Architecture of India

[citation needed] Neolithic settlements have been found in the northwest (Kashmir), east (Bihar and Odisha), south (Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Andhra Pradesh), and the northeastern frontier (Meghalaya) of India.

Important features of the period's architecture include, walled and moated cities with large gates and multi-storied buildings, wooden chaitya arches for roofs, and further structures above solid storeys.

[8] In the case of the Mauryan capital Pataliputra (near Patna), we have Greek accounts, and that of Faxian; Megasthenes (a visitor around 300 BCE) mentions 564 towers and 64 gates in the city walls.

[12] Such a tradition is extremely clear in the case of the earliest-known examples of rock-cut architecture, the state-sponsored Barabar caves in Bihar, personally dedicated by Ashoka circa 250 BCE.

These artificial caves exhibit an amazing level of technical proficiency, the extremely hard granite rock being cut in geometrical fashion and given the Mauryan polish, also found on sculpture.

There are numerous other distinct features such as the dwarapalakas – twin guardians at the main entrance and the inner sanctum of the temple and goshtams – deities carved in niches on the outer side walls of the garbhagriha.

Mayamata and Manasara shilpa texts estimated to be in circulation by 5th to 7th century, is a guidebook on Dravidian style of Vastu Shastra design, construction, sculpture and joinery technique.

[66] The South Indian temple consists essentially of a square-chambered sanctuary topped by a superstructure, tower, or spire and an attached pillared porch or hall (maṇḍapa or maṇṭapam), enclosed by a peristyle of cells within a rectangular court.

At the same time the Durga temple at Aihole is unique having an even earlier style of an apsidal shrine which is reminiscent of Buddhist chaitya halls and is surrounded by a veranda of a later kind, with a shikhara that is stylistically like a nagara one.

The basic layout of a Hindu and most Jain temples has consisted of a small garbhagriha or sanctuary for the main murti or cult images, over which the high superstructure rises, then one or more larger mandapa halls.

Following the collapse of the Mughal Empire, regional nawabs such as in Lucknow, Hyderabad and Mysore continued to commission and patronize the construction of Mughal-commissioned architecture in the princely states.

[82] The Alai Darwaza gatehouse at the Qutb complex, from 1311, still shows a cautious approach to the new technology, with very thick walls and a shallow dome, only visible from a certain distance or height.

Bold contrasting colours of masonry, with red sandstone and white marble, introduce what was to become a common feature of Indo-Islamic architecture, substituting for the polychrome tiles used in Persia and Central Asia.

While the beautiful tile mosaics on some of its walls and the luminescent mother-of-pearl inlays on black basalt are Persian in style, its carved wooden pillars and brackets are clearly derived from local residential architecture.

The style of the Bengal Sultanate mostly used brick, with characteristic features being indigenous Bengali elements, such as curved roofs, corner towers and complex terracotta ornamentation.

[98] Although the description in Pandua, the ancient capital, shows mainly Persian culture in courts, we find one of the first attempts at fusing together the Islamic and Bengali style of architecture under Ilyas Shahi dynasty who ruled then.

Some designs push out balconies at intervals up the shaft; the most extreme version of this was in the lost upper parts of the so-called "shaking minarets" at the Jama Mosque, Ahmedabad, which fell down in an earthquake in 1819.

Some of the typical features include pools, fountains and canals inside the gardens.Rajput Architecture represents different types of buildings, which may broadly be classed either as secular or religious.

The onion dome, frescoes, in-lay work, and multi-foil arches, are Mughal influences, more specially from Shah Jahan's period, whereas chattris, oriel windows, bracket supported eaves at the string-course, and ornamented friezes are derived from elements of Rajput architecture.

Distinctive architectural elements are:- Deuls are located in the numerous rivers crisscrossed by stone-free alluvial and bush landscape of the southern Sundarbans settlements in the Indian state of West Bengal.

The major cities during the period of British rule were Madras (Chennai), Calcutta, Bombay (Mumbai), New Delhi, Agra, Bangalore, Bankipore, Karachi, Nagpur, Bhopal& Hyderabad,[112][111] which saw the rise of Indo-Saracenic Revival architecture.

While most rural estates featured an elegant country house, the cities of Calcutta had widespread 19th and early 20th century urban architecture, comparable to London, Sydney or Auckland.

Notable ongoing projects in India include the city of Amaravati, Kolkata Museum of Modern Art, Sardar Patel Stadium, World One, and Navi Mumbai Airport.

Manasollasa, a twelfth century text giving details on garden design, asserts that it should include rocks and raised mounds of summits, manicured with plants and trees of diverse varieties, artificial ponds, and flowing brooks.

Thirty years ago I shared this belief with Mr. Fergusson, when I argued that the presence of arches in the great Buddhist Temple at Buddha Gaya proved that the building could not have been erected before the Muhammadan conquest.

Khmer temples were typically enclosed by a concentric series of walls, with the central sanctuary in the middle; this arrangement represented the mountain ranges surrounding Mount Meru, the mythical home of the gods.

According to Thomas R. Metcalf, a leading scholar of the style, "the Indo-Saracenic, with its imagined past turned to the purposes of British colonialism, took shape outside India [ie the subcontinent] most fully only in Malaya".

Kuala Lumpur was a 19th-century foundation, only a small settlement when the British decided to make it the capital of their new Federated Malay States in 1895, and needed a number of large public buildings.

It is considered that Ai-Khanoum and Sirkap may have been primary actors in transmitting Western artistic influence to India, for example in the creation of the quasi-Ionic Pataliputra capital or the floral friezes of the Pillars of Ashoka.

[188] The Lycian tombs, dated to the 4th century BCE, are either free-standing or rock-cut barrel-vaulted sarcophagi, placed on a high base, with architectural features carved in stone to imitate wooden structures.