Architecture of Gujarat

The Architecture of Gujarat consists of architecture in the Indian state of Gujarat.

Quotes

• The walled city, with its twelve gates and numerous mosques, temples and towers, was founded in 1411 by Ahmad Shah on the eastern bank of the Sabarmati River. Despite its dilapidated condition, the Indian Islamic architecture and the houses decorated with wood carvings attest to its affluent status.
  • Ahmedabad. Anjana Desai, in Environmental Perceptions, in Communalism, Caste and Hindu Nationalism: The Violence in Gujarat, p. 33

• The first to move beyond the walls with the growth of the city’s population were the wealthy mill-owners. They built bungalows in the northern suburb of Shahibag. From the early 1920s, wealthy members of upper-caste groups began moving to the western side of the river, where they constructed housing societies. These small cooperative apartment buildings, alongside buildings, became the new residential pattern in the area.
  • Ahmedabad. Kenneth L. Gillion, in “Ahmedabad” in Communalism, Caste and Hindu Nationalism: The Violence in Gujarat, p. 34

• The temple of Dwarica, the most celebrated of all the shrines raised to Crishna [Krishna], is built upon an eminence rising from the sea-shore, and surrounded by a fortified wall, which likewise encircles the town, from which it is, however, separated by a lofty partition-wall, through which it is necessary to pass to see it to advantage. The architectural character of this temple is that to which we are accustomed to give the name of pagoda. It may be said to consist of three parts: the munduff, or hall of congregation; the devachna, or penetralia (also termed gabarra); and the sikra, or spire…the chisel of Islam had been also at work, and defaced every graven image, nor is there enough remaining to disclose the original design: nevertheless, this obliteration has been done with care, so as not to injure the edifice. The basement, or square portion of the temple, from which springs the sikra, was the sanctum in former ages, when Budha-trivicrama was the object of adoration, anterior to the heresy of Crishna, who was himself a worshipper of Budha, whose miniature shrine is still the sanctum-sanctorum of Dwarica, while Crishna is installed in a cella beyond. The sikra, or spire, constructed in the most ancient style, consists of a series of pyramids, each representing a miniature temple, and each diminishing with the contracting spire, which terminates at one hundred and forty feet from the ground. There are seven distinct stories before this pyramidal spire greatly diminishes in diameter; each face of each story is ornamented with open porches, surmounted by a pediment supported by small columns. Each of these stories internally consists of column placed on column, whose enormous architraves increase in bulk in the decreasing ratio of the superimposed mass, and although the majority at the summit are actually broken by their own weight, yet they are retained in their position by the aggregate unity. The capitals of these columns are quite plain, having four cross projections for the architraves to rest on; and by an obtuseness in the Silpi not to be accounted for, several of these architraves do not rest on the columns, but on the projections; and, strange to say, the lapse of centuries has proved their efficiency, though Vitruvius might have regarded the innovation with astonishment. The entire fabric, whose internal dimensions are seventy-eight feet by sixty-six, is built from the rock, which is a sand-stone of various degrees of texture, forming the substratum of the island; – it has a greenish hue, either from its native bed, or from imbibing the saline atmosphere, which, when a strong light strikes upon it, gives the mass a vitreous transparent lustre. Internally it has a curious conker-like appearance. The architraves are, however, an exception, being of the same calcareous marine conglomerate, not unlike travertine, as already described in the temple of Somnat’h.
  • James Tod The temple of Dwarka, James Tod quoted from Jain, M. (editor) (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts. New Delhi: Ocean Books. Volume IV Chapter 9

• The foundation of this shrine must have been laid in the solstice, as its front varies ten points from the meridian line; and as the Silpi, or architect, in these matters, acts under the priest, we may infer that the Surya Siddhanta was little known to the Goorgoocha Brahmins, the ministrants of their times, who took the heliacal rising of those days as the true east point; its breadth is, therefore, from N.N.W. to S.S.E. Contrary to custom, it has its back to the rising sun, and faces the west. Crishna is here adored under his form of Rinchor, when he was driven from his patrimony, Surasena, by the Budhist king of Magadha. A covered colonnaded piazza connects the cella of Crishna with a miniature temple dedicated to Deoki, his mother; and within the ample court are various other shrines, one of which, in the S.E. angle, contains the statue of Budha Tri-vicrama, or, as he is familiarly called, Tricam-Rae and Trimnat’h, which is always crowded with votaries. Opposite to this, or at the S.W. angle of the main temple, is a smaller one, dedicated to another form of Crishna, Madhu Rae, and between these is a passage leading by a flight of steps to the Goomtee, a small rivulet, whose embouchure with the ocean is especially sacred, though is would not wet the instep to cross it. From the grand temple to the sungum, or point of confluence, where there is a small temple to Sungum-Narayn, the course of the Goomtee is studded with the cenotaphs of those pilgrims who were fortunate enough to surrender life at this “dwara of the deity.” Amongst them are four of the five Pandu brothers, countenancing the tradition that the fifth proceeded across the Hemachil, where, being lost sight of, he is said to have perished in its snows, and whither he was accompanied by Baldeo, the Indian Hercules, whose statue is enshrined in the south-west corner of the great munduff, several step under ground. Baldeo is represented on his ascent from patal, or the infernal regions, after some monstrous combat.
  • James Tod The temple of Dwarka, James Tod quoted from Jain, M. (editor) (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts. New Delhi: Ocean Books. Volume IV Chapter 9

