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The Vedic culture – culture – End End of II millennium
The Vedic Age The Aryans did not settle into the well-planned cities of the
Harappan culture. Preferred to clear forests around the riverbanks of the Gangetic plain and settle in small villages. Due to the inherent dislike of a pastoral people to settle in one place for very long, long, and thus their innate suspicion of any hint of permanence. They preferred to stick with the tried and tested. tested .
what are the sources? No architectural examples of this period are surviving.
These ancient texts (Vedas) were composed by the Aryan seers and handed
Early Aryan architectural forms were
down through generations orally.
translated into the architecture of India
The great epics - the Mahabharata and the
for thousands of years .
Ramayana -picture village and town life
The caves of Ajanta and Ellora, much of Buddhist architecture, architecture , were directly
during Aryavrata, or the Aryan age. Carvings on the Stupas at Barhut Barhut and Sanchi Sanchi - depict Aryan village life vividly.
influenced by influenced by the simple village village
structures of the Aryan villages. villages.
The Aryan Village
Aryan invaders – familiar with the use of tim ber and able to adapt their carpentry skills easily to w ooden structures. Simpler and easier to maintain , or to rebuild in case of floods floods and rains. Brick structures – symbolic to the people whom they have conquered. The early Aryan village – conglomerate of timber and thatch huts of different types.
Coming to India The settlers gave up their t otally nomadic existence and became partagriculturalists This provided This provided the impetus to build villages, the basic unit of which was the hut
For building material, the abundant forest provided ample raw stock.
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Aryans Residential unit Huts were of various shapes but predominantly had a circular plan
The Aryan hut - basic shape - circular in plan - with a thatched
Huts were of beehive pattern made of a circular wall pf banboos held together with bands of withes and covered with either a domical roof of leaves or thatched with grass.
Later elongated to become rectangular in plan, with roofing of
roof over a bamboo network of ribs.
bamboo - curved in the shape of a barrel.
The three stages of Vedic house
The roof made in bent bamboos – conical or domical shape,
Some of the huts were arranged in groups of 2,3 or 4 around a
made water tight with overlapping thatch or grass.
square courtyard and the roofs were covered with planks of wood or tiles.
Two or three groups of huts were arranged around open
In the better class houses, unbaked bricks were used for walls .
courtyard.
A conglomerate of such units – typical Aryan village
Clusters of these huts(grama) formed a courtyard – resembles huts in Indian
For protection against wild
villages even today.
animals - a palisade fence of wood and bamboo
The better-off citizens roofed them
surrounded the whole
with planks of wood or tiles, and used
settlement.
unbaked bricks for the walls
This fence was made of upright posts(thabha) of
To maintain the barrel shape of the roof, a thong or string, perhaps of animal hide, was stretched across the end of the bamboo.
bamboo with horizontal members(suchi) threaded into holes in posts. Controlled entry – cattle to pass to and fro of pasturage.
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At one point, the fence was
extended forward to form a sort of gate – Gramadwara Huts in modern Orissa -one of the These forms - the barrel
poorest Indian states - carrying
vaulted roof, the tie-cord, and the palisade fence and railing,
traces of this influence, with
formed important motifs for
symbolism dating back to Vedic
future Indian Architecture.
times.
Eg:Torana – archway.
Material and Construction
With the conversion of the early Vedic people into agriculturalists, a growing rivalry for precious fertile land
A palisade wall inevitably protected the cities and the buildings within made entirely of wood.
was inevitable. The Vedic carpenters developed skill in timber construction of a very high standard .
Groups of small villages banded together, and small 'cities' began to take shape
In later ages timber construction techniques were employed even though the material of construction was radically different - i.e. stone.
Layout of ideal Vedic Village - Arthashastra The cities of the Vedic period rectangular in plan. Divided into four quarters by two main thoroughfares
citadel
residential
intersecting at right angles, each leading to a city gate. One of these quarters contained the
merchants
tradesmen
citadel and another housed the residential area. A third quarter was reserved for the merchants, and the last for tradesmen who could display their wares.
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End of Vedic Age…. An ideal town was laid out as square with grid iron pattern. The main streets – north south directions,remaining three east west directions. A number of the living cities of today are built over ancient sites. From these modest beginnings, early Hindu architecture
gradually metamorphosed into the magnificent Buddhist stupas and the rock-cut caves at Ajanta.
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