[INDOLOGY] Wooden archetypes of Buddhist cave temples?

[John Huntington]

Dear list friends,

I have studied and thoroughly documented photographically the caves in
question. The earliest major caves e.g. Pitalkhora and Bhaja are such
detailed copies of wooden models that even joints in the wooden prototypes
are are carved into the stone. Further the walls in the vihara at
Pitalkhora were carved way too thin for stone and collapsed. Details of
wooden architecture, e.g. arched bracketing, continue until the end of the
fifth century.

As an occasional wood worker (mostly furniture), I can see exactly how the
wooden structures prototypes would have been built.

Unfortunately for the author, the rafters at Karle are actually wood
(presumably teak)

this can easily be seen at:
http://mleary.idv.hk/galleries/india-caves-karle/ (about 13 photographs
into his list of images)

The joining of slabs of wood to make the the curved beams is clearly
visible (simply they were not bent wood rather butt dado joints). his
entire premise is simply armchair speculation.

John

On Thu, Aug 25, 2016 at 6:44 AM, Jonathan Silk <kauzeya at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear Friends,
>
> About 4 years ago I ran across an online article by a Japanese architect
> (not Indologist) containing the claim that it was unlikely that there were
> really wooden archetypes of the Indian Buddhist cave temples such as Karla.
> As I recall, part of the argument concerned bent wooden beams, and the
> impracticality of bending such large wooden beams when it would have been
> perfectly easy to build what amounts to an "A-frame" and, if you wanted an
> curved ceiling, suspending it. Anyway, this is my very imperfect memory,
> but I can't find anything on my HD about this, and I can't, in a google
> search, find any discussion like this.
> Does this seem familiar to anyone? Has any architect actually discussed
> the feasibility of wooden construction in the fashion that we encounter in
> the caves?
>
> thanks very much!
>
> jonathan
>
> --
> J. Silk
> Leiden University
> Leiden University Institute for Area Studies, LIAS
> Matthias de Vrieshof 3, Room 0.05b
> 2311 BZ Leiden
> The Netherlands
>
> copies of my publications may be found at
> http://www.buddhismandsocialjustice.com/silk_publications.html
>
> _______________________________________________
> INDOLOGY mailing list
> INDOLOGY at list.indology.info
> indology-owner at list.indology.info (messages to the list's managing
> committee)
> http://listinfo.indology.info (where you can change your list options or
> unsubscribe)
>


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://list.indology.info/pipermail/indology/attachments/20160825/4dae3b1e/attachment.htm>