.106–2.108

2.106a

2.106c

2.106d

Namgyel (from 1629), the site commands the junction of the road from the capital, Thimpu, with the main artery from Paro to Trongsa, the western and central provincial capitals, and beyond into the eastern territories. The gompa in the central tower block is known as Sangak Sabdhon Phodrang (Palace of Profound Instruction in Secret Mantras).

The Bhutanese dzong Strategically sited at the confluence of rivers or on eminences commanding passes and naturally as varied in form as terraced contours, Bhutan’s unique dzongs contain the provincial or district administrative offices and – as religious and secular life are inseparable under leaders of equal rank – a monastery of the Shabdung’s official Drukpa order. The shrines and assembly halls central to both are invariably superimposed in a tower

697

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.107a

› 2 . 1 0 7 T R O N G S A D Z O N G : (a) overview with watchtower (left); (b–d) court front and details. Shabdrung Ngawang Namgyel built the central fortification of his unified domain as an outpost from which to secure the east: he chose the site of a lhakhang founded by his grandfather, the Drupka lama Ngagi Wangchuk, and developed it to the north. Known as Choekhor Raptentse Dzong, it was begun in 1644 and enlarged by the penlop in 1652 and again in 1771 into a warren of enclosed alleys linking courts and halls, and corridors linking residential and administrative building, ad hoc in their massing, with some twenty-three shrines – most notably those to the chief Tantric deities Yamantaka and Vajradhara – in the gompa complex developed from the original lhakhang.

2.107b

698

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.107c

699

2.107d

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

(utse) which may rise from the centre of a single court – as at Simtokha – or separate the main courts of richly diversified complexes – as in the most important places such as Trongsa and Punakha. Battered and whitewashed below red friezes like the external walls, the tower reveals its internal trabeation only in its raised porch and fenestration which increases in generosity as it ascends. The court walls, on the other hand, are variously lined with superb trabeated galleries serving the accommodation of the monks and bureaucrats – who are usually identical, given the monastic monopoly on learning and teaching. The site and the routes to it are usually overlooked by a watch tower.

2.108a

2.108b

› 2 . 1 0 8 P U N A K H A D Z O N G : (a) model from the northern (entrance) end with detached lhakhang foreground; (b) general view from the south-west; (c) detail of internal façade; (d) main assembly hall. In accordance with the self-fulfilling prophecy of Guru Rinpoche, who blessed the site, the first shabdrung began the greatest of Bhutan’s dzongs, the Punthang Dechen Phodrang (Palace of Great Happiness), at the confluence of the Pho and Mo Rivers where there had been a lhakhang from the early 14th century at least. Strategic considerations were reinforced by the will to provide maximum security for a miraculous statue of Avalokiteshvara (Runjang Karsapani, reputedly fashioned from a bone of the Drukpa founder in Tibet) which Namgyel had brought from Ralung to the fury of his erstwhile compatriots. The situation of the 2.108c

700

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

fort, lower than Thimphu, prompted its designation as the winter seat of government: it remains the winter seat of the Dratsheng (the Central Convocation of Monks) and is also the seat of government of the kingdom’s largest province. The great assembly hall – the setting for the coronation of the first king in 1907 and still a hall of state – was completed in 1657: beyond the third court at the far end of the complex, it rises through several storeys from the ground level of the main lhakhang which enshrines the remains and icon of the founder and with which the ruler’s accommodation is associated. There are twenty other shrines, several in the six-storey central tower (completed in 1676): the newest were inserted in the second court in 1983. The first court, within the entrance, houses the administration. 2.108d

701

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

›2.109

W U TA I - S H A N , X I A N - T O N G

P E N E T R AT I O N )

AND

TA Y U A N - S I

(MANIFEST (DAGOBA

T E M P L E ) M O N A S T E R I E S , reputedly founded in the mid-1st century CE, many times rebuilt but essentially Ming in definitve form: (a) Tayuan, general view; (b–e) Xian-tong, main worship hall, views of ascending terraces from below and above, and bronze pagodas. Wutai-shan is dedicated to the bodhisattva Manjusri who is believed to have alighted there. As Manjusri is of special significance to the Lamaist Buddhism of Tibet and Mongolia, the holy mountain is a place of pilgrimage: hence the bulbous Tibetan form of dagoba, Yuan in conception – indeed, like the White Pagoda in Beijing, its design is attributed to Anige – but restored under the Ming Hongwu emperor (1368–98)

2.109a

IMPERIAL L AMAISM The Ming were largely eclipsed in Tibet by the various Mongol powers which had sustained their sway over eastcentral Asia after the fall of the Yuan, but tribal affiliation furthered Qing ambitions in central Asia. Through the intermediacy of their western Mongol relatives, the rulers of Manchuria had established close relations with Tibet before they overthrew their Ming overlords. Envoys had been exchanged between Lhasa and Mukden and the fifth Dalai Lama was quick to congratulate the Qing conqueror of the Ming. Both the Dalai and Panchen Lamas were invited to Beijing in 1651: only the former came and received imperial protection; protection was accepted by the Panchen Lama in 1713. It was under these circumstances that the Kangxi emperor confronted the Dzungar invaders of Lhasa in 1717 and finally succeeded in imposing his client as seventh Dalai Lama in 1720. The Yungcheng emperor sent a resident to Lhasa at the beginning of his reign: the Qienlong 2.109b

702

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

when its compound, originally part of Xian-tong, was given separate identity. The main hall and sutra library are Ming, the latter housing the revolving case of the Tang type mentioned by Ennin in the 9th century.2.36 In the main Xian-tong compound, as defined under the Ming, the great prayer hall has been reconstructed many times and is now substantially Ming – as the interpolated decoration that fringes the beams and column tops indicates. Beyond, on steeply rising ground, are terraces with many shrine buildings including prominent examples of brick-vaulted (‘beamless’) halls, bronze pagodas rising from stupas of the Tibetan type and the celebrated ‘Bronze Pavilion’ in which the full repertory of trabeation is simulated in cast bronze.

703

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

emperor institutionalized the arrangement. In 1750, however, a dispute between the Dalai Lama’s chief administrator and the Chinese in Lhasa led to the death of the former and the massacre of the latter. The emperor sent an army to restore order. Having reasserted Chinese authority, Qianlong and his successors left Tibet in quasi-independence until just before the end of the empire. Intervention was occasionally provoked by trouble from abroad. Most serious was a Nepalese invasion in 1792: after the emperor had fulfilled his protective responsibilities he closed Tibet to the outside world. In the face of British intervention in 1903 the Dalai Lama fled to China and, after diplomacy failed to achieve a tripartite agreement on regulating the situation, the dying imperial regime despatched an occupying army in 1910:the Dalai Lama fled to India and the enmity earned in their former protectorate by the late-Manchus was to be inherited by their republican successors. Lamaism was no longer the official religion under the Ming but it was not repressed and Lamaists maintained their temples and sustained their Yuan tradition of pilgrimage to the Eastern Paradise of Manjusri which they located on Wutai-shan. At that site in the Ming era, their most spectacular complex was the Xian-tong (Manifest Penetration) and Tayuan-si (Dagoba Temple) monasteries, divided and greatly augmented under the auspices of the Hongwu emperor (1368–98).2.109 The Qing promoted syncretism, as we have noted, but their central-Asian tribal connections and enhanced involvement in Tibet predisposed Qianlong in particular to favour Lamaism. He gave the Palace of Eternal Harmony (Yonghe-gong), where his father had lived before his accession, to the Gelukpa as their principal base in the imperial capital: its transformation and expansion included accommodation for the emperor.2.110

2.109c

2.109d

704

2.109e

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

705

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

› 2 . 1 1 0 B E I J I N G , YO N G H E - G O N G , late-17thcentury Palace of Harmony converted to Lamaism in the mid-18th century: (a) overview; (b) stele pavilion; (c) Tianwang-dia (Yonge Gate or Hall of Heavenly Kings); (d) Falun-dian (Hall of the Wheel of the Law); (e) Wanfu-ge (Pavilion of Ten-thousand Happinesses). The palace built for the fourth son of the Qing Kangxi emperor was converted to an imperial ancestral gallery on his unexpected accession to the throne as the Yongzheng emperor (1723–35) – as it was contrary to propriety for an imperial residence to be inhabited by anyone else – and assigned to Tibetan lamas in 1744 by the Qianlong emperor. There are five courts: the Chaotian-men (Gate of Shining Glory) leads to the outer court, with bell and drum towers, and stele pavilions, before the Tianwang-dian (with Maitreya flanked by the four heavenly kings) whose south-facing façade is blind except for the central three arcaded bays. The second court precedes the Taihe-dian (Hall of Supreme Harmony) with the past, present and future Buddhas. The third court is preceded by the Yongyou-dian (Hall of Eternal Protection with the Buddhas of medicine and longevity) and precedes the stupa-roofed Falun-dian (Hall of the Wheel of the Law) with a statue of Tsong Khapa. The axial sequence (flanked by many other buildings) culminates in the three-storey Wanfu-ge (Pavilion of Ten-thousand Happinesses housing an 18metre-high image of Maitreya) linked by bridges to side pavilions (for ordination and special guests). This recalls the form of palace represented in the Lower Huayan-si at Datong2.42b and, beyond that, by the

2.110a

Hanyuan-dian of Tang Chang’an.2.24d,e

2.110b

706

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.110d

2.110c

2.110e

707

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

Most spectacularly, the Kangxi emperor’s retreat at Chengde was ringed by his grandson, the Qienlong emperor, with an astonishing array of Lamaist monasteries dedicated to accommodating the tribal chiefs with whom he sought to maintain close contact. And to mollify the Tibetans after 1750, he adopted Gelukpa Lamaism as his official religion. As an exercise in architectural synthesis, combining Han Chinese and typically Tibetan forms, the Chengde scheme was an assertion of imperial unity: as an exercise in architectural landscaping it was an undeniable assertion of power.2.111

2.111a

Chengde Aligned on axes radiating from the palace, eight great complexes survive in whole or part: twelve were built between 1713 and 1780 on the hills surrounding the imperial park for visiting Inner Mongolian tribal chiefs or dignitaries from Tibet. The principal annual occasion for general convocation

708

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

› 2 . 1 1 1 C H E N G D E : (a) imperial hunting camp (18thcentury scroll painting; Chengde Imperial Mountain Resort Museum); (b–d) Puning-si (1755), general view, section, elevation; (e, f ) Pule-si (1767), exterior and interior detail; (g–j) Putuozongcheng-miao (1767–71), elevation, plan, general view from below, main court with its central structure; (k) Xumifushou-miao (1780).

2.111b

2.111c

709

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.111d

2.111e

2.111f

was the autumn military exercise which – designed to discourage the Russians and outer Mongolian tribes as much as to impress the Inner Mongols – doubled as a hunting party. Most of the great works catered for special occasions. The earliest, the Puren-si (Temple of Universal Love), was built in honour of the Mongol chiefs called to the celebration of the emperor Kangxi’s sixtieth birthday in 1713 but it is resolutely Chinese in form and structure. Except for the penultimate complex, the Shuxiang-si, the works of Qianlong’s reign usually have gates, courts and trabeated halls aligned in the

710

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.111g

2.111i

2.111j

Chinese way in the front part of the complex and some concession to Tibetan massing in an elevated climax. 2.111h @ 1:4000

Qianlong’s earliest contribution, the Puning-si (Temple of Universal Peace), built to celebrate the pacification of the fratricidal Jungar Mongols to the satisfaction of their neighbours in the Yili region, was

711

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

supposedly conceived in homage to the most venerable of all Tibetan temples, the Samye. However, the compliment seems to have been lost on its Tibetan visitors: gatehouse, court with bell and drum towers, the courts and halls of the Heavenly King and of the Great Hero, succeed one another on axis in the usual way and the climax, the Hall of the Great Vehicle (Dacheng-ge), which rises from its high platform to 39 metres over a 28-metre statue of the Tibetan patron deity Avalokiteshvara (Guanyin), has prominent Chinese precedents.2.39, 2.71 Apart from the numerous bulbous dagobas on the terraces, however, uncharacteristic of China are the heavy walls with relatively small trapezoidal windows that mask the traditional trabeation, at least at the lower levels, and the multiple pyramidal roofs with relatively large finials of the upper levels. The Pule-si was built for the Western Mongols ostensibly with Tibetan advice but, like the Puren-si, it conforms largely to Chinese tradition. The double-roofed main pavilion clearly recalls the Qinian-dian of the Tiantan in Beijing2.64 but the insertion of a cruciform altar ciborium transforms the whole into a three-dimensional mandala along archetypical Tibetan Tantric lines. The foundation record of the Putuozongcheng-miao (Temple of the Putuo Sect) acknowledges the inspiration of the Potala but the building was destined for the Kokonor Mongols called to celebrate the emperor’s sixtieth birthday in 1770. The fore part departs from the Chinese norm in its irregular distribution of walled blocks – some completely solid, some with accommodation sparsely fenestrated in the Tibetan manner. The climax, overwhelming the contours of the site, is an organic assemblage of white and red blocks: the latter is assertive of great mass, like its Tibetan model, but actually encloses a vast square courtyard in the centre of which is a typically Chinese multi-storey trabeated pavilion (Miaogaozhuangyan) with a pyramidal roof of yellow tiles. The last of Qianlong’s complexes, Xumifushou-miao (Temple of Happiness in Longevity on Smeru) built for the reception of the Panchen Lama invited to the emperor’s seventieth birthday celebrations, was supposedly inspired by Tashi Lunpho – the venerable guest’s home base to which, despite the sentiment expressed in the dedication, he never returned as he died in Beijing. Sited on rising ground less steep than 2.111k

712

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

Putuozongcheng-miao, its central zone recalls the latter’s red building in form and content but the climax, beyond the Jixiang faxi-dian (Hall of Law and Good Fortune built for the lama’s residence), is a dazzling green and yellow pagoda. Its axis crosses that of the sun rising between the yang and yin of the extraordinary phallic and mammalian features that dominate the spectacular site.

From the surrounding peaks, transcending contrived enclosure as Chinese gardeners always do in borrowing the external view, the Son of Heaven naturally planned to embrace the world at large. That was his realm, cultivated under the mandate of heaven in perpetual harmony with qi. It transcends the terrestrial in effecting its perpetual concordance with qi’s cosmic currents, and never were the diviners of feng shui called to more spectacular account.

713

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

›2.112

BUDDHA IMAGES OF THE THREE KING-

D O M S P E R I O D : (a) Sakyamuni in aureole, gilt bronze

inscribed in Year Seven of Koguryo Yon’ga which is presumed to have been 6th century, from South Kyongsang Province (Gyeogsangnam-do); (b) Amitabha flanked by twin bodhisattvas in aureole (inscribed in a year named ‘Kyemi’ which has been located variously between 563 and 623 and attributed to Paekche); (c) Maitreya possibly from the Silla capital, Kyoungju, (dated to the 7th century; National Museum, Seoul). Sakyamuni, the Amitabha trinity and Maitreya were the most commonly revered images in each of the Three Kingdoms. Amitabha eclipsed Maitreya in the 8th century, after unification had been fully consolidated under the Silla and the Pure Land sect flourished, especially on remote mountain sites. Vairocana came to the fore in the 9th century.

2.112a

2.112b

7 korea According to legend, the kingdom of Korea was founded by Tangun, the son of the Son of Heaven, in 2233: his line ruled for 1111 years until 1122 bce when a Chinese scholar named Kija entered at the head of a troop of colonizers and established his seat at Pyongyang. His civilizing dynasty was replaced in 193 bce by a Chinese warrior named Wiman – reputedly – but the north was soon divided among four Chinese vassals. Southern Korea was beyond the sphere of direct Chinese control: inhabited by peoples ethnically related to the Japanese, it was divided into the three states of Mahan in the south-west, Chinhan in the south-east and intermediate Pyonhan. Recorded history begins with the Three Kingdoms which emerged in the last half century bce: modern scholarship is sceptical of the traditional dates, preferring a period of gestation over the first three centuries ce. The first was Silla which emerged in Chinhan and absorbed Pyonhan within a generation (in 57 and 37 bce according 714

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.112c

to tradition): its capital was at Kyongju. The kingdom of Koguryo emerged in the north at the same time (37 bce, according to tradition) but it took several centuries to absorb the other former Chinese colonies there: its capital was at Pyongyang. The kingdom of Paekche reputedly emerged from Mahan a little later (18 bce): its capital was first at Hansong (Seoul). There was also a small confederation of states in the south, between Silla and Paekche, known as Kaya which early forged trade links with Japan: the greater powers, especially Paekche, developed these and transmitted their culture to the putative island empire. Buddhism was reputedly introduced from China to Koguryo from 372,thence to Paekche by 384.From Paekche it was exported to Japan in 552. It was adopted as the state religion in Silla by King Pophung (514–40) though it had probably arrived in the south well before that.2.112 The kingdoms did not coexist peacefully: conflict was constant for several centuries and Silla was also exposed to the ambitions of the Japanese – who had a colonial foothold on the peninsula in Kaya at Karak by the harbour of modern Pusan. Paekche allied itself with Silla to counter Koguryo but lost Hansong to the enemy in 475: the capital was relocated at Ungjin (Kongju). The Hansong was regained in the mid-6th century but, Koguryo weakened, Silla turned on its former ally and took its winnings. At the same time Silla absorbed Kaya. Paekche then turned to Koguryo and the southern Chinese Liang rulers. Within a century the interests of these parties naturally clashed with those of the rising Tang: with the aid of the latter under the auspicies of the Buddha, King Munmu of Silla (acceded c. 660) absorbed Paekche at the outset of his reign and Koguryo eight years later. With great resources freed by peace for temple building and embellishment, Munmu’s Kim descendants sustained 715

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

the united kingdom as a cultural province of contemporary Tang China until 935. As in Tang China, as we have seen, affluence attendant on the peace prompted the efflorescence of the Pure Land sect which offered the faithful a rich eternity in the precincts of Amitabha’s fabulous palace.The domain of the Western Paradise was to be attained by esoteric means – rather than through the yoga of the Theravadin arhant – in pursuit of which the early Chinese devotees were led into the mountains as the Daoists questing for Shangqing (the Heaven of Highest Purity) had been led into retreat on Mao-shan. The Koreans followed in the era opened by Munmu. The Silla ultimately succumbed to a disaffected general, Wang-gon, who established a new state known as Koryo which he ruled as King T’aejo (918–43) from Songak (modern Kaesong, Hwanghae Province, near modern Seoul).The new king avowed admiration for Tang culture and his successor instituted a civil-service examination system on the Chinese model. After the Chinese example, moreover, Koryo was ultimately protected from the northern barbarians by a great wall (1600 kilometres long). As the dynasty’s advent was attributed solely to the Buddha, Buddhism was lavishly patronized apparently without regard to the consequences of earlier Tang largesse. Iconic art retained allegiance to the Amitabha trinity but also furthered Avalokiteshvara – with increasing degrees of elaboration as the dynasty aged.2.113 Numerous temples were founded by the regime as prayer centres for national well-being and examinations were instituted on the civil model for their monks, who governed the sangha’s increasingly affluent and powerful domain. Well within Koryo’s first century,however,the scriptural authority of the established sects – primarily devoted to the Amitabha trinity with proliferating floridity – was challenged by the Son (Chinese Chan) meditative school: a monk from the royal 716

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.113b

2.113a

›2.113

K O R YO

I C O N S : (a) Avalokitesvara (gilt

bronze, c. 1300; Seoul, National Museum); (b) the Amitabha trinity in a model shrine (gilt bronze, 10th century; Seoul, Kansong Museum).

717

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

family attempted to heal the resulting breach in the mid11th century but he failed. Son went on to triumph in Japan as Zen. The Wang dynasty ruled nominally until 1392 but the king had lost effective power to the Buddhist sangha whose tax-free economy undermined that of the state – as in 9th-century Tang China. Virtually a cultural province of the Sung, like that dynasty’s steadily diminishing realm , Koryo was destabilized by repeated foreign invasion, notably the Khitan (Liao), the Jurchen (Chin) and finally the devastating Mongols (Yuan) in 1231. The court retreated to Kanghwa Island (off Seoul) where it subsisted until the ruthless intruders were finally dispatched in 1364. However General Yi Tae-jo, who led the triumphant Korean forces, put paid to the fiction of Wang authority and ruled (1392–98) under the revived name of T’aejo from Hanyang (Seoul). The Chinese recognized

the new authority of the Yi dynasty in the domain they called ‘Chosen’. The Yi or Chosen period is conventionally divided into two by the Japanese invasion of 1392. The unprecedented prosperity promoted by the peace sustained a succession of strong, reforming rulers, most notably the third and fourth kings of the line, T’aejong (1400–18) and Sejong (1418–50). Confucianism was promoted at the expense of Buddhism: Sejong decimated the number of licensed temples and distributed the land of the great monasteries to the people; Chungjong (1506–44) terminated the sangha’s examination system and closed more temples. In the second half of the 16th century, however, a brief Buddhist revival preceded disputed succession which opened the way to the Japanese adventure. Six years of war devastated the country, economically, politically and socially: little of the culture of the previous millennium – architecture above all – survived. Recovery following the Japanese humiliation at sea in 1598 had hardly begun when the Manchus invaded – in 1627 and 1638 – as a prelude to their campaign against the Ming in China. After 1644 Korea was once again a cultural province of the colossus to its south-west – though Confucianism, promoting emulation of past masterpieces, was inimical to originality in the arts.That prompted the sirhak (‘practical learning’) movement which attempted reform of all aspects of national life on the basis of an empirically informed education influenced by increasing contact with Europeans. The decline of the Manchus prompted a nationalist revival which involved much rebuilding in a style of ostentatious embellishment to tradition, but the imperial pretensions of the Prince Regent were too much for his overtaxed subjects and for resurgent Japan: the dynasty succumbed to the Japanese in 1910.

718

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.114a

A R C H I TE C T U R E : I N T RO D U C T I O N Prehistoric dolmens and cist and chamber tombs in stone or earthen mounds are the earliest architectural exercises (9th–3rd centuries bce) to have left substantial traces in Korea. However, exposed to the threat of hostility from various Chinese forces and nomadic marauders from the north and to ambitious Silla in the south, defence works were always a prime claim on Koguryo’s resources and there are traces of forts and fortifications complementing the harsh terrain throughout the north. In the era of the Three Kingdoms, substantial royal tombs were being dug, lined in stone or brick and buried under mounds of boulders or earth.Types varied but those in which the 4th- and 5th-century Koguryo kings were interred near modern Pyongyang, palatial in the distribution of their subterranean chambers embellished with rich 2.114b

719

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

mural paintings, are the most important: the Chinese › 2 . 1 1 4 F U N E R A R Y W O R K S O F T H E T H R E E K I N G D O M S P E R I O D : (a) Kongju (or Gongju, ancient precedent is clear. There was considerable variety in Ungjin, capital of Paekche), Tomb of King Muryong Paekche too – some of the mound tombs followed a key- (datable from the epitaph of the Queen buried in 529), hole configuration like those of contemporary imperial interior of tomb chamber; (b–d) Kyongju (or Gyeongju), Japan – but outstanding is the brick tomb of King Muryong (501–23) near Kongju (old Ungjin) with its arched main chamber approached through a tunnel.In Silla,tomb types from the north replaced primitive pit burials at Kyongju in the 6th century but a unique type, with a wooden chamber in a stone and earthen mound, had emerged for individual or multiple burial at the capital.2.114 2.114d

2.114c

720

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

crown recovered from the Cheongmacheong tomb, Silla tumulus, general view and diagrammatic section. Access to the Silla tomb, from the south, is through a vaulted corridor to the rectangular tomb chamber, lined with brick stamped with lotiform and geometric patterns. Parallels have been drawn (by Jane Portal and others) with the tombs of the contemporary Liang with whom the 6th-century Paekche kings were allied: Liang coins were found in the burial chamber with Chinese ceramics.

›2.115

K YO N G J U R E L I C S : (a) Chomsongdae (c. 640); (b) memorial ‘stupa’ of the monk Yomgo (9th century; Seoul, Kyonbok Palace Museum). If the baluster-shaped tower (29 metres high) was in fact an astrological observatory, dedicated to the belief that heavenly bodies determine the course of terrestrial affairs, it is the oldest survivng building of its type in Asia.

2.115a

Tumuli were retained only for most important personages after the unification of the Three Kingdoms under Silla – though the Koryo royal tradition of the stone chamber tomb was sustained by the Chosen rulers. By the end of the 7th century lesser mortals were usually cremated and their ashes buried in urns without a mound. If particularly venerable, the cremated deceased was accorded a small stone monument, conventionally identified as a stupa but typically a reduced variant of the pagoda, in which the principal element was an octagonal or circular – even semi-spherical – canopied drum on a pedestal and octagonal stylobate. The other spectacular survivor from the era is a baluster-shaped tower which has been identified – not to the satisfaction of all commentators – as an observatory: if so, the observations doubtless governed the timing of interment.2.115

2.115b

721

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.116b

›2.116

2.116a

TE M P LE S Temple building was prolific after Buddhism was introduced to Koguryo and Paekche in the last quarter of the 4th century, later in the south, and doubtless there was always considerable Confucian work. Whatever the dedication, as in China the principal elements of the Buddhist temple – gate, pagoda enshrining relics of the Buddha, worship hall enshrining images of Buddhist divinities,and lecture pavilion – were invariably aligned from south to north on a single axis. The predominant use of timber inevitably meant no survivals earlier than Koryo, except for stone bases and footings. However, there are several important early stone pagodas – the reliquary towers, essential in all Buddhist foundations, which may be seen as the ultimate heir of the prehistoric dolmen. Of the many temples reputedly built in Koguryo, excavation has concentrated on several in the Pyongyang area 722

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

STO N E R E L I Q UA R I E S O F - 7 T H C E N T U RY

PA E K C H E A N D S I L L A : (a) Chongnim-sa; (b) Miruksa; (c) Kumsan-sa (Geumsansa); (d) Haein-sa. The central pagoda at Miruk was of timber but the flanking ones were both of stone on similar foundations. The extant fragment of the original seven-storey structure (now more than 14 metres high) is to the west: built over a square plan it reproduces timber trabeation even to the central post. At Chongnim, the pagoda rose through five storeys over a square plan: the eaves have a concave curve in the Chinese manner. The Kumsan-sa was founded in the second year of King Peop of Paekche (c. 600) and extended under King Kyongdok (Gyeongdeok) of Silla (742–65). The fivestorey pagoda appears to date from the 7th century. The extraordinary dragon-headed stupa in the centre of the platform seems to have been added in the 9th century. Haein-sa was founded by King Aejang of Silla (800–09), ex-voto for the recovery of his queen from an illness. It is the one of the chief Korean seats of the Avatamsaka sect and typical of their mountain complexes.

2.116c

– notably Wan’o-ri, Sango-ri, Ch’ongnung and the Kumgang foundation at Ch’ongam-ni. In the Ch’ongnung complex, founded in 427, both the octagonal pagoda and the worship hall to its north seem to have been flanked east and west by a pair of subsidiary halls. The Kumgang, founded in 498, seems to represent the norm in which a pair of subsidiary halls flank the octagonal pagoda but not the worship hall to its north: the formula, which sometimes extended further north to a lecture hall on the main axis, was exported to Japan – specifically to Asukadera. In former Paekche, excavation at Kunsu-ri, Tongnamwang, Kumgang, Chongnim at Puyo (South Chungchong Province) and Miruk in Iksan (North Cholla Province) has established a one-hall, one-pagoda norm except at the first and last of these sites where there appear to have been three halls side by side on the east–west axis with a pagoda to the south of each of them at Miruk.2.116 2.116d

723

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

Tomb paintings indicate that, as in China, the ubiquitous wooden trabeated structure incorporated the Han bracket system supporting the eaves of a tiled roof well beyond the line of the outer posts.2.117 At first the Koguryo

2.117b

› 2 . 1 1 7 YO N G K A N G - G U N , S A N G YO N G - C H ’ O N G T O M B , Koguryo, c. 500: (a) figures under veneration in a trabeated pavilion with a pitched roof carried on a variety of brackets (tugong) and (b) detail showing ‘frog-leg’ strut (taegong) on beam above them.

2.117a

builders copied the Chinese in applying this system to all the main elements of the complex, including the pagoda. The central post (indrakila), on which the tapering storeys of these structures were typically hung, is taken to symbolize the pole of Indra – the axis mundi – but timber of sufficient length and strength for such a structure – and its inevitable replacement – is rare and expensive in Korea. Korean builders naturally turned instead to the eminently durable granite in which their rocky peninsula is rich. Of the myriad surviving granite pagodas, the earliest belong to the Miruk temple.2.116b The square plan was the norm but the campaniform is not unknown and there are octagonal examples like the ubiquitous temple lantern. In Silla, where the earliest official temple record is dated to 534, the single axis – on a level site – was also the norm before unification. However, the great state Hwangnyong temple in the capital was a major example of the biaxial 724

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.118a

› 2 . 1 1 8 K YO N G J U , E A R LY S I L L A T E M P L E S : (a, b) Hwangyong (6th century), model (Seoul, Palace Museum); (c) Bunhwang, andresite pagoda (634).

2.118b

725

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

type: the southern gate of the rectangular compound, the nine-storey wooden pagoda, the worship and lecture halls are aligned on the north–south axis; on the cross-axis a pair of square structures – for the sutras and the bell – stood before the pagoda and the worship hall was flanked by two extra rectangular pavilions. Of nine storeys rising through 80 metres, the Hwangyong pagoda was reputedly unexcelled in its scale. The 7th-century Bunhwang pagoda in the vicinity, rising over a square plan through three storeys which follow no known Paekche – or Koguryo – precedent, is built of andresite cut to resemble brick.2.118 The advance of the esoteric sects, notably the Avatamsaka and the Pure Land sect of Buddhism, promoted the development of the esoteric mountain shrine away from the centres of power. Of several significant precursors, the cave temples of Mount P’algong may be cited.

2.118c

The grandest work of the type – one of the supreme achievements of Asian art – is a man-made stone chamber in an earthern mound at Sokkuram, on the sanctified Mount Toham which guards the eastern approach to Kyongju. Derived from the funerary type, but enshrining a great icon identified as the Amitabha Buddha of the Western Paradise, it is dedicated to prayers for the Kim ancestors: it lies at the headwaters of a stream which flows east to the estuary on the south-east coast where King Munmu is interred in a submarine tomb.2.119 In the peace attendant on Munmu’s achievement,more2.119a › 2 . 1 1 9 C A V E T E M P L E S : (a) Mit P’algong, Kunwi over, the resources diverted from war to building produced cave temple (Amitabha is the central figure of a typical numerous formal state exercises laid out on planar sites. trinitarian group, late-7th century); (b–e) Mount The one-hall, one-pagoda type is common but a pair of Toham, Sokkuram Buddhist shrine (8th century), axial pagodas stood before the hall at several sites, notably view to Amitabha and detail within rotunda, section and plan. Sach’onwang, Mangdok, Kamun and Pulguk. Like the Caves in the mountains flanking the Silla capital, equally venerable Pusok Temple and its neighbour at revered as holy, were being converted into shrines well 726

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.119b

before the mid-7th century: the earliest record of a constructed grotto, on Mount Nam, is dated to 644 – a century before the most important work of the cut-andcover type was undertaken at Sokkuram. This consists of the rotunda of the shrine itself and a rectangular anteroom for meditating devotees linked by a short passage. The north and south walls of the anteroom are embellished with reliefs of eight figures of obscure identity, sometimes called officials but probably guardian deities; opposite the entrance, flanking the portal to the rotunda, are the usual dvarapala figures and beyond them the locapalas flank a short passage. The granite vault of the rotunda, centred on a lotus roundel which provides a canopy for the masterly image of the Amitabha, rises from orthostats carved with figures also of obscure identity: sometimes identifed as disciples, sometimes as representing the twelve-year zodiac cycle, they seem to include Brahmanical deities – notably Indra and Brahma flanking the entrance – as well as bodhisattvas – notably Avalokiteshvar to the east, behind the central image. Above them bodhisattvas are enshrined in eight niches.

2.119c

2.119d

727

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.119e

2.120b

2.120c

2.120a

728

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

›2.120 P U L G U K - S A ( B U L G U K S A ), founded in the second half of the 7th century, amplified mid-8th century: (a–c) entrance stairs and stone platform, Sokkat’ap and Tabot’ap pagodas (all conventionally dated to the rebuilding campaign begun in 751); (d) Amitabha (8th century). The Pulguk complex is perhaps the outstanding ancient foundation in the united kingdom: on its high stone terrace, the main precinct had a single north– south axis and, at least from the 8th century rebuilding, there was a sutra and bell tower at either end of a covered passage around the main hall. The pagodas, symmetrically disposed before the worship hall, represent three-tiered revisions of the five-storey Paekche type radically at variance with one another in complexity. The Sokkat’ap pagoda is reputedly due to a builder from Paekche but the northern prototype is reduced to three storeys (for the Three Jewels of Buddhism). In contrast to this simple exercise, which depends on the

2.120d

carefully calculated proportions of its diminishing tiers, the complex Tabot’ap consists of an octagonal shrine elevated by four massive square piers and bracket capitals over a high socle with axial staircases.

2.121a

2.121b

›2.121 ANDONG, PONGJONG-SA (BONGJ O N G ) : Kukrak-jon, late-12th century, (a, b) exterior and interior.

729

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

Pongjong, Pulguk is a prime example of the mountain temple of the Pure Land sects which, beside Amitabha, accorded prominence to the Vairocana of the Avatamsaka. The prime foundation of the latter is Haein-sa. Contrary to the axial norm of the state temple, the distribution of elements in individual compounds in the mountain type might be symmetrical but the whole complex, in its multiplicity of enclosures, is informally distributed in accordance with the terraced contours of the site.2.120 The Koryo heritage is much depleted too, not least by the systematic destruction of the 16th-century Japanese invasion. Many temples were built in this fervently Buddhist era to the triple-hall, one-pagoda formula of Koguryo and many others to the one-hall, two-pagodas formula of Silla. However, the axis was reinforced with the amplification of the gate with a hall for worship. Several gilt-bronze shrine models survive from the dynasty’s early period2.113a but – apart from stone pagodas and stupas – the timber structural legacy is limited to the main halls of the mountain temples of Pongjong and Pusok at Anjong and Yongju respectively (North Kyongsang Province) and Sudok at Yesan (South Ch’ungch’ong Province). The first of these, the oldest surviving wooden structure in Korea, dates from c. 1190 but still uses the mid-Tang bracket system known as chusimp’o in Korea in which the brackets are supported only by pillars or struts – the latter especially in the gabled cross-sections where height was achieved with the superimposition of diminishing beams. An elaboration of the same system is preserved in the main hall, Taeung-jon, at Sudok (c. 1308) and the Muryangsujon at the Pusok Temple (rebuilt 1358).2.121–2.123 Of many multi-storey pagodas, like those lining the route to the Unju Temple (Hwasun, South Cholla Province), the most spectacular relic from the end of the

8 9

4 5

2 3

6

1

4 7 2.122a @ 1:500

2.122b

10

›2.122

P U S O K - S A ( B U S E O K S A ) : (a) plan with (1) first terrace and Gate of the Heavenly Guardians, (2) second level with triple terrace and dormitory, (3) bell tower, (4) Unghyanggak and Ch’wihyonarm, (5) third main level and Anyang Gate, (6) Muryangsujon (Hall of Eternal Life), (7) pagoda, (8) Chaindang, (9) Unginjon, (10) Chosadang; (b, c) Muryangsujon, exterior and interior with contemporary image of Amitabha. The temple was founded in 676 but the oldest elements – rare survivors of the Japanese in the late16th century – are the Muryangsujon and Chosadang: the former has an inscription recording rebuilding under the Koryo in 1376 but the style is at least 150 years earlier. The Anyang Gate and the bell tower, which mark the main axis, date from the Chosen period – as do many of the subsidiary structures. Though the centre of the Avantamsaka sect (whose devotion was focused on Vairocana), the temple follows the Pure Land formula for enshrining Amitabha (or Muryangsu in a Korean transliteration of the Chinese form of the great bodhisattva’s name) facing east at the western end of the great hall (which, dedicated to eternal life, embodies the Pure Land of Amitabha’s Western Paradise). The three main levels of the temple’s terracing, subdivided into three zones, also match the stages of progress to ultimate bliss in the Western Paradise.

2.123

›2.123

YESAN,

SUDOK-SA,

1308: section through main hall with its chusimp’o bracket system and intermediate struts.

› 2 . 1 2 4 S E O U L , K YO N G C H ’ O N PA G O D A , 1348 (removed from the Kyongch’on-sa, Kyonggi Province, to the Kyonbok Palace compound): general view. The influence of Yuan timber structure is apparent in 2.122c

730

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

period is the ten-storey, multi-faceted, richly embellished stone pagoda from the Kyongch’on Temple. The example was followed in the next century for King Sejo who, contrary to the Confucian ethos prevailing under his predecessors in Chosen, revived the patronage of Buddhism. These works mark the culmination of the genre: the tradition of the stone pagodas was not sustained with distinction after the Japanese invasion. The Kyongch’on pagoda also marks the introduction from Yuan China of the tasimp’o style of bracketing in which the clusters are repeated in mid-beam as well as over the columns. Invented in timber at Koryo sites like Simwon or Sokwang (North Korea), this was developed on an increasingly grand scale in the aftermath of the invasion catastrophe. A spectacular early example, unique in its five storeys, is the the P’alsangjon of the Popchu-sa now in the Songnisan National Park.2.124, 2.125

2.124

the style of clustered bracketing in which the main arms, supporting minor arms, rise from the column head and the intermediate beams. The increasingly elaborate tasimp’o system was evolved to support the overhanging eaves of varied roof types simulated here, notably hip and gable.

›2.125

P O P C H U - S A ( B O P C H U S A ) , founded 553, destroyed 1592, rebuilt 1624: Palsangjon. The five storey structure – the Korean equivalent to the Chinese ge – enshrines a bronze standing Buddha (33 metres high, modern). 2.125

731

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.126a

2.126b

T H E S E C U L A R T R A D I T I O N : E A R LY PA L AC E S From time immemorial, Korean houses in town and country tended to be asymmetrical in distribution, contrary to the Chinese norm: this followed from the incorporation of several pavilions differentiated in scale, form and location in accordance with the status of their occupants ranging from servant to master. Naturally, class distinction informs the scale of the complex as a whole: the number of pavilions increases with rank, but the main one faces a court flanked by service ranges. In more affluent houses there is separate accommodation for the various units of an extended family and separate provision for the women. In the north, the principal pavilion – or pavilions in the grander houses – have a heated area (ondol) partitioned from a kitchen space, the former raised over hypocaust heating facilities, the latter with a tiled or earthen floor. In the south, in addition, there was an open hall area (malu) with a wooden floor raised over posts. The grander class of pavilion had hipped and gabled roofs of tile, the poorer ones were simply gabled and thatched. Timber-frame structures were the norm with wattle-and-daub infill for 2.127

732

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

›2.126

H A H O E , North Kyongsang Province (Gyeongsangbuk-do), Chunghyodang, late-16th century: (a) gate, (b) exterior. The heated ondol is behind the enclosed bay beyond the verandah, the malu incorporates the three open bays to the right.

›2.127

K YO N G J U , A N A P - C H I A N D I T S R E C O N -

STRUCTED

‘ D E TA C H E D ’

PA L A C E

PA V I L I O N S ,

originally built for King Munmu, c. 670. Like the Tang detached palaces beyond the walls of Chang’an, the complex in the gardens centred on the lake (excavated 1973–76) was a retreat from the strict formality of state ceremonial and the halls aligned to accommodate it.

733

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

outer walls: the richer houses had stone or brick plinths below plastered panels.2.126 No palaces survive from the eras before the Chosen – though archaeology and written record confirm that, like the Chinese, the Korean tradition was essentially conservative: it began under Han influence. As in China, the formula prescribed the north–south alignment of the main elements in a rectangular walled compound with gates facing all four cardinal directions.There were three zones: the galleried precinct of the forward one, dedicated to the administration of the realm, was dominated by the great hall of state (chongjon); the central one, also defined by colonnaded galleries, contained the pavilions of private audience (p’yonjon) and residence (ch’imjon),the last comprising distinct walled apartments for the king, queen and principal members of their family; the third one, usually in the north, provided the ultimate sanctum of a garden. The foundations of the mid-5th-century Koguryo Anhak Palace (P’yongyang) indicate that there were three north–south axes in parallel and that the ceremonial precinct to the south of the central zone had three halls aligned east–west. One principal axis is asserted by the foundations of the Silla Anap-chi complex at Kyongju which dates from after the unification of the kingdom in the second half of the 7th century.There are records of the digging of lakes and the formation of hills – no doubt the one complementing the other – at royal sites in each of the three early kingdoms. Excavation of King Munmu’s Anap-chi (Lake of Wild Geese) complex at Kyongju has revealed that the axial order of the main halls was complemented by the informal disposition of pavilions on the lake shore: the latter have been rebuilt.2.127 Further, the Koryo palace built on the slopes of the natural Manwoltae hill at the capital, Kaesong, was distributed relatively informally in accordance with the contours.

