Chamber, with a doorway on each side
covered by a pediment, with a trefoil-headed niche containing a bust
of the Hindu triad, and on the flanks of the main entrance, as well
as on those of the side doorways, were pointed and trefoil niches,
each of which held a statue of a Hindu divinity.
The interior decorations of the roof can only be conjecturally
determined, as I was unable to discover any ornamented stones that
could with certainty be assigned to it. Baron Hugel doubts that
Marttand ever had a roof; but, as the walls of the temple are still
standing, the numerous heaps of large stones that are scattered about
on all sides can only have belonged to the roof.
I can almost fancy that the erection of this sun-temple was suggested
by the magnificent sunny prospect which its position commands. It
overlooks the finest view in Kashmir, and perhaps in the known world,
Beneath it lies the paradise of the East, with its sacred streams and
cedarn glens, its brown orchards and green fields, surrounded on all
sides by vast snowy mountains, whose lofty peaks seem to smile upon
the beautiful valley below. The vast extent of the scene makes it
sublime; for this magnificent view of Kashmir is no petty peep into
a half-mile glen, but the full display of a valley sixty miles in
breadth and upwards of a hundred miles in length, the whole of which
lies beneath "the ken of the wonderful Marttand."
The principal buildings that still exist in Kashmir are entirely
composed of a blue limestone, which is capable of taking the highest
polish - a property to which I mainly attribute the beautiful state
of preservation in which some of them at present exist.
Even at first sight one is immediately struck by the strong resemblance
which the Kashmirian colonnades bear to the classic peristyles of
Greece. Even the temples themselves, with their porches and pediments,
remind one more of Greece than of India; and it is difficult to
believe that a style of architecture which differs so much from all
Indian examples, and which has so much in common with those of Greece,
could have been indebted to chance alone for this striking resemblance.
One great similarity between the Kashmirian architecture and that of
the various Greek orders is its stereotyped style, which, during the
long flourishing period of several centuries, remained unchanged. In
this respect it is so widely different from the ever-varying forms
and plastic vagaries of the Hindu architecture that it is impossible
to conceive their evolution from a common origin.
I feel convinced myself that several of the Kashmirian forms, and many
of the details, were borrowed from the temples of the Kabulian Greeks,
while the arrangements of the interior and the relative proportions
of the different parts were of Hindu origin. Such, in fact, must
necessarily have been the case with imitations by Indian workmen,
which would naturally have been engrafted upon the indigenous
architecture. The general arrangements would still remain Indian,
while many of the details, and even some of the larger forms, might
be of foreign origin.
As a whole, I think that the Kashmirian architecture, with its
noble fluted pillars, its vast colonnades, its lofty pediments,
and its elegant trefoiled arches, is fully entitled to be classed
as a distinct style. I have therefore ventured to call it the Arian
order - a name to which it has a double right; first, because it
was the style of the Aryas, or Arians, of Kashmir; and, secondly,
because its intercolumniations are always of four diameters - an
interval which the Greeks called Araiostyle.
Extract from Vigne's "Travels in Kashmir."
The Hindu temple of Marttand is commonly called the House of the
Pandus. Of the Pandus it is only necessary to say that they are the
Cyclopes of the East. Every old building, of whose origin the poorer
class of Hindus in general have no information, is believed to have
been the work of the Pandus. As an isolated ruin, this deserves, on
account of its solitary and massive grandeur, to be ranked not only
as the first ruin of the kind in Kashmir, but as one of the noblest
among the architectural relics of antiquity that are to be seen in
any country. Its noble and exposed situation at the foot of the hills
reminded me of that of the Escurial. It has no forest of cork-trees
and evergreen-oaks before it, nor is it to be compared, in point of
size, with that stupendous building; but it is visible from as great
a distance. And the Spanish sierra cannot for a moment be placed in
competition with the verdant magnificence of the mountain-scenery
of Kashmir.
Few of the Kashmirian temples, if any, I should say, were
Buddhist. Those in or upon the edge of the water were rather, I should
suppose, referable to the worship of the Nagas, or snake-gods. The
figures in all the temples are almost always in an erect position,
and I have never been able to discover any inscription in those
now remaining.
I had been struck with the great general resemblance which the temple
bore to the recorded disposition of the Ark and its surrounding
curtains, in imitation of which the Temple at Jerusalem was built;
and it became for a moment a question whether the Kashmirian temples
had not been built by Jewish architects, who had recommended them to
be constructed on the same plan for the sake of convenience merely. It
is, however, a curious fact, that in Abyssinia, the ancient Ethiopia,
which was also called "Kush," the ancient Christian churches are
not unlike those of Kashmir, and that they were originally built in
imitation of the temple, by the Israelites who followed the Queen
of Sheba, whose son took possession of the throne of Kush, where his
descendants are at this moment Kings of Abyssinia.
