Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 2.djvu/389

This page needs to be proofread.

CHAP. XI. WOODEN ARCHITECTURE. 335 it must be confessed, but still not so very unlike some found in Nepal, at Swayambhunath (Woodcut No. 155), for instance, and elsewhere. The walls, too, are of interest to us, because the mode in which the logs are disposed and ornamented resembles the ornamentation of the Orissan temples more clearly than any stone forms we can call to mind. The courses of the stone work in the tower of the great temple at Bhuvanerwar (Woodcut No. 315), and other temples there, produce so nearly the same effect, that it does not seem improbable they may have been derived from some such original. The mode, too, in which the Orissan temples are carved, and the extent to which that class of ornamentation is carried, is much more suggestive of a wooden than of a lithic origin. These, however, are questions that can only be profitably discussed when we have more knowledge of this Kashmiri style than we now possess. When the requisite materials are avail- able for the purpose, there are few chapters that will be of greater interest, or that will more worthily conclude the Architectural History of India than those that treat of the true and false styles of wooden art, with which the narrative begins, and with which it also ends.