B U I L D I N G S TA N DA R D S A N D CO N F U C I A N CO LLE G E S As the essential corollary of official patronage of Confucianism, in reaction to esoteric Buddhist developments, the Chosen instituted a building-standards commission to regulate planning, supervise construction and vet materials. The system promoted sombre work with simple bracket systems for the principal building types: halls dedicated to the veneration of sages and ancestors, usually with associated education colleges. There were private academies (sowon) but the most important centres of Confucian study were the public schools for future civil servants (hyanggyo): as well as the dominant memorial shrine for the sages and spirit houses accommodating stelae commemorating notable Confucians, the essential elements were a lecture hall and library conventionally aligned with the gates to their distinct compound on a strict north–south axis; dormitories and service buildings were peripheral to the courts. The inscribed stelae, usually carried on the back of a tortoise, supplanted the stupa/pagoda as the principal stone memorial type.2.128 Other than the stone stelae, as usual little survived the Japanese invasion of the late-16th century: Confucian institutions naturally bore the full brunt of the enemy’s iconoclasm. The most important ones, Seoul’s Songgyun’gwan academy with the pre-eminent Munmyo shrine and the Chongmyo of the royal ancestors, were burnt by the commander of the invading forces, Hidei Ukida. The Chongmyo was rebuilt to a larger scale from 1608 and further augmented in 1836 but the specific sobriety of Confucian style was retained with the elementary elongated form of the open, pitched roof pavilion.2.128c As Buddhism was suppressed by a regime inimical to the individualistic esoteric sects, which had proliferated under

2.128a

›2.128

WORKS:

(a, b) Talsong, Dodong Sowon (1605), general view and plan with (1) gatehouse, (2) dormitories, (3) lecture hall, (4) shrine court gate, (5) shrine; (c, d) Seoul, Chongmyo (founded with the capital in 1394, enclosed and augmented in the early 15th century, destroyed 1592, rebuilt 1608–13, enlarged 1726 and 1836), Yongnyongjon, secondary shrine hall, and stele (Kyonbok Palace Museum Park). CONFUCIAN

1

2

2 3

4

5

2.128b @ 1:1000

734

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.128c

The founder of the dynasty, King T’aejo, built the Chongjon to enshrine four generations of his ancestors’ spirit tablets brought to the new capital from Koryo Kaesong. The south-facing site was adequately protected from the west by a natural hill but artificial earthworks were required to the east. The much-augmented collection of stelae was taken to P’yongyang by King Sonjo in flight from the Japanese. Subsequent rebuilding ultimately catered for eighteen rulers and their consorts in nineteen partitioned bays. Before them the open verandah has a ceiling carried on beams borne by posts with single bracket plates, moulded in profile, and similar brackets are superimposed to carry the overhanging eaves. The four generations of ancestors originally accommodated in the Chongjon were rehoused in the subsidiary Yongnyongjon where they were joined by seven more actual rulers – deemed ineffective – and three honorary ones in seventeen partitioned bays.

2.128d

2.129a

735

the Koryo,Buddhist building was naturally limited but the Koryo chusimp’o tradition was sustained in the Kukrakjon of the Muwi-sa and Kwanryong-sa,rare survivors from the early Yi era. Also from the era, apart from the P’alsangjon of Popchu-sa, the main hall of the Kaesim Temple furthers the tasimp’o style. At its most opulent in elaborated structure as well as painted ornament,that style is best represented by the several pavilions and their complex galleried precincts on the ascending terraces of the fully developed Pomo-sa (Beomeosa), Pulguk-sa (Bulguksa) and Haein-sa mountain complexes near Pusan, Kyongju and Daegu respectively – both Silla works lost to the Japanese in 1592, rebuilt in the 17th century and extensively again in the second half of the 20th century.2.129

2.129b

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

7

6 11

5

10

4 9 2 8

2.129d

2.129c @ 1:2000

›2.129

T H E M O U N TA I N T E M P L E R E S T O R E D :

(a, b) Haein-sa (founded c. 800, extended in the 10th century, rebuilt after the Japanese invasion of 1592 and again in the 19th and 20th centuries): library and overview of compound; (c–i) Pulguk-sa (Bulguksa; rebuilt over the century from c. 1610 and from 1963), plan (c) with (1) Chahamun at head of entrance stairs and bridge, (2) Sokkat’ap, (3) Tabot’ap, (4) Taeungjon, main worship hall, (5) Musoljon lecture hall, (6) Pirojon, (7) Kwanumjon, (8) Anyangmun at head of Chibo bridge and stairs, (9) Kungnakjon, (10) Pophwajon, (11) Nahanjon, Chahamun terrace, (d) detail of gate, (e–g) Taeungjon exteriors and interior, (h) Musoljon exterior, (i) Pirojon interior with Virocana (j), Kungnakjon exterior, (k, l) Kwanumjon interior with Avolokitesvara and exterior, (m) overview from Kwanumjon. The five main zones reputedly date from the 8th century rebuilding to an amplified scale over the 6th century foundation. The main gate, Chahamun, was rebuilt in 1436, 1630, 1781 and 1966: the complexity of its tasimp’o system is in sharp contrast to the simplicity of the Anyangmun’s chusimp’o. Though both styles were current in the 15th century, it is difficult to believe that the multiple bracketing does not owe much to elaboration in the later phase of its rebuilding. Similar in the proliferation of its bracketing, the Taeungjon was rebuilt on its original platform in 1765 and is generally recognized as representing the style of that time: the images within, created after the Japanese invasion, are of Shakyamuni flanked by his predecessor Dipankara and Maitreya. The state of the

2.129e

736

3 1

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.129g

2.129f

Kwanumjon is similar: on the highest terrace, it enshrines a modern image of Avalokitesvara (Kwanmun) in place of the lost 10th-century original. On the neighbouring intermediate terrace to the north of Taeungjon, the Pirojon was rebuilt in 1666 and restored in 1973 in the later Yi style: it enshrines the 8th-century image of Virocana. The lowest terrace, beside the Taeungjon to the west, represents the Pure Land of the Western Paradise: aligned with its Anyangmun (the Gate of Eternal Peace, or Paradise), its Kungnakjon (rebuilt in the mid-18th century and 1925) enshrines the Amitabha (attributed to the 8th century, like the Pirojon Virocana).

2.129h

2.129i

737

2.129j

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.129k

2.129l

2.129m

738

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

The complexity in structures and ornament of the halls and colonnades of Pulguk and their contemporaries may have had ancient precedent, not represented by the rare survivors from the eras before the Japanese invasion, but it is difficult to disassociate it from the Yi attempt at reassertion against the background of Qing preoccupation with central Asia in the late-18th century and with the impact of Western powers in the 19th century. Larger halls for waxing grandeur, increasingly prodigious ancestors and the self-defeating demonstration of prodigious prosperity required the development of more complex joinery in brackets, reinforcement of cross-beams and multiplication of poles in roof structures. Moreover, roofs of greater variety were required for more varied building forms for a wider range of ceremonial, official and private purposes. And the multiplication of brackets, beams and joists, ultimately preferring decorative whim to mere structural necessity, invited scroll, vine and stylized floral motifs – especially lotus and peony – to ramp over them with herds or flocks of symbolic animals and birds. All Korea’s major ‘traditional’ trabeated buildings, lovingly rebuilt or restored after brutal foreign devastation, are prolix in this complexity but, naturally, nowhere is it better illustrated than in Seoul’s complementary Kyongbok and Ch’angdok palaces.

T H E Y I PA L AC E Established at Seoul in 1394, an auspicious Han river valley site protected by a ring of mountains, the Chosen capital is rich in extant palace complexes – but little within them predates the depredations of the Japanese two centuries later. Founded on the site of a Koryo provincial base – the most auspicious south-facing location in the capital, watered by a stream from the Pukakasan mountain which guards it against the evils of the north – the first and 739

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

principal ceremonial palace of the era was completed within its first year: associated with it to the east and west respectively were the royal ancestoral shrine (Chongmyo2.128b) and the altars of heaven and earth (Sajiktan). Several subsidiary residential palace complexes followed, notably the Ch’angdok in 1406 for King T’aejong and the Ch’anggyong for King Kwanghaegun in 1615, following the Japanese destruction of its predecessors. There were royal seats in all the provincial centres as well, of course.2.130, 2.131

2.130a

2.130b

S e o u l , Kyo n g b o k a n d C h ’ a n g d o k

›2.130

The main ceremonial seat, Kyongbok, dates from the first phase of work

(originally the southern entrance to the palace); (b) Kunjongmun; (c–e) Kunjongjon, general view, eaves detail and interior; (f ) Sajongjon; (g) Kyonghoeru in its square pond; (h, i) Ch’agyongjon.

on the new capital: it was destroyed by its servants rather than the Japanese. As the site was considered inauspicious by the restored Yi, who had insufficient funds for rebuilding anyway, it was rebuilt as the principal ceremonial seat of the ruler only from 1865: the greatly expanded scale (eighteen times larger than its predecessor), matched the pretensions of Prince Regent Hungson Taewon-gun to a centralizing imperial monarchy but the cost, undermining the royal economy and alienating all sections of society, defeated the purpose. The Japanese, seeking to eradicate imperial symbolism in their new colony after 1910, overawed the throne hall with the seat of their governor-general, demolished much else and pillaged the rest. The royal family was rehoused in the Ch’angdok complex and when

740

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

S E O U L , K YO N G B O K : (a) Kwaghwamun

2.130c

2.130d

741

2.130e

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

much of that was destroyed by fire in 1917 it was restored with ch’imjon pavilions removed from the Kyongbok compound. The original Kyongbok complex was conventional in the alignment of all its principal buildings – the Kwanghwa gate, the main entrance from the south, the Kunjong middle gate to the colonnaded precinct of the throne hall (Kunjongjon), the court and audience hall (Sajongjon), the residential precincts of the king and queen (Kangnyongjon and Kyot’aejon respectively) and the Hyangwonjon private pond garden – on the south–north axis. Contiguous to the west is the Kyonghoeru official

2.130g

742

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.130f

reception pavilion in its extensive lake garden. The surviving residence of the Queen Dowager (Chagyongjon) is off the main axis to the east. The latter is the sole surviving residential quarter. Of some twenty other extant structures, the Kunjongjon, Sajongjon and several of the Hyangwonjon pavilions (Hamhwadang, Chipkyongdang, P’arujong) are the most significant. At the head of its paved court, defined by colonnaded galleries and occasionally canopied, the Kunjongjon rises through two storeys over a double terrace. On its high stepped dais, the throne canopy rises through a double-height space framed by ground-floor galleries. Here the king, who ascended the throne from the north, attended to the principal affairs of state, received ambassadors, etc. In contrast, the pavilion in which the king dealt with confidential matters, the Sajongjon, is single-height and relatively simple in ornamentation: flanking it are two smaller pavilions for discussions with scholars and priests, the Manch’unjon to the east and the Ch’onch’ujon to the west. Further west, the Sujonjon of 1867 accommodated the office of the king’s council. To its north, the vast double-height Kyonghoeru (Pavilion of Joyous Meeting) is exceptional in its dependence on forty-eight stone columns (the outer range square in section, the inner ones circular) to support a timber gallery and traditional timber roof structure: it was the scene of state banquets. The only surviving private apartment in the Kyongbok complex, the Queen Mother’s Chagyongjon, was built for the mother of King Honjong (1834–49) and rebuilt after a fire in 1888. Surrounded by a wall embellished with the ten symbols of longevity, there is a winter sleeping pavil-

2.130h

743

2.130i

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.131a

ion (Pogadang) with a heated floor (ondol) and a summer one (Ch’ongyonnu) with raised floor for ventilation – in accordance with the vernacular tradition. Way to the north, the most private part of the complex is the

744

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

› 2 . 1 3 1 S E O U L , C H ’ A N G D O K K U N G , (a) overview (c. 1825; Korean University Museum); (b, c) Injonjon ceremonial hall interior and exterior; (d, e) Huijongdang; (f, g) Taejojon of the queen’s residence, main hall and garden range; (h) Aeryonji; (i) Puyongji with the multi-faceted Puyongjong reception pavilion in the foreground and the Yonghwadang poetry pavilion, later used for civil-service examinations, in the background; (j) Chuhamnu, which contained the scientific works written and collected by King Chongjo (1777–1800); (k–m) Yongkyongdang, overview (Korean University Museum) and ranges of the master and mistress.

enclosed garden of the Hyangwonji pond: originating in 1456, it was replenished in 1873 when its hexagonal two-storey island pavilion was reconstructed. To the east of Kyongbok, the detached Ch’angdok Palace founded by King T’aejong was burnt by the Japanese, partially rebuilt from 1606, burnt by insurgents in 1623, again rebuilt from 1656, again destroyed by fires of 1803 and 1833: it was much-altered in its subsequent restoration and in its adaptation following yet another devastating fire in 1917 as the principal residence of the royal family: at that time the court of the Taejojon was replaced with structures from the Kangnyongjon and Kyot’aejon of the Kyongbok compound. From its origin, however, it is unconventional for a city palace in its informal distribution: the precinct of the main Injong audience hall in its western section is regular but much of the compound to the north-east, devoted to the Piwon garden, follows the contours of its rising ground. The significance of a mountainous setting is asserted in the screen behind the Injonjong throne: under the sun and moon, rivers flow from five peaks recalling ancient animistic veneration of the elevated abode of the gods and the bounty cascading from them. Developed throughout the 17th century and much-restored on several occasions, the principal garden area – known variously as Piwon, Pukwon

2.131c

745

2.131d

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

or Huwon (Secret, Northern or Rear Garden) – was the setting for various character-forming activities required of a Confucian gentleman: meditation and study as well as hunting and martial arts. Conceived for the assimilation of man and nature – which Koreans have traditionally preferred to preserve without artifice – its stream-fed landscape extends freely to forests on rising ground and embraces a naturalistic lake but is also punctuated with formal elements. Numerous pavilions apart, the most important of the latter are three rectangular ponds: first and largest, the focus of several garden pavilions, is the Puyongji with its circular island and the multi-faceted Puyongjong partially rising from its

2.130f

southern embankment; to the north-east the Aeryonji with its Aeryonjong overlapping its northern embankment; to the north-west the Yonji in front of the Yongkyongdang. The rationalism of these works is complemented, occasionally, by imported, contorted rockery. Set in the natural landscape and modelled on the house of a private gentleman, the Yongkyongdang takes its name from the reception wing of the master’s range in the main compound. Beyond a pond and a bridged stream – features of an auspicious site backed by rising ground, as here – entrance to the latter is from the south through an outer service

2.130g

court and non-aligned gates. The main compound is divided into an outer zone for the master and an inner one for the women. The master’s suite (with ondol living area) is central: to its east is the Sonhyangjae study room and library beside a terraced garden with meditation pavilion. The

2.130h

2.130e

746

2.130i

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.130j 2.130m

accommodation for the mistress, the master’s mother and children (with two ondol rooms) protrude into the inner court from the master’s range. The service zone is to the north, detached from the living quarters in the manner characteristic of aristocratic houses from the era of the Three Kingdoms. The complex was built for King Sunjo in 1828 who chose to live in the style of a gentleman rather than in the palace.

2.130k

2.130l

747

2.130n

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2 . 2 J A PA N

2.132a

748

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

8 origins I N T RO D U C T I O N Mythology maintains that the Japanese islands were born of the deities Izanagi and Izanami, as were the islands’ sister and brother, the sun-goddess Amaterasu and the storm-god Susano’o. The conflict of Susano’o caused the retreat of Amaterasu to a cave and, thus, darkness engulfed the world but the offended goddess remained obdurate. Desperate, the other spirits (kami) who inhabited the ‘Plain of High Heaven’ tricked Amaterasu into returning: told that a superior kami had appeared, she looked from the cave and saw her own reflection in a mirror held by the plaintive kami and was overcome. Her reward was the expulsion of Susano’o: he surrendered his sword and descended with his henchmen to despondent wandering through the archipelago until he reached Izumo, on the south-west coast of Honshu, where a final adventure led to his fathering of Japan’s earliest inhabitants.That adventure culminated in slaying a dragon and recovering a sacred sword from its tail: this Susano’o surrendered to Amaterasu who was gratified by her brother’s terrestrial exploits. Established at Ise on the south-east coast, she sent her grandson Niniji to earth armed with the sacred mirror which reflected her image, with Susano’o’s sword, with a signet jewel of delegated authority and with a host of retainers to receive the submission of Susano’o’s progeny. The first emperor, identified as Niniji’s great-grandson, Jimmu Tenno, is reputed to have founded his capital in the vale of Yamato, the site of later Kyoto, in 660 bce. His clan, the people of Yamato, descend from his greatgrandfather’s retainers.2.132 Geology suggests that the Japanese islands were produced by volcanic activity along one of the main faultlines in the earth’s crust, where the Pacific and Asian 749

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

continental plates clash. Constantly subjected to earthquakes, the islands stretch from the subtropical to the subarctic zones, and the clash of cold and warm fronts over them produces heavy rainfall in the spring and the autumn, typhoons in the hot summer, and frigid winters. Sensitively attuned by necessity to these unstable seismic and climatic conditions, and thus empirical by nature, the original Japanese found their origin in the clash between sun and storm, naturally worshipping the forces of nature. The archipelago arcs into the Pacific opposite Siberia, Manchuria and Korea, and its inhabitants are diverse in origin.The indigenees (called Ainu) apart, some may have derived from the Malay islands to the south,but the majority seem to have come from Mongolia through Manchuria and Korea. Some five Neolithic millennia of gatherering and hunting, fishing in particular, in which maritime and inland communities emerged but agricultural settlement was still foreign, is known as Jomon after the cord pattern applied to its pottery. Both rice cultivation and the facility to work metal – at first bronze, then iron – were imported by the Yayoi who 2.132b probably crossed in waves from the Korean peninsula dur- › 2 . 1 3 2 T H E C R E AT I O N O F J A PA N , G E O L O G Y A N D M Y T H O L O G Y : (a) Mount Fuji emerging from the ing the 3rd century bce and who settled in the low-lying, waves (Hokusai); (b) Amaterasu drawn from her cave wetlands which suited their crop. Metalworking ensured (Kunisada); (c) representation of Amaterasu’s sacred their triumph over the natives and earlier immigrants, and mirror (Kamosu, haidan of the Taisha jinja). Amaterasu’s mirror, the sword recoved by Susano’o it was clearly related in the mythology: Amaterasu’s mir- from the dragon and the jewel of authority are the prinror, traditionally reproduced in bronze as the key object of cipal objects of the imperial regalia kept in the shrine of ritual devotion by the Yayoi, reflected her devastating the great sun-goddess at Ise. countenance,of course,and the invincibility of metal.2.132c Though generally assimilated into one hybrid race, the immigrants had been organized into clans ruled by chiefs from time immemorial. Awe of natural phenomena was at least as profound as in any other early culture devoted to eliciting continued prosperity and, at first, the spirits were encountered in places of outstanding beauty – or terror – 2.132c

750

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

›2.133

N I K KO ,

TO S H O G U ,

PROCESSIONAL

PA L A N Q U I N (modern) in the associated jinja.

2.133

751

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

marked only by cairns within stone-ringed precincts: ritual developed with the devotee’s sense of the need for purification before entering the precinct. Inevitably each clan claimed a patron deity, the personified fertility spirit of its district identified with a prominent hill, waterfall or tree. All were also inescapably devoted to the kami of the deceased – especially deceased leaders – and to those of the Plain of High Heaven – above all to the arch-protectress, Amaterasu. Her mirror was to be the focus of rites enshrining custom which preferred tribal identity to individuality. Ultimately, too, there were festivals involving procession, music, dance and theatre to attract and transport the kami, in delight as much as from the point of descent through communal space, in the hope of securing continuous benevolence. But no dogma was to inhibit man’s direct community with nature in silence.2.133 The imperial family emerged with the clan which first asserted significant hegemony over its neighbours from Yamato. Ise was in its orbit and Ise’s celestial inhabitant, Amaterasu, was identified as their ancestral deity. Under her, their supremacy was acknowledged by most of the clans of Honshu and the other main islands of the archipelago, Shikoku and Kyushu, in the so-called Kofun period (c. 300–700), but their political authority was never absolute. Since the triumph of Yamato, Japanese history has been moulded by an idiosyncratic conservatism: change was admitted – or forced – but existing institutions were supplemented, not supplanted. The key to this is the divinity of the emperor: descended from heaven, unlike the Chinese emperor who only held the mandate of heaven as long as he was effective, any development had to be accommodated to his indispensibility.

2.134

›2.134

M AT S U E : reconstruction of a pit-dwelling.

From the outset the Japanese sought to live in harmony with nature: even in pit-dwellings of c. 5000 BCE the portico extended before the entrance breaks the barrier between internal and external space.

2.135

E A R LY B U I L D I N G S Remains unearthed by archaeologists – clay models and images inscribed on sacred objects – indicate that the first Japanese buildings were shelters over pit-dwellings, followed somewhat later by granaries raised from the ground on piles. The earliest remains of the former type, doubtless indigenous, date from the mid-Jomon period, c. 5000 bce. More sophisticated versions, usually accompanied by the raised granaries of wet-rice farmers, are common at sites associated with the Yayoi in the early Iron Age.2.134, 2.135 The high watertable of the lowlands which best suited early rice cultivation prompted the development of raised dwellings but the pit tradition was sustained for centuries, increasingly sporadically. The raised storehouse was never supplanted. Indeed, it was adapted for the aristocratic dwelling and was sanctified as the prototypical shrine, probably before the end of the Yayoi era.Beyond that,it was always an essential element in the sacred enclosure. 752

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

› 2 . 1 3 5 YA YO I , settlement with pit-dwellings and raised storehouses, clay model (Himeji Historical Museum). Pit-dwellings were of variable shape and size, usually rough squares c. 4 by 4 metres and considerably less than 1 metre deep: the depth decreased (from about 1 metre) as the Jomom period advanced into the last millennium BCE and rough squares were preferred to earlier irregularity. A pitched, hipped or hip-and-gabled roof of reeds or thatch laid over timber rafters was carried on four or more posts connected by tie-beams. These defined the central living area from the lateral ancillary spaces covered by eaves descending almost to ground level. Central stone hearths appear in the 5th millennium BCE. Notwithstanding the inundation of their land for wet-rice farming, the Yayoi seem to have sustained the tradition, with shallower pits, raised wooden floors and embankments. The pitched roofs of the later, larger examples generally had a ridge pole raised on king-posts to the front and rear. The granaries, perhaps also the houses of the rulers, were usually raised on four, six or eight piles. The platform was wooden and occasionally extended beyond the line of the posts to form a gallery. Sometimes there were wooden walls of horizontal or vertical slabs attached to the posts on both ground and upper levels, but usually the ground was not enclosed. The posts were braced by tie-beams and the lateral ones might be connected by rafters to form a loft. Hip-and-

gabled roofs were still common, but the open gables of the simple pitched form reveal a ridge pole supported by additional posts, freestanding to front and rear. An image of a raised building on an engraved mirror from Samida Takarazuka (early 5th century CE) suggests that the ends of the rafters extended beyond the apex to either side. This was probably to secure the thatch and was later done with billets laid horizontally across the ridge at regular intervals between rafters crossed diagonally at the ends. Yoshinogari, one of the largest Yayoi settlements so far uncovered, was moated and had watch towers, circular and rectangular pit dwellings, raised storehouses, wells and tombs.

›2.136

B A K A I , O S A K A P R E F EC T U R E , TOM B O F

T H E F I F T E E N T H E M P E R O R , N I N T O K U (395–427):

plan. Natural hills sometimes provided a basis for tombs – as for Emperor Sujin c. 30 BCE. For man-made mounds the extraction of earth readily formed a ditch which could be flooded to form a moat. Like the tomb of Nintoku (480 metres long by 40 metres high), and the even larger one of his successor, the most ambitious exercises have three moats, but some have none at all. The imperial kami ascends and descends via the ‘mountain’ represented by the tumulus. The trapezoidal area in front of the burial mound accommodated the ritual attending the kami ’s activity: it was called ‘niwa’, the word used for garden too and gardens would always included a discrete area for the ritual accommodation of the local kami. The imperial tombs are inviolate but the form was not exclusively imperial: excavation of aristocratic Kofun has revealed that trenches for wooden coffins were gradually replaced by increasingly substantial stone chambers – sometimes vaulted over ground level and then covered with an artificial mound – for stone sarcophagi as masonry technology was introduced to Japan from Korea in the 5th century. In the next century, with the advance of Buddhism, burial was superseded by cremation.

B U R I A L P R AC T I C E S The Yayoi were buried in urns or trenches, sometimes covered by low mounds. The earliest rulers of Yamato, the first emperors, were buried in hills – if not demonstrating disparate origin, certainly asserting superiority.Their successors were further dignified with man-made tumuli: indeed the period of Yamato supremacy is called Kofun after the ‘old mounds’ with which the Japanese first achieved monumentality. Not necessarily indebted to the Indian stupa1.6, 1.15 – the hemispherical burial mound is ubiquitous – but probably inspired by the tombs of the imperial Han in China, the Japanese tumulus was uniquely extended with a trapezoidal element for obsequies on a base with the profile of a keyhole and set into a d-shaped moat.2.136

2.136 @ 1:1000

753

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

T H E S PI R I T H O U S E With agriculture came continental influence on the concept of the shrine – indeed, on the conception of the deity. Over several centuries following their introduction of rice cultivation, the Yayoi developed the native animistic pantheism into the religion distinguished as Shinto (the Way of the Gods) after the advent of Buddhism in the mid-6th century. Dedicated to the propitiation of the fertility spirit and involving bronze regalia, the Yayoi seem to have focused on granaries hardly distinguishable from the grandest of human dwellings, but doubtless erected in an enclosure protecting the objects sacred to the kami concerned. Timeless was the belief that the spirits of the dead were disembodied ghosts who would haunt their former homes indefinitely unless provided with a special ‘spirit house’. However, it may not have been until the Kofun period, most probably on the advent of the Mahayana, that the Japanese first began to see the fertility spirit in human form and, therefore, as in need of accommodation. Originally, ground deemed sacred (yuniwa) was delimited by sand or carefully graded gravel within a simple rope fence entered through a portal (torii) consisting of two cylindrical posts surmounted by an overhanging lintel and braced towards the top with a secondary beam: the torii is an invariable feature of all Shinto sites. The gravelled area was centred on a pillar (shinno mihashira) for the descent of the kami: beyond that, the kami may first have been accommodated in a palanquin for festival procession but somewhere to keep ritual regalia must also have been an early requirement. Images on the backs of ritual mirrors of the 5th century provide the essential link with the Yayoi granary – or aristocratic residence.2.137 Raised on stilts, rather than dug from the ground, entered from the side and covered by a 754

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

›2.137

EMBELLISHMENT ON THE BACK OF A

R I T U A L M I R R O R , Nara Prefecture: bronze, early 5th

century CE (Imperial Household Department). Of the four shrine buildings represented, one has a thatched roof rising directly from the ground, like a pitdwelling; another has a similar roof rising over a podium; and a third reproduces the same form of roof – presumably hip-and-gable – over a trabeated pavilion raised on piles and surrounded by a verandah with a ladder. The fourth shrine building, also with piles, verandah and ladder, has a gable roof. The roof ridges project beyond the base plane of the gables, producing a deep overhang, and the raked rafters are extended to cross on the diagonal at the apex, as a finial (chigi). At the 3rd-century site of Rito-cho Shimogari a large building has been identified – because of its size but not without debate – as a prototype of the shinmei zukuri style of building, raised on piles and with freestanding posts supporting the ridge of a pitched roof which projects well beyond each end.

›2.138

ISE,

S H I N TO

SHRINE

OF

SHINMEI

Z U K U R I : (a) inner sanctuary (shoden), Naiku, plan,

(b, c) main shrine, plan and elevation, (d) view from the outer precinct to the entrance of Naiku, (e) subsidiary shrine. Attributed to the 3rd and 5th centuries respectively, the spirit houses of Ise are supposed to have been rebuilt every twenty years from their inception, but building is first recorded at the site under the emperor Tenmu in 685. Thus, though the buildings are new, the form (shinmei zukuri) is of venerable antiquity: its origin in the storehouse or granary, rather than the house, is suggested by its perpetual function as the repository of regalia.

steeply sloping thatched roof supported by freestanding posts and penetrated by extensions to the raked rafters at each end, the spirit houses anticipate the most sacred of all Japanese shrines, those accommodating the sun-goddess Amaterasu and the rice-god Toyouke bime no okami, with their treasures, at Ise.2.138

2.138a @ approximately 1:1250

2.138d

Ise Each site, and each sanctuary, is surrounded by a palisade (tamagaki) entered through a torii. The Naiku sanctuary is dedicated to the living presence of Amaterasu Omikami (Heaven-illuminating Great Spirit). The outer Geku sanctuary is dedicated to Toyouke Okami (Great Spirit of Food Abundance) and built to match the earlier work c. 200 years later. Each sanctuary has two adjacent sites used alternatively for the rebuilding: this was prescribed by imperial decree – evidently no earlier than Tenmu – despite exclusive use of the straight and fine-grained Japanese cypress (hinoke), one of the world’s most durable building timbers. The shrine building centred within its sacred enclosure, accompanied by symmetrically disposed subsidiary storehouses, preserves the regalia of the deity – most notably the mirror given by her to her grand2.138b, c @ 1:250

son Niniji and transmitted by him to the imperial line through his greatgrandson, the first emperor, Jimmu Tenno. Each is associated informally

755

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

with a higher shrine for the god’s living presence and a lower one for the local fertility spirits. The hierarchy between these secondary shrines is taken to represent the subjection of the indigenees of Ise by the imperial clan from Yamato. Within four palisades, the main shrine building in Naiku (Shoden, 11 by 5.5 metres) is raised on posts set into the ground without a base – like the traditional granary. The central post (shinno mihahira) perpetuates the sacred pillar, facilitating the descent of the deity, which seems to have been the focus of the earliest Japanese sanctuaries. Surrounded by a verandah protected by deep eaves, the enclosed chamber is entered through a door from a staircase in the centre of the southern side. The thick thatch of the pitched roof – diminishing in thickness with height – is

2.138e

held down by ten billets evenly spaced along the ridge between the crossed rafters which frame the gables like barge boards. The deep overhang of the ridge pole supported on a freestanding post and the stout pegs which punctuate the end rafters are major and minor characteristics of the type. The style draws its effect from the native qualities of hinoki and superb carpentry, unmasked by paint. Subsidiary storehouses in the compounds and extraneous shrines dedicated to the fertility spirits related to the dedicatees are similar in conception.

2.139a, b

›2.139

LO C A L VA R I AT I O N S There are other Shinto sites almost as venerable as Ise, and distinctive styles of shrine developed in them in sympathy with the local vernacular. Perpetually rebuilt, like the Ise shrines, they nevertheless may be taken to represent Japan’s earliest style of trabeated building. Sumiyoshi, Osaka, was dedicated by the empress Jingo (late-4th century) to the gods of the sea under whose protection her dynasty was established: three gods each have a shrine, facing the sea in line; she has the fourth, set apart from the others. Supported by short piles, the typical jinja is a small cubicle of four bays by two with pitched roofs surmounted by billets between crossed rafters. Entrance 756

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

S H I N T O S H R I N E T Y P E S : (a) Sumiyoshi

zukuri; (b) Taisha zukuri (Izumo).

› 2 . 1 4 0 TA I S H A Z U K U R I : (a) Kamosu (origin remote and obscure, rebuilt 1583), general view from south-west with honden right and later haiden left, (b) modelled in miniature for a visiting kami. The Kamosu shrine conforms to the Taisha style of building (zukuri) established at Izumo, but the present building predates the rebuilt prototype of 1744. The stairs to the pile-supported chamber are covered by a separate roof in the centre of the gabled entrance front, but the entrance is dislocated to one side by the symbolic central post between the twin bays; the passage to the inner sanctum is also deflected by another central post supporting a screen only to the right. The crossed finials perch on the gables detached from the rafters or bargeboards with which they originated: they

2.140a

are decorative features characteristic of the Taisha style and related styles developed later elsewhere. The haiden was not an original component of the Taisha zukuri.

2.140b

757

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

is through the gabled end rather than the side, unlike the Ise type – and contrary to Chinese practice. Sumiyoshi is the main source of inspiration to Shinto builders in western Japan.2.139 Izumo, in Shimane Prefecture, is the centre of the cult of Amaterasu’s grandson Niniji whose grand shrine building (the Taisha zukuri) was reputedly modelled on the emperor’s palace, itself – inevitably – reflecting the ideal of the Palace of the Gods. The largest Shinto jinja type, it is not only more elevated than those of Sumiyoshi,and square with two bays to each side, but had a pitched roof and a bifurcated entrance under a gable. It was emulated elsewhere in the area – at Matsue,for example,where the existing Kamosu shrine predates the present version of its model. Throughout Shimane the Taisha style is represented at countless sacred spots,though on a tiny scale.2.140

›2.141

T H E S H A K A T R I A D (623, Horyu-ji). Initially, Buddhism in Japan was a simple faith focused on the Shakyamuni (Shaka) and the bodhisattvas of healing (Yakushi Nyori) and compassion (Kannon = Avalokiteshvara) and the guardians of the four cardinal directions of space. The influence of Koguryo is apparent in the hieratic frontality: such symmetry was foreign to the native sensitivity to nature.

9 from asuka to heian T H E A DV E N T O F B U D D H I S M At the height of the Kofun period, early in the 6th century, the emperors had sent expeditions to Korea and even established a colony there.Through this involvement with the mainland, influence flowed from China – especially through script. Confucianism readily inspired the education of the imperial elite and lent its authoritarian shape to their conception of the state. It informed Japan’s primitive pantheism, too, given that both were concerned with the propitiation of ancestral spirits and were preoccupied with the proper performance of rites rather than with theological speculation.Any unfulfilled inclination towards the latter, however, was satisfied by Buddhism, which had begun to filter through to Japan by the mid-6th century, embracing animism there – as at its inception in India – and complementing Shinto as it had complemented Con758

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

fucianism in China. Indeed, it was the Buddhists of the Mahayana, dedicated to organized religious practice in preparation for salvation, who coined the term Shinto (the Way of the Gods) for the essentially spontaneous native animistic pantheism, and the Japanese have usually followed both.2.141

›2.142

759

P R I N C E S H O T O K U (c. 574–622).

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

A S U K A D E R A A N D T H E A DV E N T O F T H E B U D D H I S T TE M P LE The 6th century produced a stream of Buddhist immigrants from the continent but Japan’s first Buddhist temple was founded at the command of the emperor Kinmei (539–71) to house an image of Sakyamuni sent to him by the king of Paekche in 552. The foundation was followed by an outbreak of the plague which discredited the faith and provoked the destruction of the temple. However, the new faith was not without powerful supporters, particularly the head of the formidable Soga clan, who maintained that the worsening of the plague testified to the anger of the Buddha. Strife ensued but Soga overcame the anti-Buddhist, anti-foreign forces in 588, founded a new capital at Asukadera, south of Nara: somewhat retrospectively, this gave its name to the first Buddhist era (‘Asuka’, c. 552–710) in which the influence of Korea remained dominant in the arts. The Soga chief installed his niece there as Empress Suiko (593–628), pending the accession of the late emperor’s son Shotoku Taishi.2.142 This never happened, but the prince acted as regent from 593 until his death in 621. Codifier of law, regulator of government, cementer of relations with the continental powers, patron of the universalist Buddhist ideals of the Vimalakirti and Lotus Sutras, he is revered for his compassion and scholarship. After the death of Prince Shotoku in 621, and then that of Empress Suiko in 628, the Soga manipulated the

imperial succession and seemed bent on usurping the throne for themselves. In 645 their overweening head was assassinated by two imperial princes in league with Kamatari Fujiwara of the Nakatomis, rivals of the Soga. The puppet empress abdicated and one of the princes acceded to the throne as Kotoku, initiating the Taika era of reform under the guidance of Kamatari. A stream of edicts recast Japan on the Chinese model, furthering the regulation of government on the humane lines laid down by Shotoku but bolstering imperial power after the eminent Tang example – unenduringly, as it transpired. The impact of Buddhism was magnified: along with statecraft came priests and architects and a new capital, Naniwa (Osaka), emulating Chang’an.2.24 An imperial edict of 646 instituted Buddhist cremation rites and prohibited burial in Kofun. Another edict of 685 ordered all householders to erect altars to the Buddha. The simplicity of the Shinto shrine paled before the magnificence of the temples which proliferated throughout the imperial domain, yet there was no concerted effort to popularize the religion, and beyond court circles the people remained bound to their fertility kami.

2.143a

11

10

9

T H E B U D D H I S T TE M P LE A N D I TS PA RTS With the aid of monks and craftsmen from the Korean kingdom of Paekche, the empress Suiko built a new Buddhist temple, Hoko-ji, at Asukadera in 596. The regent is credited with the foundation of Shitenno-ji (in the south of Osaka) in 592, in gratitude for Soga’s victory of 588, and with the inception of Horyu-ji (beside one of his palaces north-west of Asukadera) in 607. Others followed, usually selecting flat sites near the capital. Nothing remains of earliest Hoko-ji.There was a disastrous fire at Horyu-ji c. 670, followed by highly

8

6

7

5

4 3

2

1

2.143b @ 1:2000

760

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

›2.143

O S A K A , S H I T E N N O - J I , late-6th century, rebuilt mid-20th century: (a) 17th-century overview (Suntory Museum of Art); (b) plan with (1) south gate (nandaimon), (2) main precinct gate (chumon) in (3) cloistered gallery (kairo), (4) pagoda, (5) kondo, (6) kodo with (7) aisle (hisashi) and (8) nave (moya), (9) belfry (shuro), (10) library (kyozo), (11) dormitory (sobo); (c) axial view from entrance. Notable are the podia, the trabeation and the wideeaved hip-and-gable hall roofs. In contrast with the axial alignment of gate, pagoda and kondo, excavations at Hoko-ji have revealed the foundations of twin pavilions (presumably for images) on either side of the pagoda as well as a larger one on the main axis. In both complexes there seems to have been an additional hall for assembly and lecturing at the head of the axis, outside the compound at Hoko-ji, centred on the north cloister range at Shitenno-ji. The arrangement at Shitenno-ji conforms to early Chinese practice as represented by the Dacien-si (Temple of Great Goodwill) at Xi’an.2.27b,c Hoko-ji seems to follow a Korean precedent – Ch’ongam-ri near Pyongyang.

761

2.143c

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

important rebuilding. Much of Shitenno-ji was perpetuated in faithful renovation until World War ii and has subsequently been rebuilt in its original form. That reflects early Chinese and Korean Buddhist practice in the axial

alignment of the principal elements: gatehouse, pagoda and image pavilion. It also marks the introduction of Chinese building types and construction techniques.2.143 The sacred enclosure is ubiquitous, but instead of the Shinto portal the Japanese Buddhist compound, like the Chinese, is usually entered through a succession of small columned halls with side chambers or niches for the images of guardian spirits (nio): manifestations of Brahma and Indra transmogrified as Bon-ten and Taishaku-ten in Japanese, these are daunting in their contorted muscularity. The outermost gate is normally to the south (nanmon), the inner main precinct gate (chumon) is usually centred in the main compound’s cloistered enclosure (kairo). Outside, to the north, twin pavilions house the belfry (shuro) and library (kyozo). Also outside were the dormitory (sobo), refectory (jikido), store (azekura) and other utilitarian structures. To dominate compound and countryside in enshrining relics or sacred texts, the Japanese Buddhists developed their version of the Chinese pagoda (to), itself translated from the Indian stupa in terms derived from the Han multi-storey, trabeated tower.2.13 Invariably of timber and square in plan, unlike the earliest surviving Chinese examples which are polygonal and of masonry, the Japanese form has an odd number of storeys each distinguished by deep eaves: five, as at Shitenno-ji, is the usual number. To house their images, and later, to accommodate congregations for lectures in the main image hall (kondo or hondo) and the kodo respectively, Japanese Buddhists retained the Chinese type of oblong trabeated hall. Entered through the central bay of one of its longer sides, this usually has a nave (moya) flanked by an aisle (hisashi) on at least one side, and covered by a wideeaved hipped or hip-and-gabled roof. For greater depth the forward hisashi might be doubled (magobisashi). For 762

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

greater height and dignity, the nave rises well above the aisle’s pent roof (mokoshi) through a clerestory to its distinct hip and gable roof, as in the rebuilt kodo of Shitenno-ji – and as in the Chinese ge. Protecting the main icon are the four lords of the cardinal directions of space, known as Shi-tenno to the Japanese.

