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The Vedic culture End of II millennium

The Vedic Age

B.C. 1500 800 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, and thus their innate suspicion of any hint
By: of permanence.
Ar.Sukhman Chawla
They preferred to stick with the tried and tested.

what is the importance of this period?

what are the sources?

No architectural examples of this

period are surviving.
Early Aryan architectural forms were
translated into the architecture of India
for thousands of years.
The caves of Ajanta and Ellora, much
of Buddhist architecture, were directly
influenced by the simple village
structures of the Aryan villages.
These ancient texts (Vedas) were
composed by the Aryan seers and handed
down through generations orally.
The great epics - the Mahabharata and the
Ramayana -picture village and town life
during Aryavrata, or the Aryan age.
Carvings on the Stupas at Barhut and
Sanchi - depict Aryan village life vividly.

The Aryan Village Coming to India

The settlers gave up their totally

Aryan invaders familiar with the use of timber and able to
nomadic existence and became part-
adapt their carpentry skills easily to wooden structures.
agriculturalists
Simpler and easier to maintain , or to rebuild in case of floods
This provided the impetus to build
and rains.
villages, the basic unit of which was the
Brick structures symbolic to the people whom they have
hut
conquered.
For building material, the abundant
The early Aryan village conglomerate of timber and thatch
forest provided ample raw stock.
huts of different types.

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Aryans Residential unit

Huts were of various shapes but The Aryan hut - basic shape - circular in plan - with a thatched

predominantly had a circular plan roof over a bamboo network of ribs.

Huts were of beehive pattern made of a Later elongated to become rectangular in plan, with roofing of
circular wall pf banboos held together with bamboo - curved in the shape of a barrel.
bands of withes and covered with either a
domical roof of leaves or thatched with
grass.

The three stages of Vedic house

The roof made in bent bamboos conical or domical shape,
made water tight with overlapping thatch or grass.
Two or three groups of huts were arranged around open
courtyard.
Some of the huts were arranged in groups of 2,3 or 4 around a
square courtyard and the roofs were covered with planks of
wood or tiles.
In the better class houses, unbaked bricks were used for walls .

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
bamboo with horizontal
To maintain the barrel shape of the
members(suchi) threaded into
roof, a thong or string, perhaps of
holes in posts.
animal hide, was stretched across the
end of the bamboo. 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
These forms - the barrel
vaulted roof, the tie-cord, and
the palisade fence and railing,
formed important motifs for
future Indian Architecture.
Eg:Torana archway.
With the conversion of the early Vedic people into
agriculturalists, a growing rivalry for precious fertile land
was inevitable.
Groups of small villages banded together, and small 'cities'
began to take shape
01-11-2017
City of Kasingara near
Magadha , in Bihar
Huts in modern Orissa -one of the
poorest Indian states - carrying
traces of this influence, with
symbolism dating back to Vedic
times.
Material and Construction
A palisade wall inevitably protected the cities and the
buildings within made entirely of wood.
The Vedic carpenters developed skill in timber
construction of a very high standard.
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.