Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/421

INDIAN.] ARCHITECTURE 397 gablets, and tref oiled arches may have strongly affected the architecture of the Saracens. Of the style of North India Mr Fergnsson gives remark able, and by no means elegant, examples; as the Black Pagoda at Kannaruc, and temples at Ba- rolli and at Be nares. The chief features are a sort of entrance [torch, sometimes walled and some times carried on pillars, called the nuptial hall, leading into a great pagoda, square in plan, and finishing Fia. 35. Temple at Pandrethan. with a sort of tub-shaped dome. The ornamentation is profuse, so much Fia. 36. Ghoosla Ghat, Benares, so as to detract from the greatness of the design. There FIG. 37. Shoemadoo Pagoda, Pegu. are no buildings in this style anterior to the Mahometan conquest. The date assigned to the temple of Jugernath is 1198, and to the -^ Black Pagoda, 1241 A.D. The ghats, or landing - places (fig. 36), that line the banks of the rivers of Northern India, are often of great architectural merit. The pagoda forms a very prominent feature in the archi tecture of Further India. A specimen of the Burmese style of temples is pre sented in the Shoe madoo (i.e., "golden great god") Pagoda of Pegu (figs. 37, 38). Fia. 38. Shoemadoo Pagoda, Pegu ; quarter of plan. ASSYRIAN ARCHITECTURE. Assyria and Babylonia or Chaldea may be shortly defined as the countries watered by the Euphrates and Tigris, lying between Armenia and the Arabian desert, and reaching down to the Persian Gulf. The capital, Ninus or Nineveh, was taken by the Medes under Cyaxares, and some 200 years after Xenophon passed over its site, then mere mounds of earth. It remained buried until 1845, when Botta and Layard discovered the ruins of the Assyrian cities. The principal remains are those of Khorsabad, 10 miles N.E. of Mosul; of Nimroucl, supposed to be the ancient Calah; and of Kouyunjik, in all probability the ancient Nineveh. In these cities are found fragments of several great buildings which seem to have been palace-temples. They were constructed chiefly of sun-dried bricks, and all that remains of them is the lower part of the walls, decorated with sculpture and paint ings, portions of the pavements, a few indications of the elevation, and some interesting works connected with the drainage, <kc. The structures were built usually on artificial mounds, and approached, it is supposed, by great flights of stepa (of which remains composed of black basalt have been found at Khorsabad). They consist of series of halls and chambers of no great size, the largest hall in Sennacherib s palace at Kouyunjik being only 200 feet by 45 feet, where as Westminster Hall is 2G8 feet by G8 feet. In their proportions they are utterly unlike Egyptian structures, and they display the striking peculiarity of being elongated beyond anything known in other styles of architecture ; e.g., one of the Kouyunjik halls is "122 feet long by 27 wide, another is 218 feet long by 25 wide. The great hall at Nimroud, though 162 feet by 62, was divided lengthwise in the centre by a wall 12 feet thick, leaving each side only 25 feet wide. Another peculiarity of these struc tures is the immense thickness of the walls. Those of the Kouyunjik hall (27 feet wide) were 15 feet thick, and those of Nimroud (32 feet wide) were 26 feet thick. It has, indeed, been reckoned by Mr Fergusson, that in some of the palaces the area of the walls is as great as that of the chambers. The reason he suggests for this is that these thick walls supported a double row of columns as a clerestory under the roof, so arranged as to give light and air, while excluding the rays of the sun. He covers the halls with flat roofs, supported on columns, which being of wood have rotted or been burnt. An entirely different theory is that of M. Flandin, who studied the sub

ject on the spot. He believes that the halls were vaulted