2.144a

2.144b

› 2 . 1 4 4 B R A C K E T I N G : (a) Horyu-ji kondo (7th century); (b) Yakushi-ji pagoda (8th century). The system adopted for the Horyu-ji kondo begins with a pair of axial dougongs which distribute the load of perpendicular beams over the column. However, only the inner arm preserves the form inherited from China: the lateral ones are reduced to miniature decorative brackets; the outer one is transformed into a convoluted console extended with its beam to support the diagonal joist and, above the latter, it is repeated in miniature to support an upper beam carrying rafters. In the Yakushi-ji pagoda the integrity of the initial dougong cluster is preserved in all four directions: the beam supported by the longitudinal pair itself terminates in a repetition of the dougong arm in a single plane; the joist, in turn, supports a complete lateral dougong. The graded repetition of the dougong in this latter logical manner was the way forward, ultimately meeting the need to provide cantilevered support for increasingly extended eaves.2.146, 2.150e, 2.178b, 2.184f 763

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

CO N S T RU C T I O N For dignity and for protection from the damp, as on the mainland, halls and pagodas are usually set on separate podiums of impacted earth sheathed in stone and punctuated with stone bases for the timber posts (as in the rebuilt Shitenno-ji). Their centres defining the bays, the posts are braced with longitudinal and lateral beams.Walls to the rear, sides and sometimes the end bays of the front are non-loadbearing: if not of timber slabs, they may be of wattle and daub or of mud and straw. As in China, too, increasingly sophisticated bracket clusters, carried only on the posts at first, allowed for the lengthening of intercolumniations and the deepening of eaves: the outer bracket arms and upper beam ends hold the purlins, or diagonal beams which themselves then hold the purlins, on which the rafters are laid. With the widening of bays, the beams carry intermediate supports for the superstructure, often in the shape of an inverted V, called ‘frog-leg’ struts (kaeramata), as on the lower storeys of the rebuilt Shitenno-ji pagoda and kodo – and as in China under the Northern Wei and contemporary Koguryo in Korea.2.144, 2.19, 2.117 The lateral beams, called ‘rainbow’ (koryo) because of the slight upward curve which enhances their tensile strength, usually bear only king-posts carrying the ridge of a pitched roof over buildings one bay deep. In larger, taller structures they are repeated on a smaller scale at a higher plane over struts. Doubled for important buildings,

sometimes radiating at the corners, the rafters carry the tiles which – after the example of China – generally distinguish Japanese Buddhist temples from the thatched or shingle-roofed Shinto shrines.

M ATE R I A L S Stone bases were the norm for important buildings: they were paved with stone or tiles or, later, supported timber floors which, later still, were covered with rice-straw (tatami) matting. The posts and beams of the ubiquitous trabeated structure, rising from the stone base well above damp ground, were generally made of the straight and fine-grained hinoke. Walls, invariably non-load-bearing, are generally made of bamboo or reed lath and plaster. Terracotta tile was the norm for the greatest temple roofs but lesser ones might be shingled or thatched. Shinto shrines are shingled. Houses, if not palaces, were generally thatched. CO N S E RVAT I V E T R A D I T I O N Nothing demonstrates more graphically the conservatism of the Japanese tradition than its record of continuous reproduction. The native trabeated system was expanded in accordance with Chinese models for temple and palace, notably in virtue of the bracket cluster upon which so much that was characteristically Chinese depended.There were moments when decoration was as opulent as anything produced in China and tile often replaced thatch for greater security, but the superbly worked timber of Ise characterizes Japanese building throughout its history. While much of this is due to the belief – common throughout the world – that it is impious to tamper with forms adopted by the gods – though originated by priests – much is also due to the role of the carpenter. His was certainly not the world’s only hereditary craft with conven764

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

tions transmitted orally, but more than most others – except the Chinese – Japanese building followed sanctified formulae. As rigorously as the Chinese, Japanese building is categorized and classified in accordance with a strict hierarchy of types and clients – Shinto shrines (jinja) and Buddhist temples (-ji as suffix), palaces (goten) or castles (shiro) and their governmental adjuncts, the houses of the nobility (shinden, shoin) and of the commoner (minka). The trabeated structural system was ubiquitous – even within the thick walls of castles – but each building type and class had its own set of proportions. The oldest system was based on the module of the structural bay (ken) subdivided into shaku and sun (approximating feet and inches) – though, ironically, standardization of measurements was delayed until the 19th century. Long before that, however, the dimensions of the tatami mat were standardized in an alternative spatial modular system. The formulae of proportion and of the proprieties which governed every aspect of building were transmitted orally until the increased complexity and scale of public building under the Tokugawa shogunate prompted the compilation of manuals. Standardization of the trabeated form in whole and part – if not of measurement in practice – obviated the individualistic architect in favour of prefabrication in the carpenter’s workshop and there was a special workshop for each building type and class. Moreover, the carpenter (daiku) was supreme: in him artist and artisan are hardly distinguishable and, at the outset of the exercise, it was he who chose the living timber and registered the characteristics derived from the aspect of each tree to ensure for it the same aspect when it stood dressed in the re-evoked forest of structure. And sensitivity to nature is – or was – the prime characteristic of Japanese building. 765

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

6

5

4

4

3

2

2.145a @ 1:2000

1

E X P E R I M E N TA L P L A N N I N G In the 7th and early 8th centuries there was considerable experiment with varying the axial distribution of the main elements in the temple complex inherited through Korea: alignment on the north–south axis or the development of a subsidiary cross-arm. Biaxial symmetry was developed with twin main image halls aligned on a cross-axis running through the pagoda or twin pagodas aligned to either side of a main image hall.The worship hall emerged as the dominant element instead of the pagoda and subsidiary sanctuaries were introduced but the main new theme was asymmetry: that was native to the Japanese though essentially Daoist in China too and, naturally, it served the esoteric sects introduced into the Japanese highlands from the mainland well before the end of the 1st millennium. The cruciform arrangement of kodos was adopted for the Hoko-ji temple, for instance. The twin-pagoda approach, conceding dominance to the central kodo, dis766

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.145b

›2.145

NARA

(VICINITY),

YA K U S H I - J I ,

founded 680: (a) plan with (1) south gate, (2) main precinct gate, (3) cloistered gallery, (4) pagodas, (5) kondo, (6) kodo; (b) view across the compound to the eastern pagoda (right), with rebuilt pagoda and kondo (left). Founded to house an image of Yakushi Nyorai (the bodhisattva of healing), the complex has been entirely rebuilt at various times (including the 1990s) with the probable exception of the eastern pagoda. The latter (35 metres high) is unique for the alternating rhythm of three full storeys with prominently projecting eaves and three mezzanines (mokoshi) with moderately projecting eaves. If not actually dated to 680, the pagoda is usually placed within the following century.

tinguished the Yakushi-ji monastery complex near Nara, but only one of the original pagodas survives.2.145 The pagoda was relegated to an outer compound,as at Kofukuji. Predating the latter, asymmetry is splendidly represented by the Horyu-ji where the kondo and pagoda are side-by-side, rather than on axis with the main precinct gate. On axis with the latter, however, the kodo, converted from a palace pavilion donated by the emperor, was added to the north.2.146 7

5

6

3

4

2

› 2 . 1 4 6 N A R A ( V I C I N I T Y ) , H O R Y U - J I , after 670: (a) main compound (sai-in), plan with (1) main precinct gate, (2) cloisters, (3) kondo, (4) pagoda, (5) library, (6) belfry, (7) kodo (Dai-kodo); (b) main precinct gate (late-7th century); (c) main compound with kondo and pagoda (rebuilt c. 710); (d, e) kondo section and exterior detail; (f ) pagoda section; (g) Yumedono in the eastern sanctuary (mid-8th century); (h, i) Dai-kodo (rebuilt 990), exterior with library in background and interior.

1

2.146a @ 1:2000

Hor yu-ji On falling ill, Emperor Yomei (540–87) was persuaded by his son, Prince Shotoku, to embrace Buddhism and to dedicate a temple to Yakushi Nyorai – the healing Buddha. The emperor died within months of his conversion, but the prince fulfilled the vow and built the Wakakusadera complex beside a small palace to its east. Contemporary chronicles record its dedication and destruction by fire in years corresponding to 607 and 670 respectively: excavations at the site have revealed an axial distribution on Korean lines comparable with that of Shitenno-ji.2.143 Reconstruction after the fire, slightly to the north-east, rejected continental axiality but perhaps incorporated as kodo a Shotoku shrine saved from the fire. It was reputedly nearing completion in 710 when the imperial capital was established at Nara and as there is no record of their subsequent rebuilding, the main elements seem to be the oldest-surviving

2.146b

767

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.146c

768

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

timber structures of importance in Japan – perhaps, indeed, the oldest surviving timber buildings in the world. The two-storey gatehouse, slightly to the west of centre in the southern range of the cloistered enclosure, preserves Japan’s oldest nio statues, dating from 711. It is now generally thought that the main compound as built after 670 was a simple quadrangle with the north and south cloisters equidistant from the kondo and pagoda. The belfry and library would then have been outside the compound to the north. The cloister was extended to embrace belfry, library and kodo. All the elements of the complex were listed in an official document of 731, except for the kodo. At that time a dormitory seems to have occupied the site of the present kodo, at the northern culmination of the axis, but an inventory of 747 lists a refectory (larger than the present one) after the kondo: it is possible that this was the original building at the head of the axis and that it doubled as a kodo. That building or perhaps a new hall, added towards the mid-9th century, was burnt in 925 and replaced in 990 with a palace building from Kyoto adapted to form a kodo (Dai-kodo): its hisashi has the earliest known example of a hidden roof (noyane). Meanwhile, in the mid-8th century, a secondary sanctuary was developed on the site of Prince Shotoku’s palace, to the east of the main compound, around an octagonal shrine (Yumedono) which also survives in its original form. In the main compound, the kondo and pagoda are aligned on the east–west axis. The three storeys of the latter are carried on a grid of four columns and a colossal central mast. Set on a stone base, the aisle and nave of the kodo have distinct roofs with broad eaves, the latter rising for greater dignity over the unused space of a blind attic surrounded by a balustrade carried on brackets and intermediate frog-leg struts. An outer aisle, added in the late-8th century, has its own contracted eaves. Over the main columns, strengthened with pronounced entasis, simple bracket arms bear the beams. At the edges the arms are extended to hold a diagonal beam which, counterbalanced by the main roof, carries the outer purlins of the over-sailing eaves. The sculpted props at the corners of the upper storey were added in the early 18th century. On the kondo’s central dais, under the canopy of a coved ceiling, Shakyamuni (623, reputedly modelled on Prince Shotoku) is flanked by

769

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.146d

2.146e

Yakushi Nyorai (607) and Amida (Amitabha, early 8th century) and accompanied by the guardians of the quarters of creation (early 8th century). They were surrounded by celebrated murals, destroyed by fire in 1949. Colour is confined to a dark-red woodstain in contrast with plain whitewashed walls, but as kondos were called golden halls there was presumably much gilded detail, inside at least. Built on the site of the prince’s palace to house his statue, the octagonal shrine (hokkedo) is the earliest of several similar ones in the Nara region. Between the two compounds are the refectory, stores and dormitory. The southern end of the latter was converted into a shrine to Shotoku (Shoryo-in) in the 12th century.

770

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.146f

2.146g

2.146h

T H E F U J I WA R A Sinification and the encouragement of Buddhism continued through the reigns of the able emperors Tenchi (662–71) and Tenmu (673-86) who sustained Naniwa as the capital.To obviate pollution,Shinto proscription had hitherto inhibited the maintenance of the capital at the seat of a deceased emperor, but the retention of Naniwa through several reigns anticipated the triumph of Chinese ideas, Tang centralization of power in particular.2.147, 2.148 Dynastic turmoil followed Tenmu’s death in 686 and 2.146i

› 2 . 1 4 7 PA L A C E PA V I L I O N , detail (12th century fresco; Matsue, Yaegaki-jinja). This type of rectangular hypostyle hall, initially undivided internally, though partitionable with screens, is known as a shinden (sleeping hall). Instead of the podium, which elevated the earliest Chinese-style temple halls, the posts rise from the ground and there are also balustraded verandahs – as in earlier Yayoi shrines and granaries.2.136 2.147

771

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

Kamatari’s Fujiwara successors took advantage of it to › 2 . 1 4 8 N A N I W A ( M O D E R N O S A K A ) : model of consolidate their hold on the position of civil dictator palace, mid-7th century (Osaka Castle Municipal Museum). (Kampaku). A brief period of imperial residence at the A port from time immemorial, Naniwa was ancestral seat of the Fujiwara was terminated in 707 by a unplanned as imperial capital, unlike its successors. plague: it killed the emperor Monmu who had extended There seems to have been a palace there before Emperor Kotoku moved his capital from Asuka in 645, government regulation to Buddhist foundations (701). and his palace, completed in 651, was superseded by The empress Genmei (Monmu’s mother, reigned 707–15) another a century later: excavations on the site promoved to Nara at the instigation of Fujiwara no Fuhito, vided the basis for the reconstruction of a complex on the Tang model. The huge compound (4 by 3 kilomewho had established a power base there under the pro- tres), equivalent to the Imperial Forbidden City in Beitection of the fertility spirit of Wakakusa hill and his own jing, was initially divided into two zones, the southern clan fertility spirits which he persuaded to take up resi- one (Chodoin) for administration and the northern inner palace (Dairi) for the imperial family. Entered dence on the neighbouring slopes of Kasuga hill. from the south and flanked by ministries, the Chodoin

HEIJO-KYO A well-watered plain crossed by major lines of communication provided ample space for development along the grand formal lines of Chang’an adapted to the traditional local pattern of rice-paddy division in squares.Though far from complete, the new city, Heijo-kyo, was formally occupied in 710 and gave its name to the second phase of development under the influence of ideas from Buddhist China (‘Nara’, 710-94).2.149

772

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

court led north to the Dairi gate. Centred in the imperial compound was the state reception hall (Chodo seiden) and the private audience hall (Daigokuden), which were linked by an open gallery. Abandoned in 655, the palace was reoccupied by Emperor Tenmu in 672, but it was burned in the year of his death. A new palace on the same site was begun by the emperor Shomu (724–49) in 726, but it was occupied by the court only for a year (744–45). It had four zones: one for assembly before the administration court, and one each for imperial reception and the inner palace. The palace remained in use until the reign of the emperor Kanmu (781–806) when many of its buildings were moved to his new capital, Nagaoka.

› 2 . 1 49 H E I J O - K YO ( M O D E R N N A R A ) , plan with (1) imperial compound (Daidari) with (2) Chodoin (court for administration) and (3) Dairi (private apartments), (4) Todai-ji, (5) Kofuku-ji, (6) Toshodai-ji, (7) Yakushi-ji.

1 2

3

4

5 6 7

2.149 @ 1:10,000

Chang’an emulated Settled in prehistoric times, the district of modern Nara was an early centre of the rulers of Yamato, but it does not appear to have taken primacy until the empress Genmei moved there. Heijo-kyo (4.8 by 4.3 kilometres) was divided into regular blocks by ten streets running east–west, eight running north–south, and a central axial thoroughfare (72 metres wide) leading from the main southern gate to the state entrance of the palace compound in the north. Like its predecessors and successors, the palace had four distinct zones: an outer court dominated by an assembly hall (Choshuden); the court of the ministers surrounded by twelve pavilions for the different branches of administration (Chodoin); the court of ceremonial audience dominated by the principal imperial hall of state (Daigokuden); and the inner compound of the imperial private apartments (Dairi). Delimited like a Shinto shrine as the seat of a kami, this last was initially to the east of the Daigokuden in a precinct of its own. After 750, the Daigokuden, Chodoin and Choshuden were relocated on axis with the Dairi, to its south in an extended compound – still delimited as a jinja site. The original buildings in the western compound were adapted for use by the empress consort, but the Choshuden was moved to the Toshodai-ji.2.150

773

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

Even after the departure of the court in 794, Nara remained an important regional and, above all, religious centre. Nothing survives on the Heijo-kyo palace site, indeed no secular building of the period survives unaltered. Though both adapted to changed circumstances and were much renovated, however, the imperial palace halls reused for the kodos – the Horyu-ji kodo2.146h for example – well demonstrate that the Chinese hypostyle prototype, enclosed with shutters or non-loadbearing wall panels and subdivided internally only by movable screens, was as important to palace builders as it was to the Buddhists. Before the construction of Nara, that example was well established at Naniwa. The Chinese masonry podium survives in contemporary temple building but it cedes to the indigenous trabeated platform surrounded by verandahs in numerous later re-evocations of secular pavilions on scrolls.2.147

M O N A S TE RY A N D S TATE Early in the era of the city’s development, an imperial household office was set up to oversee work on the palace in addition to the works department (Mokuryo) charged with regulating the construction of public buildings and temples. A district east of the site was set aside to accommodate Buddhist temples moved from the old capital, distorting the axial plan. Of the four main ones two were moved from Ashukadera, the Yakushi-ji was moved from Fujiwara and the Fujiwara clan temple of Yamashinadera was rebuilt as Kofuku-ji in association with the Kasuga shrine of the clan fertility spirits. And new ones were to be built by Buddhist priests and architects imported from China. Following Tang precedent, the emperor Shomu (724– 49) issued an edict at the outset of his reign establishing a network of provincial monasteries and convents dependent on two great national temples to be built in Heijo-kyo: the monastic Todai-ji, which had the exclusive right to ordain priests, and the conventual Hokke-ji. Amaterasu, 774

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

the sun-goddess,had provided the emperor with his native mandate and he sought her approval before embarking on his project to endow the Todai-ji. He now sought another from the Buddha in his drive to weld disparate clans, each devoted to its own fertility kami readily identifiable with a protective bodhisattva, into a centralized state – and neither he nor his Tang mentor was the first emperor to see the essentially universal appeal of the Buddhist salvation ideal as an instrument of unity. Until this time Buddhist theologians in Japan were primarily Hinayana (the Small Vehicle) in their affiliations, especially in their obsession with canon law, but now they turned to the Mahayana whose way had been paved by Prince Shotoku. Reserving release from the brutal cycle of existence to the monk who was able to give up all worldly concerns in the pursuit of enlightenment, the Hinayana was essentially the way of an elite. Offering salvation to the masses in virtue of faith in the ministrations of a supremely compassionate deity, in contradiction of the exclusive claims of the monk in virtue of personal responsibility exercised through mental and spiritual discipline, the Mahayana was bound to prevail so long as the humanitarian ideal of Prince Shotoku and the Taika era guided imperial reform. Various schools of the Mahayana were introduced to Japan from India via China: they were studied widely without sectarian bounds but they promoted much metaphysical debate among themselves and, of course, with the Theravadins. Thus, for instance, to the Madhyamika (‘Sanron’ in Japanese) contention that all in the material world is illusory, the Yogacharya ( Japanese ‘Hosso’ practiced at Yakushi-ji, Kofuku-ji and Horyu-ji) responded that all in the universe is a construct of the mind. The Avatamsakas (Flower Garland Kegon-gyo) of Todai-ji – the principal recipients of imperial patronage 775

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

– interpreted the universality of Vairocana (Birushana) in terms of consciousness and saw all sentient beings as facets of the universal mind. Its theme of universality naturally recommended the Kegon-gyo to an imperial regime committed to establishing a state cult. In addition to the Avatamsaka, the Kegon theologians drew on the Konkomyo-saishoo-kyo (Golden Light) Sutra, devoted to the protection of the infinitely compassionate Buddha at the centre of creation, and the associated treatise on benevolent kings (‘Ninno-kyo’ in Japanese) whose rule establishes paradise on earth. The basic postulation is that Buddhahood is an absolute, central to myriad universes,and that it unfolds through all creation like the petals of a lotus: that the Buddhahood of Sakyamuni, far from the achievement of the individual, is identical with the essential nature of all being and responds to ministration like the flower to the sun. With state patronage, promoting to the invocation of the deity as protector of the empire, the cosmic manifestation of the Buddha came to the fore: veneration of Shaka, supported by Kannon and Yakushi, was supplemented with devotion to Birushana (or Roshana) with whom Amaterasu herself was identified. Fount of Dharma,the Cosmic Buddha is seated on a lotus of a thousand petals, each a universe of innumerable worlds. Represented in miniature, each world is distinguished by a manifestation of the Roshana: in Japan that manifestation is the emperor and the lotus traditionally symbolized the unfolding creation of the universe in all its multiplicity, which had its obvious analogy in the unity of his diverse realm.2.150 The emperor Shomu imposed doctrinal uniformity and sent the Golden Light Sutra to all the temples of the realm founded on his orders. He marked the establishment of the state religion by commissioning a colossal statue of the 776

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

lotus-borne Roshana as the chief icon of the principal state temple, Todai-ji. Precedents for the imperial colossus were set by the Tang and their predecessors at Yungang and Longmen,2.22 but there the images were cut from the living rock. Shomu’s statue was cast in bronze from a mould 16 metres high. And the kondo required for its shelter at Todai-ji was larger even than the largest halls of the Tang palace at Chang’an. Before casting was complete, enough gold was found to gild Shomu’s colossus. Amaterasu was consulted. She consented. The Buddha and the sun-goddess were assimilated and with this act of high state the essentially popular process of assimilating Buddhism and Shintoism had the grandest possible inauguration.

2.150a

›2.150

H E I J O - K YO

(MODERN

NARA),

T O S H O D A I - J I : (a) principal icons (in the kondo)

Birushana (or Roshana = Vairocana, the Cosmic Buddha) flanked by Kannon (Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of infinite compassion) and Yakushi Nyori (the bodhisattva of healing); (b–e) kondo, exterior from south, lateral section (mid-8th century with a 17thcentury roof, left, original roof reconstructed right), verandah, eave corner detail; (f ) dormitories and storehouses (8th century); (g, h) kodo interior and exterior (from the south-west with sutra store to the right). 777

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

I M P E R I A L TE M P LE S A full picture of the mature Heijo-kyo temple is provided by the Toshodai-ji founded in 759. The kondo is original except for the roof raised in the 17th century. Built by Chinese immigrants, it is the greatest extant example of Tang architecture, except for the Eastern Great Hall of the Foguang-si (Temple of the Buddha’s Glory) at Wutaishan,2.30 which it must greatly have resembled before its roof was changed. Like its larger lost contemporaries, Kofuku-ji and Todai-ji, it is a monumental rectangular hypostyle hall with symmetrical cross-sections, though the arrangement of screens provides an open verandah for worshippers along the front. To the east, beside the dormitories, the treasure and sutra stores (hozo and kyozo respectively), raised on piles and walled with logs dressed to a triangular profile and chamfered at the corners, are among the earliest surviving examples of the adaptation of the ancient indigenous granary type. The kodo, on the main axis to the north, was imported to the site from the imperial palace in 760. With

2.150b

a verandah, like the kondo, it anticipated the development of the lecture pavilion as a hall with icons enshrined in the main space and the devotees accommodated in one or more extra aisles open to the front, which was furthered in the 9th century by newly introduced esoteric sects.2.150

2.150f

778

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.150d

2.150c

The kondo of seven by four bays (28 by 14.6 metres) is unusual for its period (in Japan, if not in China) in having only one storey. The distinction of the front range of bays as an open verandah before the other three ranges, enclosed as the nave, was novel and it set an important precedent: though symmetry in the section is disturbed only by the screening of the north aisle. The intercolumniations are graded in width from the sides to the maximum in the centre. Stepping forth in their serried ranks, triple brackets support rectangular rafters and a diagonal lever arm which, in turn, supports a fourth bracket holding a circular purlin. The kodo was renovated in the 13th century but it retains much of the original structural system, notably double rainbow beams. In distinction from the kondo, and that type’s norm, it has a hip-and-gable roof.

2.150e

2.150g

779

2.150h

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

3

4

2

1

1

2.151a @ 1:5000

Like Toshodai-ji, but unlike Horyu-ji, the largely lost imperial temples of Heijo-kyo followed the imperial Chinese axial norm but varied it in multiplying the principal elements. Thus the scheme of Todai-ji provided a large, central kondo in a vast compound flanked by twin pagodas to the south-east and south-west, with a kodo and service buildings to the north, and the ordination pavilion to the west. At Kofuku-ji, two supplementary kodos were to be interposed between the main one and the twin pagodas. Only one of the pagodas was built, but the Todai-ji project was fully realized on a site four times larger than the Kofuku-ji. Both Kofuku-ji and Todai-ji were burnt in 1180, though the latter’s subsidiary Hokkedo survived.2.151, 2.172

› 2 . 1 5 1 H E I J O - K YO , T O D A I - J I : (a) plan with (1) pagodas, (2) Daibutsuden (Great Buddha Hall), (3) kodo, (4) refectory; (b) model of 8th-century foundation; (c, d) Hokkedo or Sangatsudo, c. 746, entrance front, lateral section. Founded by the emperor Shomu in 743 for the Kegon sect (introduced into Japan from China in 735 by the priest Roben), Todai-ji was dedicated in 752. Preceded by two monumental gates (of which the Nandaimon was the greatest), the Daibutsuden was unprecedented in scale for a timber building (57 by 47 metres, 52 metres high). Entirely surrounded by a verandah and two aisles, the outer one under its own, lower, roof, it was joined by colonnaded galleries to subsidiary pavilions, as in images of Tang palaces. To the north, the kodo had a precinct of its own framed to the north, east and west by dormitories. The Kaidanin (ordination hall) was beyond the main compound, to its west. West-north-west is the Shosoin, a storehouse built of dressed logs for treasures given by the emperor and others: it is one of two notable survivors from the original foundation (though restored in 1913). The other notable survivor is the Hokkedo (Hall for Meditating on the Lotus Sutra) in a precinct to the east. Reputedly the kondo of the priest Roben’s original Konsho-ji, the classic simplicity of the Hokkedo form and structure (five by eight bays, with single-step brackets, squared rafters and a ceilingless, hipped roof ) is wholly consistent with such a date. Whereas the images in the Horyu-ji kondo were arranged to address all directions, denying frontality, all except one here faced resolutely to the south, and the north aisle was screened off as a sort of sacristy. The structure is lucid too: simple vertical struts provide intermediate support between columns, and bracketing (two tiers

2.151c

780

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.151b

inside, one outside) responds purely to functional requirements. Adapted to accommodate the rites performed annually in celebration of the Lotus Sutra, it was extended to provide more space for the participants and witnesses in the late-12th century.

2.151d

781

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

H E I A N - K Y O ( K Y OTO ) A N D T H E A DV E N T O F F E U DA L I S M The Heijo-kyo temples founded by imperial decree were originally conceived as sanctuaries for the protector of the realm. However, with grants of virgin lands and tax exemption to the monasteries which developed around them, the power of the priests – inimical to the development of the Confucian meritocracy originally promoted by Shotoku – became a threat to the imperial authorities at Nara. It was to escape from this, indeed, that the emperor Kanmu (781–806) moved the capital to Heiankyo (Kyoto) in 794 and temple construction within the new imperial city was limited to two main sites – the Toji and Sai-ji, by the south-eastern and south-western gates respectively.2.152

Eclipsed at the centre of power though they may have been, the old Heijo-kyo clerical hierarchy’s tax privileges were sacrosanct, but the emperor Kanmu had some success against the secular magnates who posed a similar threat to his authority and financial security. He abolished the hereditary tenure of civil office, particularly provincial governorships which disposed of large tax-free estates as quasi-independent rulers. The effort proved unsustainable: his followers lost the Confucian ideal of ethical central government to vested regional interest.There was also war with the aboriginal Ainu tribes in which advance was 2.152a @ approximately 1:30,000 largely due to Sakanoue Tamuramaro who was rewarded › 2 . 1 5 2 H E I A N - K YO ( K YO T O ) : (a) city plan with with the title of Sei-i-tai Shogun (Barbarian-subduing Daidairi palace compound at the northern head of the main axis; (b) Daidairi, plan with (1) Chodoin court with Great General). Daigokuden audience hall at its head, (2) Burakuin Peace and prosperity encouraged later 8th-century reception and banqueting court, (3) Kokyo resential emperors to lapse into learning and to leave the concerns zone; (c) court lady (18th century re-evocation, Fujwara Mitsunari, Tosa school). of government to their chief advisor, the Fujiwara Kam- The plan, still inspired by Chang’an, was an amplifipaku. With the advent of the Kampaku the unity of the cation of Heijo-kyo’s grid. The perimeter was nearly imperial ideal became duality: the emperor was supple- square (c. 5.5 kilometres north–south and 5 kilometres east–west): as hills framed the site and the scheme culmented, not supplanted, by a hereditary Fujiwara regent minated in the palace compound to the north of centre, (sessho). The Japanese looked for continuity in the only the south was open to development. In the Chiemperor’s descent from the original emperor Jimmu nese tradition, a grid of avenues (eight running east–west, ten north–south) divided the urban area Tenno, who brought them under unified control. His into wards which were subdivided by streets and legitimacy as their ruler was assured by their common alleys into allotments whose size was strictly graded in descent from the sun-goddess Amaterasu – rather than accordance with the social hierarchy. The western half of the project was never realized and the Sai-ji site from some inferior foreign invader – and, in the event, the lapsed. longevity of his line amassed its own prestige. As the fount In contrast to the imported rational order, the native of legitimate authority the emperor could not be destroyed flair for effecting balance intuitively within complex asymmetrical compositions of irregular forms and disby one of his officers without the destruction of that offi- parate patterns is admirably illustrated by the silk cer’s claim to power. No-one, not even the most grandil- scroll painting of a Heian court lady: the painting is oquent Fujiwara, dared take that step. Nor did the nearly eight hundred years younger than the lady but its assumptions are not denied in principle by evidence Fujiwara overawe the emperor with military might: they from the rare images surviving from the Fujiwara period dominated through marriage into the imperial line. – when specialists are known to have been employed to Successive young emperors were married to Fujiwara reproduce complex costume designs. daughters and persuaded to abdicate in favour of their first 782

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

3

2

1

son: obviously the Fujiwara’s position as regent for his grandson, the child-emperor, was bolstered by the status of his daughter, the empress-mother. Beyond that, the other progeny of the now quasi-imperial Fujiwara formed a court aristocracy which provided the major officers of state. Even as provincial governors, however, they remained at court, and power was administered by the local clan chiefs (daimyo) who were quick to take advantage of the situation. With the grant of landholding in reward for imperial service and the concession of the right of private ownership over newly reclaimed land in the mid-8th century, the centralized state succumbed to feudalism.

2.152b @ 1:2000

E S OTE R I C R E T R E AT About the time the emperor moved to the new capital,several novel esoteric sects were introduced to counter the power of the Heijo-kyo establishment. Favoured by the emperor and his advisors, the most important were the Tendai and Shingon. In general, they preferred remote sites for their unorthodox rites, the Tendai establishing its headquarters on Mount Hiei, overlooking (ultimately overawing) Heian-kyo, the Shingon on Mount Koya way off to the south-west where the emperor gave him land. Significantly, too, the Shingon were given the To-ji site within Heian-kyo and perhaps the Sai-ji site would have gone to the Tendai, had it been developed. But the emperor sanctioned the ordination of priests in the Tendai mountain temple – named Enryaku-ji after Kanmu’s era – independent of the Nara hierarchy who had hitherto guarded the rite exclusively. The imperial Kegon sect of Todai-ji interpreted the universality of Roshana in terms of consciousness and saw all sentient beings as facets of the universal mind. The new sects discounted mind. The Shingon (Chinese Zhenyan) 2.152c

783

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

was formed by the Japanese monk Kukai (774–835), an extremely versatile master of both physics and metaphysics who worked in both Mandarin and Sanskrit. In China he was adopted as the spiritual heir to the priest Huiguo, disciple of the Indian master Amoghavajra who transmitted Tantrism to the Tang realm, and he brought the occult home with him in 806. His followers to Mount Koya distinguished between the exoteric and the esoteric, the revealed and the secret,the body and spirit of Roshana, the world and the mystery of life. To penetrate that mystery, to gain access to the realm beyond consciousness, like the Tibetan Lamaists and the devotees of Tantrism in general, they sought to invoke occult powers through abstruse ritual accompanied by the chanting of mantras and the observation of mandalas. And they won popular support ›2.153 by identifying fertility kami as emanations of Roshana, especially at Koya. The Tendai was imported by the Japanese priest Saicho (767–822) from the school on Mount T’ien-t’ai in southern China. It was highly eclectic but maintained in essence that the Buddha was the ultimate reality beyond both matter and mind,apprehensible neither to empiricism (as they agreed that the phenomenal world is illusory) nor to transcendental idealism (as individual consciousness is equally illusory) but only through the instruction of the sutras – revelation – and meditation in accordance with T’ien-t’ai prescription. It took its departure from the Lotus Sutra, identifying the historical Buddha with the essence of the universe in absolute terms and opening the way to salvation through him to all sentient beings. At the popular level,accordingly,it furthered the identification of the host of bodhisattvas with the native pantheon – the fertility spirits of Mount Hiei above all. Kami were invited to protect temple compounds and accommodation was provided for them in miniature jinjas. 784

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

T H E A M I D A B U D D H A (Heian period).

›2.154

K YO T O , D A I G O - J I : PA G O D A , mid-10th century. The temple was founded in 907 under the patronage of the emperor Daigo (897–930) for Shingon monks entrusted with prayers for the emperor and the nation (hence it is known as Daigo Shingon). The initial building in the original upper precinct (Kami Daigo) was the Yakushido (Hall for Yakushi), followed by the Shakado (Hall for Sakyamuni) in the secondary lower precinct (Shimo Daigo) in 926 and a five-storey pagoda between 936 and 951. The former was destroyed, like almost everything else in the complex, in the civil wars of the 15th century and was replaced in the 16th century; the latter survives, reputedly as Kyoto’s oldest building.

Tendai eclecticism was wide-ranging. Just as the original populist schools had done in India,believing that compassion was the essence of Buddhahood and that faith was the key to Grace, several Tendai scholars followed the priest En’nin who returned from the mainland in 847 converted to the cult of Amitabha (Amida). Belief that the end of the Buddhist era was immanent prompted the proliferation of the practice of ceaseless calling (nenbutsu) at the instigation of the mendicant priest Kuya (903–72) and then under the direction of the priest Genshin (942–1017), late abbot of Enryaku-jii. As in China and Korea, however, it was popularly believed that the Dhayani had promised response to the instant call on his name and the beatific vision evoked for Ojo-Gokuraku-in (the Palace of Rebirth) by its agents was irresistible to the vast majority who could not follow the monks’ path. And in Kyoto the entourage of ephemeral emperors were peculiarly susceptible to the call of the Palace of Paradise.2.153

D E V E LO PM E N TS I N TE M P LE BUILDING Sympathetic to nature, the esoteric sects rejected the formal norm of temple planning developed on the relatively flat sites around the old capitals. Moreover, while the old sects initiated the practice of building subsidiary sanctuaries on detached sites which did not compromise the order of the main one – such as the Yumedono of Horyu-ji or the Hokkedo of Todai-ji2.151 – the free situation of the new sects promoted the proliferation of image halls dedicated to different aspects of the deity within a single, irregular compound – such as Koya of the Shingon or, failing the survival of the original To-ji, their Daigo-ji on the outskirts of Kyoto, and Enryaku-ji of the Tendai on Mount Hiei. To serve their particular purposes, too, the new sects both maintained and transformed old building types.2.154 785

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.155a

After the introduction of the Mahayana to Japan, devo- › 2 . 1 5 5 M O U N T H I E I , E N R YA K U - J I : (a) Kompontees presumably gathered in the space in front of the chudo (9th–10th centuries, last rebuilt 1642), main court front; (b) Kaidan-in, exterior, (c) Monjuro shrine kondo, resorting to the kodo for instruction. With their on the upper level, interior. emphasis on abstruse ritual, the new esoteric sects tended Mount Hiei, abode of the fertility spirits of Kyoto, to combine the two halls into one building for worship was the retreat of the monk Saicho (767–822, later known as Dengyo Daishi) in 785. Distributed in accordintegrated with assembly – or at any rate to eclipse the for- ance with the contours of the site rather than a rational mer with the latter. To provide more places in the refecto- ideal, Enryaku-ji has three main sanctuaries: Toto, the ries and dormitories of expanding monasteries, the earliest with the Kompon-chudo as its nucleus, Saito and Yokawa. hypostyle hall was readily extendible – with the roof ridge The initial building of the complex, which became longitudinally, or doubled laterally under parallel pitched one of Japan’s most powerful monasteries, was Sairoofs. The provision of extra space for worshippers in cho’s meditation hall (dedicated to Yakushi on its consecration in 788). Saicho introduced his esoteric Tendai image halls was more complicated, especially as the logic doctrine in 805, after a pilgrimage to China, and built a 786

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

shrine to Manjusri, bodhisattva of wisdom (Monju in Japanese) on the hill above the meditation hall. In 827, on the grant of imperial sanction for the ordination of the sect’s priests on Mount Hiei beyond the auspices of the Heijo-kyo establishment at Todai-ji, work began on a great hall (kaidan) for the ceremony: to the west of the meditation hall, it was completed five years later (and rebuilt in 1604). Towards the mid-9th century the meditation hall was rebuilt on a colossal scale as the Kompon-chudo (Root or Fundamental Hall): facing an unusual cloistered court, its outer aisle appears to have been doubled soon after, and again during renovations in 978. It was destroyed with the rest of the monastery by Oda Nobunaga in 1571, but is believed to have been reproduced in reconstruction from 1642. A miniature two-storey pagoda-like structure, the Monjuro shrine was also destroyed by Oda Nobunaga and reproduced in the 1620s. Though on a minute scale, the interior well represents an antechamber for worshippers screened from the image chamber.

2.15b

2.155c

787

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

of the type of hypostyle hall imported from China required matching adjuncts to front and rear (and sides, indeed), though the images enshrined in the centre were worshipped only from the front. An elementary approach, anticipated in the kondo at Toshodai-ji, was to distinguish the front range of bays as an open verandah before an enclosed nave. A more progressive solution was to retract the altar platform to the back of the nave, leaving the north aisle free for ritual circumambulation (pradakshina), and attach a range of extra bays to form an antechamber (magobisashi if covered by an extension of the aisle roof, mokoshi if under its own pitched roof ) or a front hall under a separate roof (raido). Doubled aisles were doubtless common in shrines of all esoteric sects but the earliest examples of doubling the front range are known only from texts or are deduced from excavation: the procedure is well illustrated in the Tendai Enryaku-ji Kompon-chudo and Monjuro.2.155 Early examples accommodating worshippers of Kannon and Amida at Hokai-ji and Koryu-ji show the transition from a simple verandah.2.156 A more developed example is the antechamber of the kondo at Ishiyamadera.2.157

2.156b

2.156a 2.1566c, d @ approxinately 1:2000

2.156e

›2.156 2.156f

2.156g

788

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

K YO T O , P U R E L A N D S H R I N E S : (a–c)

Hokai-ji, Amidado (1057), exterior, lateral section and plan; (d–g) Koryu-ji, kodo (1165), plan, lateral section, exterior and interior. The square Amidado Hall, of five by five bays surrounded by a verandah one bay in depth, has a nave of a single square bay, wider than the outer ones, and a residual ambulatory considerably wider than the verandah. Syncopated, the outer and inner structures could not be braced in the traditional perpendicular system of lateral and longitudinal beams: instead, there is an ad hoc arrangement of slanting beams on semi-diagonal lines hidden between the ceiling and the roof. Coved and coffered, supported on bold but single-tier brackets, the ceiling recalls the Toshodai-ji kondo.2.150a Prophetically, the central bays of the verandah are

given special emphasis by the raising of the line of the eaves over chamfered posts. Koryu-ji was founded in 622 in honour of Shotoku, but it was transformed in the 12th century when the worship of Amida was becoming dominant in court circles. The kodo, enshrining Kwannon, is its oldest remaining structure. Four bays deep and five long, it is partitioned so that the first range of bays forms a semienclosed vestibule (one bay deep) instead of a verandah, as at Hokai-ji. Like the rear range of bays which forms an aisle behind the image platform of the nave, the vestibule has a low-pitched ceiling distinguished from the higher structure in the centre to enhance monumentality and to throw off the rain. The roof was probably raised over a hidden structure (noyane) at the outset, with continuity of line at a steeper pitch than either of the ceilings to mask their disparity. The columns are tall and slender, lacking entasis, the beams lose their subtle curvature and the frog-leg struts have double-curved profiles: late-Heian architecture tended towards lightness and grace from strength and virility.

