154 THE AR YANS IN ANCIENT INDIA.
Greco-
Bactrian
and
Muham-
madan
influences.
its theme, was the celebration of the Queen of England andher ancestors, in a Sanskrit volume entitled the Victoria-Gitika(Calcutta, 1875). No Englishman has yet brought an adequateacquaintance with the technique of Indian instrumentation tothe study of Hindu music. The art still awaits investigationby some eminent Western professor ; and the contempt withwhich Europeans in India regard it, merely proves their ignor-ance of the system on which Hindu music is built up.
Indian architecture ( artha-sdstra 1 ), although also ranked as-an upa-veda or supplementary part of inspired learning, derivedits development from Buddhist rather than from Brahmanicalimpulses. A brick altar sufficed for the Vedic ritual. TheBuddhists were the great stone - builders of India . Theirmonasteries and shrines exhibit the history of the art duringtwenty-two centuries, from the earliest cave structures androck-temples, to the latest Jain erections, dazzling in stuccoand overloaded with ornament. It seems probable that ourChristian churches owe their steeples indirectly to the Buddhist topes. The Greco-Bactrian kingdom profoundly influencedarchitecture and sculpture in Northern India ; the Musalman conquerors brought in new forms and requirements of theirown. Nevertheless, Hindu art powerfully asserted itself inthe imperial works of the Mughals , and has left memorialswhich extort the admiration and astonishment of our age.
The Hindu builders derived from the Muhammadans alightness of structure which they did not formerly possess.The Hindu palace-architecture of Gwalior , the Indian-Muham-madan mosques and mausoleums of Agra and Delhi , withseveral of the older Hindu temples of Southern India, standunrivalled for grace of outline and elaborate wealth of orna-ment. The Taj-Mahal at Agra justifies Heber’s exclamation,that its builders had designed like Titans, and finished likejewellers. The open-carved marble windows and screens atAhmadabad , which look like open lace-work in marble, furnishexamples of the skilful ornamentation which beautifies everyIndian building, from the cave monasteries of the Buddhist period downward. They also show with what plasticity theHindu architects adapted their Indian ornamentation to thestructural requirements of the Muhammadan mosque.
A beautiful example of Indian domestic architecture andinterior decoration, the Darbar Room in the new wing ofOsborne, has just been finished for Her Majesty by Ram Singh,a native of the Punjab , entirely from his own designs (T892).
1 Specifically, nirmana-silpam , or nirmana-vidya.