Historic city of Ahmadabad

UNESCO Historic city of Ahmadabad

...... After AD. 1411 came to be erected the oldest extant fortification of the city, viz., the square Bhadra towers, which with massive form included the royal citadel on an area of about 16 hectares.

• After AD. 1411 came to be erected the oldest extant fortification of the city, viz., the square Bhadra towers, which with massive form included the royal citadel on an area of about 16 hectares.

• Its wealth of wooden architecture of settlements is also a great heritage for which the city is well known since centuries and is considered a storehouse of integrated crafts which extended from block making for textile printing to some of the finest expressions in traditional houses and temple building arts...Its economic enterprise sustaining the city and state, its wisdom in financial expertise and its guild tradition for community co-existence, leading to a world class status in textiles in 19th century.

• Ahmadabad is a curious amalgam of conservative traditions and cosmopolitan trends. Reputed as 'Manchester' of India, is a busy industrial city situated in cotton-growing hinterland north of Gulf of Cambay, about 100 km upstream of the mouth of the Sabarmati river.

Dr. Syed Mahmudul Hasan, Mosque Architecture of Pre-Mughal Bengal

Dr. Syed Mahmudul Hasan, Mosque Architecture of Pre-Mughal Bengal, Dacca (Bangladesh)

• It is true that Mosque architecture in Gujarat only began in the 14th century. When ‘Ala-al-Din Khalji conquered and annexed the country to the Delhi Sultanate in the later part of the 13th century, there still flourished a singularly beautiful indigenous style of architecture. The early monuments of Gujarat, notably at Patan (Anhilvada) tell the same story of the demolition of local temples and the reconstruction of their fragments…
  • p. 45-46

• …In the beginning, at the Qutb, the Hindu element was confined architecturally to the trabeate constructive methods, and to part of the decoration, Islam contributing the plan and the embellishment of the Arabic lettering. In Gujarat, notably in the entrance porches of the Jami‘ Masjid at Cambay, much may fairly be described as literal reconstruction of Hindu work, as units in the established plan of a Muslim place of worship. These entrances have their parallels in the pavilions and mandapas of Hindu and Jaina temples still standing, for instance, at Modhera and Mount Abu…”
  • p. 45-46

• The earliest recorded building in Gujarat is the Adina Masjid at Patan (Anhilvada), as stated above. This bears the same unusual name as that of the Mosque built by Sikandar Shah at Hazrat Pandua about fifty years later. The tomb of Sheikh Farid and the Adina Masjid at Patan, which are dated C. AH 700/AD 1300, correspond in their utilization of Hindu building material with the tomb and the Mosque of Zafar Khan Ghazi at Tribeni in Hooghly, Bengal, which are dated C. AH 705/ AD 1305. The now demolished Adina Masjid at Patan, is said to have had one thousand and fifty pillars of marble and other stones taken from destroyed temples. Erected by Ulugh Khan, ‘Ala’-al-Din Khalji’s Governor, it measures 400 feet by 300 feet…”
  • Patan (Gujarat) p. 46

• Unlike the Patan Mosque, the Jami‘ Masjid of Bharoch, which is also dated C. AH 700/AD 1300 is a new creation. Although it does incorporate Hindu pillars, it is built on the usual Mosque plan with which we are familiar in earlier works. The brackets of the incorporated pillars and the carved interior of the corbelled domes are particularly fine. They, of course, necessarily recall the much earlier work of the Quwwat al-Islam at Delhi. It is important to realize that these primitive methods were still being used in the Indian provinces two hundred years after they were fully developed at Delhi.
  • Bharuch (Gujarat) . 1979.

• The Mosque of Cambay demonstrates the imposition of Khalji features, such as the arched screen of the Jama‘at Khana Masjid at the Dargah of Nizam-al-Din Aulia in Delhi, upon the local trabeate forms of Gujarat Hindu architecture. Codrington writes, ‘The Jami‘ Masjid at Cambay was finished in 1325, and is typical of these earlier buildings. It has all the appurtenances that Islam demands-cloisters, open court-yard, the covered place for prayer, mimbar and mihrab-but only the west end is in any sense Islamic. As at Delhi and Ajmir, the pillars of the cloisters, and notably the entrance porches as a whole, are the relics of sacked Hindu shrines.
  • Khambhat (Gujarat) . p. 46