›2.157

I S H I YA M A D E R A : kondo interior. The temple was founded c. 750 at the base of the sacred Mount Garan, seat of important fertility spirits, by the Kegon priest Roben at the instigation of Emperor Shomu as one of the chain of provincial temples dependent on Todai-ji. The oldest surviving structure, from the late-11th century, is the nave of the kondo and its adjunct, a shrine to the lady Murasaki Shikibu (975–1031), who wrote the celebrated romance Genji Monogatari (The Tale of Genji) there in the early 11th century. The veneration of Kwannon was important at the site, as at other temples of the Nara period, and it is likely that extra space was needed for worshippers in the kondo. The extant outer structure dates largely from the late-16th century.

789

2.157

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

Of course, the effect of developing an antechamber was ultimately to be an asymmetrical section and end profile, as at Ishiyamadera and later,2.174, 2.175 but the early magobisashi was contained without disturbing symmetry, as at Koryu-ji and Hokai-ji. Ceilings, at first over the main space, later over the extension as well to mask any disparity, allow the pitch to be increased to span both elements with one roof for greater visual effect outside without exaggerated vertical perspective inside: a system of concealed struts and rafters, rising from revealed rafters to lift the roof to a higher plane, constituted the so-called ‘hidden roof ’ (noyane).2.156e

2.158b

2.158a

TE M P LE A N D J I N J A Variously related in style to the most venerable jinja at Isa and Izuma are the many later shrines built for the guardian deities of new capitals and new regimes after the introduction of the Buddhist temple – and the advent of the anthropomorphic kami in need of accommodation. The shrine (honden) might retain its primitive form of a 2.158c

2.158e

790

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.158d

pitched-roof cell on stilts but it might assume the form of a temple hall entered from the long side rather than the gabled end. The jinjas on upper and lower sites by Kyoto’s Kamo River were dedicated to the Heian deities when the capital was moved from Nara at the end of the 8th century: each site has a south-facing pair, the western auxiliary one accommodates the kami only when the eastern one is under reconstruction. Nagare zukuri, the Kamo jinjas and their many replicas have a single chamber surrounded by a verandah and entered from the long side, like shinmei zukuri: the roof is projected asymmetrically out over a portico in an unbroken curve to cover the worshipper on the steps. The posts rise from the sill, as in a palanquin.2.158a The Kasuga shrines of the Fujiwara clan on the slopes of Wakakusa Hill at Nara, established in the 730s, were elevated to quasi-imperial significance when the Fujiwara assumed the regency. The Kasuga zukuri, entered from a gabled end under a projecting canopy, has much in common with the sumiyoshi, taisha and nagare: like the taisha, it has decorative crossed rafters at the apex of the roof

2.158f

2.158g

› 2 . 1 5 8 J I N J A V A R I E T I E S : (a–e) Nara, Kasuga (Heian origin), entrance and verandah before the four shrines in the main compound, (12th century, last rebuilt in 1863), Kasuga zukuri, perspective, model (exterior and inner honden where ritual objects are kept), jinja of Wakakusa Hill kami; (f ) Kamo (first recorded end of 7th century, reconstructed 1864), Nagare zukuri, perspective; (g) Iwashimizu, Kyoto, (probably of 8th century origin, rebuilt mid-19th century) Hachiman zukuri, perspective; (h) Kamakura, Sugimoto-dera (Kannon Temple, reputedly founded

2.158h

791

2.158i

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

detached from the structure; like nagare its four corner posts are braced just above ground level by sills, as in a palanquin and as in the nagare zukuri; as in the main sumiyoshi complex, the main sanctuary encloses several identical jinja aligned side-by-side (here four accommodate the tutelary deities of the Fujiwara). A 9th-century description makes it clear that there was a barrier before the four jinja, but it was replaced by a gallery in the 12th century.2.158b–f Hachiman, the war-spirit who guarded both Nara and Kyoto and helped the imperial forces to subdue Kyushu, has shrines at Usa on Kyushu. at Kyoto and at the Todaiji in Nara which was appointed to protect by Emperor

2.158j

792

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

734), jinja of visiting kami; (i) Kamosu, jinjas of several zukuri for visiting kami; (j) Kyoto, Kitano Tenman-gu of the Heian minister Sugawara Michizane (845–903) built in the gongen zukuri development of the hachiman zukuri, with independent honden and haidan joined by a passage (10th century, rebuilt 1607 as shown here); (k) Matsue, Yaegaki jinja of taisha zukuri with later haiden in the Buddhist temple style.

Shomu.The Hachiman zukuri has juxtaposed honden and haiden under twin roofs joined in a valley. The haiden is essentially a raido and entrance is to its long side under extended eaves.2.158 The typical vermilion and white colour scheme and metal ornament were introduced as lesser timber was used in place of the unadorned hinoke about the turn of the 1st millennium bce. New too was a distinct facility for worshippers (haiden) – either an extension of the porch, a vestibule or a detached building – and a separate place for offerings. And miniature jinjas often appear at the approach to temples, as well as at the preserves of major kami, for visiting kami or local guardian spirits.2.158i–k

2.158k

793

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

T H E CO U RT A N D T H E W E S TE R N PA R A D I S E The apogee of the Heian period was achieved by the Fujiwara in the first half of the 11th century. By then, however, the problem of ensuring that there was always a daughter to marry the emperor – let alone a son of the union – had led to the emergence of several collateral branches of the Fujiwara, and abdicated emperors began to assert themselves. The failure of a Fujiwara bride to produce an heir led to the accession of the forceful emperor Go-sanjo (1068–72), and for more than a century from the 1070s the emperors Shirakawa and Toba in turn held more effective power than the Kampaku even after retiring to monasteries. With the isolation of the court from reality at Heiankyo by the 10th century, devotional emphasis in the imperial entourage shifted to personal salvation. Following the trend at Chang’an in the decline of the Tang, inspired by devotion to Guanyin transmitted by Genshin, they followed the popular path to salvation in the Pure Land of Amida’s Western Paradise. And Amida’s palace was a major theme at the climax of Heian temple building under the later Fujiwara and the resurgent emperors after 1072.2.159 The Hojo-ji of Fujiwara no Michinaga,2.160 begun c. 1019 on the Kamo River to the north-east of Heian-kyo, and the Hossho-ji, dedicated in 1077 by the emperor Shirakawa on the stream named after him, both had halls linked by colonnaded galleries to the north, east and west of a lake. The huge central kondos, on stone platforms, were dedicated to Roshana, but there was an almost equally grand hall for Amida to the west of the lake in both schemes. The garden setting ameliorated formality, as it did later in palace design: indeed, as emperors retired to the duties of monastic rule and lived in the context of the 794

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

›2.159

A M I D A ’ S W E S T E R N PA R A D I S E , in the manner of the Chinese Taima mandala, which entered Japan in the late-9th century (Edo period recension on silk).

›2.160

F U J I W A R A N O M I C H I N A G A , 966–1027.

› 2 . 1 6 1 K YO T O , H O S S H O - J I , 1077: plan with (1) Amidado (Hall for the Worship of Amida), (2) ninestorey pagoda, (3) kondo, (4) bell tower and sutra store, (5) kodo, (6) Yakushido (Hall for the Worship of Yakushi), (7) Godaido (Hall for the Worship of the Five Wrathful Gods), (8) gates. Though the kondo was dedicated to Roshana and the western hall houses Amida, the whole scheme evokes the native land of the historical Buddha Sakyamuni in the conventional Tang terms of a palace with many halls, the central one with rectangular galleries leading to pavilions by a lake. The nine-storey pagoda on the island to the east of the Amidado, to the south of the kondo, perhaps recalls a passage in the Lotus Sutra relating the miraculous appearance of a huge stupa out of the earth before the Buddha. Added to the temple by 1083, five years after the dedication of the main halls, it was burnt in 1342.

8

6 7 5

3

4

4

2 1

8 2.160 @ 1: 5000

› 2 . 1 6 2 U J I , B YO D O - I N , H O O - D O , 1053: (a) elevation; (b; pages 796–797) general view from southwest. Developing an earlier villa for his retirement, Fujiwara Yorimichi built the Hoo-do as a shrine to Amida and a reception hall. It is a small shinden with limited internal division, in the Heian tradition, joined by lower wings to pavilions overlooking the lake.

2.162a

795

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

temple, there was no clear distinction between religious and secular modes at the apex of society.2.161 Hojo-ji and Hossho-ji are long vanished,but something of their splendid symbolism survives, miraculously. An Amida hall was occasionally built as an adjunct to a palace in the age of the late-Fujiwara, like the exquisite Byodoin added by Fujiwara Michinaga’s son, Yorimichi, to his villa at Uji, south-east of Kyoto, in 1053. In the art of Tang China, the Pure Land was generally represented as the Palace of the Western Paradise, in allusion to the royal origin of the Buddha, and the model was inevitably the emperor’s palace at Chang’an.2.24 Conforming exactly to the type most commonly represented in the Tang frescoes of the Buddhist grottoes at Dunhuang, for example,1.23c the Hoo-do (Phoenix Hall) of the Byodo-in is the most tangible surviving record of the Tang ideal in secular architecture.2.162

On Miyajima, an island in the Inland Sea identified as › 2 . 1 6 3 M I YA J I M A , I T S U K U S H I M A J I N J A , 12th16th century, Heian foundation: (a, b) general views of sacred to sea-kami as early as the 6th century, the princimain sanctuary from south-east and south-west; (c) pal element of the Shinto Itsukushima Jinja – with Bud- model of site with (1) Great Torii, (2) dance platform, (3) dhist affiliations before 1868 – is the most substantial haiden, (4) haiden, (5) honden (6) No theatre (1568), (7) Sori Bashi; (d) Great Torii. surviving example of an Amida palace: built over the Founded by Taira no Kiyomori (1118–81), governor of water at high tide, it consists of a central complex of Aki, the jinja of the three sea-goddesses of Miyajima prayer vestibule (haiden), offering room (honden) and waxed with Taira fortunes which reached their apogee when Kiyomori’s daughter married the emperor and honden for the presiding kami linked by kairo to projectproduced his heir (Antoku, born 1178). Taira eminence ing subsidiary honden for lesser kami. The complex well was terminated in 1185 but the jinja prospered as seademonstrates the influence of Buddhism on the architec- farers continued to seek the protection of the Itsukushima kami. ture of the Shinto shrine – of the transformation of the latter under the impact of the former into a palace of the Tang type.2.163

2.163a

798

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2

1

2.163b

2.163c

2.163d

799

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

› 2 . 1 6 4 PA L A C E PA V I L I O N S : (a) detail from episodes in the life of Prince Shotoku (15th-century scroll painting); (b) house of a military officer, bukezukuri (from the illustrated biography of Honenshonin, 1133–1212). The shinden remains dominant, but now it has adjuncts and is linked by bridges or galleries to smaller pavilions devolved into the garden – the later ones at right angles to one another. At first divided only by movable screens, by the end of the Heian period sliding panels were providing more privacy: as in the glimpse of Honen’s early 12th-century birthplace, the southern sector was for reception and ceremony, the wing for the guard and the outer palisade are distinguishing features of the warriors’ buke zukuri. Eventually living space was to be entirely separate.

2.164a

H O U S E A N D PA L AC E I N H E I A N - K Y O By decree, as at Heijo-kyo, the houses of Heian-kyo followed the Chinese courtyard model – the number of courtyards doubtless reflecting social standing in the majority – but at the top of the social scale, at the apogee of Fujiwara rule, the decree was honoured as much in the breach as in the observance. Moreover, the scale and formal grandeur of the imported temple style did not appeal to the native taste for the natural – for the intrinsic qualities of timber and shingle as much as for informal siting and organic development of building. Japanese culture would always be characterized by the dichotomy between the native at home and the imported at large. The aristocratic house seems to have consisted of a central shinden, subdivided by screens and surrounded by verandahs as before,2.147 linked to smaller pavilions by galleries like the Hoo-do of the Byodo-in at Uji, though not necessarily symmetrically and facing south instead of west. The galleries would also have defined inner garden courts but their open trabeation allowed for the visual integration of these external rooms.2.164 800

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.164b

As to the palaces of the Heian rulers – emperors and regents – little remains. However, excavation, contemporary descriptions and paintings confirm the conformity to Tang models conveyed by the close relationship between the Hoo-do and the images of the Palace of the Western Paradise in the caves at Dunhuang which accord with the excavated remains and images of the palaces of Chang’an.2.24 Like these, the Kyoto Hoju-ji palace of the Fujiwara regent Tamemitsu (942–92) was a complex of pavilions and galleries dependent on the shinden. Of the same type as the Horyu-ji Dai-kodo,2.146h the latter provided undifferentiated living and reception space but ›2.165

K YO T O , H O J U - J I PA L A C E , second half of the 10th century: reconstruction. The central shinden is south-facing over a lake and entered in the centre of the south front: consisting of hisashi around an open moya, it provided the main living space in which tatami matting probably made its first appearance as a regular floor covering and privacy was admitted only with screens (standing or folding, tsuitate or byobu) or curtains (kicho). It was joined by galleries to a secondary shinden (koshinden) east, to subsidiary pavilions (tainoya) north and west and further galleries extending south from the eastern and western pavilions frame the lake.

801

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.166a

excavation reveals that the disposition of a lake garden to › 2 . 1 6 6 K YO T O , I M P E R I A L PA L A C E : (a–c) Shishin-den, exterior and interior, plan with (1) outer its south promoted entry in one of the side pavilions (taingates; (2) Jomei-mon, (3) Shishin-den (Hall for Ceremooya = opposed hall), east or west. The lateral alignment of nial Occasions), (4) Shodaibu-no-mar, (5) Seiryo-den pavilions, disparate in size, encouraged the native (Hall for Lesser Ceremonial Occasions), (6) Giyo-den (antechamber); (7) Ko-gosho (Sleeping Hall of the predilection for asymmetry – here and elsewhere.2.165 Crown Prince), (8) Ogakumon-jo, (9) lake garden, (10) Though rebuilt most recently in 1855,the imperial palace Tsune-goten (Sleeping Hall for Withdrawal to the Pri(Gosho) in Kyoto represents the development of the so- vate Garden), (11) Kogo-goten; (12) private garden; (d) Seiryo-den, eastern verandah and corridor; (e) Kocalled shinden style of building in the later-Heian period. gosho from the north; (f ) Kenji-no-ma, interior; (g) priBy then the emperor – like his most affluent subjects – was vate garden. no longer satisfied with an open-plan hall: indeed, the formal ceremonial dian of the great Chinese palace was alien

2.166b

802

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

1

11

12

1

10

8

9

1 7 5 4

3

2

6

1

1 2.166c @ 1:500

to native Japanese sensibilities. External shutters hinged at the top for raising in warm weather (shitomido), movable internal screens – or curtains – were supplemented with sliding ones (to define private space in the northern sector of the shinden), then adjuncts to the north provided completely separate rooms, and finally the latter were detached in freestanding pavilions and the shinden was left free for ceremonial activities. As Chinese influence receded with the decline of the Tang in the 10th century, strict formality was relaxed in whole and part. Indeed, it was in their approach to the design and siting of their houses – where eternity was obviously not an important consideration – that the native predilection for the informal achieved its full expression.In plan it is clear how the imperial palace at Kyoto reflects the various stages in the evolution of the Japanese tradition at its grandest: the Chinese formality – even the Chang’an prototype – has left its mark but the symmetry of the main court is disturbed by the transition to the residential quarters. Shingled or thatched over pristine timber trabeation, these are devolved back into the site informally, on a diagonal, addressing a small lake on the way to the complete seclusion of the emperor’s private garden (niwa): there, as in the very different sanded court of the shinden, is the yaniwa of the imperial kami.2.166

The imperial palace The original imperial palace (Daidairi) of Heian-kyo was built in 794 for the emperor Kanmu on the model of the one at Heijo-kyo but further departed from symmetry in the placing of the imperial private quarters off-axis to the east. The complex as a whole was centred at the head of the great north–south axis which was to divide the new capital into halves, as at Heijo-kyo. But the western half of the urban project was never realized and the emperor moved further east to a detached palace (Sato-dairi) after disaster had struck the Daidairi. The eastern palace became the official

803

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

imperial residence in 1331 but was damaged by fire many times. It was rebuilt in 1788, after the fire which destroyed much of Kyoto, and again in 1855 in reproduction of its original Heian form. The Shishin-den, the grandest hypostyle hall of the complex, containing the imperial thrones (Takami-kura for the emperor, Micho-dai for the empress), was used for the installation of emperors and other major court ceremonies. It is of unpainted wood and is partitioned only to form a retiring space at the back (north). The roof is thatched. Note the asymmetrical connection with the antechamber. In the Heian period the emperor lived in the Shodaibu-no-mar, a shinden similar in profile but smaller than the Shishin-den: he moved to less formal quarters later, leaving the Shodaibu-no-mar for ceremonial occasions of less importance than those accommodated in the Shishin-den, where internal partitioning is much less extensive and flexible. Another shinden, internally screened beyond an east-facing corridor, the Ko-gosho was the residence of the crown prince. Furthering the process apparent in 13th-century works such as the Shoryoin (Prince Shotoku’s shrine terminating the dormitory) at Horyu-ji, the main gables are elaborated with bargeboards and pendant finials to the purlin ends.

2.166d

804

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.166e

2.166f

› 2 . 1 6 7 ( PA G E 8 0 7 )

THE

TA L E

OF

GENJI,

M I O T S U K U S H I (17th-century Tosa school illustration

to Burke edition of the 11th-century novel by Murasaki Shikibu – the Heian conventions of illustration, respected by the Tosa artist, descend at least from the early 12th century when the earliest extant suite was executed).

805

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

THE GARDEN Beyond mastery of the asymmetrical, the most characteristic feature of Japanese architecture is the directness with which buildings relate to their environment, complementing nature in homage to the local kami.From the outset,the Japanese have sought to live in harmony with nature rather than in opposition to it: even in their primitive pitdwellings the portico extending before the door broke down the barrier between internal and external space,integrating house and site.2.135, 2.136 This was the origin of the verandah. With its development went landscaping. Originating in the pristine simplicity of the native yaniwa but overlaid with Chinese incident, the Japanese garden is a reproduction of natural scenery within strict confines: mountains, streams, lakes or seas, islands and plants are reproduced to a scale suited to the scope of the site. Texts dating back to the 11th century, not least the Sakutei-ki (Account of Garden Making), deal with the recreation of nature in the small space of a garden and even the self-conscious emulation of celebrated beauty spots with poetic associations evocative of emotion – notably along the coast and on the islands of the Japanese archipelago. Doubtless drawn from earlier sources, there is a 15th-century treatise on deployment of the elements – rocks, water, plants – for the eliciting of atmosphere. Ideally, as in China, there should be six attributes: art and age, expansiveness and seclusion, spaciousness and abundant water. Unlike the Chinese, the Japanese rarely partitioned even urban gardens into distinct rooms. Literature and excavation reveal, however, that from the earliest period of Sinification at Heijo-kyo, a pond or lake was central to the design. It was stream-fed from the north and bordered by galleries leading to pavilions (tsuridono) partially built over the water: dedicated to fishing – in concept, at least – these disclosed ideal views complemented

2.166g

806

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

by those from select places on the circuit. If there were stone compositions, they were ‘sculptures’ of Japanese coastal significance, carved like the seashore by the waves from which the archipelago was borne, not self-assertive enigmas of the Lake Tai type whose importation might offend the local kami. The lady Murasaki Shikibu, who wrote The Tale of Genji early in the 11th century, knew such gardens.2.167 The focal lake, certainly, was a key element in the evocation of the western paradise at Hojo-ji and Uji and in the reconstructions of the Fujiwara and imperial palaces of Kyoto – but that takes us well beyond the Heian period.

2.167

807

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

›2.168

YO R I T O M O A N D T H E J I N J A I N T H E

M I N A M O T O E R A : (a) Minamoto no Yoritomo (by Fuji-

wara no Takanobu; Kyoto, Jingu Temple); (b) Nagoya, Eiho-ji, Kaisando (c. 1350): section with conjectural restoration of roof (after Paine and Soper); (c) Kamakura Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gu (refounded by Yoritomo, last rebuilt 1828), Hongu with hondan (left) and haidan. The Kamakura Hongu is gongen-zukuri, with haidan and hondan joined by a lower passage, all with their own pitched roofs: the formula, surviving in perhaps its oldest form at Nagoya, has its precedent in the Kitano jinja in Kyoto but derivation from the hachuman zukuri reflects the affiliation of the Minamoto kami jinja with the Kyoto Iwashimizu Hachiman-gu.2.158g The Kamakura Hongu compound was entered through a double-height gate in a range of galleries: from the 12th century, at the latest, similar arrangements were made at other jinja such as the Kasuga at Nara.2.158a–e 2.168a

10 kamakura and muromachi M I L I TA RY D I C TATO R S H I P A N D Z E N In the mid-Heian period abbots had been permitted to raise forces from their tenantry ostensibly to protect themselves from the incursions of the Ainu. Enryaku-ji, in particular, had a formidable force which was in practice often to overawe the government in Heian-kyo. Not to be outdone, the local clan chiefs also maintained armies. Rival factions at court appealed to rival chiefs, whose professional warriors (samurai) made them the real powers in the land. To counter this situation, the resurgent emperors of the late-Heian period formed a body of guards from two great clans of imperial descent, the Taira and the Minamoto, who had both been distinguished in fighting against the Ainu. Conflict over the imperial succession in 1156 was won by the Taira, but their corrupt and dictatorial rule led to further trouble from which the Minamoto emerged victorious in 1185. 808

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

Minamoto no Yoritomo (1147–99) established rule by the samurai class through his kinsmen, in principle over the Minamoto, in practice over the empire.2.168 The title shogun (‘Barbarian-defeating Great General’) was revived for him, and the emperor and the regent both remained in place. He wielded his power through his camp office (bakufu) at Kamakura,south of modern Tokyo near the site of the Minomoto clan jinja which he rebuilt on a grand scale as the Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gu. He also rebuilt the temples of Heijo-kyo and Heian-kyo,destroyed in the civil war. His heirs were eliminated by the Hojo family of his formidable widow, the lady Masako: the shogunate was given to an infant Fujiwara and the Hojo wielded power from Kamakura as ‘regents’ for the him and his titular successors. Duality was doubled. The Kamakura period of military rule saw the introduction from China of the Chan sect of Buddhism,known as Zen in Japan. Zen spurned dogma as inimical to ultimate truth and rejected the mantras and mandalas of Tendai and Shingon. It denied that the world is comprehensible through rational analysis of observation. It deplored the idea of self as egotism which must be shed for 2.168b

2.168c

809

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

salvation. It sought enlightenment in untrammelled consciousness, characterized as the ‘inner light of the Buddha heart’ in every individual. Dormant, it needed awakening (satori). One way, promoted by the Soto, was through a meditative yoga (zazen) which conditioned the aspirant for ‘listening to the universe’. The other, promoted by the Rinzai, devised mental and physical shock (koan) to overcome reason. The latter was the way of the priest Eisai (1141–1215), who introduced Zen to Japan with his foundation of Shofuku-ji at Dazaifu (Fukuoka) in 1191: he is also credited with the introduction of tea as a palliative to torpor in extended meditation and as a focus of attention in the abstruse ceremony of its preparation. Promoting discipline of mind and body, self-realization and self-help, independence and uncompromising responsibility, Zen’s peculiar asceticism appealed to the warrior in particular: Yoritomo’s bellicose widow Masako retired to the Jufuku-ji monastery at Kamakura under the guidance of Eisai. The Hojo ‘regent’ Tokiyori (1226–63) espoused it enthusiastically under the influence of Chinese émigré priests who had fled from the Mongols and alerted the Japanese to the danger they faced:the great Zen Kencho-ji was founded on the northern outskirts of Kamakura by Tokiyori for his Zen mentor, Rankei Doryu, in 1253, and the priest entrusted with the project was sent to Hangzhou to study the architecture there. Thus, as in China, there were multiple strands of Buddhism in Japan: the ways to salvation through merit won personally with works or through faith in the agency of outside powers – especially the Amida Buddha of Jodo’s Pure Land – were now supplemented with a wholly inner way. And the military regime favoured Zen with its patronage to the almost total disadvantage of the esoteric sects which had enjoyed the attentions of the rulers of Heian-kyo and then overawed them. 810

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.169a

2.169b

›2.169

M U RO M AC H I In 1260 the Hojo regent Tokiyori was alerted to the danger of invasion from the Mongol mainland: the messanger was the radical – and uncharacteristically intolerant – Tendai priest Nichiren (1222–82) who was banished from Kamakura for castigating Zen and preaching catastrophe unless Japan embraced his interpretation of the Lotus Sutra exclusively.2.169 Duly, in 1274 and 1281, the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan attempted to invade Japan. On both occasions he was driven back by exceptionally severe storms. The storm-god Susanowo and the Shinto gained the credit – and Zen shared it, for Zen principles had been applied to the defence of the realm,as the ‘Way of the Warrior’ (bushido), against impossible odds: the other great Zen establishment at Kamakura, Engaku-ji was founded by the regent Hojo Tokimune in 1282 to succour the souls of the fallen.2.170 The cost of mounting the defence had impoverished Hojo’s regime and, unable to pay the troops, it was discredited. Opposition crystallized around an unusually forceful emperor, Go-Daigo, who turned again to the esoteric sects – he was the last significant imperial patron of the Shingon. He was deposed, but he rallied his forces and over-ran Kamakura in 1335. However, one of his

T H E M I S S I O N O F N I C H I R E N : (a) ‘Praying for Rain on the Promontory of Ryozangasaki in Kamakura, 1271’; (b) ‘On the Way to Sado Island’ (Utagawa Kuniyoshi, c. 1835).

811

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

supporters – a Minamoto turncoat called Ashikaga Takau-ji – betrayed him, deposed him again and had reestablished the shogunate at the Kyoto suburb of Muromachi by 1338. Zen was there ascendant with the scholar-priest Muso Soseki (1271–1346) as spiritual adviser to the new ruler. At first the Muromachi regime promoted a rival to GoDaigo’s legitimate successor as emperor,who had retreated from Kyoto to Yoshino in the south: thus there were two imperial courts until the third Ashikaga shogun, Yoshimitsu (1367–1408), suppressed the Yoshino court. He was effective in general, but the power of his successors proved limited, and from the mid-15th century Japan was constantly racked by violence – notably the Onin War (1467–77) in which much of Kyoto was destroyed by factions contending for the succession to the weakest of latter-day Asikagas, Yoshimasa. Yet trade prospered on the reopening of contacts with China. Before the end of the 1540s the Portuguese had introduced themselves from Macao off the Chinese coast. With them came the first Christian missionary, St Francis Xavier. His Jesuit followers had remarkable success in their proselytizing mission, especially in Kyushu.2.171

M ATE R I A L S A N D T H E M A N I P U L AT I O N O F F O R M Trabeation remained ubiquitous in all genres of Japanese building – even the castle which which made its spectacular appearance towards the end of the era depended on its internal grid of massive posts and beams as much as on its stout external walls. However, the Japanese taste for precision and simplicity in the conception and execution of the structural frame had been formed with hinoke and that was in short supply by the beginning of the era: for all but the grandest buildings this dictated the substitution of 812

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.171a

2.171b

2.171c

›2.170

E A R LY Z E N M O D E S T Y AT K A M A K U R A :

(a, b) Jufuku-ji (founded c. 1200 by the premier Rinzai priest Eisai, renovated): approach avenue and main hall with katomado; (c) Engaku-ji, Shozoku-in subtemple (late-13th-century foundation of the priest Mugaku, preceptor to the regent Hojo Tokimune), general view through first enclosure to the karahafu and the shari-den. Not surprisingly, the first Zen houses in Japan reveal no dramatic departure from the contemporary norm for the modest Buddhist foundation – unless in their closer resemblance to modest Song works in the homeland of its abbot.

›2.171

T H E S H I P - B O R N E N A M B A N J I N (‘South-

ern Barbarians’ = Portuguese).

813

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

various more vulnerable, less straight-growing pines (akamatsu or kuromatsu) or the deciduous native keyaki with its complex grain. Carpenters developed new skills in lamination or mortice-and-tenon joinery and the winning of straight posts from crooked logs prompted the development of steel blades for a variety of sawing techniques, including cross-cutting. And colour was introduced, especially the vermilion and white of the jinja.2.168c Terracotta was the most pervasive roofing material – but the jinja was still shingled. Thatch was most common for housing, even for the detached palaces and garden pavilions in which the upper classes sought integration with nature. Walls, invariably non-loadbearing, were generally made of bamboo or reed lathe and plaster. Later in the period, native cedars (sugi) and fruit woods, as well as exotic imports like rosewood or ebony, were used to line select interiors but special effect was also drawn from basic natives like bamboo and from the convoluted grain patterns of keyaki. Characteristically, the sliding screens between rooms or defining exterior from interior were of thick mulberry-pulp paper stretched on light timber frames. To facilitate the installation of the sliding screens in response to the growing demands of privacy in residential buildings, posts were now square in section – contrary to the persistent circular norm on the mainland. A carpenter’s square (sashigane) with an ancillary square-root scale not only made it possible to calculate the dimensions of the dressed product from the circumference of the undressed log but to calculate sophisticated serpentine curvature, parabolas, etc.: the major products were the undulating ‘Chinese’ gable (karahafu) and the cusped or ogee-arched window (katomado), as in the inner gate of the Shozoku-in sub-temple of Engaku-ji and the windows of the Jufuk-ji, both in Kamakura.2.181

TE M P LE S T Y LE S Despite the conservatism common to religious builders everywhere, the Buddhists diversified form and style for the specific purposes of varied sects in the Kamakura period.Three main styles emerged: the ‘Indian’ (tenjikuyo or daibutsu), the ‘Chinese of the Zen’ (karayo or Zenshiryo) and the ‘Japanese’ (wayo): the last, originally imported from the mainland in the Heijo-kyo period and adapted by Heian builders during the ascendancy of Kyoto,

2.172a

814

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.172b

815

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

was called ‘Japanese’ under the Kamakura rulers to distin- › 2 . 1 7 2 N A R A , K O F U K U - J I : (a) western pagoda; (b) south-eastern kondo and pagoda. guish it from the newly imported mainland styles, someBurnt by Taira in 1180, Kofuku-ji was rebuilt over the what misleadingly called ‘Chinese’and ‘Indian’.Ultimately next thirty years, but subsequent destruction left only there was some cross-fertilization, particularly between the small western pagoda. The five-storey eastern pagoda (at 55 metres, Japan’s tallest) was rebuilt in the ‘Zen Chinese’ and the ‘Japanese’ styles.

WAY O The development of the orthodox ‘Japanese’ style had been furthered by the Fujiwara, to lend an aura of legitimacy to their favoured Pure Land sect. Naturally, when their Kofuku-ji was destroyed by the Taira, it was rebuilt in the original style after the Minamoto triumph and the style was retained in subsequent rebuilding.2.172 Conservatism was also the cause of the esoteric Shingon and Tendai in asserting their claims to orthodoxy. Beyond the addition of an antechamber to provide extra space for worshippers in front of the images in the nave, the increasingly abstruse rites of these sects prompted the doubling of the sanctuary (naijin) with an area for worship (gejin), and, augmented by this extra space, the

2.173

816

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

1426. The kondo was rebuilt a decade earlier over the archaic plan with moya within hisashi covered by noyane: the front range of the hisashi is open, as a verandah, revealing the most elementary brackets over posts and frog-leg struts over the intercolumniations.

›2.173

K YO T O , D A I G O - J I , K O N D O , c. 1300: exterior. The Shingon foundation, dating from 874, was raised to imperial status by Emperor Daigo I in 907, after which it developed on an upper and lower site. In reasserting his support for the Shingon in opposition to the Kamakura dictatorship, Emperor Daigo II (1319–38) emulated his ancestor in adopting the name of the monastery. The pagoda apart, the complex was largely destroyed in the Onin War c. 1470. To replace the lost originals, the kondo and its 12th-century icons (and the main gate) were removed from Negoro-dera (Kii peninsula) towards the end of the following century. In its

conservatism of detail it is characteristically Shingom but its precise date is uncertain: it was probably the product of the brief revival of the old esoteric sects which culminated in the last Daigo’s era. Its single covered volume, internally screened, marks the definitive solution to accommodating a considerable lay audience in an expanded raido without inhibiting the discrete performance of abstruse ritual beyond the screen in the naijin.

› 2 . 1 74 N A R A , YA K U S H I - J I , T O I N D O , 1285: (a, b) exterior and detail of interior. In line with the Kamakura regime’s desire to assert legitimacy, most of the restoration work carried out after the destructive rivalry between Taira and Minamoto was conservative, as here: indeed, while the interior has the light elegance of the late-Heian style, the exterior goes further back and recalls some lateHeijo-kyo strength. K O R A - M A C H I , S A I M YO - J I , 13th century: section. The typical ‘Japanese’-style plan was rectangular and partitioned laterally, at the second or third column of the side ranges, into an open front section for worshippers and an enclosed sanctuary which might be subdivided to form a sacristy behind the image chamber. Where the main division took place at the third column – or later – intermediate supports were necessary in the worshipping area, preserving the distinction between it and the antechamber. According to the extent of the former, or the extension of the roof over the porch, the section might depart from the symmetrical norm. Brackets and struts follow late-Heian precedents, but the frog-leg struts are usually more elaborately decorative.

2.174a

›2.175

2.175

817

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.174b

main hall (hondo) was clearly the dominant element in the complex at the expense of the pagoda.2.173 Given that the logic of the structural system was masked by ceilings of the type with a hidden roof frame (noyane), greater freedom of planning allowed the elimination of columns to clear space of obstruction. On the other hand, the area for worship was often screened from the sanctuary with lattice and this admitted disparity in the height of the ceilings – elevated over the great images, lowered to intensify the space of the worshippers.2.174, 2.175

2.176b

818

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.176a

›2.176

2.176c

T H E TA H O - T O : (a) mandala image (after

Paine and Soper); (b) Ishiyamadera (built by Yoritomo Minamoto, 1147–99); (c) Miyajima, on the hill above the Itsukushima jinja (asserting the Minamoto victory over the Taira), detail of upper level. A type of single-storey pagoda was developed from the Indian stupa by the esoteric sects in the Heian period to enshrine relics and secure treasure. There are no survivals, but images on mandalas show that initially, at least, the bulk of its mass was a cylinder and hemisphere – or a dome on a drum – over which a canopy was represented by a broad-eaved roof of the traditional Japanese kind. As the Japanese were unused to masonry, the dome was probably of plaster on a timber frame, and thus was perishable. Drum and dome were encased in trabeated cubicles, one over the other and each with a roof. The triumph of elegant trabeation over sturdy mass is clearly distinguishable in the perpetuation of late-Heian aesthetic values into the 12th century and beyond.

819

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

Survivals from the early Kamakura period are rare. Among pagodas, notable are the taho-tos of Ishiyamadera and Itsukushima built by Yoritomo in the distinctive stupa-derived form introduced by the esoteric sects and in the late-Heian style.2.176

DA I B U TS U Despite its name, the ‘Indian’ style was imported from southern China by the monk Chogen (1121–1206) specifically for the huge structure required to shelter the colossal statue of the Buddha in the rebuilding of the Todai-ji complex at Nara after its wanton destruction by the Taira in 1180. The style is characterized by a vast double-height space with continuous pillars and no ceiling. Its rainbowbeams, pronounced in their curvature, are separated by bottle-shaped struts (taiheizuka) instead of the familiar cylinder or the frog-leg form first imported from Wei China. Most distinctive, however, are its brackets stepped out through six tiers perpendicular to the building line, without lateral arms but braced with continuous tie beams parallel to the building line. The fanning of the rafters at the corners of the eaves is also distinctive of the style.

The Todai-ji Nandaimon (Great South Gate) survives › 2 . 1 7 7 H YO G O , J O D O - J I , J O D O D O , 1194: section. as the only important representative of Chogen’s original Despite the identification of the style as ‘Indian’, the work. His Daibutsuden (Great Buddha Hall) was simple square interior – without noyane – derives a destroyed in 1567 and ultimately was replaced by a lesser characteristically Japanese monumentality from the massive columns supporting stout rainbow beams and building in an ‘Indian’-style permutation for the patchedmultiple bracket arms in the Chinese manner. up Buddha. In the main, the grandiose monumentality of the style was not to the Japanese taste: apart from the › 2 . 1 7 8 N A R A , T O D A I - J I , N A N D A I M O N , 1196–1203: (a) view from the south, (b) lateral section. Todai-ji Nandaimon, the sole important survivor of the Restoration of Todai-ji after it was commissioned by style is the relatively intimate Jododo of the Jodo-ji in the former emperor Shirakawa (who reigned between 1155 and 1158 with effective power) was directed by the Hyogo.2.177, 2.178

2.177

2.178a

820

monk Chogen and paid for by Yoritomo after his triumph over the Taira. From this campaign, only the Nandaimon survived destruction by the forces of Matsunaga Hisahide in 1567. Of five by two bays (28.8 by 10.8 metres and 25 metres high), it set the standard for the monumental gate, and was emulated many times – though the proportions of the storeys were adjusted. With its vast double-height space rising to the apex of the roof without ceiling, between continuous posts bearing six-tiered brackets for the eaves of both storeys, it is the greatest surviving example of the ‘Indian’ style. The mode is exceptionally rare, but some of its characteristics were introduced to the renovation of Todai-ji’s Kaisando (Small Founder’s Hall) in the mid13th century.

2.178b

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.179b

2.179a

›2.179

KAMAKURA,

S U G I MOTO - D E R A ,

founded 734, reconstructed 17th century: (a, b) main hall exterior and interior (housing three early 13th-century Kannon icons).

›2.180

K I TA - K A M A K U R A ,

SHOZOKU-IN

ENGAKU-JI,

S U B - T E M P L E , late-13th century:

Shari-den, conjectural reconstruction of original elevation. The building was later given a steeper thatched roof than was the Song tiled norm.

2.180b

821

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

Z E N S H UY O No more typically Chinese than the Tang forms of the preceding age, the ‘Zen Chinese’ style was imported from Sung Hangzhou by the monk Eisai who introduced Zen Buddhism to Kamakura. Jufuku-ji’s austerity and modesty of scale, the hallmark of the Zen style, are shared by the contemporary Sugimoto-dera on the other side of Kamakura.2.179 The premier example of Song architecture surviving in Japan, however, is the Shozoku-in sub-temple of the Engaku-ji at Kita-Kamakura: it was founded by the priest Mugaku, Zen preceptor to the regent Hojo Tokimune who founded Engaku-ji itself in 1282.2.180 Even in the modest context of the sub-temple, where the Zen monk lived, austerity was moderated by the introduction of the so-called Chinese gable (karahafu) and the cusped ogee-arched window (katomado). Song survivals may be rare in Japan but the formal north–south axis, ubiquitous in Chinese compounds of all eras, is invariable in the great Zen foundations and as the sect attracted patronage from the circle of increasingly opulent shoguns, elaboration of the inherited tradition was admitted to the main halls of the grander establishments. Not least, the traditional structural frame was manipulated to hide noyane above broad ceilings over radically

expansive naves without intrusive posts but with inter- › 2 . 1 8 1 K A M A K U R A , K E N C H O - J I , founded c. mediate bracket-clusters instead of struts and multiple 1250, damaged many times by fire and reconstructed after the 1923 earthquake: (a) plan with (1) sanmon, (2) lever arms. Roofs, often of shingle rather than tile, are butsuden, (3) hatto, (4) karamon, (5) hojo and garden steep and upturned at the corners – the latter reflecting (5a); (b) sanmon (rebuilt 1754); (c, d) butsuden, extesouthern Song élan – and the rafters fan at the corners of rior and interior (rebuilt 1647); (e) butsuden and hatto (rebuilt 1814); (f ) karamon; (g) hatto interior, (h–k) the eaves. Katomado light the hisashi of even the grand- hojo, abbot’s hall, garden and interiors. est buildings and the abbot’s compound is usually entered through a karamon. The principal elements of the typical early Zen compound in Japan – gate, image and kodos, but rarely pagoda – are aligned on axis in the traditional way (garan) and they also follow Heian precedent in their symmetry. The gatehouse, sanmon (‘triple’ or ‘mountain’ gate), is characteristically of three bays and two storeys. The butsuden (main shrine building) and the hatto (kodo) are grand structures with the full panoply of brackets, like the ‘wayo’ style, wide central bays and flat ceilings to distinguish the nave from the surrounding ancillary space. Countering the formality of the main axis, a plethora of sub-temples is ad hoc in accretion. Highly characteristic is the prominence of residential quarters for monks and, within these, of all utilities – including lavatories – as all aspects of the Zen life had to be performed with the utmost concentration in the determination to void the mind of illusion-provoking thought. Most significant is the extensive hojo (quarters for the abbot) dependent on a convocation hall: the earliest surviving residential buildings in Japan, these are generally asymmetrical in distribution between a large convocation hall, with shrine adjunct, and an enclosed garden. Usually only with dry materials, ther latter captures in miniature the cosmic moment for which the Zen monk was trained to listen. Associated with it was an innovation of seminal importance: a writing room (shoin) with its alcove for books projecting to the exterior like a blind oriel. 822

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

4

1

2

5

5a

3

2.181a @ approximately 1:1000

2.181b

823

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

Z E N F O U N DAT I O N S Little survives from Eisai’s period or from the rest of the 13th century in Kamakura, except the Shari-den of the latter’s Shozoku-in sub-temple as well, perhaps, as the Jufuku-ji and the main hall of the Sugimoto-dera.2.181 Hardly less significant is the memorial jinja of the Zen master Muso Soseki (1271–1346), mentor to the shogun Ashikaga Takauji, at the Eiho-ji near Nagoya. The site organization of the prime Zen complexes, Kencho-ji and Engaku-ji, is perhaps the major legacy of

2.181c

2.181e

824

2.181f

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.181d

the Kamakura period. Though much-renovated or reconstructed, the major buildings aligned on the major axis of the premier Rinzai foundation, Kencho-ji, supplemented by the Kyoto Daitoku-ji (also Rinzai), by the Soto sect’s Daijo-ji in Kanazawa and by the Myosen-ji of the opposition Nichiren Tendai sect on Sado Island, may be taken as faithful representatives of their type. Whenever they were last rebuilt, on their original plans imprinted in their original stone bases, the main structures of the greatest Zen complexes enshrine the venerable formulae determined by the hallowed masters who founded them.2.182–2.185 2.181g

825

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.181i

2.181h

T h e g re a t Ze n c o m p l e x The sequence of great structures opens with the sanmon: equipped with a generous space for images on the upper floor, as in the Nandaimon at Todai-ji, the typical Zen form is slightly reduced in height to avoid topheaviness. Stairs could not be incorporated in the body of the building without inhibiting passage through it, so they were erected to the sides – sometimes in detached towers connected to the main structure by a bridge. Last rebuilt in the 16th century, the Daitoku-ju sanmon is the earliest surviving example.

