History of mediæval art . nd of the base,was so unfavorable to the design as a whole that the floral sup-ports of India did not remotely attain to the organic unity of theEgyptian lotos columns,—even as the chamfered piers above de-scribed were inferior to the proto-Doric shafts of Beni-hassan. Theluxuriant vegetation of India perhaps accounts for the overloadedcharacter of the floral column. Rows of leaves, bent both upwardand downward, appear upon the calix capitals in a manner resem- 142 INDIA. bling that observable in the Persian monuments of the age ofXerxes, to the details of which one o
History of mediæval art . nd of the base,was so unfavorable to the design as a whole that the floral sup-ports of India did not remotely attain to the organic unity of theEgyptian lotos columns,—even as the chamfered piers above de-scribed were inferior to the proto-Doric shafts of Beni-hassan. Theluxuriant vegetation of India perhaps accounts for the overloadedcharacter of the floral column. Rows of leaves, bent both upwardand downward, appear upon the calix capitals in a manner resem- 142 INDIA. bling that observable in the Persian monuments of the age ofXerxes, to the details of which one of the capitals of the ViharaGrotto at Ajanta {Fig. 79, c) is strikingly similar. A capital of theYadnya-Sri Grotto {Fig. 79, b), placed beneath an abacus with pro-jecting brackets, approaches in form the spirals of the Ionic style,as it is ornamented by twisted foliage falling at the four cornersover a heavy roundel similar in character to an echinus. Thistransformation of the round section of the capital to a square is. Fig. 78.—Buddhist Supports with Console Capitals. a. From a Grotto at Ajanta. b. From the Ganesa Grotto c. From a Grotto at Ajanta. near Cuttack. perhaps to be derived from that form of the column in which areversed calix forms the lower part of the capital, correspond-ing to the similar but upright ornament of the base, while thebud of the flower seems to be enclosed in a square shrine re-sembling the Buddhist reliquaries described above. Decorationsof this kind have already been met with upon the stambhas andthe interior supports of the chaitya halls. One of the columns ARCHITECTURE. 143 of the Nahapana Grotto at Nassick, answering to this description,is represented by Fig 79, a. The images of animals,—lions, horses,elephants, or oxen, as in the last-mentioned instance, with or with-out human figures,—are also transferred from the stambhas to thecapitals of columns, where they are employed to mask the junctureof the support with the horizontal beam,
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