 The Idea
In timeline framework, Architecture can be seen as the matrix of human civilization. The Matrix accommodates both permanence, embedded in roots and changes that sprout from the unchanging roots catering to different courses of spatio-temporal necessities. Changes that happen over large timelines are often recoveries of the deeper, the roots. This is like a feedback loop. The patterns of loops and cyclic courses are the true architectural principles that remain eternal and always a source to something new as a recovery. Every time, a recovery forwards that root - the permanent, the new change brings in a quantum leap in future patterns of civilization reflecting the root or heritage itself. In the case of Indian Architecture, where historical roots and the principles of change are deeper, the change is mostly a great recovery, almost equivalent to a ‘Renaissance’.
‘Renaissance’ means rebirth. In a deeper sense, it means a revival, a recognition of something that was always there. Each Renaissance again is a higher recognition and a more perfect future realization surpassing the ones that preceded it. Timeline studies therefore unfold them as experiments with an ever-expanding truth of human evolution. The Book is an experiment of this Idea of permanence and change embedded in Indian Architecture and her principles.
The Binary Principles
The Book forwards a timeline of four Renaissances. Each Renaissance is seen as a recovery of a complete truth. Historically, it has happened through an interaction of the two ancient forces – the Indian and the Greek minds. The Indian mind has had always looked inside aiming for spiritual liberty based on improvements of the inner individual world. The Greeks have forwarded liberty of the material environment based on improvements in the external social world. Both are one-sided. But together, whenever they have had interacted, a Complete Goal has been attempted. The completeness is ‘the liberty of the individual and the society, of the inner and the outer growths of human being’. But that goal is being gradually reached over time. Hence, there is a need of a Timeline study that forwards each ‘Renaissance’ born out of the interactions of Indian and Western (originally Greek) Architectures.
Timeline study
With every Renaissance, the interaction of the two forces gave rise to great civilizations and cultures, a step closer to that complete goal. The Book traces three such interactions from the histories and forwards the possibility of a fourth one, where the attainment will reach its climax:
- In times of extreme remote antiquity, the interactions between Indian wisdom and the Greek analytical philosophy had given rise to the very ancient civilizations of Persia and the Anatolian-Romaic (West Asian) world. These were the world’s first urban empires and their architectures before the West had seen any. The classical principles of symmetry, rhythm, repetition and geometry was born of the Quadrangular Compositions (Char-Bagh) of the Vedic altar and developed earliest Classical Buildings and Garden Architecture were born in Persia, Mesopotamia, Assyria and parts of Anatolia.
- Then, after the invasion of Alexander the Great, another interaction had taken further westward, giving rise to major spiritual tides like Christianity deluging the Eastern Mediterranean. The Missionaries of Buddhism reached Judea, Alexandria and Crete. Buddhist architecture had lasting influences on the art-architecture-cultural systems of the new movements in Turkey, Crete, Italy, Islands of Greece and Eastern Mainland Europe. Rock-cut Tombs and Monasteries, Basilicas with variable apsidal compositions turned out to be the best expressions born of the second confluence of Indian and Greek minds.
- Later during and after the Dark Ages, through the rise of Arabia and its Prophet, the two had met again. Through the rise of Baghdad the assimilation of art-architecture principles of Ancient India and Persia recurred. Through invasions of various Tartar-Mughal (Mongol) tribes, Renaissance architecture was re-born right in the heart of Western Mediterranean i.e. Moorish France, Spain and Portugal. This marked the beginning of modern European or Western architecture mainly centered at Paris, Florence and Venice.
- Now, in our own times, the impact of communication forces of globalization has created another greater opportunity of interaction. There is also the great necessity of a paradigm shift in our ecological and scientific mind-set. The lopsidedness of a one-track material urban development and the ‘international style’ points out to critical gaps. The gaps are in the over-homogeneity of our current industrial-design tools, in our current environmental set-up, in our ecological awareness and in the overall planetary understanding failing in framing variations and norms of a varied moral-social-humane race. These shortcomings are indeed critical enough to press forward a biggest of all Renaissances. The Book traces the stage of this greatest of changes beyond the influence of a Euro-American predominance in built-environmental grammar. Instead it sees a recovery of elements from Asia – from China, Persia and mainly India thus forwarding a return of civilization patterns to its very origin. Various inputs and evidences from a global pool of scholars and their wisdom have been drawn and collated to come to this major conclusion. A holistic school of a Green Design Grammar is the need of the day, where, Principles of Indian Architecture will play a leading role.
Conclusions
The book recovers the timeline of the Four Renaissances with the help of a very significant pattern of civilizational and cultural trends - the ‘Principles of Indian Architecture’. Outer Physical Indian architecture has deeper foundations in the inner sciences of humanity, which is her spirituality. These principles have both an assimilative power to correlate connections of the outer and the inner dimensions of human habit-habitation complementarities. The book recovers the holistic principles with the cooperative dimensions of archaeology, iconography and folk-anthropology to best forward the timeline.
Through first two chapters the book presents these cardinal principles based on India’s spiritual roots. In the following four chapters, it posits them in the four phased timeline to finally arrive at the holistic approach to built-environments, which is the great need of the day.
Author: Joy Sen, Associate Professor
Department of Architecture and Regional Planning, IIT Kharagpur
ISBN: 81-902768-4-0
Published by: Cygnus, Kolkata (Price: Rs. 200 |
|