2.181j

The butsuden and hatto are similar but the altar with icons in the former is supplanted by a lecture platform with the abbot’s chair in the latter. Both buildings are invariably of two storeys – or, rather, of two tiered roofs separated by a clerestorey – over the traditional plan with moya surrounded by hisashi. The latter, with its pent roof (mokoshi) extending into broad eaves, is closed to the exterior except for the three central bays of the five-bay front (in principle facing south) and, perhaps, katomado in the other two bays. The moya, accommodating the monastic congregation, is typical of the grander aspects of the ‘Zen Chinese’ style though consistent with Zen abstraction: unimpeded by posts, its flat ceiling masks the noyane at clerestorey level. To relieve residual stress on this scale, given the massive timbers needed for the span, intermediate 2.181k

826

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

› 2 . 1 82

K YO T O , D A I T O K U - J I : (a) sanmon (1526–89); (b, c) butsuden interior (1665) and hatto section (1636); (d–f ) Daisen-in sub-temple, abbot’s hall (hojo), shoin and garden. The complex occupies the site of the hermitage of the Zen master Shuho Myocho (1282–1337) who taught the emperor Hanazono (1308–18) and thus attracted imperial support. Destroyed in the carnage of Onin, it was rebuilt by Abbot Ikkyu (1394–81), an imperial bastard who diverted himself in the port of Sakai and there solicited the aid of merchants promoting luxury goods from China. At his instigation it emerged as the centre of development of the tea ceremony as an artistic performance of intrinsic validity. After attracting the patronage of the tea devotee Hideyoshi, who led his vassals in the proliferation of its sub-temples, the complex reached its apogee in the 17th century. The garden of the Daisen-in marks an important stage in the development of the miniature dry landscape: it was modelled c. 1480 by Shogun Yoshimasa’s court painter Soami on a Sung ink landscape of the Daoist holy Mount Horai and its riverine environment but the river and its fall – represented in gravel – constitute the descent from the axial mountain of the Vital

2.182c

827

2.182a

brackets were often incorporated over thickened beams between the columns and on the plane of the wall. On the other hand, paradoxically, the doubled lever-arm ends may be purely decorative, as in the Daitokuji hatto, their continuity and structural role interrupted by the huge hidden beams from which the ceiling is suspended and on which the upper roof frame rests. Somewhat crowded multiplication of once-structural

2.182b

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.182e

Force symbolized – in China – by the dragon. And the rocks are there to constitute the Meruvian range, not as enigmatic emblems of transitoriness – like the stones of Tai. 2.182d

› 2 . 1 8 3 S C H E M AT I C S H O I N I N T E R I O R with oriel with raised sill for writing (tsukeshoin), alcove with built-in shelves for storing documents (chigaidana) and recession for displaying decorative objects (tokonoma).

2.182f

elements for decorative purposes, and the decorative carving on structural members, were characteristic of Chinese architecture beyond the apogee achieved by the Song in the 12th century. Moreover, the upward curvature of the roof recalls Song élan but steeper pitch through enhanced height seems, rather, to follow Ming developments.

828

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.184a

›2.184

K A N A Z A W A , D A I J O - J I , Zen Soto sect, 1261, rebuilt late-17th century: (a) Honda clan memorial; (b–d) hatto interior details and exterior; (e–f ) butsuden interior and exterior detail. After the introduction of cremation with Buddhism, the ashes of emperors and other important figures were enshrined in temples. Memorials in the form of lanterns, stupas or miniature pagodas were occasionally erected in temple grounds, especially (as here) to clan chiefs in the precincts of a clan foundation.

2.184c

2.184b

2.184d

The hojo of the abbot’s quarters at Kencho-ji, removed from the Hanju Zanmai-in at Kyoto, is dedicated to the Rinzai rites defined by the founder of the monastery, Rankei Doryu, the Chinese priest Lan-his Tao-lung (1213–78): unlike the quarters he would have left in his homeland, his accommodation and its successors depart from axial symmetry internally and in their position in the complex as a whole – like the sub-temples, of

829

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.184e

830

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.184f

which Kencho-ji originally had forty-nine. Behind the hojo, beside the Tokugeturou which accommodated the monks and provided facilities for their instruction – as well as monastic offices – the garden is attributed to Muso Soseki. Built in 1513, the main building at the Daitoku-ji sub-temple, entered through karamon, consists of three rooms to the north doubled by three facing south through a verandah to the enclosed gravel garden. The main gables show some departure from the representation of the purely structural beam and strut, ridge pole and purlin ends: pendants conceal the last at least. The central chamber in the southern Daisen-in range is the shrine. Its simplicity and austerity are typical of the style in essential principle: it is celebrated for the screen paintings of the masters Soami (1472–1523), Kano Motonobu (1476–1559) and Kano Yukinobu (1513–75). The northern range was for sleeping and for study, with the area for the latter incorporating a prime shoin.

831

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.185a

2.185b

2.185c

832

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.185d

›2.185

S A D O I S L A N D , M YO S E N - J I : (a) sanmon; (b) subsidiary shrine with the jinja of the founder’s kami; (c–e) abbot’s quarters, interiors and garden front. The monastery was founded in 1271 by an attendant of the emperor Juntoku who was exiled to the island after an abortive counter-coup against the Hojo in Kamakura in 1222. The quality of its hojo matches that of a Zen foundation but its founder was a follower of the radical Tendai priest Nichiren who had been exiled for countering Zen with the Lotus Sutra as the only sure defence against the Mongols.

2.185e

833

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.186a

THE ZEN GARDEN: WILDERNESS, A B S T R AC T I O N A N D TE A Seeking enlightenment in total self-abnegation through intuition inspired by meditation on the meaning of the universe revealed in natural phenomena, seeking unity with nature, Zen promoted the laying-out of gardens – and even resort to the wilderness. The latter was the way of the Zen priest Muso Soseki who pioneered the translation of Song painting of forbiddingly rugged mountains – reducing man to insignificance2.32 – into the physical reality of a wilderness garden as an aid to meditation: at 834

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.186b

›2.186

KAMAKURA,

ZUISEN-JI,

1 3 2 7 : (a)

wilderness garden (mid-14th century); (b) tea-house (undated).

his Zuisen-ji, on the outskirts of Kamakura, the garden is constituted by the rocky cliff of the site, its cave of retreat and the complementary pool of reflection.2.186 In contrast to the resort to nature – or its literal reproduction in the manner derived by the Heian masters from the Chinese – but in line with the general austerity of their way to salvation, Zen Buddhist gardeners preferred abstraction calculated to elicit a subjective response. Though some planting is admitted, rocks and raked gravel or moss may alone represent the primary features of the natural world, earth and water. These dry landscapes are not entered (except for the cathartic activity of maintenance) but contemplated in meditation on the significance of natural phenomena. We have noted the importance of the Daitoku-ji’s Daisen-in garden, which reconstituted a painted evocation of a specific Chinese site.2.182f › 2 . 1 8 7 K YO T O , R YO A N - J I : (a, b) moss and gravel gardens. A villa with a pond garden inherited by Hosokawa Katsumoto c. 1450 was transformed in 1488 by his son, Masamoto, into a shrine to his memory as a sub-temple of the Myoshin-ji. The abbot’s quarters were rebuilt in 1681 but the garden is usually thought to date in inception from the aftermath of the Onin War and attributed to Soami. However, the precise meaning of the fifteen rocks in five informally related groups, surrounded by a sea of gravel, is the subject of much conjecture. Referring to the seminal disposition of seven rocks in a pond in emulation of a Song landscape painting at Tenryu-ji in the late-13th century, some (particularly P. and S. Rambach in their illuminating Gardens of Longevity) see gardens of this type as representing the creation myth of the archipelago’s emergence from the waves on the backs of giant turtles: domed but square of visage, encapsulating the geometry of heaven and earth, resolving opposites, the turtle symbolized the ultimate unity of uncreated Being on which creation and its illusions were based – and of which comprehension was the objective of Zen meditiation. The giant turtle is, of course, basic to Meruvian cosmology. 2.187a

835

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.187b

The painter-monk Soseki introduced the concept of constituting ideal landscape painting to Kyoto in 1339 for the monks of Saiho-ji – retaining the present water, as the context for islands of stone reproducing the painted crags, and developing the painterly motif of the waterfall. However, the most celebrated work of pure abstraction is the dry garden belong to another foundation of the Kamakura period, the Ryoan-ji sub-temple of the Myoshin-ji. The origin and precise meaning of its fifteen rocks in three informally related groups – of three, five and seven components – surrounded by a sea of fine gravel, are the subject of much conjecture. Certainly it provided the 836

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

context for meditation on the meaning of creation. Perhaps it represented the divine archipelago of Japan itself, the residence of the descendants of the Son of Amaterasu, and the axial mountain which provided for the descent of the divine kami: the ideal was the legendary island source of the elixir of immortality – set by the Chinese, in vague recollection of Meru cosmology, on the backs of giant turtles. If this is so, it fulfilled the two specifically Japanese prescriptions of the Sakutei-ki while also fulfilling the others.2.187 A related event of great significance for the design of gardens and residences was the development of tea-mak837

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

ing into an abstruse ceremony of great subtlety, concentrating the mind on the elimination of inessentials. Tea had been introduced to Japan in the 8th century, but it became a ritual in the Zen context after Eisai. In initial principle – and recurrent practice – the tea was prepared and the host served with his guests in a room of a simple rustic hut with a view. By the end of the 15th century, however, distracting view was seen as inimical to the intensity of concentration which the ritual sought to induce – espe- › 2 . 1 8 8 S C H E M AT I C T E A - H O U S E S H O I N I N T E cially for the reseeing (mitate) of its utensils as objects of R I O R , with tokonoma, chigaidana and nakabashira. Set in a miniature dry garden, crossed by stepping transcendent beauty in their elemental simplicity. Per- stones, the tea-room will have restricted access which versely, that cause was furthered by those who shared the inhibits the introduction of swords and other distractdetermination of errant Abbot Ikkyu of the Kyoto ing equipment and which humbles all who stoop to enter. A miniature and rustic derivative of the shoin, it Daitoku-ji to see the ceremony itself as an art form of will have a tokonoma, for the display of a scroll painting intrinsic beauty, rather than as a means to a quasi-religious relevant to the season, but no tsukeshoin, and a square end. Thus the Zen garden was ideally – but by no means fire pit or brazier adjacent to an undressed timber post (nakabashira). A focus of concentration, the latter invariably – organized so that the path serving the blind divides the wall screening the adjunct (with chitea-room symbolized passage between engaging artifice gaidana) in which the host prepares for the ritual. Densely latticed windows admit subtle light but deny and the primitive purity of undefined wilderness.2.188

2.189

838

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

distracting views – at least in principle. As the fashion spread through secular society and different masters perfected a variety of styles, openness to the environment was a revived concern of the tea-house designer.

› 2 . 1 8 9 G A R D E N D E TA I L S : detail from a 15thcentury scroll painting of the life of Prince Shotoku. The shinden survives, at top, as do the galleries linking it to less-pretentious pavilions. Now, too, there are several small, open kaishos distributed informally in the garden, especially in relationship to the lake which still provides the nucleus of the scheme – as under the Fujiwara and, particularly, in The Tale of Genji.

›2.190

( PA G E S

840–841)

K YO T O ,

K I N K A K U - J I : pond garden (c. 1220) with Kinkaku

(1397, rebuilt 1955). In 1397 the garden’s proprietors (the Saion-ji family) were forced to cede it to Yoshimitsu, who built the extensive Kitayamadono palace thereafter. The surviving pavilion is eclectic, shinden zukuri for the lower two floors and Zen style for the upper storey with its katomado. The elevation derives ostensibly from the ‘Chinese-style’ dependency of the late-12th-century Amida temple of Saiho-ji (west of Kyoto, on the site of a palace of Prince Shotoku). The two-storey Ruriden (Lapis-Lazuli Hall, destroyed) was reputedly modelled by Muso Soseki on the pavilions in Song landscapes. Yoshimitsu avowedly emulated Muso’s work in the design of both his palace and its setting: the latter appreciable from the former in its entirety – unlike the Heian garden which was designed for appreciation from a moving boat. The prototype was presumably a side pavilion joined to a shinden-style main hall by galleries, as in the palaces of the Fujiwara and their Tang models. Whether that was originally the case here too, the square plan subdivided into northern and southern ranges of rooms is typical of the kaisho as it developed in complete detachment.

839

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

M U RO M AC H I PA L AC E S In the Kamakura period the essentially symmetrical shinden continued to dominate the imperial palace complex, though this might be asymmetrical in its general distribution. The de facto rulers and their entourage resorted to the radically asymmetrical shoin or ‘writing-room’. Alcoves were occasionally incorporated in the latest shinden to form the hybrid structure called a shuden. Scroll paintings are still the main sources of information.2.189 The secular form originated from the diversification of elements within the palace compound: the shinden was retained for ceremonial purposes,though more extensively partitioned than in the Heian period, but the informally related elements of the private quarters were detached and distributed as ‘meeting places’ (kaisho) in sympathy with the configuration of the garden.This development was furthered, if not initiated, at the end of the 14th century in the palace built for the retirement of the grandiloquent shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (1358–1408) in an earlier pond garden in Kyoto. The nature of the garden is difficult now to assess and the only surviving element of the extensive palace complex is the so-called Kinkaku (Golden Pavilion), a kaisho converted into a shrine dedicated to the patron (Kinkaku-ji).2.190 The principal Muromachi seat in Kyoto, rebuilt by Ashikaga Yoshinori (1394–1441) had a shinden and three kaishos. These are all lost – as is the original form of their pond garden – but conjectural restoration is based on nearsquare plans subdivided into northern and southern ranges of rooms, some with a projecting bay next to an outer corner. To supplement contemporary descriptions and scroll paintings,evidence for this is drawn from the surviving elements of the retirement villa built from 1482 for Yoshinori’s son, Yoshimasa (1436–90): the Ginkaku (the so-called Silver Pavilion) and Togudo tea-house.2.191

›2.191

K YO T O , G I N K A K U - J I : (a, b) pond garden with Ginkaku (1482) and Togudo tea-house (1486). Like Kinkaku, much in the Ginkaku scheme derives ultimately from Saiho-ji, including the garden, but the accidents of survival and the whims of future developers make it difficult to assess the full achievement of either Yoshimitsu or Yoshimasa: later converted into a dynastic temple, Ginkaku-ji enshrines Kannon in a small chapel among its reception rooms. The Dojin-sai of the Togudo was arranged for the tea-master Murata Shuko (1422–1502), the disciple of the priest Ikkyu who might be seen as having initiated the projection of the tea ceremony beyond service to a specifically Zen objective.

2.191a

Supposedly covered in silver, the Ginkaku was inspired by the Kinkaku but it has only two storeys and the lower one is a development of the shoin zukuri appropriated from the quarters of the Zen abbot. In the Dojin-sai of the Togudo – thought to be Japan’s oldest tea-room as distinct from the tea-house of a Zen monastic garden – the shoin approaches secular maturity with all its essential elements: tsukeshoin, chigaidana and tokonoma. Before the 16th century was well advanced, the shoin with all these features and decorative doors derived from protective screens (chodaigamae) was generally preferred as the master’s retreat in both religious and secular accommodation:as the nucleus of the samurai house no less than as the retreat of the abbot and, ultimately, as the chamber for receiving important guests (page 857ff.). 842

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.191b

2.192a

11 from momoyama to edo The late-Muromachi period of civil war (Sengoku, 1467–1573) was ended by Oda Nobunaga, a local clan chief of central Honshu who had reduced all his neighbours to submission by 1578. He eliminated the military might of monasteries like Enryaku-ji which had taken sides against him, and fortified his base at Azuchi with the first of the great castles from which power would henceforth be wielded. On his assassination in 1582, his mission to reunify Japan was taken up by his vassal Toyotomi Hideyoshi and his ally Tokugawa Ieyasu. Setting aside their initial rivalry, they co-operated to overcome the remaining opposition by 1590. This included the Christians – Spanish now,as well as Portuguese – whose aggressive methods seemed to aim as much at temporal as spiritual imperium. An edict of 1587 expelling all foreign priests, but not the merchants, contained the situation for a time, though it was not in fact fully implemented. 2.192b

843

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.192c

Hideyoshi had disarmed the populace, imposed a caste › 2 . 1 9 2 A S S E R T I O N O F P O W E R : (a) Hideyoshi system based on profession, tied the peasants to the land (1536–98) scaling the heights; (b) Osaka Castle and its cyclopean podium; (c) Miyajima, Senjokaku (Pavilion and consolidated feudalism by designating lords of the of One Thousand Mats, 1587) above the Itsukushima manor (daimyo) to raise levies for the central authority. jinja; (d–f ) the feudal lord (daimyo) Ukita Hideie, Dedicating his services to the emperor, he obtained the adopted son of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, his castle at Okayama (1589, rebuilt from 1966) and his palanquin. Fujiwara title of kampaku – but recognized that only a Minamoto could be shogun. He built magnificently, most notably the Jurakudai palace on the site of the old imperial Daidairi in Kyoto and Osaka Castle as his main stronghold but also at the Itsukushima jinja on Miyajima. He attempted to secure his position by directing the unruly local clan chiefs against Korea in 1592.The expedition was disastrous, but the protracted struggle ended only after his death in 1598.2.192 844

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.192d

2.192e

Tokugawa Ieyasu asserted himself to fill the void, dismissing a final challenge from his rivals at Sekigahara in 1600 and eliminating Hideyoshi’s young heir in 1615. As a Minamoto, he claimed the shogunate and established it at Edo (now Tokyo, the ‘Eastern Capital’). The major fiefs were reallocated among three categories of clan chief – Ieyasu’s relatives, their allies at Sekigahara and the beaten opposition. Naturally the best land and the most important strategic positions went to the first of these, who were allowed to fortify them with castles as the seats of constituted authority – in principle only one for each province. However, the fiefdoms were constantly rotated and their holders forced to spend much of their time in attendance on the shogun at his seat. The foreigners also had to be dealt with. To the Portuguese and Spanish, the Dutch were added in 1605.Their rival pretensions, political and doctrinal, served only to turn suspicion into xenophobia at a time of stress when a new regime was establishing itself. The expulsion of foreigners had been decreed several times since the edict of 1587, but in 1639 it was finally effected except for a small

2.192f

845

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.193a

2.193b

846

colony of Dutch traders on an island in Nagasaki Bay.2.193 For nearly 250 years thereafter, order was enforced within 2.193c and the outside world excluded. Naturally, for an envelop› 2 . 1 9 3 A D M I S S I O N O F F O R E I G N E R S : Nagasaki, ing centralism, that order was syncretic and eclectic, draw- Dutch traders: (a, b) Dejima, model and reconstructed ing on many strands of Japan’s heritage. street; (c) Dutch ship (by Yoshitora, 1859).

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

› 2 . 1 9 4 YA N O H A R A , F A R M H O U S E O F S A S U K E I W A S E , village headman (shoya) and one of the richest men in his district (mid-18th century, moved from Gifu in 1960 to the Sankeien Garden Museum of Traditional Architecture in Yokohama): (a, b) exterior and interior of service area with ladder to sleeping accommodation. It is assumed that the standard differentiation of living accommodation between a timber dais (toko) for sleeping raised from the earth floor (doma) of the entrance and general living area descends from the arrangement of the age-old pit dwelling.2.134, 2.135 Like the temple pavilion, after Sinification the grander houses were divided by the trabeated structure into a central area (joya, corresponding to the nave) and ancillary spaces (geya, corresponding to an aisle) surrounded by open verandahs. After the 17th century, at least, areas for servants and storage were screened from the rest of the raised toko, largely in the

T H E TO KU G A WA P E R I O D The Tokugawa period was peaceful, on the whole. With peace came prosperity – for all except the imperial entourage at Kyoto, who subsisted in empty hereditary offices, and the redundant professional soldiers (shizoku, or pensioned samurai), retired in select quarters of castle towns where they turned either to learning or to decadence. By the 18th century the merchants had emerged predominant economically. And they had their equivalent in the countryside – where the overwhelming majority of the population lived – among those landowners who had capitalized on the growth in demand for foodstuffs from the swelling urban population.2.194

2.194a

2.194b

ancillary spaces, and the timber dais, which expanded in the central area, was partitioned or raised to separate eating from sleeping. The master had the sophistication of a shoin.

Economic power matched social hierarchy no more in Japan, of course, than in late-feudal societies the world over.Socially inferior,the newly rich townsmen – like their rural counterparts – were beneath the contempt of the samurai, let alone the culture of the shogun’s court, and they lavished their resources on the gratification of sensuality. Many also invested in education. Inspired by inklings of Western scientific achievement transmitted by the Dutch, their ranks were to foster opposition to the increasingly

847

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

stultifying regime, destabilized in the 19th century by swollen bands of destitute ex-samurai (ronin). Xenophobia, on the other hand, had encouraged introspection and a concern with the past – not least by the samurai. This, in turn, prompted a revival of interest in the indigenous religion and, through Shinto, the divine descent of the emperor sustained in Kyoto. All the greater, then, was the humiliation when the shogun was forced to grant a trade treaty to the Americans following the intrusion of a naval squadron under Commodore Perry in 1853–54. Other Western powers followed with equally irresistible force: the ‘Barbarian-defeating Great General’ was not fulfilling his function. Resistance being futile, the pragmatic Japanese saw that it would be best to learn from the foreigners and to make a new start. After little more than a year Keiki, the new shogun, appointed in 1866 on the death of his childless predecessor, surrendered his authority to the new emperor Meiji, who had succeeded his father early in 1867 at the age of fifteen.

C A S T LE S A N D T H E I R TO W N S As elsewhere, the earliest forts in Japan consisted of little more than a sequence of wards surrounded by palisades of timber or rammed-earth on a precipitous crag, with a barracks compound below. A raised platform, guarding the entrance to the first ward, provided for the lookout. The introduction of the cannon after the advent of the Portuguese in the mid-16th century led to the abandonment of inaccessible sites and the development of the keep (tenshu) on a commanding eminence from which the artillery could command the plane of approach: the initiative was Oda Nobunaga’s after his devastatingly successful deployment of artillery against his Takeda rival in 1575. The base he built for himself at Azuchi, to the east of Kyoto on a commanding eminence beside Lake Biwa, was not a 848

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

›2.195

H I R O S A K I - J O , 1611: (a) Kamenoko-mon (north gate); (b) tenshu; (c) honmaru, model. Several gates and the relatively modest three-storey keep survive. As here, the outer gatehouses were usually backed by a walled compound which forced approach through 90 degrees. The extent of the honmaru has been deduced from the traces of its footings.

defensive retreat but a seat of potential offence against the capital:soaring through seven storeys as the concrete manifestation of power, it was the model for numerous later castles (hirayamajiro, ‘fortified eminence in a plain’, or hirajiro if there was no natural eminence). In the cause of consolidating their power, the Tokugawa permitted only one castle as the seat of authority in each province, as we have noted, and many of those built in the previous generation were destroyed. More went with the assault on feudalism which followed the Meiji restoration in the later 19th century and still more in World War ii. A dozen or so important original examples survive, however, illustrating the main phases of development in the great age of castle building, though the history of fortification in Japan is as old as internecine rivalry. Of these, Hirosaki, superb Himeji and Matsue will be taken as exemplary of essential aspects of the type.2.195–2.197

2.195a

2.195b

849

2.195c

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.196b

2.196c

›2.196

1

2

2.196d @ 1:4000

The castle (jo) Nobunaga’s example was exceeded by his successor, Hideyoshi, at Osaka in 1583. Thereafter an unprecedented campaign of fortification throughout provincial Japan produced more than one hundred castles between the foundation of Azuchi by Oda Nobunaga in 1576 and the completion of the Tokugawa stronghold at Edo in 1639. Offence in aspect did not, of course, obviate defence in depth. The eminence was surrounded by moats and an extensive bailey within which the tortuous line of approach, formerly provided by nature, was reproduced by labyrinthine design. In the time-honoured way of defence, at Himeji the approach is punctuated by numerous gates which deflect it

852

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

H I M E J I - J O , 1601: (a; pages 850–851) view

from south-west; (b, c) section and model of keep; (d) plan with (1) entrance, (2) keep. Fortifying a strategic position south-west of Kyoto and west of Osaka, the main seat of Hideyoshi, the finest extant example of the Japanese castle was built by the Tokugawa Ieyasu’s supporter and son-in-law Ikeda Terumasa (1564–1613) immediately after Sekigahara. The battered outer walls and barbicans, with their cyclopean bases rising from moats and machicolated parapets (ishi-otoshi, through which missiles, boiling oil and other discouraging substances could be poured on to scaling enemies) are the most extensive in Japan (6 kilometres in circuit). They embrace two low hills, Sagiyama to the west and Himeyama towards the centre. Only 50 metres high, but augmented by a massive podium rising through 30 metres in places, Himeyama hill supports the great keep (daitenshu) and a complex of towers linked by doubled walls around a roughly square court.

›2.197

M AT S U E : (a–c) castle (1607–11), interior timber structure and view from the south; (d) model of town. The castle was built by Horio Yoshiharu (1543–1611), who was made local clan chief of Izumo as the reward for his contribution to the Tokugawa victory at Sekigahara. Matsue was a fishing village on his advent, but Yoshiharu recognized the strategic significance of a natural port dominating the Sea of Japan coast of westcentral Honshu, and prompted its rapid development as a military base and centre of administration and trade.

through a daunting elliptical course. This skirted successive podiums of cyclopean masonry which raised the main buildings of the complex well above the line of fire. The upper terrace (honmaru) was usually extensive enough to accommodate a vast palace for the lord and his entourage as well as the tenshu. The refuge of last resort, the tenshu was usually a tiered structure of stout trabeated timbers protected by a thick skin of impacted clay and enlivened by splayed roofs with curved or pointed gables at each level. There are three, five and seven storeys respectively at Hirosaki, Matsue and Himeji. Providing ample refuge and armament accommodation, the latter two are built like the hulls of ships progressively diminished in size. They are hung on a frame of massive timbers: at Himeji one main post was originally dressed from a single trunk nearly 25 metres high. Mortice-and-tenon joints throughout provide enough flexibility for the structure to withstand earthquakes. Rarely has elegance been so effectively promoted by brute necessity as in the Japanese jo. And nowhere is this represented with more élan than at Himeji, where variety was enhanced by the asymmetrical diversification of mass.

2.197a

2.197b

853

2.197c

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

The five-storeyed tenshu is still essentially a tower (30 metres high) on a low hill, dominating an ascending sequence of wards and surrounded by a double moat. Renovated in 1642, it was spared serious damage in the great ages of Japanese defortification (under the early Tokugawa when Matsue was in the hands of their vassal and in the late-19th century under the Meiji).

›2.198

TO B A ,

CASTLE

AND

TO W N

MODEL

(Toba, Fishermen’s Museum). Built on a rocky promontory at the mouth of Nagoya bay, on the Pacific Ocean coast of central Honshu, a relatively primitive late-16th-century watch-tower keep was the nucleus for Toba’s development with trade and the fishing industry in the 17th century. The organic growth pattern, governed by the topography, is typical of the castle town.

2.197d

Towns had always grown up around the main seats of power and in the vicinity of important temples where the currents of pilgrimage, in particular, prompted the development of markets: so too did station towns, capable of servicing the grand entourages of great lords which developed from staging-posts along the arteries of empire. In the later-16th century, when war lords moved from inaccessible crags to wield provincial power from eminences strategically placed on the junctions of highways or by the estuaries of rivers, the castle town (jokamachi) eclipsed its predecessors and the buke zukuri of the urbanized samurai is distinguished from the styles of lesser ranks by defensive features imported from the countryside to assert prestige unmatched by power.2.198–2.201 C a s t l e t ow n a n d h o u s e As part of the defence strategy, the streets continuing the exterior highways often have dead ends in a labyrinth of arteries designed to confuse and entrap, like the approach to the keep within the castle. Following the contours, and framing housing plots set back-to-back, this organic net-

854

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

›2.199

A R T I S A N H O U S I N G A N D S H O P S : (a) Osaka, scroll painting of the early Tokugawa period (Osaka Castle Municipal Museum); (b, c) Sado, model of the gold-mining town with terraces of houses descending with the contours from the mansion of the government controller, and model of shopping street. Scrolls of the 17th century reproduce much earlier pictures of town dwellings showing rows of two-or-fourbay structures with a front salesroom and perhaps an inner reception space for important clients. Beyond the latter was the family room, divided (like its country counterparts) into a raised sleeping area and timber dais. Beyond that the services were dependent on a small courtyard.

2.199a

work sharply distinguishes most castle towns from the formally planned imperial capitals.2.149, 2.152 As the economy developed in the Tokugawa period, markets were established in such towns, attracting merchants and, as always, the country came to town through the market, and the link is clearly discernible in housing. The urban area was zoned in accordance with the profession and social standing of the inhabitants: naturally the lord’s entourage and that of the shogun’s representative were at the top; artisans and traders, encouraged as sources of revenue, were in the centre and along the lines of communication respectively, while the pensioned samurai were in districts of their own – the lower-ranking ones forming a ring of first defence punctuated with temples on the outskirts. Matsue and Toba may be taken as exemplary. At the basic level, the house is entered directly from the street but there is often a garden to the side. Though there were regional variants, 2.199b

as in the country, the basic norm for burghers of modest means was a rectangular block with a file of three rooms in depth, opening into a continuous raised sleeping area to one side – possibly flanked by or terminating in a garden strip – and an elevation of two storeys. With the growth of towns at the beginning of the 17th century, plots became longer and narrower and houses higher but, as affluence and social standing increased, so too did the size of the house and its garden. Essentially asymmetrical in distribution, according to the configuration 2.199c

855

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.200b

2.200a

of roughly rectangular plots, the main block of the poorer samurai house is usually to the side of the entrance court, facing a garden on at least two sides: naturally the extent of house and garden increases with rank and that equates with the size of the gate in the street front of a service range. The merchant’s wealth may run to as much accommodation as a middleranking samurai but not to a compound portal – as most would have a 2.200c

›2.200

M E R C H A N T H O U S I N G : (a–c) Hagi, Kikuya

family house of the chief merchant of the Mori clan (17th century), exterior, shoin, doma (earth-floored service hall); (d, e) Kanazawa, Nomura house, guest room and shoin (19th century, moved from Daisho-ji by the merchant Kubo Hikobei in the 20th century).

2.200d

856

2.200e

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.201a

›2.201 HOUSE,

2.201b

HIROSAKE,

MODEST

2.201c

2.201d

SAMURAI

U M E D A , mid-19th century: (a) exterior; (b) shop on the street front – and not usually to an extensive garden. In all guest room with brazier; (c) roof structure; (d) tea- cases, timber frame was the norm with wattle-and-daub infill to the exteroom with kettle.

rior. Space flows from room to room in the open-plan interior – screened

4

with laminated rice paper on a slender timber grid – and out over a shallow verandah to the garden, which is enclosed and screened from the

2

1

entrance court. The Ito-ke at Hirosaki may be taken as exemplary of a lowly samurai

3

house, the Terashima house in Kanazawa of a middle-class one, the Buke Yashiki in Matsue of an altogether more expansive upper-class one catering for the reception of important guests in a separate suite beyond a

2.202a

›2.202 HOUSE,

KANAZAWA, MIDDLE-RANK SAMURAI T E R A S H I M A : (a) plan with (1) entrance

separate entrance off-axis with the single assertive gatehouse in the walled compound. In between, the house of the Kikuya, the chief mer-

bifurcated for family and guests, (2) guest suite with antechamber and room with tokonoma, (3) family quar- chant of the Mori clan in Hagi, well represents the product of commercial ters, (4) tea-house and dry garden, (b) view from guest affluence. reception to entrance; (c) dry garden and tea-house.

2.202b

857

2.202c

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

13 5 12

11

10

6

9

7 4

8

16 14 15

3

2 1

›2.203

2.203b

M AT S U E :

(a) Shiominawate district esplanade on castle moat with upper-class samurai housing; (b) plan of Buke Yashiki with (1) street entrance in gatehouse, (2) servants’ quarters, (3) bifurcated entrance, (4) guest reception, (5) guest room verandah, (6) guest guard, (7) guest washroom and verandah, (8) family entrance, (9) family hall, (10) mistress’s sitting room, (11) master’s sitting room, (12) family sitting room, (13) family tea-room, (14) family dining, (15) kitchen, (16) services; (c) street entrance; (d) bifurcated entrance; (e, f ) guest entrance and

2.203a

2.203c

2.203e

858

2.203d

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

reception rooms; (g) guest suite verandah; (h) guest guard; (i, j) family sitting and dining rooms; (k) looking towards master’s room verandah; (l) kitchen.

2.203f 2.203j

2.203g

2.203k

2.203h

2.203i

859

2.203l

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.204a

M A N S I O N S A N D PA L AC E S The houses of the greatest lords differed from those of the lower orders not in open-plan form or even materials but in scale and, of course, opulence: more rigorously than ever, the planning formulae of Japan’s strictly graded social hierarchy was determined by the number and disposition of the modular tatami floor-covering. Spaces were subdivided by sliding screen-walls ubiquitously but in the grandest complexes extensions diversified the mass of the pavilions organically: ceding the discretion of the shinden to defensive cohesion, they were joined to one another at the corners or, at most, with zig-zag corridors.The mature shoin (sukiya shoin), with alcoves of all three kinds and chodaigamae screening sleeping platforms, was an essential element by the end of the 16th century. Supplementing a relatively formal shuden, for ceremonial reception, on the scale of the palace audience chamber it lost its intimacy as the hiroma and the lavishness of the decorative objects on display in the alcoves ostensibly fitted them for the reception of government officials. From the Zen hojo 860

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

› 2 . 2 0 4 K YO T O , N I S H I H O N G A N - J I : (a) karamon (late 16th century), view from inside the compound; (b, c) Hiunkaku (‘Flying Cloud Pavilion), exterior and interior. Announcing the sumptuously ornamented style with which the Momoyama rulers and their Tokugawa successors advertised their affluence, the lacquered and gilded trabeated portal with its cruciform cypressbark roof reputedly came from Fushimi – as did the Shiro Shoin reception complex, at least in inspiration. This style of roofing with crossed pitches, the one covering the entrance axis curved up into a ‘Chinese’ gable, the longitudinal one slightly concave in profile, is characteristic of the main gates of palace compounds. Moved to its present site in the garden of the Hongan-ji abbot’s quarters c. 1610, the Hiunkaku pavilion was Hideyoshi’s retreat in the grounds of his Jurakudai palace in Kyoto, which was demolished after he had fallen out with his nephew to whom he had assigned it as his heir. Marking the ‘artless’ (sukiya) apogee of the mature shoin, the three storeys of elegant withdrawing rooms are graded in scale and intimacy under varied roofs, the lower two distinguished with ‘Chinese’ gables. The square plan typical of the early kaisho has ceded to asymmetry in complete sympathy with the informal purpose and garden setting.

2.204b

2.204c

861

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

too, via Ginkaku, came the tea-pavilion and the rock garden – for gratification rather than meditation. Beyond the mansion, the palaces of Hideyoshi were unprecedented in their opulence: both the Juraku-tei of 1588 within Kyoto and the Fushimi-jo of 1591 outside the city were destroyed by the Tokugawa but important elements survive elsewhere, especially in Iemitsu’s Nijo-jo and in the compound of the Nishi Hongan-ji. Most prominent at both sites is a lavishly adorned karamon but the most significant survival at Hongan-ji is the Hiunkaku (Flying Cloud Pavilion): a kaisho inspired by the Ginkaku and containing a tea-room of the type now widespread in the domains of the upper classes.2.204 Nijo-jo, the Tokugawa seat in Kyoto, is the supreme surviving example of the metropolitan castle on open ground (hirajiro), with a defensive moat and cyclopean walls protecting a palace more opulent than that of the emperor. Formidable as a work of military engineering, it was built in emulation of Hideyoshi’s celebrated palace complexes – with materials pillaged from them – primarily to display wealth and power.2.205

›2.205 1

5

11 10

3 6

9 8 7

4 2

2.205a @ 1:1000

2.205b

862

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

K YO T O , N I J O C A S T L E , 1626: (a) plan with (1) moated outer compound and (2) Higashi-Ote-mon (Eastern Main Gate), (3) Honmaru with (4) keep (burnt in 1750) and (5) palace pavilions (burnt in 1788), (6) Ninomaru compound with (7, 8) Yanagi-no-ma and Tozamurai (Guard and Antechamber Pavilion), (9) Shikidai (Reception Pavilion), (10) Ohiroma (Ceremonial Audience Pavilion with four grand chambers), (11) Kuro-shoin (Private Audience Pavilion) and (12) Shiroshoin (withdrawing rooms); (b) overview, (c) Ninomaru, entrance; (d) Ohiroma (foreground) and Kur-shoin; (e–g) Ohirama reception hall, Ohiroma, Kuro-shoin. Begun by Ieyasu in 1599, the original scheme was complete by 1603: it then consisted of the moated outer ward and moated inner honmaru with its keep, removed from Fushimi but destroyed by lightning in 1750, and palatial buildings. In 1624, Tokugawa Iemitsu added a second range of palace buildings in the outer compound, Ninomaru.

2.205c

Nijo Typical of the most opulent secular buildings and monastic quarters built in the period of reconstruction after the civil wars of the 15th and 16th centuries – like the private quarters of the reconstructed Kyoto Imperial Palace,2.166 indeed – the palace at Nijo is a sequence of pavilions staggered along a diagonal axis linked by internal corridors which supplement – in part replace – the external communications of the old shinden type. Each block is divisible by retractable screens into compartments of varied size, the shuden, hiroma and shoin prominent among them, proportioned in accordance with a limited number of standard arrangements of contiguous tatami mats, consistent in their dimensions. The trabeated structure, raised from the ground on posts, is surrounded by shallow verandahs and

863

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.205d

walled with non-load-bearing screens, often of a slender timber framework and paper, sometimes of timber slats or lattices. The monumental tiled roofs, gabled and hip-and-gabled, reveal intricately carved bargeboards overlaid in gilt bronze. The surviving Ninomaru suite has five halls – approached on squeaky floors and backed by hidden guard cubicles. Tozamurai, first in the sequence and largest (625 square metres), is a square divisible by screens into some ten compartments of widely disparate size for the samurai guard, waiting visitors and offices. The second and smallest, Shikidai, for the reception of dignitaries and their offerings by the shogun’s ministers, is divided in the manner of the latest shinden into a south-facing hall and three north-facing chambers. Third and grandest, the Ohiroma, is divided north–south into four main compartments: an armoury, an antechamber and a bipartite reception hall (ichi-no-ma, or First and Second Grand Chambers) for visiting local clan chiefs who had not been Tokugawa allies at Sekigahara are screened with painted panels 2.205e

864

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.205f

2.205g

865

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

with gold grounds to each side under the elaborately carved frieze. The fourth, the Kuro-shoin, is divisible east–west into parallel chambers for the reception of Daiymo who had been allies at Sekigahara: more intimate, it is no less opulent then the Ohiroma with shoin alcoves arranged for relief, rather than for practicality, and inset with magnificent murals. The fifth, the Shiro-shoin, small in scale and relatively modest in decoration, was for the ruler’s use. The garden laid out for an imperial visit in 1626 is designed to be viewed from Ninomaru, not from a sequence of internal viewpoints: the origin of the type in the Zen hojo is obscured by its inflation to incorporate an extravagant collection of distorted rocks and exotic plants.

