Architecture

The first of these cultures to be treated, and in some ways those that had the most important influence on other Asian cultures, were those that developed in what is now India. As early as 5,000 years ago several cities flourished along the Indus River in northeastern India, producing remarkable artwork and forms of writing still debated as to methods of decipherment. A native Dravidian religion later developed in this area, with emphasis on male and female fertility imagery. About 3,500 years ago groups of Aryan invaders moved in from the north, bringing more ascetic religious practices. These two ancient belief systems underlie Indian temple architecture to this day, combining abstract diagrammatic and symbolic plan arrangements overlaid with a profusion of luxuriant carvings portraying the numerous gods, shown in episodes from their many stories, including depictions of transcendental male and female physical union.

Around 2,600 years ago three major religions developed in India—Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism—each with a variant belief in the transmigration of souls, reborn in new bodily form after death. In Hinduism, with its pantheon of numerous deities largely associated with natural elements and events, the ancient emphasis on the individual and the universal, male and female, the phallic lingam form and the corresponding female yoni imagery, was strongly developed. Hinduism, with its many elaborate rituals carried out by Brahmin priests, was rejected by Jainism, and also by Buddhism, started by Siddhartha Gautama (c. 563–c. 483 B.C.E.), who, through meditation directed at release from human desire, achieved the state of "enlightened one," or Buddha. Spread throughout India and far beyond by disciples and monks who emulated the Buddha's example, Buddhism rejected the elaborate Hindu rituals in favor of seeking release from self with the extinction of desire, leading ultimately to a state of nirvana.

Hindu architecture.

In Hindu belief the primordial world floated in a vast ocean, with a sacred mountain at its center consisting of five or six ascending levels or terraces. From this idea developed the concept of the gods residing in the mountains or in sacred caves; this led to the creation of temples as caves carved into the solid rock of cliff sides, the carved elements of the shaped space inside recalling more ancient forms once carved in wood. A good example is the Vishnu cave-temple carved out in the sixth century at Badami in Karnataka, southern India, a hall with many square columnar piers, oriented on a north-facing axis.

Two axes typically govern Hindu temple architecture: a horizontal ground-plane axial system oriented to the cardinal directions, most often facing east; and a towering mass marking a vertical axis. This vertical mass, the shikhara, represents the sacred mountain, and rises in massed layers, gently rounded at the top. The enormously thick masonry walls of the base enclose a small internal chamber, the sacred cave-womb space, garbhagriha. Leading up to the garbhagriha are several chambers, aligned on the principal east-facing axis, surrounded by columnar porches, the entire complex set on a tall plinth or base, the mandapa. The type of the northern Indian temple is well represented by the Khandariya Mahadeva temple at Khajuraho, built about 1030 in the Madhya Pradesh region of north central India, whose rising, slightly parabolically curved shikhara, in the quintessential mountain profile, is composed of bundled layers.

Buddhist architecture.

Ironically, Buddhist architecture in India is comparatively rare, surviving better in examples based on Indian prototypes but built in places to which Buddhism was carried, such as Sri Lanka and Cambodia, and in wooden framed temples built in China and Japan. The building type mostly closely related to Indian sources is the stupa. Following the Buddha's death, his ashes were divided into ten parts, which were carried to places associated with his life and teaching. These portions of his remains were buried in mounds inspired by the small mounded village memorials or chaityas traditionally built over the remains of deceased leaders. The Buddhist stupa, a large domed mound covered with stone, represents the dome of heaven; it is enclosed by circular walkways for meditation, and defined by encircling stone fences punctuated by large gates in the cardinal directions representing the winds. A splendid example (remaining in India) is the Great Stupa at Sanchi in the Madhya Pradesh, begun by the Indian ruler Asoka sometime between 273 and 236 B.C.E. The broad dome, 120 feet (36.5 meters) in diameter and rising 54 feet (16.5 meters) in height, is capped with a square railing (harmika) and a spire-like form (chatra) resembling superimposed umbrellas representing the stages of enlightenment achieved by Buddha as well as symbolizing the bodhi tree under which he achieved his final enlightenment. As Buddhism spread eastward, this chatra form is believed to have inspired the development of the Chinese pagoda tower (the name for which derives from the Sanskrit dagoba for stupa).