Except for those of Hideyoshi, the chambers of the Tokugawa were unprecedented in their opulence: murals on gold ground,expansive from the Momoyama era,were initially devised to reflect the light from limited fenestration of the jo. The shoin-style retreats of the court aristocracy, even of emperors, were less ostentatious. Inspired in particular by the mature tea-house (sukiya shoin) of the preTokugawa period, elegant if often capricious, they favoured intimacy of scale, simplicity of line and restraint › 2 . 2 0 6 S A N K E I - E N (Garden Museum of Traditional Architecture, Yokahama): (a) Choshukaku; (b) in ornament which preferred the natural qualities of finest shoin zukuri tea-house interior. timber to applied colour or relief. The chodaigama, the Built in 1623 by the tea-master Shogen Sakuma for main motif of display,is eliminated and the other three ele- the third Tokugawa shogun, Iemitsu, in the Nijo-jo compound, the Choshukaku is clearly a follower of the ments of the classic shoin are rearranged with studied sukiya zukuri of Hiunkaku. It was moved to Edo in the informality. As we have seen, the tea-house resulted from later 17th century and finally to Shankei-en in 1922.

2.206a

866

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.206b

the reduction of the shoin to a minimal,rusticated essence. Now the creative impulse was reversed:the shoin is infused with the rusticity of the tea-house in contrast to its aggrandisement into the hiroma. The supreme example is the early 17th-century Katsura Detached Palace on the outskirts of the old imperial capital.2.206, 2.207 1

5 4

3

2 6

7

9

8

2.207a

›2.207

K YO T O , K AT S U R A D E TA C H E D PA L A C E ,

1616–46: (a, b) site and main complex plans with (1) main gate, (2) Ko-shoin (Old Shoin), (3) Chu-shoin (Middle Shoin), (4) Shin-shoin (New Shoin), (5) Gepparo, (6) Shokin-tei (Pine Lute Pavilion), (7) Shoka-tei, (8) Shoi-ken (Sense of Humour Pavilion), (9) Ama-nohishidate (‘celestial bridge’); (c–e) main complex exteriors from south-east, south-west and interior; (f ) view from Geppa-ro; (g) Shokin-tei interior; (h, i) Shoi-ken, exterior and interior with exterior view; (j) Ama-nohishidate.

K a t s u ra

2.207b

The palace – detached from the metropolitan seat of the imperial family – was built over much of the first half of the 17th century for the Hachijo line of imperial princes. There are three main buildings: the Ko-shoin built by Prince Toshihito in 1616, the Chu-shoin built in 1641 by Toshihito’s son, Toshitada, in preparation for his marriage, and the Shin-shoin built by the same prince in anticipation of a visit by his uncle, the retired emperor Mizunoo, in 1663. Toshihito also built the Geppa-ro and Shokin-tei teahouses. Toshitada rebuilt them and added two more, the Shoka-tei and Shoi-ken, between 1640 and 1655. The Ko-shoin, Chu-shoin and Shin-shoin are staggered along a diagonal – like the main group of buildings in the Ninomaru at Nijo – in the informal, additive manner, maximizing views of the garden from the interior, and typical of the shoin. All have hip-and-gable roofs of shingle. Beyond verandahs, unbroken lines of sliding screens (shoji) can be entirely removed in summer for the complete integration of the exterior and interior.

867

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.207c

The Shokin-tei is built in a self-consciously rustic style (grass-hut structure), with undressed timber posts, rough plaster, an irregular massing and a part-thatch, part-tile roof. The largest garden pavilion at Katsura, it has four compartments – one for the tea ceremony, two for withdrawing and a kitchen: the first of the withdrawing rooms is noted for its striking chequerboard-patterned screens and the view over the lake. From the inner room, there is a view out beyond the confines of the garden – a borrowed view, reminding the viewer of the real world beyond simulated paradise. It is a device recalling the principles of the Chinese gardener.

868

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.207d

On the Sea of Japan to the north-west of Kyoto, near Miyazu, a spit of sand covered in pines protects the lagoon of Aso. In poetry and mythological prose it is often assimilated to the ‘celestial bridge’ from which Izanagi and Izanami, the productive deities in the mythology of the creation of the Japanese, created the islands of the archipelago. As such, it was designated as one of the empire’s three main beauty spots.

2.207e

869

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.207f

2.207g

2.207h

2.207i

THE GARDEN The Japanese garden is various but like its Chinese counterpart its creator is bent on the evocation of an ideal Nature symbolically: indeed, as we have noted (page 805), the Japanese Sakutei-ki is the prime source for classical Chinese theory on the objectives of the gardener. When Amitabha was ascendant the ideal was the Pure Land of his Western Paradise but devotees of alternative sutras – and the landscape paintings of Chinese masters inspired by the Dao – saw it in the wilderness. Either way, the garden was the physical context for spiritual quest. In Japan, moreover, the ideal was the legendary island source of the 2.207j

870

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

6 4

5

7

1

3 2

2.208a @ approximately 1:10,000

›2.208

KANAZAWA,

KENROKUEN

STROLL

GARDEN,

begun 1676, severely damaged 1759, restored from 1774, definitive form c. 1830, extended with Seisonkaku villa 1863: (a) plan with (1) Renchimon – ‘lotus pond’ – entrance and Yugao tea-house (1774), (2) Kaisekito pagoda, (3) Shigure tea-house, (4) Kotojitoro, (5) fountain (Japan’s oldest), (6) distant viewpoint, (7) Seisonkaku villa; (b, c) Seisonkaku villa upper external gallery and shoin in the vibrant colours favoured by the mid-19th-century Maeda daimyo); (d) Kaisekito pagoda in Hisagoike – ‘gourd-like’ – pond fed by Midoritaki – ‘green’ – waterfall; (e) Kotojitoro – after the fret of stringed koto musical instrument – lantern in Kasumigaike – ‘misty’ – pond with Uchihashi tea-house in the distance; (f–h) rivers and glades. Established in the outer ward of the castle, in the peaceful Tokugawa

2.208b

871

2.208c

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

elixir of immortality – set by the Chinese, in vague recollection of Meru cosmology, on the backs of giant turtles. As we have seen, the Chinese located those islands and their turtles beyond the seas to their east and, naturally, the Japanese idealists identified them with the realm of Amaterasu’s progeny.Thus, in addition to the general purposes, the Sakutei-ki lists provision of eminences for the descent of the celestial kami as visitors to the genii of a Japanese locality perfected to accommodate them. The Heian pond or lake garden, the setting of the shinden zukuri evoking the Western Paradise, was sustained by later shoguns – in so far as the accidents of survival in the domains of Kinkaku and Ginkaku testify. However, transition from shinden to shoin in the context of the Zen hojo prompted a much more intimate approach: the Zen contrived dry composition, often in miniature, whose great subtlety was to be perceived from without rather than discovered within. On the other hand, the teahouse garden was the access zone through which movement was effected on stepping stones. The lords of Muromachi and Edo amplified the one and invoked the other in the gardens they laid out to complement their sukiya shoin.However,they also recalled the Western Paradise of previous shoguns to effect the synthesis of the ‘the stroll garden of many pleasures’ (kaiyu) – a variety of real or ideal places, Japanese or Chinese, grand and intimate – in which water is the principal organizing element. Evoked in literature from at least as early as the era of the Fujiwara, when The Tale of Genji was written, the Japanese garden – like the Chinese – also responded to literature and constantly reproduced the images found there. At imperial Katsura or the celebrated Kenroku-en of the Maeda lords at Kanazawa and Koraku-en of the Ikeda lords at Okayama, as in 7th-century Heijo-kyo, 11thcentury Heian-kyo and the Lady Murasaki’s imagery in

2.208d

2.208e

872

2.208f

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.208g

era, the stroll garden is considered one of the three most perfect in Japan for its evocation of the physical features of the natural world – the others are Kairakuen and Koraku-en. It was named to convey its combination of Li Gefei’s six qualities (page 651): art and age, expansiveness and seclusion, space and abundant water. Water – the ‘history’ of its transition from ‘mountain’ spring through lakes, cascades and smooth flowing rivers to its confluence in the ‘sea’ – is handled with supreme artifice which, naturally, extends to arranging breadth of view and intimacy. And apparent age in gnarled trees is, of course, also contrived. The water is brought from the Saigawa River (50 metres above the height of the garden which is itself 50 metres above sea level) on the long aqueduct (of the Tatsumi system developed primarily for fire-fighting after a fire in the castle in 1631).

873

2.208h

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

The Tale, water in its various forms provides both the unifying thread and the central motif in the design. And in complete contrast to the dry garden of meditative Zen, movement into the garden on a decreasingly determined path and through it around the lake – or lakes – to enjoy the succession of broad or intimate vistas is the principal motive of the design.

2.209a

874

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.209b

Beyond the lake a rock or mound, real or artificial, within the confines of the garden or borrowed from the view beyond it, are the essential features of an encapsulated world view which may find its origin in the cosmology of Meru – though the mountain retreat of the Chinese Daoists is at least as relevant. Of course much will also depend on masking the outside world from the garden. The circuit’s delight is generated by the finding and losing of determined prospects – by borrowing from the remote to enhance the near and immediately losing

2.209c

875

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.209d

›2.209

O K A YA M A , K O R A K U E N , 1670 and later: (a, b) views from and to the castle; (c) Enyo tei; (d, e) Sawano-ike pond viewed from Yuishinzan and to distant view; (f ) Jizo-do jinja; (g) plan with (1) castle, (2) entrances, (3) Yuishinzan hill, (4) Sawa-no-ike pond, (5) Enyo tei, (6) Eisho bridge over Kayo-no lotus pond, (7) Jizo-do jinja. Beyond the features typical of a stroll garden – the artificial hill, the nuclear lake, the streams defining routes, the tea-houses, etc. – the garden’s main novelties are a naturalistic rice field, a tea-garden and expansive lawns (of probable Western derivation). The name is a contraction of ‘sen-yu-ko-raku’ (‘grieve earlier, enjoy later than others’).

2.209f

876

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.209e

the prize to movement. Aspects of several celebrated beauty spots succeed one another in the prospects of the Kenroku-en at Kanazawa; one particularly venerable beauty spot, the Ama-no-hishidate, is evoked at Katsura; the Korakuen of Okayama is content with intrinsic beauty. In all these, as in countless lesser gardens of the Edo leisured classes, tea-houses may promote undistracted meditation but they prefer unbounded wonder at the beauty of nature – immanent and recalled.2.208, 2.209

2

1

2.209g @ approximately 1:10,000

877

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.210a

› 2 . 2 1 0 N A R A , T O D A I - J I , D A I B U T S U D E N : (a, b) exterior and interior, with a patchy reconstruction of the colossal image of Roshana. Rebuilt to the specifications of the monk Chogen after its destruction by the Taira in 1180 but destroyed again by the forces of Matsunaga Hisahide in 1567, the Daibutsuden was repaired immediately and finally rebuilt between 1684 and 1709. It has seven by seven bays rather than the original eleven by seven, but it retains the double-height space, hipped roof and walled ambulatory under its own, lower, roof. The basic concept and elements such as the coffered ceiling are in the ‘Japanese’ style – indeed Heijokyan – but ‘Indian’-style elements introduced by Chogen, particularly the brackets and braces, were retained, and the karahafu over the entrance is a ‘Zen Chinese’ feature.

2.210b

878

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

›2.211

K YO T O , C H O I N , S A N M O N , 1619. One of the largest temples in Kyoto, Choin was founded to protect the mausoleum of the priest Honen Shonin (1133–1212), one of the principal authors of the Shin Jodo sect. Largely destroyed in the civil strife of the 15th and 16th centuries, it was rebuilt under the patronage of the early Tokugawa shoguns. The Sanmon emulates the Nandaimon of Todai-ji in scale but amplifying the form of the Daitoku-ji Sanmon,2.182a and is considered the masterpiece of the type.

879

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

TE M P LE S A N D S H R I N E S Not without Muromachi precedent, Momoyama and Tokugawa builders developed a hybrid style (setchuyo) from the cross-fertilization of the ‘Japanese’, ‘Zen Chinese’ and even the ‘Indian’ styles in their vast programmes of reconstruction after the three hundred years of internecine strife and destruction which followed the decline of the Kamekura bakufu. Apart from the Todai-ji Daibutsuden, destroyed in 1567 but replaced with prolix eclecticism after 1684,2.210 among the most prominent examples are the gates and halls of the Kyoto Choin and Nishi Hongan-ji. 2.211, 2.212

2.212a

› 2 . 2 1 2 K YO T O , N I S H I H O N G A N - J I : (a, b) interior, and Goei-do (Founder’s Hall, 1636), with Hondo (Amidado, 1760, background). Founded in 1224 by the priest Shinran Shonin of the Shin Jodo sect, Nishi Hongan-ji became the headquarters of the sect in 1591 with the blessing of Hideyoshi. The Goei-do (57 metres long) marks the apotheosis of the gejin as a vast space for assembled worshippers before the screened shrine to the founder and several other compartments. To the north, but also facing east, the Amidado (in which Amida is enshrined with Prince Shotoku) is only slightly less expansive.

2.212b

880

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.213a

›2.213

2.213b

Quite the most spectacular results of cross-fertilization – bizarre some would say – are in the Tokugawa gongen zukuri (‘incarnation structure’) mausolea (reibyo) at Nikko on the slopes of the holy Mount Nantai. Nikko was not only colonized by the esoteric Tendai but also was dedicated to a rare syncretism between Shinto, Jodo and Zen in the abode of three fertility spirits identified as manifestations (gongen) of Amida Kwannon and Yakushi. Such syncretism was clearly not without its appeal to the

N I K K O : (a–e) Toshogu, shrine of Ieyasu,

Hideyoshi and Yoritomo), drum tower, Yomei-mon with detail, karamon of inner shrine compound and overview; (f–h) Taiyuin (shrine of Iemitsu, 1653), details of haiden and honden. At the top of a flight of steps, well within the sanctuary enclosure and beyond a range of storehouses, is the Yomei-mon (Gate of Sunlight), a prodigiously ornamented two-storey variation on the type of the karamon moved to the Nishi Hongan-ji from Hideyoshi’s Fushimi. Within, the upper precinct is flanked by shrines including the Goma-do (Sacred Fire Temple) to the right and Mikoshi-gura for reliquary palanquins to the left. In the centre, another elaborate karamon, with karahafu to all sides like the Yomei-mon but of only one storey, leads through a protective grille to the main sanctuary largely occupied by the tripartite Hon-den in which Ieyasu is venerated with Hideyoshi and Yoritomo. Gilding overwhelms the black lacquer of the basic trabeated structure. The Daiyuin shrine of Iemitsu (1653) is relatively more restrained – at least in sculptural detail. Precedents for the type of tripartite complex with two buildings joined by a narrower gallery were found in the Kitano shrine in Kyoto, for example, built in the 10th century for Sugawara no Michizane and rebuilt under the second Tokugawa in 1607, in the mid-14th century Kaisando of Muso Soseki and in the late-16th-

2.213c

2.212d

881

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.213e

first Tokugawa, bent on reunifying Japan after centuries of internecine strife and asserting his political pretensions in a syncretic Shinto-Buddhist monument of unprecedented opulence. He reputedly confided his wish to be buried on the mountain to the abbot of the Tendai Mangan-ji, the principal temple of Nikko.The abbot removed his remains from Kuno-san, where they had been interred provisionally on his death in 1616.His mausoleum,the Toshogu,was not begun until 1634 under the direction of his grandson,

2.213f

882

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.213g

883

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

Iemitsu, who built another for himself, the Daiyuin, some twenty years later.2.213 While constructing his grandfather’s tomb, Iemitsu did much to consolidate the centralizing structure of his state, and recalling the power of Tendai Enryaku-ji to overawe past administrations in Kyoto from its stronghold on Mount Hiei, he extended his patronage to the other sects at Nikko. Within little more than a decade the triad of fertility spirits had been enshrined in the huge Sambutsu-do, the largest building on the site, eclipsing the Mangan-ji, which was rebuilt on a smaller scale as Rinno-ji.

I M P E R I A L R E S TO R AT I O N With the restoration of power to the Meiji emperor following the humiliation of the Tokugawa shogun by the Americans, foreign technology and foreign political ideals were readily espoused and Japan was transformed incredibly quickly. Still the emperor survived: patron of change, indeed, he emerged enhanced from the centuries of his eclipse.Traditionally he is believed to be of divine descent – but so too is his nation. With the reconstitution of the empire along Western lines under the Meiji, the descent of the imperial line from Amaterasu was given new stress, distinguishing it from other Japanese, in line with European ideas of divine right. But if the emperor’s descent was superior to that of his people, their descent from the divine entourage made them superior to all others. The consequences go far beyond the concern of this book – as do the details of Japan’s transition from feudal obscurity to world power in little more than a generation. However, the revival of Shintoism and the proliferation of Shinto architecture along the lines preserved at Ise, also incorporating the imported hypostyle hall as it had developed over the millennium between Ise and Nikko, take our history of Japanese architecture full circle.2.214 884

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

2.213h

century Hokoku shrine of Toyotomi Hideyoshi (in Kyoto, destroyed). As to detail, once-structural elements were multiplied, contrary to structural logic (but in the case of the lever arm, not without precedent in Karyo practice), and transformed with ornament in disguise of practical purpose (like the frog-leg strut which had begun as intermediate support spreading the load of beams between columns, but was now an excuse for sculptural ingenuity).

2.214a

›2.214

T O K YO , M E I J I J I N G U , 1920, reconstructed after war damage in 1958: (a, b) gate and shrine. The Meiji Jingu enshrines the fertility spirits of the Meiji emperor (1868–1912) and his empress. A variant on the Nagare style of Shinto shrine, itself developed from the Shinmei style of Ise and, beyond that, the Yayoi granary, the Meiji Jingu amplifies the scale of the prototype to that of the average Buddhist hypostyle kondo. In place of the extended roof of the Nagare type, forming a portico, it incorporates the karahafu which, crossed with the massive pitched roof, was common in Buddhist architecture – and shoin-style residences – since the great age of reconstruction began with the termination of civil strife by the Tokugawa in 1600.

2.214b

885

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT »HEAVEN’S EMPIRES

glossary flat slab forming the top of a capital. highest part or citadel of a city, usually the area containing the principal public buildings. A E D I C U L E ornamental niche housing a sacred image, for example. A G O R A open space used, for example, as marketplace or assembly area. A I S L E side passage of a church or temple, running parallel to the nave and separated from it by columns or piers. A L I N G A L I N G blind wall in a traditional Balinese house, preventing entry by evil spirits who cannot turn corners. A M B U L AT O R Y semi-circular or polygonal arcade or walkway surrounding, for example, a sanctuary. A N D A burial mound at the centre of a stupa, usually in the form of a solid dome. A N G diagonal cantilevered beam. A N TA R A L A passage or vestibule before a sanctuary in a Hindu temple. A PA D A N A columned hypostyle hall usually square in plan, with portico on one or more sides. A PA S A R A in Hundu and Buddhist mythology, a female nature-spirit associated with clouds and water. A P S E semi-circular domed or vaulted space, especially at one end of a basilica, hence A P S I D A L , in the shape of an apse. A R C A D E a series of arches supported by columns, sometimes paired and covered so as to form a walkway. A R C A - G R I H A image-chamber in a Buddhist shrine. A R C H I T R A V E one of the three principal elements of an entablature, positioned immediately above the capital of a column, and supporting the frieze and cornice. A R C U AT E shaped like an arch. Hence (of a building) A R C U AT E D , deploying arch structures (as opposed to trabeated). A S T R A G A L small moulding with circular or semi-circular crosssection. A V A R A N A - D E V ATA attendant or subsidiary deity in the Hindu pantheon. A X I S M U N D I pole of the god Indra in Vedic iconography. A YO D H YA generic Vedic term for city of the gods. A Z E K U R A storerooms in a Japanese Buddhist temple complex. ABACUS

ACROPOLIS

in Khmer architecture, the temple mountain. Balinese sleeping pavilion. B A N G A L D A R Bengali form of roof with a central curved ridge, highest in the centre. Derivatives are D O - C H A L A , a roof curving down from the centre in two segments, and C H O U - C H A L A , curving down in four segments (hipped). B A O S H A N C H E N G palisade surrounding the tumulus of a Ming tomb. B A R A Y Khmer reservoir. B A KO N G BALE

886

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT

fortified structure at the entry to a town or city, often straddling a gateway. B A R G E B O A R D board – usually decorated – sited at the gable end of the pitches of a roof. B A S I L I C A temple or other public building, consisting principally of a colonnaded rectangular space with an apse at one end, generally enclosed by an ambulatory, or having a central nave and side aisles, and lit by a clerestory. B A S T I O N structure projecting from the angle of a defensive wall enabling enhanced vision and mobility for a garrison. B AT T E R I N G reinforcement of walls and column bases by building sloping supporting structure. B A W - G A H S U A N G storage place in a Baganese monastery. B E A M horizontal element in, for instance, a trabeated structure. B H U M I J A type of northern Hindu temple superstructure composed of superimposed rows of miniature shrine motifs between vertical bands. B O D H I S AT T V A previous incarnation of the Buddha, a compassionate spirit. B U K E - Z U K U R I residence of the samurai class. B U T S U D E N a Japanese Buddha hall. BARBICAN

Indo-Indonesian royal sepulchre. top part of a column, supporting the entablature. C E L L A the sanctuary of a temple, usually containing the cult statue. C H A D YA cornice, awning, eave. C H A I T YA shrine or other sacred place or object. C H A I T YA - G R I H A type of Buddhist shrine evolved from a meetinghall. C H A N G J O N great hall of state. C H A N K A M A / C H A N K YA M A promenade. C H AT T R A V A L I tiers forming the chattri on top of the mound of a stupa. C H AT T R I an umbrella-shaped dome or pavilion, sometimes acting as a turret on the roof of a stupa. C H AT U R M U K H A four-sided temple. C H E D I in Thailand, a stupa built to house a relic of the Buddha or an important person. C H I G A I D A N A a shelf or alcove for displaying art and art objects in a mature shoin. C H I G I crossed finials or ornamental additions to the roof of a Shinto temple. C H ’ I M J O N residential pavilion. C H I W E I decorative finial on the apex of a roof, often in the form of fish tails or dragons. C H O D A I G A M A E alcove for sleeping, in a mature shoin. CANDI

C A P I TA L

administrative precinct in imperial palace. state reception hall in imperial palace. C H O N G J O N main shrine in a Korean temple. C H O R T E N bottle-shaped Tibetan stupa. C H O S H U D E N assembly hall in imperial palace. C H U M O N principal gate inside outer gate of a Japanese Buddhist shrine, usually in teh centre of the compound’s main enclosure. C H U S I M P ’ O system of brackets supported only on pillars and struts, in contrast to TA S I M P ’ O . C I TA D E L fortress, usually at the highest part of a town. C L E R E S T O R Y windowed upper level, providing light from above for a double-storey interior. C L O I S T E R covered arcade, often running around the perimeter of an open courtyard. C O L O N N A D E line of regularly spaced columns. C O L U M N vertical member, usually circular in cross-section, functionally structural or ornamental or both, comprising (usually) a base, shaft, and capital. C O R B E L support bracket, usually stone, for a beam or other horizontal member. Hence C O R B E L L E D , forming a stepped roof by deploying progressively overlapping corbels. C O R N I C E projecting moulding forming the top part of an entablature. More generally,a horizontal ornamental moulding projecting at the top of a wall or other structure. C R E N E L L AT I O N indentation in the upper part of a battlement. C R E P I D O M A steps forming the platform of a temple. C U P O L A hemispherical dome forming the roof of all or (especially a relatively small) part of a building which may not itself be of circular plan. C U S P projection formed between two arcs, especially in stone tracery, hence C U S P E D . C Y M A R E C TA wave-shaped moulding, usually forming all or part of a cornice, the upper part being convex and the lower concave. C Y M A R E V E R S A wave-shaped moulding, usually forming all or part of a cornice, the upper part being concave and the lower convex.

law, doctrine, or righteousness. large hall with a ceremonial or religious function. D I S T Y L E a portico with two columns. D O M A beaten earth floor of a farmhouse. D O R M E R rectilinear horizontal/vertical structure piercing a sloping roof. D O U G O N G combination of D O U and G O N G at the top of a column and supporting upper elements. D O U block, usually timber at the top of a column and supporting upper elements. D U R B A R royal assembly or audience. D V A R A door. D Z O N G Tibetan monastery.

CHODOIN

DHARMA

CHODO SEIDEN

DIAN

the part of a roof which overhangs the outer face of a wall. an opening or indentation in a wall or parapet. E N TA B L AT U R E that part of the façade of a temple, etc., which is immediately above the columns, and is generally composed of architrave, frieze and cornice. E N TA S I S slight bulge in a column, designed to overcome the optical illusion which would otherwise occur of a straight column being slightly concave, or waisted around the middle. EAVES

EMBRASURE

harmonization with nature, hence geomantic system of bringing a building into harmony. F E N S H E N G M I N G L O U ‘spirit tower’ through which the tumulus of a Ming tomb is reached. F I L I G R E E decorative work formed from a mesh or by piercing material to give the impression of a mesh. F I N I A L ornament at the top of a gable or roof, for example. F R I E Z E the middle part of an entablature, above the architrave and below the cornice. More generally, any horizontal strip decorated in relief. FENG SHUI

Indonesian stepped pyramid. small square space serving as the inner sanctum of a Hindu temple. G A V A K S H A lunette or horseshoe-shaped window or gable. G E multi-storey pavilion housing an image of Guanyin. G E J I N area for worship in front of the main hall of a Buddhist temple complex. G E YA space surrounding the central area of a house. G H A N A D V A R A false or blind door in Hindu temple. G I YO - D E N antechamber in imperial palace. G O M PA Tibetan Buddhist monastery. G O N G curved cantilevered cross-beam, usually timber, on top of a dou and supporting the main beam. GAPURA

GARBHA-GRIHA

the middle part, between base and cornice, of, for instance, a pedestal, or the lower part of a wall when treated as a continuous pedestal. D A G O B A Buddhist reliquary, usually in the shape of a dome. D A I B U T S U D E N hall housing a massive statue of the Buddha. D A I D A R I imperial palace compound. D A I G O K U D E N principal imperial hall of state. D A I R I private apartments in imperial palace. D A I T E N S H U great castle keep. D A O the hidden power of nature, hence D A O I S T . D E Confucian ideal of virtue. DADO

887

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT

Daoist temple or palace. type of hall embracing a sanctuary or incarnation structure, expressed externally. G O P U R A gatehouse to temple. G O T E N palace of the Asuka period. G U primitive Pyu form of pahto.

a square vimana, part of the typical Cham shrine. water pitcher or vase in Vedic iconography. K A P O TA eave-like cornice. K A R A H A F U undulating ‘Chinese’-style gable. K A R A N G B I N T U L U all-seeing eye over huge fanged teeth and supporting a Meru. K A R A YO ‘Zen Chinese’ style of temple architecture. K A R N A K A pointed astragal moulding. K AT O M A D O cusped arched window. K H U R A floorslab with curved shoulder. K I N G P O S T principal vertical structural element supporting a roof. K I R T I M U K H A leonine monster in Vedic cosmology, and hence its stylized representation. K O Chinese multi-storey pavilion. K O D O lecture hall in a temple complex. K O F U N burial mound: by extension the name given to a dynasty ruling Japan c. 300–700. K O N D O central sanctuary building or image hall of a Japanese Buddhist temple. K O R YO curved lateral ‘rainbow’ beams. K O S H I N D E N secondary shinden. K R AT O N court or palace of early Indonesian rulers. K U type of Thai altar shrine. K U M B H A bulbous water pot of early Water Cosmology, and hence derivative torus moulding. K U M U D A torus moulding, either semi-circular or chamfered (alternative term for kumbha, especially in the south). K U TA G A R A pavilion on the terrace of a palace. K YO Z O library or sutra store in a Japanese Buddhist monastery.

GONG

KALAN

GONGEN ZUKURI

KALASHA

HACHIMAN-ZUKURI

a simplified gongen-zukuri, where the Shinto god Hachiman is worshipped. H A I D E N a building for public worship,usually in front of a Shinto sanctuary. H A M S A goose in Vedic iconography. H A R M I K A part of the structure of a stupa. H AT T O lecture hall of a ‘Zen Chinese’ monastery. H I N A YA N A the lesser vehicle towards salvation in the Buddhist tradition (as opposed to M A H A YA N A ). H I N O K I cypress wood. H I R A J I R O castle sited on open, flat ground, defended chiefly by rivers, swampy terrain and man-made moats. H I R A YA M A J I R O ‘fortified eminence in a plain’, a castle sited on a hill. H I S A S H I roofed verandah in temple or dwelling. H O J O apartment of the abbot in a ‘Zen Chinese’ monastery. H O K K E D O octagonal shrine in a Japanese Buddhist temple. H O N D E N main hall or sanctuary, usually Shinto. H O N D O main hall of a Japanese temple complex. H O Z O treasure store in an imperial temple complex. H T I sacred parasol attached to the top part of a finial. H U A N G C H E N G walled compound. H Y P O S T Y L E H A L L hall with a roof supported by numerous columns more or less evenly spaced across its area.

Tibetan monastery. covered passage or wall in a garden. L ATA creeper, and hence a particular style of decorative band in the Hindu temple architectural tradition. L AT I N A type of northern Hindu temple superstructure composed of a single body (as opposed to S E K H A R I or B H U M I J A ). L E O G R Y P H fabulous creature with the physical characteristics of a lion. L I N G A phallic emblem, most frequently occurring symbol of Shiva in Hindu iconography. L I N T E L horizontal member over, for example, a window or doorway or bridging the gap between two columns or piers. L O U in Chinese architecture, a watch tower or gatehouse; also a twostorey garden pavilion. L O U G E multi-storey style of pagoda. L U L I residential block or walled district of a town. L U N E T T E semi-circular window or recess, usually at the base of a dome or vault. LAMASERIE

lattice or filigree-patterned screen. J I as a suffix = temple J I A N bays of standard size, together defining the main interior of a building. J I K I D O refectory in a Japanese Buddhist temple complex. J I N J A a Shinto shrine and its environs. J O D O D O a hall where rites promoting rebirth in Paradise are enacted. J O K A M A C H I fortified castle town. J O YA central area of a house. JALI

frog-leg strut. ordination hall or raised platform for the performance of the ordination ceremony. K A I R O cloistered gallery in a Japanese Buddhist temple complex. K A I S H O informal pavilion set in a palace garden. K A I Y U traditional garden embodying symbolic aspects of nature. K A E R A M AT O KAIDAN

888

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT

LANG

gallery or parapet projecting on corbels from the outside of defensive walls, with holes from which missiles might be dropped or thrown. M A G O B I S A S H I verandah under the main roof of a building, often enclosing the H I S A S H I . M A H A L summer-house or pavilion. M A H A YA N A the great vehicle towards salvation in the Buddhist tradition (as opposed to H I N A YA N A ). M A I D A N open field before fort or palace, hence civic park. M A K A R A crocodile-like monster in Vedic iconography. M A K A R A - T O R A N A doorway embellished with makara carvings. M A L U open hall area in southern Korean pavilion. M A N D A L A magical diagram. M A N D A PA hall or pillared pavilion. M A R A B I N H S U A N G assembly room in a Baganese monastery. M E D H I drum forming the base of a stupa. M E N gate. M E R L O N S raised elements of a battlement, alternating with embrasures. M I A O originally an ancestral shrine; later a non-Buddhist temple. M I C H O - D A I empress’s throne. M I K O S H I verandah with its own roof abutting main building. M I N K A Asuka-period house of a commoner. M I T H U N A representation of intimate couple – sometimes shown engaged in sexual intercourse. M I YA Shinto shrine or palace. M I YA N type of pagoda with multiple superimposed cornices. M O K S H A liberation or release. M O K O S H I double-pitched-roofed aisle connecting two storeys of a Japanese temple. M O N D O P = M A N D A PA in a Thai Buddhist temple. M O N G K U T spire in the style of the royal crown or multi-tiered umbrella. M O U L D I N G the contour of a projecting or inset element. M O YA central interior space of a building, especially a Japanese Buddhist temple. M U K H A L I N G A linga with a face (M U K H A ). M U L A P R A S A D A main block of a temple, containing a shrine. M YA N pagoda with multiple superimposed cornices. M A C H I C O L AT I O N

fabulous serpent in Vedic iconography. a type of shrine in which the front roof extends to shelter the stairway. N A G A - T O R A N A doorway embellished with naga carvings. N A I J I N Buddhist temple sanctuary. N A K A B A S H I R A central post in a shoin. N A N D A I M O N south gate of a Buddhist temple enclosure. NAGA

NAGARE-ZUKURI

889

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT

main gate to a Japanese Buddhist shrine, usually at the south of the complex. N A V E central body of principal interior of, for instance, a temple. N I O Buddhist guardian spirits. N I R V A N A in the Buddhist tradition, the blissful end to the human struggle. N O YA N E a ‘hidden roof ’ built over an exposed roof with an independent support system and concealed rafters. NANMON

ceremonial audience pavilion. heated area in a Korean pavilion or house. O R D E R defining feature of architecture, comprising a column together with its entablature. OHIROMA ONDOL

PA D M A

lotus, hence also derived cyma recta or cyma reversa mould-

ing. PA D M A - K U M B H A

combination of mouldings characteristic of, for example, capitals in Hindu temples. PA D M A L ATA bowl with trailing lotus vines in Vedic iconography. PA D M A S A N A a raised stone throne,a seat for the patron deity of a Balinese temple. PA G O D A Buddhist temple in the shape of a many-tiered,many-niched tower. PA H T O Baganese temple. PA I L O U entrance screen. PA L A N Q U I N covered litter with poles for carrying on the shoulders of bearers. PA N C H A YATA N A five-shrine temple complex in the Hindu tradition. PA R A P E T low wall, usually for defensive purposes. PA R S H V A - D E V ATA aspects of the deity in Hindu iconography. P E D E S TA L base supporting, for example, a column or statue. P E D I M E N T triangular area of wall above the entablature. P E I F A N G ceremonial arch embodying an entrance screen. P E N D O P O open pillared pavilion. P H A M S A N A stepped pyramidal type of roof with rectilinear profile. P I E R supporting pillar for a wall or roof, often with a rectangular cross-section and/or formed from a composite mass of masonry columns. P I L A S T E R a pier of rectangular cross-section, more or less integral with and only slightly projecting from the wall it supports. P L I N T H rectangular base or base-support of, for example, a column or wall. P O D I U M continuous base or pedestal consisting of plinth, dado and cornice, to support a series of columns. P O R T I C O entrance to a building, featuring a colonnade. P O S T vertical element in, for example, a trabeated structure. P R A D A K S H I N A ambulatory in Buddhist monastery.

P R A D A K S H I N A - PAT H A

circumambulatory path or passage around a

shrine.

SHASTRA

porch of a Hindu temple. corn cob-shaped tower, part of a Thai temple. P R A S A D A multi-storey structure: mansion, palace or temple. P R A S A D A - V I M A N A palace in a sacred environment, as in a tomb building, for example. P S AT T H AT H S U A N G shrine chamber in a Baganese monastery. P U J A worship. P U R A Balinese temple of public shrine. P U R N A K A L A S H A bowl of plenty in Vedic iconography. P U R U S H A in Brahmanism, the ‘Essence of Existence’. P ’ YO N G J O N pavilion of private audience. PRAGGRIVA PRANG

front hall with a separate roof in a Japanese temple of an esoteric Buddhist sect. R AT H A ritual chariot in Hindu temple. R AT H I K A niche or aedicule. R E L I E F carving typically of figures, raised from a flat background usually by cutting away more (high relief ) or less (low relief ) of the material from which they are carved. R E V E T M E N T decorative reinforced facing for retaining wall, for example. R O N I N warriors without any particular allegiance. RAIDO

Korean Buddhist temple. main compound of Buddhist temple. S A K YA M U N I Prince Siddhartha, the Buddha. S A N M O N main gateway of Buddhist temple enclosure in the ‘Zen Chinese’ tradition. S A M U R A I hereditary professional warrior. S A M V A R A N A pyramidal hall roof with tiers of bell-shaped mouldings. S A N G G A H Balinese ancestral or family shrine. S A N G H A order of monks, especially Buddhist, hence S A N G H A R A M A abode of Buddhist order, monastery. S A N U abbot’s residence in a Baganese monastery. S A R D U L A leogryph in Hindu iconography. S E K H A R I type of northern Hindu temple superstructure composed of a cluster of spire-like forms (as opposed to L AT I N A ). S E R D A B subterranean room. S E T C H U YO hybrid style of architecture. S H A K A Japanese name for S A K YA M U N I . S H A K H A conceptualized branches depicted in the principal members of a temple doorway in Vedic iconography. S H A K T I active or imminent aspect of deity personified as consort in Hindu iconography. S H A N mountain. SA

SAI-IN

890

gatehouse to a tomb or temple architectural treatise in Vedic literature. S H E N D A O spirit path in a Ming tomb. S H E N G blocks on a G O N G supporting a beam. S H I K H A R A superstructure of a northern Hindu temple. S H I N D E N principal building of a Heian or Kamakura palace compound or an upper-class residence, generally in the form of a hypostyle hall. S H I N D E N - Z U K U R I type of residence centring on a shinden. S H I N N O M I H A S H I R A central post for the descent of the kami in a Shinto shrine. S H I N T O native Japanese polytheistic religion. S H I R O Japanese castle of the Heian period. S H I S H I N - D E N imperial audience hall. S H I Z O K U pensioned samurai. S H O D E N shrine building whose style is based on that of a granary. S H O G U N military leader or dictator. S H O I N originally a large reception room of the Momoyama period, subsequently the most important building in late-medieval houses of the warrior class, planned axially with changes of floor level, hence S H O I N S T Y L E of building; also a library or alcove for reading. S H O I N - Z U K U R I type of residence that included a shoin. S H O J I sliding door composed of a wooden latticed frame covered with translucent white paper. S H U D E N main reception room of a palace. S H U R O bell-tower of a Japanese Buddhist temple compound. S I Buddhist temple. S I H E Y U A N courtyard housing, ubiquitous in Ming and Qing China. S I M = V I H A R A in Thai Buddhist architecture. S I M E N TA type of pagoda with entrances on four sides. S O B O dormitory in a Japanese Buddhist monastery. S O C L E base or pedestal. S TA M B H A pillar or post. S T E L E upright stone marker in shape of column or panel, usually with decorative carving and/or inscription. S T R I N G C O U R S E projecting horizontal course of structural elements or moulding. S T U PA pre-eminent type of Buddhist monument, a tumulus, burial or reliquary mound, always freestanding, characteristically comprising a circular drum (M E D H I ) forming the base for a massive solid dome (A N D A ), topped by a turret (C H AT T R I ). S T Y L O B AT E top step of a crepidoma, forming the base for a colonnade. S U K I YA S H O I N mature shoin or pavilion embracing space for tea ceremony among other things. S W A S T I K A cross in fragmentary squares, symbol of solar movement. SHANMEN

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT

altar or pagoda. frog-leg strut. TA H O T O single-storey pagoda. TA I H E I Z U K A bottle-shaped strut. TA I L I A N G pillar-and beam framing system supporting a heavy tiled roof. TA I N O YA side pavilion of a Heian-period palace. TA I S H A type of Shinto shrine. TA K A M I - K U R A emperor’s throne. TA N G porch or, later, monumental hall. TA N T R I S M Buddhist doctrine associated with a group of mystical works – the TA N T R A S . TA S I M P ’ O system in which clusters of brackets are repeated in midbeam as well as over columns, in contrast to C H U S I M P ’ O . TATA M I rectangular floor-mats, of more or less standard size, made mainly of rushes. T E N J I K U YO ‘Indian’ style of temple architecture. T E N S H U castle keep. T I N G garden belvedere or pavilion, usually open-sided. T I R T H A in the Hindu tradition a fording place,place of spiritual regeneration, and hence a temple, thus T I R T H A N K A R A ford-maker. T O K O sleeping platform in a traditional farmhouse. T O K O M A alcove for sitting, in a mature shoin. T O K O N O M A alcove for the display of decorative objects or paintings, in a mature shoin. T O R A N A ceremonial portal or portal motif. T O R I I gateway to a Shinto shrine. T O R U S large convex moulding, typically at the base of a column, of more or less semi-circular cross-section. T R A B E AT E D structurally dependent on rectilinear post and beam supports. T R A N S O M cross-bar or lintel, especially of a window. T S U K E S H O E N alcove for writing, in a mature shoin. T S U R I D O N O a Japanese garden pavilion, ideally built partially over water, for fishing and contemplation of views. T U G O N G Korean system of brackets supporting a pitched roof. T U M U L U S ancient burial mound. T Y M PA N U M triangular area of a pediment enclosed by cornices above and entablature below; an area, usually recessed, formed by a lintel below and an arch above. TA

UBOSOT

the holiest structure in a wat.

TA E G O N G

891

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT

vehicle or mount of a god. thunderbolt of the god Indra in the Vedic tradition. V A S T U residence. V A S T U P U R U S H A residence of the gods, especially as embodied in Vedic literature. V A S T U P U R U S H A M A N D A L A diagram for the residence of the P U R U S H A , the formula for sacred building. V A S T U S H A S T R A traditional science of architecture. V A U LT structure forming an arched roof over a space. V E D I K A railing, especially of sacred enclosure. V E R A N D A H roofed colonnade attached to the side or the sides of a building. V I H A R A monastery or residential quarters of Buddhist monastery. V I H A R N = V I H A R A in Thai architecture but not residential. V I M A N A storeyed building with receding terraces, used in the south as the main element of the sanctuary (equivalent to northern M U L A P R A S A D A ). V O L U T E scroll or spiral ornamental and/or support member. V YA L A lion or leopard in Hindu iconography. VAHANA VAJRA

Buddhist temple/monastery, particularly in Thailand, Cambodia or Laos. W AT T L E A N D D A U B method of making walls using thin twigs (wattles) interwoven and then plastered with mud or clay (daub). W A YO ‘Japanese’ style of temple architecture. W AT

summer-house or gazebo. so-called land-boat garden pavilion (also X I E or F A N G ), a summer-house reserved for study.

XIA

XUAN

masculine tree-spirit. feminine tree-spirit. YA S H T I shaft or mast associated with the god Indra. YO G I N I embodiments of working energy in Hindu iconography, subservient to S H A K T I . Y U A N garden or courtyard, also part of the grounds of a monastery. YA K S H A

YA K S H I N I

ZEDI

Baganese stupa.

further reading This set of volumes, Architecture in Context, is based on a survey series of lectures covering the whole spectrum of architectural history developed over a quarter of a century at the Canterbury School of Architecture. It is therefore impossible, even if it were desirable, to enumerate all the books that I have consulted and, in one way or another, depended on, over that period. Beyond students of architecture, for whom this whole process was initiated, I hope that the present work will provide the general reader with a broad but also reasonably deep introduction to the way our environment has been moulded over the past five thousand years. With this in mind, rather than a bibliography, I hope it will be useful if I provide a rough guide to how I would go about developing a course in further reading, were I starting now. First, I would consult the Grove Dictionary of Art, as much for the bibliographies attached to each section of each subject as for the individual articles – inevitably some are better than others as different authors naturally bring different standards of scholarship to bear on their products. Second, for greater depth and breadth, I would consult The Pelican History of Art, now published by Yale University Press. Notable for the scope of this book are J.C. Harle, The Art and Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent, Laurence Sickman and Alexander Soper, The Art and Architecture of China (New Haven and London 1971) and Robert Treat Paine and Alexander Soper, The Art and Architecture of Japan (New Haven and London 1981). Again, the bibliographies appended to each volume will be an invaluable guide to even broader and deeper reading. Taschen (under the indefatigable editorship of Henri Stierlin) and Könemann have both published lavishly illustrated multi-volume series that have perhaps been over-ambitious and therefore incomplete. Despite this, many readers will find them extremely valuable, often for their text, always for their magnificent illustrations. Third: specific histories of architecture. As any student of the subject knows, the inescapable primer is the work first published in 1896 by Sir Banister Fletcher as A History of Architecture on the Comparative Method: that was essentially a catalogue arranged roughly chronologically by area but as the method was gradually superseded more room was found in the later-20th-century editions for essential analysis. Beyond that, from my view in the 1970s the most useful general survey of architectural history was the multi-volume series initiated by Electa in Milan, edited by Pier Luigi Nervi and published in English by Abrams (and later by others): it had its flaws, not least in the relationship of text to illustrations, and much was lost in translation from the authors’ native languages into English. However, the

892

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT

range of scholars involved was impressive and, despite their age, some of the material not otherwise easily available is still essential reading. In general, finally there are numerous one-volume histories of architecture – ranging from the mystical to the prosaic: it would be invidious to impose my choice of author – and, therefore, approach – but I do think the further reader will be stimulated by the consideration of both sides to the Pevsner–Watkin debate. In particular, 1 S O U T H A S I A : I would draw the reader’s attention to the bibliography in my The History of Architecture in India (London 1990, 1994), notably the invaluable The Art of Ancient India by S. and J.C. Huntington (New York and Tokyo, 1985), The Penguin Guide to the Monuments of India by George Michell (London 1989), and the Encyclopaedia of Indian Temple Architecture, edited by M.W. Deiste and M.A. Dhaky (Princeton, various dates); 2 SOUTH-EAST ASIA: the various works of Jacques Dumarçay on the temples of Java, and more generally Helen Ibbitson Jessup’s works on Indonesia and Cambodia, Worshiping Siva and Buddha by A.R. Kinney (Honolulu 2003), The Temples and Sculpture of Southeast Asia by Louis Frédéric (London 1965), the various works of Claude Jacques and Michael Freeman on Cambodia and Thailand, Jean Laur’s very helpful illustrated guide to the monuments of Angkor (Paris 2002), the various works of Paul Strachan on Pagan, the catalogue to the exhibition The Kingdom of Siam edited by F. McGill and M.L. Pattaratorn Chirapravati (San Francisco and Salem 2005), Cham Art by Emmaneul Guillon (Bangkok 2001), and the Musée Guimet exhibition catalogue to Trésors d’Art du Vietnam, edited by Thierry Zéphir (Paris 2005); 3 CENTRAL AND EAST ASIA: Chinese Architecture by Laurence G. Liu (London 1989), Chinese Architecture edited by Nancy S. Steinhardt (New Haven, London and Beijing 2002), on which, in particular, we have based plans of serveral early Chinese cities, K. and A.S. Larsen’s Lhasa Atlas (Boston 2001), and the Royal Academy of Arts’ exhibition catalogue to Wisdom and Compassion: The Sacred Art of Tibet by Marylin M. Rhie and Robert A.F. Thurman (London and New York 1992), The Arts of Korea edited by Kim Choung Ki, Hwang Su Yong and Chung Young Ho (6 volumes, Seoul 1974 and 1979), Korea: Art and Archaeology by Jane Portal (London 2000), Korean Ancient Palaces (Seou 1993), and Japanese Art by Joan Stanley Baker (London 1984). My own dependence on the contributors to the series cited in the second and third paragraphs above – and relevant works inadvertently omitted from the list in the fourth paragraph – will be apparent to many readers – especially the authors themselves to whom I apologize for any unwitting offence.

south-east asia

•P’yongyang •Seoul

Beijing•

IS

TA

CHINA •Lanzhou

•Srinagar

N

•Taiyuan

•Xi’an

Lahore• •Amritsar s u d In •Delhi •Agra

NE

Chongqing•

L

• Kathmandu

B H U TA N

Calcutta•

•Changsha

East China Sea

Fuzhou•

Xiamen• Xijiang (Pearl River)

•Kunming

•Guangzhou

PACIFIC OCEAN

BURMA Mandalay•

•Hanoi

L

BANGLADESH

INDIA •Nagpur

Shanghai•

Chengdu• PA

Ganges

•Ahmadabad

•Osaka

TA I W A N

K

I-

A O

Loungphrabang•

S

•Mumbai

IL ES

SRI LANKA

M A L A Y S IA

M

AL

AY

SI

A

S u m a

Kalimantan

tr a Java

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT

IN

•Ho Chi Minh City

INDONESIA

893

P

South China Sea

IP

CAMBODIA

VIETNAM

Madras• Bangkok•

H

•Da Nang

THAILAND

Phom• Penh Indian Ocean

P

Rangoon•

g on ek M

Viangchan• Bay of Bengal

Bangalore•

•Tokyo

SOUTH KOREA

Y (C ang ha tz ng ek jia ia ng ng )

PA

N

Huanghe (Yellow River)

A H FG N A TA S

NORTH KOREA

JAP

Changchun•

AN

Sea of Japan

MONGOLIA

empires of the indian subcontinent M A U R YA ,

322–185

KUSHANA,

BCE

1ST–3RD

CENTURIES CE

Taxila•

WESTERN SATRAPS

Pataliputra•

Pataliputra•

SATAVAHANAS

CHOLAS PANDYANS

G U P TA , C .

P R AT I H A R A ,

300–700

Added by Samudra Gupta

Empire of Chandra Gupta I

Added by Chandra Gupta II

894

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT

6TH–11TH

CENTURIES

Kanauj•

C H A L U K YA ,

6TH–12TH

CENTURIES

PA L L A V A ,

4TH–9TH

CENTURIES

•Basavakalyan Badami•

Kanchi•

CHOLA,

10TH–13TH

CENTURIES

•Gangaikondacholapuram Thanjavur•

895

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT

china: states

Heilongjiang

MONGOLIA

Jilin

U

pp

er

M

o

o ng

li

a

Liaoning NORTH KOREA

Beiijing

Shanxxi

Tianjin

SOUTH KOREA

Shandong

Jiaangsu Henan Anhui

Qinghai

Shaanxi

Ningxia

Gansu

Hebei

Xinjiang

Xizang Hubei Sichuan

Zhejiang

L

Hunan B H U TA N Guizhou

Fujian

PA

Jiangxi

NE

TA I W A N INDIA

Yu n n a n

Guangxi

VIETNAM

BURMA

LAOS THAILAND

896

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT

Guangdong

china: dynasties SHANG, C.

1600–C.1046

CHOU, C.

BCE

1050–C.255

BCE

Yin (Anyang)•

QIN,

221–207

HAN,

BCE

Xianyang•

897

Hao• (Xi’an)

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT

203

BCE–220 CE

Chang’an•

SIX DYNA STIE S,

TA N G ,

222–589

618–907

Eastern Wu, 222–80 Eastern Jin, 265–420 Song, 420–79) Qi, 479–502 Liang, 502–57 Chen, 557–89

Chang’an•

Jianye•

FIVE DYNA STIE S,

907–960

NORTHERN SONG,

•Luoyang

960–1127

Later Liang, 907–23 Later Tang, 923–36 Later Jin, 936–47 Later Han, 947–51 or 982 Later Zhou, 951–60

Luoyang•

898

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT

•Kaifeng (Bian)

•Kaifeng

SOUTHERN SONG,

1127–1279

YUAN,

1271–1368

Dadu• (Beijing)

Hangzhou•

MING,

1388–1662

QING,

Beijing •

Nanjing •

899

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT

1616–1912

Beijing •

•Shenyang

cambodia LAOS THAILAND

•Siempang

•Boung Long

•Phnom Thbeng Meanchey •Sisophon Angkor Wat •Siem Reap •Battambang

T O N L E S A P

•Kampong Thom •Kratie

•Pursat

Senmonorom

Mekong

Kampong Chhnang•

•Kampong Cham

•Krong Koh Kong

Phnon• Penh Kampong Speu•

•Prey Veng •Ta Khmau Bassak •Svay Rieng

GULF OF THAILAND

•Takeo

Sihanoukville•

900

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT

•Kampot

VIETNAM

korea

Ch’ongjin•

CHINA

•Kanggye

Kimch’aek•

•Kusong NORTH KOREA

•Wonsan •P’yongyang

EAST SEA •Changyon

•Ch’orwon •Haeju •Munsan

Kangnung•

•Seoul

•Wonju

Suwon• SOUTH KOREA

YELLOW SEA

Kunsan•

g •Ch’ongju an -g m u K •Taejon

•Andong

•P’phang

•Chonju •Ulsan

•Kwangju

•Pusan

JAPAN

901

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT

japan RUSSIA

•Sapporo Hokkaido

•Aomori NORTH KOREA •Akita

•Morioka

SEA OF JAPAN

•Sendai

Yamagata• Sado

•Niigata

•Fukushima

Honshu Toyama Maebashi• • Kanazawa• Nagano• SOUTH KOREA

Tottori•

Okayama• Hiroshima• Yamagochi• Fukuoka• •Saga Nagasaki•

Oita•

Kyushu

•Kagoshima

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT

Gifu• •Nagoya

•Shizuoka

Kyoto• •Otsu Kobe• •Tsu Osaka• •Nara

•Wakayama • •Matsuyama Tokushima Kochi• Shikoku

•Kumamoto

•Miyazaki

902

Takamatsu•

•Mito

Urawa• Tokyo• •Chiba •Yokohama

Fukui•

Matsue•

Utsunomiya •

PAC I F I C O C E A N

index Page numbers in italics denote an illustration and/or caption. abacus 122 Abhayagiri 226 ablution tanks 131, 144, 227, 320 Achaemenids 221 aedicules 95, 111, 123, 156, 188, 191, 202, 306, 397 Agastya 299 Aggabodhi IV, King 237 agni-curna 211 Agung, Mount 339 Aihole 90, 91–4; Durga Temple 90, 91, 91, 92; Lad Khan 91, 92, 93, 94; Meguti 93, 93, 94, 110 Ainu 808 Airlangga, King 317, 317, 320, 333, 334 Ajanta 34–5, 52, 57; chaitya-griha 32, 78, 79–80; ecxavation at 32, 33, 33, 77–8; vihara shirne 80, 81 Ajatashatru 20 Alaumgsithu 439 Alaungpaya, King 468 Alexander of Macedon 21 aling aling 336, 341, 341 Altan Khan 671 amalaka 81, 157, 185, 196 Amarapura 445, 450; Bagaya Kaynag 453, 454 Amaravati 39, 389; great stupa at 54–5, 55, 233 Amaterasu 749, 750, 750, 751, 774–5, 777, 782 Ambarnath: Ambaranatha temple 176, 177 Amber 217 ambulatories 91, 92, 93, 110, 115, 125, 152, 153, 158, 429 Amitabha (Amida) cult 44, 48–9, 537, 538, 785, 794, 794, 870 Amshuvarma, King 253, 255 Anak Wungsu, King 334 Anawrahta, King 422–3, 424, 427, 443 anda 233, 360, 427, 428, 446, 447, 459, 460, 494 Andhra 23 Andhradesa 54

903

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT

Angkor 351–87, 417, 467; Ak Yum 349, 352; Bakong 354, 355–7, 355, 356, 375; Baksei Chamkrong 362, 363; Banteag Kidei 404; Banteay Samre 379, 386–7; Baphuon 372, 374–5; Bayon 404, 410–11, 413–14; Beng Mealea 375, 379, 404; building by Jayavarman VII 402–15; Cham reversal 401–15; Lolei complex 358–9; Neak Preah 408; Neak Prean 403, 406–7; Phimeanakas 371–2, 372, 373, 374, 413; Phnom Bakheng 357, 358, 359, 360; Phnom Krom 358, 360; Prasat Kleung 371, 372; Prasat Kok Po 354; Prasat Kravan 362–3, 363; Pre Rup 362, 362–3, 366, 368; Preah Khan 404, 406, 407, 408, 413; Preah Ko 354, 354, 358; sacked by Chams 388, 388; site plan 358; Ta Keo mountain temple 368, 369, 370–1; Ta Prohm 404, 408, 409, 413; Thommon 378–9, 379 Angkor Borei 345, 346, 348, 351; Ashram Maha Rosei 346, 347, 348, 353 Angkor Thom 372, 375–6, 404, 408, 409, 413 Angkor Wat 375, 378, 379, 379–80, 379, 380–1, 382, 384, 387, 402, 404, 459 Aninditapura 349, 351 Anjong: Pongjong 729 antarala 153 antechamber 789, 816 anthropomorphic representation 30, 47, 78 Anuk Wungsu 333 Anuradhapura 218, 219, 220, 221, 237, 243, 446; dagobas 225, 229–31, 230–1, 232–3; monastic complex 225–7, 226, 227, 228; palace buildings 234, 234 Anushapati, King 318, 321 Anyang 514, 515 arca-griha 53, 90, 419, 420, 429, 431, 450 arches: corbelled (torana) 156; flying 159; trefoil 148 Arjuna 62 Arjuna-Semar complex (Java) 297 Arsikeri: Ishvara at 208, 209 Ashikaga Yoshimitus 839 Ashoka, emperor 21, 22, 23, 25, 40, 252–3, 418

Ashukadera 774 assembly halls 225, 500, 502; Bhutanese 701; Tibetan 675, 676, 677, 677 astragal (karnaka) 155, 202 Asukadera 759; Hoko-ji 760 asymmetry, Japanese 766, 802 Atbaichandi temples 146 audience halls 234, 235, 518, 557 Aurangabad 78, 81; vihara shrine at 80, 81 Ava 444, 445, 446; Maha Aungmyre Bonzan 454; stupa and prasada 450 Avalokiteshvara 47, 48, 49, 65, 66, 220, 236, 255, 308, 592, 716, 717 axis mundi 517 Ayodhya 17 Ayutthaya 457, 467–76, 469–80, 481; chedis 474, 475–6, 475, 476; monuments 469–76; palaces 477–8, 477; plan 467; Wat Chaiwathanaram 470, 472, 473; Wat Kuti Dao 479, 480; Wat Phra Ram 469, 471; Wat Phukhao Thong 475; Wat Phutthaisawan 469, 470; Wat Ratchaburana 469, 470, 471, 475; Wat Si Sanphet 470, 474, 475, 475; Wat Suwan Darasam 479, 480 Azes I, King 39 Azuchi 843, 847–8 Bactria 21, 38, 50 Bactrians, Hellenistic 47, 50 Badami 69, 70–1, 74, 82, 91, 110, 110 Badanganj: Damodara 146 Badoli 153, 157; Ghateshvara 153 Badut 297, 297, 320–1 Bagan 422–3, 422–3, 444; Mahabodhi Paya 492; monastic buildings 443, 443; monuments 424–41; pahto 431–9; stupas 424, 424–5, 426–8, 429, 433–4, 443 Bagh 78 Bagiratha 62 bahal 275 Bakai: tomb of Emperor Nintoku 753 Bakong (temple mountain) 354, 355–7, 355, 356, 375 balconies 153, 155, 158, 171, 264, 265

Bali 318, 319, 333–43 bamboo 764, 813 bamboo and mud hut: Bengali 147 Bangkok 481–91; palace pavilions 482; Wat Phra Chetupon 489, 490, 491; Wat Phra Kaeo 483, 484–5, 486, 487–8, 487, 491 Bansberia: Ananta Vasudeva 146 Banteay Chmar 404 Banteay Meanchey: Kbal Sre 362, 365 Banteay Prei Nokor 351 Banteay Srei 368; monastic complex 365, 365, 366–7, 366, 367 Barabar: excavated works 26, 26 bargeboards 500, 502, 506 Bat Chum 362 bathing places: Balinese 334, 335 Bedsa 32, 36, 37 Bedulu, Goa Gajah 335, 335 Behistun 21 Beijing 575, 600, 605, 610, 613, 614–24; Biyun-si 632, 633, 635; courtyard housing 647, 648, 648; defences 614, 614; ‘Forbidden City’ 614, 616–21, 616, 618–19, 620, 621; plan 615; Tanzhe-si 632, 635; Temple of Confucius 637; Tian-Tian 622, 623–4, 623, 624; Tianshoushan tombs 628–9, 628, 629; Xiequ-yuan 665, 667, 668; Yihe-yuan 665, 666–7, 667; Yonghegong 706–7, 708; Yuanming-yuan 665, 665, 667; Zhenjue-si 614; see also Dadu Beikthano 420 bell tower 609, 611 Belur: Chenna-Keshava 202, 203, 206 Bengal 146–7, 304 Besakih: Pura Penataran Agung 342, 343 Bhadravarman 389 Bhagavad-Gita 11, 57 Bhagavati cult 399 Bhaja 32, 33, 36 Bhaktapur 255, 260, 267, 277; Bhairavnatha Mandir 284; Dattatraya Mandir 281–2, 285; Durbar square 272–3; Nyatapola Mandapa 284; sattal temples 284, 285; Siddi Lakshmi Mandir 277; Tadhunchen Bahal 275; Vatsala Durga Mandir 277 Bharhut 47; Great Stupa 27, 30; ‘Palace of the Gods’ 36 Bhatika Abhaya 220

904

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT

Bhatkal: Narayana Temple 95 Bhauma Kharas 180 Bhima 104, 106 Bhitargaon 94; brick Vishnu temple at 86, 88 Bhubaneshvar 66, 157, 180, 181–5, 186; Lingaraja 181, 183, 184–5, 185, 187, 188; Mukteshvar 181, 182, 182–3; Parashurameshvara 94, 94–5, 181; Rajarani 183, 185; Sisireshvara 180, 181; Vaital Deul 180, 181; Varhi temple 181, 183 Bhumija style 157, 175, 179, 179, 186, 193 Bhupatindra Malla 262 Bhutan 595, 688–701; images of Buddhism 688, 689; Potala 696 Bhuvanekabahu IV, king 246 Bihor: Lauriya Nandangarh 22 Bileshwar: Vishnu Temple 95 Bimbisara of Magadha, King 20 Binh Lam 399 blind doors 85, 86 Bodh Gaya 13, 14, 16, 52, 219; Mahabodhi temple 87, 145 Bodhi tree 13, 219, 225, 226 bodhisattva 42, 44, 45–6, 47, 48–9, 51, 52, 54, 291, 294, 540–1 Bodhnath 258; great stupa 256–7, 258 Borneo 291 Borobodur 296, 300; Great Stupa 300, 302–3, 304–7 Boromma-trailokanat, King 468 ‘bowl of plenty’ 72, 76, 81, 86 bracketing: Japanese 763, 763, 817, 819; Korean 729, 731, 731, 734, 735, 736 Brahmanism 9–10, 11, 12, 40, 57, 293, 389 brick 233, 353, 366, 378, 424, 445, 450, 500, 514, 605, 611 Brikuti, Queen 89 bronze casting: and Shang 515 Buddha 13–17, 18, 21, 41, 44–5, 66, 418, 419; classical 46; introduction of image of as obejct of worship 46–7; statue 76 Buddhism 418, 445; assimilation with Hinduism 66, 260, 275, 309; and Ayuttaya 468, 468; and Chams 389–90; and China 538–41, 543, 549, 550, 572–3, 632; in India 40, 41–9, 50–3, 75, 593; in Japan 758–60, 771, 775–6, 810; in Java 292, 293, 295, 309; in Korea 714, 715, 716, 718, 734–5; manifestation of Great Transformation

46–9; in Sri Lanka 218, 219, 219; and Thais 456, 457, 457; in Tibet 592, 598, 688; Wheel of Life 43 building standards: Chinese 561–2; Korean 734–9 burial practices: Han 531, 532; Japan 753, see also tombs Burma/Burmese 375, 419, 457, 467 Butanese building 690–701 butsuden 826 Byodo-in: Hoo-do 795, 795, 796–7, 800 Cambodia 344, 345, 346, 349, 360 candis 296–8, 297, 298, 299, 300, 300, 301–2, 308, 308, 309–14, 320, 321, 324, 325, 325–7, 335, 335 capitals: ‘bowl of plenty’ 81, 86; Chandellas 171; Corinthian 51; early Indian 24; Late Chalukyas 195; Pratihara 156 carpenters: Japanese 765 castle towns: Japanese 854–5, 854 castles: Japanese 812, 843, 847–54, 861, 862 cave temples: Korean 725–6, 727; Sri Lankan 224, 225 ceilings: Chinese 612, 612; Indian 157, 171, 181, 198; Japanese 789, 817, 821–2 cellas 175, 243, 296, 297, 321, 325, 327, 461 Chahamanas 158 chaitya-griha 19, 26, 32–3, 36, 36, 37, 50–1, 56, 78, 78, 79, 91, 543 Chakrasamvara 65 Chaliang 461; Wat Phra Si Ratna 472 Chalukyas 75–6, 79, 121, 190; architecture 110–14; experiments in structure 90–7; Late 191–202, 203 Champa 389, 390, 418 Chams 346, 347, 375, 388–401, 418 Chandellas 158, 168–72, 174, 179 Chandra Gupta 74, 75 Chandra Gupta II 74, 77 Chandra Suriya, King 418 Chandragupta Maurya 20–1, 24, 25 Chang’an 529–30, 530, 533, 551–2, 551, 552, 605, 795, 801; plan 530; Qianing of Gaozong emperor 555, 555, 556; see also Xian Changu Narayan complex (Nepal) 262 Chao Phrya valley 417–18

chatravali 52 Chaudadampur 193; Mukteshvar at 192–3 chedis (stupas) 459; Ayutthayan 474, 475–6; Bangkok 483, 484–5; Lanna 492, 493–4, 493; Sukhothai 459, 460–1, 460, 461, 463, 464, 465 Chen-yen 338–9 Chengde 668, 669, 706, 706–13 Chezarala 56 Chidambaram 131; Nataraja temple 132–3, 132–3 Chieng Mai 457, 498–9; Phra Boromath Doi Suthep 499; Wat Chedi Luang 492; Wat Chet Lot 492–3, 492, 493; Wat Chiang Man 498; Wat Phan Tao 500, 500; Wat Phra Singh 498, 499–500, 500 China 255; beliefs 515–16; and Buddhism 538–41, 543, 549, 550, 572–3, 632; building standards 561–2; Confucianism and Daoism 519–22; gardens 523, 533–4, 568–9, 569, 651–63, 665–8; opening history 512–17; topography 511; town and country planning 523–5; trade 529–30; variety of vernacular traditions 511; see also separate dynasties Chinhan 714 Chittor 152, 211, 212–13, 214–15; Salindheshvara 162 chodaigama 866 Chogen 819, 820 Cholas 75, 190, 214, 236, 237, 238, 317; architecture 121–34 chorten 691, 691 Chosen 734, 739 chusimp’o 729, 735, 736 citadels 390, 690 coinage 39, 39 colour: Japanese 813; and Tibetan interiors 685 columns 153; Chinese 559, 562, 563, 563, 566, 579, 582, 582, 584, 611, 624; Chola 122, 123; Indian 76, 80, 81; Khmer 354, 385, 387; Late Chalukyan 191, 193, 194, 197, 202; Pallavan 105, 108; Paramaras 177; Pratiharas 153, 153, 155; Solanki 158, 159, 160; Sukhothai 466, 466; Tibetan 598, 678; Vijayanagaran 136–7 concrete 493 Confucian colleges 734–5 Confucianism 519–20, 520–1, 524, 529, 535, 537, 538, 547, 575, 602, 623, 718, 734, 758 corbel vaults 157, 363, 378

905

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT

courtyard houses: Chinese 533, 533–4, 542–3, 608, 646–7, 647, 648, 648; Japanese 800 Culavamsa 219 cupola 122, 125, 196, 246 cyma recta (padma) 155 dadoes 155, 171, 175 Dadu 600–2; ‘White Pagoda’ 600, 601; see also Beijing dagobas: Anuradhapura 225, 229–31, 229, 230–1, 232–3 Daibutsu 814, 819–20, 820 Dalai Lama 671, 672, 672, 673, 674, 679, 702, 703 Dambadeniya 238 Dambal: Dodda Basappa 208, 209 Dambulla: temple 224, 225 Danang 347 Dantidurga, king 115 dao 537–8 Daoism 519, 521–2, 529, 550, 568, 575, 602, 637 Darasuram: Airavateshvara 128, 129, 130 Datong 542, 555, 612; Bojiajiaozang-dian 579; Huayan-si 584, 584–5; Shanhua-si 584, 584–5, 586–7 Daulatabad 215 Daxing 549, 551 Daxiongbao-dian 573 Deccanis 178–9, 191 Deogarh 94; Dashavatara temple 85–6, 85, 86 Devagiri 190, 215–17, 216 Devaraja 344, 351–2, 355, 415 Devi cult 131–2 Devi Danu (goddess) 339 Dhanga 168 Dhanya-kataka see Amaravati Dharma 15, 16, 21, 23 Dharmaraja 104 Dharmawangsa, King 317 Dhatusena, king 221 Dieng 298; Candi Srikanda 298 Digambara 13 Dilwara 166 Dong Duong 390, 393–4, 397; Lakshmindra Lokeshvara 394–5 Dongjing see Kaifeng

Dongxuan Lianjie 540 Dorasamudra 203 dougong 534, 536, 559–60, 561, 561, 564, 580 drum towers 340, 341, 609 Dunhuang 795, 801; Mogao 542–3, 543 Dutthagamani 219, 229 Dvaravati 418, 418–19, 456 dzong: Bhutanese 691, 697–701 Dzungars 673, 702 eaves 280, 281, 346 Elara, King 219 Elephanta 82; Great Shiva Temple 84 Ellora 78, 82; Chhota Kailasa 115–16; Dashvatara 82, 115; Indra Sabha 116, 120; Kailasa 115–20; vihara shrine 79, 81, 81, 82; Vishvakarma 79–80, 79 Embekke 246, 247 Enryaki-ji 808 entabulature 188 Fa-hua 539 feng shui 520, 523–4, 547, 601, 605, 628, 647, 713 Fergusson, James 229 five-bay scheme 181, 182, 186 fluting 201 forts: Indian 210–17; Korean 719; rock (Sri Lanka) 221, 221, 222–3 fountains: Java 320, 321 Four Noble Truths 13, 15 frescoes: China 543, 602; Sri Lanka 221 friezes 127, 155, 171, 187, 188, 214, 242, 384 Fujian 646 Fujiwara 772, 774, 782–3, 791, 794, 795, 816 Funan 344, 345, 345–7, 389, 418 Fuzhou: Yongquan-si 590, 590 Fuzi, King 519 Gadag 193 Galadeniya 246, 246, 247 galleries 144, 368, 371, 375, 384, 385, 579, 597, 733 Gampola 246; temples 246, 246, 247, 248 Gandhara 46, 47, 148 Ganesha 61, 260 Ganga 82

Gangaicondacholapuram: Brihadishvar 124–5, 127–8, 127 Ganga 82, 186 Gaochang 546, 546 Gaozong, Emperor 553 Gaozu, Emperor 533 garbha-griha 69, 72, 73, 82, 92, 101, 123, 158, 278, 280, 346, 350, 385 garden palaces 553, 554 gardens: Chinese 523, 533–4, 568–9, 569, 651–63; Chinese imperial 665–8; Japanese 795, 805, 806, 807, 807, 827, 839, 840–1, 870–8; Japanese Zen 834–8, 871, 873; Korean 746; Sri Lankan 235, 235 Garuda 284 Gaur 217, 217 gavaksha 151, 353, 367, 393 Gaya 13, 16; Bodhi temple 88, 440, 441; Mahabodhi Temple at 613 gazebo 659 Gaznavids 145 gedige (image shrine) 236, 236, 239, 243 Gedong Songo 298, 299 Gelukpas 673 Gendun Drubpa 671 Genmei, Empress 772 ghanadvaras 54, 191 Ghandara 274 Ghingis Khan 597 Ghumli: Navalakha at 161 Gingee 211, 214 Go-Daigo 811, 811–12 Go-sanjo 794 Goei-do 880 gompa 692, 692, 693, 694–5 Gondeshvara 179 gopuram 106, 123, 128, 132, 133, 136, 136, 144, 356, 366–7, 367, 370, 371, 375, 384, 391, 394 granaries: Japanese 752, 752, 754, 756 granite 122, 724 Great Stupa: Amaravati 54–5, 55–6, 55; Bharhut 27, 30; Bodhnath 256–7, 258; Borobodur 300, 302–3, 304–7; Java 300–9; Nepal 255, 256–7, 258, 259; Sanchi 28–9, 30–2, 30, 31; Swayambhunath 258, 258, 259 Great Wall of China 526, 527, 529, 549, 602, 605, 606–7, 608

906

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT

gui 537–8 Gujarat 152, 161, 179 Gunung Gangsir, Candi 321 Gupta 74, 76–7, 82, 85, 90, 94, 145 Guru Rinpoche 690, 700 Gwalior 152, 158, 174; Sas-Bahu temples 174, 187; Teli-ka Mandir 151, 152 Gyangze: Zong-shan castle 592 Gyaraspur 153; Mala Devi temple 152, 156 Gyeraspur 157 Haeinsa 729, 735 Hagi: housing 856 Halebid: Hoysaleshvara 204–5, 206, 207 halls: Chinese 559, 560, 566, 575, 578, 585, 590, 636; Indian 181, 196; Japanese 763; Korean 739 Han 513, 528–35, 537, 555, 591; burial 531, 531, 532 Hangal 196; Tarakeshvara ceiling 198 Hangzhou 568, 590 Hanoi: Dien Huu 643; Van Mieu 643 Hansong 715 Hariharalaya 351, 352 Haripunjaya 418, 457 harmika 233 Harsha Vardhana 145 Harshavarman I 360 Hastinavati 135 hatto 826, 827, 829 Haveri 193; Siddeshvara 192–3, 194, 195 Heian-kyo see Kyoto Heijo-kyo see Nara Hellenism 38–9, 47, 50 Henan see Xin’an Hidei Ukida 734 Hideyoshi 843, 843, 844 hill-forts 598 Himeji-jo 850–1, 852 Hinayana 40, 42, 47, 53, 344, 775 Hindu temples 67–9, 70–1, 72, 75, 76–7, 82, 84, 85, 90 Hinduism 56, 82, 146, 293, 468; advent of 58–62; in Bali 334; covergence with Buddhism 66, 260, 275, 309; flourishing of 75; Khmer empire 348; and Nepal 260; and Tantrism 65; worship rituals 66–7, 68

hinoke 764, 812 Hirosaki: Jo 848, 848; samurai house 857, 857 Hiuen Tsang 88 Ho Chi Minh City: Hoi Quan Thien Hua 642 Hoa Lai 393, 393, 395 hojo 822, 831, 833, 866, 871 Hojo Tokimune 811 Hongtong: Guangsheng-si 632, 633, 634, 635 Hongyuan: Xuankong-si 637, 638, 639 Honshu 751 horses, Chinese 525, 529, 531 houses: Bali 336; Butanese 690–1, 691–2; Chinese 512, 513, 513, 533–4, 533, 535; Chinese town 646–50; Indian 18; Japanese 800, 846, 855–8, 855, 856–7, 858–9; see also courtyard houses Hoysalas 190, 191, 203–8 Hua-yen 538–9 Huanghe river 511 Huizong, emperor 567, 568, 575 ‘hundred-columned’ halls 132 Hungh Thanh 399 Huns 145 Huo Qubing 531, 531 huts: Chinese 513, 513 Hyogo, Jodo-ji 820 hypostyle halls: Chinese 535–6; Japanese 777, 786, 884; Late Chalukyan 196; Tibetan 597, 599 Iemitsu 884 Ieyasu 843, 845 Ikkyu, Abbot 827, 838 Ikshvakus 39, 75 image halls 227, 557, 762, 766, 786–7 image house 225, 233 image shrine see gedige India: and Buddhism 40, 41–9, 50–3, 75, 493; early imperial works 24–5; early town planning 17; Hellenistic intruders 38–9; Hindu empire and the fruits of dynastic rivalry 74–97; history of 5; infiltration of by Aryans 5–6; kingship and caste 9; Macedonian penetration into 21; settlement by Aryans 17–19; transmigration and liberation 11; worship in 66–73 Indonesia/Indonesians 289 Indra (god) 9, 9

Indraprashtra 17 Indrapura 351, 389, 390 Indravarman I 353, 355, 357 Indravarman II 389–90, 415 Indus, river 5 Irrawaddi 419 Ise 755–6, 764, 884; Shinto shrine of Shinmei Zukuri 754, 755 Ishanapura 348 Ishanavarman 347, 348, 349 Ishanavarman II 360, 361 Ishiyamadera 789, 789, 818 Islam 30, 158, 319, 333, 550 Ittagi 196, 196; Mahadeva hall 198–9, 200, 201 Jabung 329 jade 531 Jagat 155, 156, 157; Ambica Mata 153, 154, 172 Jago: Candi 324, 325, 325 Jaina icons 12, 13 Jains 66, 72, 82, 115–16, 161, 161–2, 166 Jaisalmer 210, 215, 217 Jambudvipa 346 Jandial, Fire Temple 51, 51 Jangala 318 Jangchup Galtsen 670 Janggala 317 Japan 549, 748–884; and Buddhism 758–60, 771, 775–6, 810; burial practices 753; court and western paradise 794–8; dealing with foreigners 845–6, 847; early buildings 752; esoteric sects 783–5, 786–7; geology 749–50; hierachy of building 765; history 750–1; imperial restoration 884; materials and manipulation of form 812–13; military dictatorship and Zen 808–10; mythology 749, 750; religion 751; spirit house 754–6 Java 289–331, 333, 343, 352, 389, 390, 418; Buddhism in 292, 293, 295, 309; Eastern supremacy 316–19; Great Stupas 300–9; monuments in the east 320–7; monuments of syncretic faith 296–9; religious and central dynasties 290–5 Jawi: Candi 321, 321, 322 Jaya-Indravarman IV, King 388, 401 Jayadevi 349 Jayanagara, King 326

907

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT

Jayavarman I 351 Jayavarman II 344, 351, 352 Jayavarman IV 361 Jayavarman V 368 Jayavarman VI 375 Jayavarman VII 401–3, 401, 403–4, 506 Jayavarman VIII 415 Ji Cheng 657 Jiansu: Mount Kongwang 538 Jianye see Naning Jimmu Tenno, Emperor 782 Jin 568 Jin Wudi 541 Jina 12–13 Jincheng: Erxian-guan 578; Erxian-si 611 Jingo, Empress 756 jinja 790–3, 813 Jiuchenggong 553, 554 jiva 72 Jixian: Dule-si 577–8, 578, 579 jo see castles, Japanese Jogeshvari 82 Jolotundo 320, 320; Candi Belahan 320 Jurchen Tartars 568, 717 Jyotir Malla 255 Kachchapaghathas 153, 174 Kadam order 592 Kadambas 95 Kadiri 316, 317, 318 Kadvar: Varaha Temple 95 Kaesong, Koryo palace 733 Kagyu order 593, 670 Kahuripan 317 Kaifeng (Dongjing) 567, 568, 569 Kakatiyas 190 Kalachuris 76, 158, 174, 179 kalans: Cham 391, 392, 393, 394, 394, 395, 397, 398, 399–400 Kalasan 297, 300, 301, 321; candi 300, 301–2 kalasha 57, 72, 183, 187, 191 Kalawab 56 Kalimantan 290 Kalinga 21 Kalugumalai 115 Kalyani 190

Kamakura 809, 821, 823; Engaku-ji 811, 813, 813, 823, 825; Jufuku-ji 813, 813; Kencho-ji 822, 823, 823, 824–5, 825, 829, 831; Sugimotodera 791–2; Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gu 809, 809; Zuisen-ji 834, 835, 835 kami 751, 753, 754, 775, 784, 790, 791, 798, 805, 807, 837 Kamo 791 Kamosu 792 Kamphaeng Phet 456 Kanauj 145, 149 Kanazawa: Daijo-ji 829, 830–1; housing 856, 857, 857; Kenrokuen stroll garden 871, 871–3, 873 Kanchi 115, 121; Ekambaranatha 144; Vaikuntha Perumal 109 Kanchipuram 98, 104, 106, 106–7, 108, 108–9; Ekambarantha 142; kambareshvara-natha temple 141; Kaliasanatha 106, 106–7, 108; Vaikunthaperumal 106, 108, 108–9 Kandy: royal palace compound and Temple of the Tooth 249, 250–1, 250, 251 Kanghwa Island 717 Kangxi, Emperor 610 Kanishka 39, 40, 47 Kanmu, Emperor 781, 782, 803 Kapal: Pura Sadat 338 kapota 95, 101, 105, 110, 182, 191, 239, 299 karang bintulu 341 Karle 32, 36, 37 karma 11, 12, 23, 41, 42 Karma Sutra 171 karnaka (astragal) 155, 202 Kashmir 148–9, 148, 149, 277–8 Kassapa I, King 221, 221 Kathiawar 161 Kathmandu 252, 253, 254, 255, 260, 277; Asta Yogini Mandir 277, 279, 280; Chuysa Bahal 274, 275; Durbar square 266, 267; Ganesha shrine 262; Hanuman Dhoka 266, 267; Jagannatha Mandir 282, 287; Kakeshwara Mahadeva Mandir 279; Kashthamandapa 263, 263; Kotillingeshwar Mahadev Mandir 279; Kumari Bahal 274, 275; Pashupatinata temple complex 260, 260–1, 262; Sweta Matsyendranath Mandir 286; Taleju Mandir 287; vernacular embellishment 264 katomado 813, 821, 822, 826

Kauthara 389; Po Nagar 389 Kautilya 25, 210, 420 Kaya 715 Kedaton 327 Kegon sect 783 Ken Dedes, Queen 318, 318 Kerala 97, 277 Kertajaya 333 Kertanagara, King 318, 319, 321 Kertarajasa, King 318, 319 keyaki 813 Khachapagathas 158 Khajuraho 158, 168, 169–73, 169–73; Duladeo 179 Kharavela of Kalinga 23 Khitan 568, 717 Khmers 344–50, 390, 402, 457, 467, 500 khura 105, 110 Kidal, Candi 321, 321 kingship 9, 22, 293, 294 Kinmei, Emperor 759 Kiradu 153; Someshvara 158 Kirtanagara, King 321 kirtimukha 10, 156, 158, 297 Kirtivaman II 115 Kita-Kamakura, Engaku-ji 821, 821 kodos 766–7, 769, 777, 779, 786 Kofun period 754, 758, 760 Koguryo 715, 722, 722–3, 758 Koh Ker 362, 363 Kompong Speu 349 Kompong Thom 349 Konarak: Surya Temple 64–5, 186–8, 187, 188–9 Konbaung 445 Konchok Gyalpo 593 kondos 777, 777, 779, 780, 786, 789, 794, 816 Kongju (Ungjin) 715; Tomb of King Muryong 719, 720 Kora-Machi: Saimyo-ji 817 Korea 549, 714–47, 758; Buddhism 714, 715, 716, 718, 734–5; building standards 734–9; history and religion 714–18 Koryo 716, 717, 717, 729, 735 Kosala 12 Kotoku, Emperor 772 Krishna 247, 293, 294

908

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT

Krishna I, King 83 Krishnadeva Raya 135 Kroh Bei Krap 353 Kshatrapas 39 ku 494 Kubera 308 Kublai Khan 319, 591, 597, 600, 671, 811 Kukai 784 Kukkanur 190, 191, 191, 192; Kalleshvara 191, 191, 192; Navalinga complex 190, 191 Kulottunga I 132 Kulottunga III 130, 132 Kumara 75 Kumarapala 161 Kumari (goddess) 274 kumbha 56, 57, 72, 105, 182, 279 Kumgang 723 kumuda 101, 110, 202 Kurej gompa 694–5 Kuruvatti 196; Malikarjuna 201 Kushanas 39, 40, 52, 74, 345 Kutakanna 220 Kwanghaegun, King 740 Kyanzittha 427, 432 Kyong Mai 395 Kyongju 715, 720; Anap-chi complex 732–3, 733; Bunhwang 725, 726; Hwangyong 724–5, 725; relics 721; tombs 720, 720 Kyoto (Heian-kyo) 749, 781–3, 812; Choin 879; Daigo-ji 785, 816–17; Daitoku-ji 827, 828, 835; Ginkaku-ji 842, 842; Hoju-ji palace 785, 801, 801–2, 801; Hokai-ji 788, 789; Hossho-ji 794–5, 794–5; imperial palace 802, 803–4, 803, 804; Iwashimizu 791; Jurakudai palace 844; Katsura Detached Palace 867–9, 867, 868, 869; Kinnaku-ji 839, 839, 840–1; Koryu-ji 789, 789; Nijo-jo 861, 862, 863–6, 863; Nishi Hongan-ji 860, 861, 861, 880; Ryoan-ji 835–7, 836–7 Kyushu 751, 812 Lakkundi 191, 191, 196, 203; Jaina temple at 191; Kashivishveshvara 196, 197 Lamaism 592–7, 611, 632, 665, 670, 671–2; at Dadu 600–2; imperial 702–13 lamaseries 598–9 Lambakannas 221, 237

Lampang 493, 494; Wat Phra Kep Don Tao 493, 497 Lampang Luang: Wat Phra That chedi 494, 495 Lamphun 493; Wat Ku Kut 419, 419, 429; Wat Phra That Haripunchai 493, 496 landscape painting 569, 569 Lankatilaka 246, 246, 247 Lanna 456, 457, 467, 492–500, 500 Laos 345, 500 Laozi 519, 521, 521, 522, 524, 538, 547 laterite 378 lhakhang 691–2, 692, 694–5, 696 Lhasa 550, 591, 592, 592, 595, 671, 673, 673, 674, 702; Barkor 686; Drepung 675, 675, 676, 677; Jokhang 89, 595, 595, 596, 673, 675, 685, 686; King Songtsen Gampo 596; plan 686; Potala 676, 679, 680–1, 682; Ramoche 596, 597, 673, 687, 895; Sahtra mansion 687 Li Gefei 651 Li Yuan 549 Liao 575 libraries 384, 391, 414, 429, 479, 497, 573 Lichchhavis 253–4, 255, 260 Lin Yi 389 lingam 68, 125, 238, 297, 299, 348 Lingqui: Jueshan Temple 537 Linji Yixian 540 lintels 280, 349, 357, 358, 361, 367, 367, 375, 379, 392, 395 Lo Thai 457, 463, 464, 466 loggias 678–9 Lokeshvar 347 Lonar: Daitya Sudana 178, 179 Longchen Lodro 594–5 Longmen 543, 548–9 Longshan culture 513 Lop Buri 370, 375, 401–2, 418, 467, 469; palace 477, 477; Phra Prang Sam Yot 460; Wat Mahathat 469, 469, 470, 476, 478 lotus-bud form 463, 464, 466, 469 Lu Dongbin 637 Luang Prabang 500–6; temples of 502, 502–4, 505 lunettes 79, 157 Luoyang 518, 525, 530, 530, 531, 533, 540–1, 542, 549, 551, 557

Macedonians 21 Madhyadesha 12, 52 Madhyamika 44, 65 Madurai 144; Minakshi-Sundareshvara 138–9, 140, 142 Maghda 12, 20 Magul-maduva 251 Mahaballipuram 62, 99, 99–100, 101, 104; Shore Temple 99, 102, 102–3, 105, 108 Mahabharata 292, 293, 294 Mahabodhi 13, 14 Mahadeva (Great Goddess) 61 Mahamudra 63 Mahan 714 Mahapala 174 Maharashtra 179 Mahasanga (‘Great Sangha’) 22 Mahasanghika 41, 54 Mahasena 220–1 Mahavamsa 219 Mahavihara 221, 226, 229 Mahavira 12, 12 Mahayana 40, 42, 45, 47, 53, 54–6, 57, 66, 77, 78, 221, 293, 344, 402, 418, 423, 759, 775, 786 Mahendra Malla 278 Mahendra-varman I 98, 99, 99 Mahendra-varman III 106 Maheshvara (Great Lord) 61, 297, 347 Mahmud of Ghazni 158, 161 Maitreya 47, 47, 236 Majapahit 319, 325, 333 makara 297, 352, 367 Malang 320 Malaya 291, 344 Maligavila 236 Malla era (Nepal) 262, 265, 275 Malwa 158, 175, 176, 179, 191 Manchuria 702 Manchus 718 mandalas 69, 265, 464 Mandalay 445, 446; palace 455, 455; Shwe-in-bin Kyaung 454 mandapa 56, 76, 144, 234, 236, 242, 429 Manju Pattana 252 Manjusri 47, 252, 593 Mannavamma, King 237 mansions: Japanese 860–1

909

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT

Manu Deva, king 253 Marpa 593 Martand, Surya Temple 148, 149 masonry 294, 632, 678 Matsue 752, 757; castle 853, 854; housing 857, 858–9; palace pavilion 771; Yaegaki jinja 793 Mauryan dynasty 20–1, 22–3, 24, 38, 39; palaces 24, 24; sancturies and shrines 25–6 Maynapur Hakanda 146 Meapi 288–9, 290 medhi 447 Megesthenes 24 Meguti 94, 110, 111 Meiji, Emperor 847, 884 Menander 39 Mendut 297; Candi 308, 308 Mengrai 456–7 Merapi, Mount 297 Meru 4, 8, 191, 294, 296, 304, 320, 345, 346, 355, 356, 372, 413, 459, 472, 481, 875 Mihintale 219 Mihira Bhoja 151 Minamoto 808, 808 Mindon, King 455 Ming 605–9, 610, 614, 625, 670, 702; gardens 654, 665; temples 632–6; in Tibet 702; tombs 625–9 mithuna 65 Miyajima 798, 819, 844; Itsukushima Jinja 798, 798–9; Senjokaku 844 Modhera Surya temple 158–9, 159 Mohra Moradu 52 monasteries: after Bagan 452, 453, 454; Anuradhapura era (Sri Lanka) 225–8; Ayutthayan 478–80, 479; Butanese 692; Chinese 542–3, 542–3, 557, 558, 567, 577–8; Indian 17, 18, 19, 26, 27, 30–3, 34–5, 36, 37, 52–3, 53, 54, 56; Japanese 774–7; Java 300; Lanna 492–500; Nepal 274–5, 274, 275, 276; Thai 458–9, Tibetan 592–3, 594–5, 594–5, 598, 672, 688–9 see also dzong mondops 460, 478, 506 mongkuts 488, 491, 507 Mongols 444, 568, 591, 597, 602, 605, 702, 717, 811 Mons 418–20, 422, 446 moon-gate 651

Mother-Goddess 5, 60 Mount Abu: Dilwara complex 163; Jain shrines 161 Mount Fuji 748–9 Mount Hiei: Enryaki-ji 786–7, 787 Mount P’algong: Kunwi cave temple 727 Mount Penanggungan 320 Mount Toham: Sokkuram shrine 726, 727 Mount Ungaran 297, 299 mountain temples see temple mountains Mugaku 821 Mukden 702 mulaprasadas 92, 152, 152, 156, 158, 162, 166, 177, 178–9, 180–1, 182, 187, 196, 279, 314, 315 Munmu, King 715, 716, 726, 772 Muromachi 811–12; palaces 839–42 Muslims 135, 146, 148, 149 Muso Soseki 823, 834 My Son 389, 390, 391, 392, 396–7 Myanmar 422 Nachna Kutara: Parvati temple 86 Nagarjuna 54 Nagarjunakonda 55, 56 Nagasaki: Koshi-byo 645; Sofuku-ji 644 Nagasaki Bay 846 Nakhon Pathom 418 Nalanda 88, 304, 444; gedige at 236–7, 236; temple at 88–9, 238 Nandl-varman II 106 Naniwa 771, 772 see also Osaka Nanjing 541, 604–5, 604; Cialing of Zhu Yuanzhang 625, 626–7 Nara (Heijo-kyo) 772, 773, 774, 781; Horuy-ji 767–70, 767, 768–9; Kasuga 790, 791, 791; Kofuku-ji 814–15, 816, 816; Todai-ji 780, 780–1, 783, 792–3, 819, 820, 878, 879; Toshodai-ji 777–8, 777, 778–9; Yakushi-ji 766, 767, 817 Narai, King 477 Narapatisithu 440 Narashimha-varman I 99, 99, 104 Narasimhadeva Ganga 186 Nasik 54; Gautamiputra 54, 80 Nataraja 131; temple of at Chidambaram 132–3, 132–3 Nayakas 135, 144

Nepal 252–87, 550; court and square 267–73; great stupas 255, 256–7, 258, 259; and Hinduism 260; kingdom and city-states 255–62; Lichchhavis 253–4, 255, 260; Malla era 262, 265, 275; Newari deity 252–3, 252; shrines 275; vernacular building 263–6 Newari 252–3, 252 Ngawang Namgyel, Abbot 689, 690 Nichiren 811, 811 Nikator, Seleucus 21 Nikko 881–2, 881, 882–3, 884 Nilagunda 193; Bhimeshvar at 193, 195 Niralgi 193; Siddharameshvara 192–3, 194 nirandara 169 Nirartha 333, 334, 338 Nissankamalla 237–8, 243 Nobunaga, Oda 843, 847, 852 Norodoms 506 Northern Wei 542, 543 Nyingmapa 689, 696 observatory: Korea 721, 721 Okayama: castle at 845; Korakuen 874–5, 876–7, 877 Orissa 145, 157, 180–9 Osaka 760, 855; Shitenno-ji 760–1, 760–1 see also Naniwa Osaka castle 843, 844 Osian 152; temples 150 padma 56, 57, 202, 299 padma-kumbha pilasters 110, 111, 114, 122, 193 Padmasambhava 592 padmasana 341, 343 Paekche 715, 720, 722, 723; Kumsana 722, 723; Miruk temple 722, 723, 724 Pagan 445 pagodas 547, 557–8, 558, 559, 574–5, 574, 578, 580, 588, 633, 640–1, 726; Chinese 538, 544, 546, 547, 547, 557–8, 558, 559, 574–5, 574, 578, 580, 588, 633, 640–1; Japanese 762, 763, 767, 785, 814–15; Korean 722, 722, 723, 723, 724, 725, 729–31; Tibetan 600, 601 Paharpur (Somapura): Buddhist temple 145 pahtos: Baganese 429, 431–9 Pakpa 597, 598 Pala architecture 145

910

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT

palace of the gods 19, 69, 137, 191 palace pavilion: Japanese 771 palaces: after Bagan 455, 455; Ayutthayan 477–8, 477; Balinese 336, 337; Bangkok 482, 487–91; Chinese 514–15, 518, 524–5, 526, 533–4, 534, 540–1, 542, 553–4, 571, 585, 617–18, 665, 667; Indian 17, 18, 24–5, 24; Japanese 800–4, 800, 801, 802, 839–42, 860–9, 864–5; Java 296; Khmer 354; Korean 732–3, 732–3, 739–45; Nepal 266, 267, 267, 273; Parthian 50, 51; Sri Lankan 234–5, 234, 235, 250, 250; Tibetan 682–4, 682, 684 Palas 145 Palembang 290 Pallavas 74–5, 98, 110, 125, 131, 226, 236, 237, 296; architecture 98–109 Panataran 325, 342–3; Candi 325, 326, 327; Majapahit state temple 325, 326–7 panchayatana 153, 226 Pandrethan: Shiva temple 148, 149 Pandukabhaya, King 219 Panduranga 389 Pandyas 121, 135, 190, 237 Parakramabahu I 237, 239, 243 Parakramabahu II 238 Parakramabahu III 238 Paramaras 153, 158, 175–9 Parambanan:, Loro Jonggrang 397 Parameshvara-varman II 106 Parantaka 123 Parthians 38, 50, 51 Parvati 60 Pashupati Shaivite sect 260 Pataliputra 74; Mauryan palace 24, 24 Patan 253, 254, 260, 267; Chyasim Deval 270, 277; Durbar square 270–1; Hiranyavama 281, 289; Jagannarayana shrine 282; Krishna Mandir 270, 277, 278; Kumbheshvara Mandir 282, 283, 285; Mahabouddha Mandir 278; Narayana Mandir 277; Rudravarna-Mahavihara 275, 276 Pattadakal 110, 110–11, 114; temples 110–11, 111–14, 115; Virupaksha Nandi pavilion 191 pavilions 479; Balinese 336, 339, 340; Chinese 534, 553, 573, 585, 618, 621, 649, 658; Indian 144, 159, 169, 186; Japanese 802, 868, 868; Korean 732–3, 735, 742, 742; Tibetan 597

Pawon, Candi 308, 308 pedestals: Cham 393, 394, 397, 398, 398, 399 pediments 357, 367, 368, 391 Pegu 420 Pema Linga 692 Persia/Persians 22, 24–5 Phanom Rung (Thailand) 366 Phimai (Thailand) 366, 376–7, 379 Phitsanulok 456, 469; Wat Phra Si Ratna Mahathut 472, 476 Phnom Bayang 349, 352 Phnom Kulen 351, 353, 353 Phnom Penh 506–7, 506, 507 Phnom Rung 375, 376 pidhas 153 pilasters 239, 395, 395; Baganese 432; Chola 123; Indian 105, 188, 191, 191 pilgrimage 67, 88–9 pillars 24, 36, 99; Ashokan 20, 21, 22, 22; Chinese 564; Chola 125; Indian 93; Late Chalukyan 191, 196, 201; Mauryan 33; Nepal 254; Pallavan 99; Paramaras 175, 177; Pratiharas 156 Pinya 445 pit-dwellings: Japanese 752, 752 Plaosan 314; Candi 315 Po Nagar 398, 399, 399 Polonnaruwa 237–8, 246; Alahana parivana and Rankot vihara 243, 243, 244, 245; Chola temple 238; royal palace complex 239, 242; Sacred Quadrangle 239–41, 240–1 Popchu-sa (Beopjusa) 731 Pophung, King 715 portals 274, 280, 321, 340, 378; Baganese 431; Balinese temples 340, 341; Chinese 653; Indian 82, 86, 93–4, 155, 156, 175; Khmer 357, 365 porticoes 131, 151, 153, 153, 188, 503, 545 Potala 679, 680–1, 682–4 Prabhas Patan: Somanatha temple 161, 161 pradkshina patha 302 Prajnaparamitra 42 prakara 145, 366, 491 Prambanan 295, 314, 321; Loro Jonggrang 295, 309, 310–11, 312–13, 312, 313, 314; Mahayana Borobodur 295

prangs 459, 463, 469, 471, 472, 473, 482, 483, 483, 646–72 prasadas 76, 77, 157, 267; Baganese 429–30; Indian 19, 19, 69; multi-storeyed 88, 122, 440; Nepal 262, 277; rock-cut 546; Sri Lanka 233, 234 prasada-vimanas 296, 348 Pratapa Malla 258, 262, 267 Pratiharas 145, 149–56, 313 Preah Vihear 370, 370–1 Prithvi Narayan Shah 262 Prome 494; Shwe-hsan-daw 446, 446 Pulakeshin II 79 Pulguk temple 728, 729, 729 Pulguksa 735 Pullamangai: Brahmapurishvara 122, 123 Punakha dzong 700–1 Pura Besakih (Bali) 339 Pura Gede Perancak (Bali) 338 pura kahyangan 336 Pura Mengening (Bali) 332–3, 335, 338 pura pedharman 336 Pura Rambut Siwi (Bali) 338, 340, 341 Pura Ulan Danu Bratan (Bali) 338, 339 Purandapura 349 Puri: Jagannatha 186 purna-kalasha (‘bowl of plenty’) 81, 82, 179, 182 Purusha 10, 10, 11, 69, 73 Purushapura 52 Pushuprakha, king 262 Pushyamitra, General 23 Pusok temple 730 Pyongyang 715, 719 Pyonhan 714 pyramids, stepped 329, 419, 419, 472, 493 Pyu 419, 420, 422, 431 Qianlong, Emperor 610, 702–3, 703, 710, 711 Qin 525–8 Qin, Emperor, tomb of 528, 528–9 Qin Huangdi 525, 549, 555 Qin Ling 528–9 Qing dyansty 610–22, 625, 655, 673, 702, 703 Qufu 635, 637; Temple of Confucius 636–7 Quy Nhnon 398–9

911

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT

raja-nivesana platform 135, 137 Rajaraja I, the Great 121, 124, 237, 317 Rajaraja II 130 Rajasa 318 Rajasanagara 319, 326 Rajasthan 175, 179 Rajendra I 121, 132, 145, 317 Rajendravarman 361–2, 368 Rajendravarman II 365 Rajputs 158, 211 Rakai Pikatan, King 314 Rama I, King 481, 487 Rama II, King 482 Rama III, King 482 Ramathibodi I, King 467 Ramgarh: Bhumija Shiva temple 179 Ramkhamhaeng, King 456, 457, 461, 467 RanakpurDharana-vihara 164–5, 166, 167; Surya temple 179, 179 Rangoon 445, 494; Shwe Dagon 446, 447, 448–9 Rashtrakutas 98, 115, 121 Ratu Hoko 294, 295 reliefs 327, 387, 388 Rig Veda 6 Rinchen Sangpo 592 roads: early Indian 17 rock-cut architecture: Balinese candis 335, 335; Chinese monasteries 543–4; Hindu 84; and Pallavans 98–9; Sri Lankan forts 221, 221, 222–3 Roda 152; temple 150–1 Roluos 357, 361 roofs 387, 453, 453, 507, 507; Ayutthayan 480, 488, 491, 502; Balinese temples 343; Bengali 147; Butanese 691; Chinese 528, 536, 544, 560–1, 566, 578–9, 611, 613, 617, 618; Indian 175, 185; Japanese 762, 764, 786, 789, 813, 822; Korean 739; Nepal 275, 277, 278; Tibetan 597, 599, 599 Roulos 353 Ruicheng see Shanxi Saaddharma-pundrika 42, 44 Sacred Tooth 237, 238, 239, 250 Saddhatisssa 220 Sado 855; Myosen-ji 832–3 Sagaing 446; Kaungmudaw Paya 446

Sailendra dynasty 292, 295, 316 Sakutei-ki 651, 870, 871 Sakya 597, 598, 670 Sakyapa 597 Sale 452, 453 Saliendras 309 Saman 236 Sambisari: Candi 314, 315 Sambor Prei Kuk 349, 349, 350, 352 samsara 11, 13, 23, 41, 42, 44, 57 Samudra 74 samurai 808, 809, 847, 854, 856 Samye 594, 594 Sanchi 30, 225; Great Stupa 28–9, 30–2, 30, 31; Temple 76, 76, 77 sanctuaries: Mauryan 25–6 sandhara 169 sandstone 353, 357, 365, 366, 378, 424 Sangha 7, 15, 16–17, 18, 21–2, 41, 75, 146, 255, 444, 457 sangharama (monastery) 17, 77 Sanghyang Widi 335, 341 Sanjayas 292–3, 294, 295, 316, 317 Sari 297, 314; Candi 314 Sarnath: Kushna Dhamekh stupa 52; lion capital 20, 22 Sarvastivadins 41–2, 47 Satavahanas 23, 39, 47, 54, 292, 389 Satrunjaya 162 sattal temples 263, 277, 281–2, 281, 282, 284, 285, 286–7 Sejakpur: Siddharaja’s Navalakha temple at 161 Sejo, King 730 Sejong, King 718 Sekhari mode 157, 185, 186, 193 Sembiyan Mahadevi, Queen 123 Semeru (volcano) 290 Sena I, King 237 Senas 145, 146, 217, 217 Seoul: Ch’angdok palace 740, 744–7, 744–7; Ch’angdokkung 744–6; Ch’anggyong 740; Chongjon 735; Chongmyo 734, 735; Kyongbok 42, 739, 740–3, 741, 743; Kyongch’on Temple 730, 731, 731–2; Songgyun’gwan academy 734; Yi palaces 739–40 Sewu 300–1, 301, 302, 304, 321 Shabdrung 689, 690

Shailendras 352 Shaivism 59, 75, 311, 389, 390 Shakas (Scythians) 38, 39 shakti 60, 61, 62, 65, 66, 68, 72, 73, 131 Shakyamuni 15, 16, 20, 25, 678 Shakyas 252 Shalu 599 Shang 513–15, 517 Shang Anyang 536 Shanghai: Yu-yuan 664 Shankei-en 866 Shantarakshita 592 Shanxi (Ruicheng): houses 649; Houtumiao 571, 571; Xio Xitian 613; Yonelgon 602–3 shastras 72, 144, 296 shen 537–8 Shigatse, Tashi Lhunpo 671 shikharas 18, 94–5, 94, 152, 153, 153, 157, 172, 173, 181, 182, 185, 187, 313, 393, 438 Shikoku 751 shinden 800, 800, 801, 802, 838, 839, 871 Shingon 783, 783–4, 811, 816 Shinto 754, 758, 847, 884 Shiva 58–9, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62–3, 66, 68, 72, 238, 247, 255, 260, 294, 317, 338, 347, 348, 352, 415 shogun 812, 846, 847, 871, 884 shoin 866, 867, 871 Shomu, emperor 774, 776, 789 Shore Temple 122 Shotoku, Prince 759, 759 shrines: Baganese 424; Balinese 336, 338; Cham 391, 393, 393, 394, 397; Chinese 542–3, 543–4, 546–7; Chola 128, 131, 132–3; Indian 18, 19, 50–1, 51, 86, 87, 88, 91–3; Jain 162, 163; Japanese 756–7, 790–3, 879–84; and Japanese spirit house 754–5, 755, 756; Khmer 349, 349–50, 357, 362; Mauryan 25–6, 26; miniature 185, 187–8, 191; Nepal 275; Pallavan 99, 99–109, 99–103; Pratiharas 153; Vijayanagaran 138–9, 140, 142; see also monasteries; vihara Shrinivasanallur: Korangantha 123, 123 Shu 541 Shu Yu, Prince 580 shuden 839 Shuho Myocho 827

912

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT

Shunga period 23, 23, 27–30 shuntaya 63, 65 Si Satchanalai 456; Wat Chang Lom 459, 460–1, 466; Wat Chedi Chet Thaeo 461, 461 Siddhapur: Rudramala 160, 161 Siddharaja Jayasimha 161 Sigasri 321 Sigiriya 221, 221, 222–3; palace buildings 234–5, 235 siheyuan 646–7 Sila 719 Silk Road 550 Silla 714–15, 715, 716, 720, 721, 724–5; Haeinsa 722, 723 sims 500, 502, 502, 503 Simtokha 67 Sindok, King 316, 317, 333 Singasari 318, 320; Candi 321, 322, 323 Sinnar: Gondeshvara 178–9, 179 sirhak movement 718 Sirkap see Taxila Skanda 236 sliding screens 803, 813 socles 72, 85, 101, 105, 110, 111, 114, 127, 153, 155, 156, 171, 175, 181, 182, 183, 188–9, 191, 202, 207, 209, 233, 299, 302, 308, 350, 391 Soga 759, 759–60 Sohagpur 174 Solankis 153, 158 soma 5, 6, 8 Somanathpur, Keshava at 208, 208 Somavamshis 180 Son 716–17 Song dynasty 567–8, 584, 605, 828; religious buildings 571–5 Song Shan 547, 547 Songgoriti 297 Songnisan National Park 731 Songtsen Gampo, King 253, 550, 678, 688 spirit house, Japanese 754–6, 755, 756 spirit path 625, 631 Sri Lakshmi (goddess) 58, 60–1 Sri Lanka 23, 218–51, 418, 423, 457, 475; and Buddhism 218, 219, 219; descendents 218; history of 218–20; interior realms and Kandy 246–51; orthodox and heterodox

220–1; Polonnaruwa monuments 238–44; see also Anuradhapura Sri Nivasa Malla 262 Sri Rama 294 Sri Walaprabhu 333 Srikestra 419, 420, 420, 421, 422 Srirangam 144; Jambukeshvara temple 133, 133, 140; Rangatha temple 142, 143 Srivijaya 290, 291, 309, 316, 317, 418 stambha see pillars star-shaped plan 29, 191, 203, 206, 207, 208 stelae 252, 359; Cham 399; Korean 734, 734 Sthaviravadins 22, 45 Sthiti Malla 255, 273 stone carving: early Indian monasteries 32–3, 34–5, 36 stucco 432, 450, 502, 505 stupas 47, 52, 54, 56, 77, 255, 362, 419; Baganese 424, 424–5, 426–8, 426, 427, 428, 429, 433–4, 443; Java 200, 290, 291, 300; Kusahana Dhamekh (Sarnath) 52; Luang Prabang 505–6; Nepal 254; of Pegu, Prome and Rangoon 445–7, 448–9; Phnom Penh 507; Pyu 420, 421; votive 52, 53, 80, 254, 275; see also chedi; Great Stupa stylobates 85, 278, 302, 313, 327 Suddhodhana 13 Sudok: Taeung-jon 729 Sui dynasty 542, 549, 552, 553, 557 Suiko, Empress 759, 760 Sukhavati 49 Sukhothai 456, 457, 458, 459–64, 467; chedi at 460, 461, 463, 464, 465; Wat Mahathat 460, 462–3, 463, 464–6; Wat Sir Chum 466, 466; Wat Si Sawai 469 Sukuh 327; Candi 327 Sumatra/Sumatrans 238, 287, 290, 333 Sumiyoshi 756–7, 756 Suna: Nilakantha temple 160, 161 Sunjo, King 747 Surowono 327 Surya 187 Suryavarman I 368, 370–1, 372 Suryavarman II 290, 344, 375–85, 388 Suryavarman VII 402 Susano’o 749

Suzhou (Jaingsu) 568–9, 650; Bao’en-si 589, 590; Beisi Pagoda 588; Liu-yuan 662, 663; Wangshi-yuan 654, 654, 655;Yunan-si pagoda 588; Zhuozheng-yuan 656–7, 658, 659, 660–1 Swayambhunath: great stupa 258, 258, 259 Tabgath 541–2 T’aejo, King 716, 735 T’aejong, King 718, 740, 744 Taeungjon 735–6 taho-tos 819, 819 Taiping rebellion 590 Taira 808 Taisha zukuri 756–7, 757 Taiyuan: Chongshan-si 634, 635, 635; Chunyanggong 637, 638; Jin-si 580–2, 580, 581–2; Longquan-si 612; Shengmu-dian 578 Taizong, Emperor 551, 555 Taksin, King 481, 482 Talsong: Dodong Sowon 734 Tamils 219, 220, 221, 237 Tampaksiring: Gunung Kawi complex 335; Pura Gunung Kawi 334 Tamshing 692, 693 Tang dynasty 549, 553, 557, 560, 567, 715, 716 Tangun 714 Tanjavur: Brihadishvara 124–5, 124, 125, 126, 127–8; Rajarajeshvara 131 Tanjore 238 Tankhaby 692 Tantrism 63–6, 64–5, 260, 344, 592, 688 tatami floor covering 801, 860 Taxila (Sirkap) 46, 50, 56; Dharmarajika Monastery 53 tea-houses: Japanese 834–5, 842, 866, 866–7, 871, 877 tea-making 838 tea-rooms: Japanese 838, 842, 861 temple mountains 354–6, 368, 369, 370–1, 370–1, 372, 404, 410–11, 735–7; Angkor 352–3; Ayutthayan 469; Bakong 354, 355–7; 355; 356; 375 temples: after Bagan 450–1, 450, 451; Ayutthayan 469; Baganese (pahto) 424, 429, 431–9; Balinese 334, 335, 336, 338–43; Bangkok 481–2, 491; Bengali 146–7, 146, 147; Chalukyas 90–5, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96–7,

913

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT

110–14; Chandellas 168–73; Chinese 543–7, 557–8, 560, 571–5, 571, 590, 632–41, 642–5; Chola 122–3, 122–3, 124–33; Dravidian 238–9; Ganga 186–8, 187, 188–9; Gupta 90; Hindu 67–9, 70–1, 72, 75, 76–7, 82, 84, 85; Hoysalas 202, 203–8, 204–5; Indian 56, 76, 88–9, 89; Jain 161–2, 164–5, 166, 166–7; Japanese 760–4, 777–80, 781–2, 785–9, 790–3, 814–22, 879–84; Java see candi; and Jayavarman VII 403–15; Kashmir 148–9, 148, 149, 277–8; Khmer 346–7, 351, 352–3, 352, 354–75, 379–87; Korean 716, 722–9; Luang Prabang 502; Nepal 260, 260–1, 262, 277–87; Orissan 180–9; Pallavan 99–108; Paramaras 175–9; Polonnaruwa (Sri Lanka) 238–9; Pratiharas and early northern 149–56; sattal 263, 277, 281–2, 281, 282, 284, 285, 286–7; Singsari tower 321–2, 321, 322, 323, 324–5; Solankis 158–9, 159–67; Sri Lankan 224, 236, 236, 246, 247, 248, 250–1, 250, 251; Tibetan 595, 596, 598, 675–9; Vijayanagaran 135–42, 135, 136, 137, 144; Yadava 178–9, 179 Tenchi, Emperor 771 Tendai 783, 784–5, 816 Tenmu, Emperor 771 Ter temple 56, 56, 72 terraced temples 324–5, 324, 327, 354 terracotta, Japan 813 Thailand/Thais 344, 359, 370, 417–18, 456–64; and Buddhism 456, 457, 457; vernacular and monumental types 458–9 Thakuri dynasty 255 Thap Mam 398, 399 thatch 813 Thaton 419, 420, 427, 443 Thayetmyo 451 Thera Mahinda 219 Theravadins 42, 220, 221, 418 thirta (Theatre of Grace) 73 Thisong Detsen, King 89 Thonburi 468, 481 threshold stone 227, 228 throne platform 135, 137 Tianwang-diang 572–3 Tibet/Tibetans 255, 591, 598–9, 702; after the Yuan 670–3; Buddhism 592, 598, 688, 689;

building 674–87; and Chinese 702–3; and emergence of Lamaisim 592–7 Tigawa: Kankali Devi 77 Tilokaraj, King 493 timber 225, 265, 445, 458, 493, 500, 535, 611, 685, 722, 764, 857 timber-framed structures: Chinese 513, 528, 534, 562; Korean 732 Tirthankaras 12, 161, 162, 166 Tiruchirapalli 98, 142; Srirangam Ranganata 142 Tiruvarur 131; Achaleshvara 122; Thyagarajashvami temple 132–3, 132 Tissa, King 219, 220, 225, 229 Toba: castle and town model 854 Tokiyori 810, 811 Tokugawa period 846–7, 848, 855, 861, 882 Tokyo: Meiji Jingu 885 tombs: Chinese 519, 531, 555–6, 555, 556, 570, 570, 625–31; Korean 719–20, 720, 721, 724 Tonburi: Wat Arun 481–2, 483 Tongkang-gun: Sangyong-ch’ong tomb 724 torana (ceremonial portal) 19 Toungoo 444–5 tower temples 329; Singsari 321–2, 321, 322, 323, 324–5 town houses: Chinese 646–50 town planning 144; Chinese 523–4, 568, 568; Indian 17, 19, 50, 51 town squares, Nepal 266, 267, 267, 270–1, 272–3 towns: Chinese 514; Indian 17, 18, 18, 19, 50, 51; Japanese 854–5, 854 Tra Kieu 395, 397, 398 trabeation: Chinese 534, 535, 544, 559–60; India 26; Japanese 756, 763, 764, 765, 812; Java 293–4; Korean 724, 739; Tibetan 597, 678 trade: Chinese 591, 605; Indian 39–40; Japanese 812 trefoil arch 148 Tribhuvanadityavarman 375, 388, 401 Tribhuvanam: Kampahareshvara 130, 130 Tripur 158 Trisong Detsen, King 592 Trongsa dzong 698–9 Trowulan 319, 328–9, 329, 343; Candi Brahu 329, 329 Tsong Khapa 670, 671, 671, 677–8

tumulli 25, 555, 625, 720, 721, 753 tympanum 265, 506, 507 U Thong 418, 467 ubosots 478, 483, 487, 494, 497, 502 Ubud: palace at 337 Udaipur 217 Udayaditya, King 175 Udayadityavarman II 372 Udayagiri 77; Rani Gumpha Jaina complex 26 Udayaguru 77 Udayana, King 333 Udayapur: Udayeshvra temple 175, 175, 176 Ungjin see Kongju Upanishads 11 Utkala 180 Uttama Chola 123 Uttaravihara (Northern Monastery) 221 Vadnagar: torana 160, 161 Vaishnavites 59 Vajrabhairava 593 Vajrapani 47, 49 Vajrayana 275, 593, 594 Vakatakas 32, 39 Vamsavali 252 Vardhamana 12, 13 Varuna 6, 7, 8, 9, 22 Varunya 345 vastupurusha 304 Vasu 9, 9 Vat Kompong Preah 353 vatadage 229, 229 Vatsaraja, King 150 Vattagamani, King 220, 221, 224 Vedas 5, 9, 25 Vedic 6, 18, 69 vedika 155 Vellore 217 verandahs: Chinese 583; Japanese 805 vernacular building: Nepal 263–6; and Thais 458–9 Vibeheshana 236 Vidisha 23 Vietnam 361, 388–9 Viets 390, 402

914

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT

viharas: Baganese 429; Indian 52, 53, 54, 56, 78, 79, 80–1, 89; Nepal 254, 274–6, 274, 275, 276 viharns 494, 497; Luang Prabang 505–6 Vijaya 390, 398, 399, 400, 402; Po Kluang Garai 400, 400 Vijayabahu, King 237 Vijayadurga 217 Vijayanagaran empire 135–40, 372 Vijayapuri 54 Vikramabahu III 246 Vikramaditya II, King 109, 110 Vikrantavarman, King 392 Vimalakirti 42, 44 vimanas 202, 207; Cham 391; Chola 124–8, 130; Dravidian 201; Indian 69, 72, 86, 122, 144, 191, 196; Java 290, 291; Khmer 353, 367; Late Chalukyas 191, 191; Pallava 104–8; Sri Lanka 236 Vishnu 58–9, 58, 63, 72, 74, 145, 220, 236, 255, 262, 294, 338, 347, 378 Vishnupur: Keshta Raya 147 volcanoes, Java 294 Voshnu 60 votive stupas 52, 53, 80, 254, 254, 275 Vyadhapura see Angkor Borei walled compounds 570; Chinese 514, 542, 557, 570, 647; Korean 733 walls: Chinese 650, 712; Japanese 764, 813; Tibetan 674 Wang dynasty 717 Wangcheng 518, 518, 523, 526 Wat Phimai 375 Wat Phra Phai Luang 460 watchtowers: Bhutanese 698; Chinese 608 Water Cosmology 2–3, 6–8, 11, 22, 30, 62, 65, 67, 78, 85, 156, 387 water management, Khmer 258 water-forts, Indian 217 wats 469, 487–8 wattle-and-daub 19, 512, 732, 857 wayo 814, 816–19 Wei empire 541 Wheel of Life 43 ‘wilderness monastery’ 226 windows 429; Chinese 651, 664; Japanese 813; Nepal 264, 265; Tibetan 682

‘womb chamber’ 68 worship halls 725, 766 Wu kingdom 541 Wudang-Shan 638 Wudi, Emperor 529, 530, 531, 533 Wutai-Shan 702–3; Fogung-Si 562, 563, 564, 565, 565, 777; Jinge temple 635, 635; Nanchan-Si 562, 562, 565; Tayuan-si 573, 702–3, 703; Xiantong 703, 703, 704–5 Wuxi: houses 649; Jichang-yuan 651, 652, 653, 663 Wuzong, Emperor 550, 558 Xia 513, 514 Xiamen: Nanputuo-si 590, 635, 638, 640–1 Xian 517, 557, 609, 646; Dacien-si 557–8, 559, 559, 562; Jianfu-si 558; see also Chang’an Xianyang 526 Xin’an 514; burial chamber 570 Xinjiang 546 Xiongnu 529 Xixian see Shanxi Xuanzang 558 Yadavas 179, 190, 215 yakshas 6, 7, 16, 41, 60, 67 Yaksha Malla, King 260, 284 yakshinis 6, 7, 60 Yakushi-ji pagoda 763 Yamato 749, 751, 753 Yamuna 82 Yang Jian 542, 549 yang see yin/yang Yangshao 512 Yangtse 512, 513 Yashodharapura 362, 371 Yashovarman I 357, 358–9 Yashovarman II 375 Yayoi 750, 752, 752, 753, 754 Ye 531, 542 Yech’on 732 Yellow Hats 671 Yesan, Sudok-sa 730 Yi dynasty 718, 739; palaces 739–45 Yi Jing 290, 292 Yi Tae-jo, General 717 yin/yang 515, 516, 537, 569, 652, 657

Yingxian: Fogong-si 578, 580, 624 Yingzao fashi 561–2, 575, 580, 584 yoga 12, 13, 42, 45, 57 Yogacara 44, 65 Yogyakarta 329, 330–1 Yomei, Emperor 767 Yoritomo 808, 809, 810, 819 Yoshiharu, Horio 853 Yoshimitsu 812 Yuan dynasty 591, 602, 670 Yueh-chi 39 Yungang 543, 544–5 Yunnan 646 zedis 424, 428 Zen 809–10, 811, 812, 821; gardens 834–8, 871, 873; temples 823–33 Zenshuyo 814, 821–2, 821 Zhengding (Hebei): Longzing-Si 576, 577 Zhenla (Chenla) 347–8 Zhenwu 637 Zhiy-i 539, 540 Zhou dynasty 517–19, 520, 523, 530, 534, 542 Zhu Di 605 Zhu Yuanzhang 604–5, 625, 628 Zoroastrians 51 Zunhua: Changrui-shan 630, 631, 631

915

›ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEXT