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Recendy I was involved in compilingan exhibition on Indian Architecturefor the FESTIVAL OF INDIA. The exhibition covered a wide range of built

form, from the earliest times right downto the present day . Since, over the centuries, India has accumulated a truly spectacular collection of architecture, the taskof editing it down to a shordist of fiftyexamples was indeed difficult. But evenmore formidable was the effort to understand - and communicate - the passion(the mythic beliefs ) that generated thesemagnificent buildings and cities. Forwhenever we construct, we are moved- either consciously or unconsciously -by mythic images and values . These arethe wellspring of the architecture wecreate.

And these images and values permeate everything; from the mud villages ofRajasthan and Madhya Pradesh to thegiant metropolii of Bombay and Ahmedabad. Documenting this varying habitat

Below:

Wayside shrine, Bombay

("Every few metres,

a sacred gesture.")

Bottom:

Sacred images in tribal hut.

Photograph:J.Jain.

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was indeed a revelation. Even in acrowded commercial centre likeBhuleshwhar or Manek Chowk, wefound, every 5 or 6 metres, a sacred gesture : a r ngoli (pattern of coloured powder) on a doorstep, a y ntr painted on awall, a shrine, a temple.

The presence of these gestures was sooverwhelming, I was astonished that ithas not been more central to the work ofcontemporary plannners and architects.For although today there is much awareness (and discussion) about the Publicrealm and the Private realm, there ishardly any attention paid to this - theSacred - realm.

And yet, in human terms, it is perhapsthe most important realm of all. For instance, of the various countries of Europe,

Italy - which like Bhuleshwhar andManek Chowk is filled with sacred gestures - is certainly the most compelling.When you come to France, the religion

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Top:

Humayun's Tomb, Delhi.

Photograph:Joseph St Anne

Above:

Buddhist stupa at Sanchi,

Madhya Pradesh.

Photograph:John Panikar.

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(Catholicism) and the culture (Latin) arethe same, but the gestures are less frequent. France is more secular - and so itdoesn t move you quite as much . Whenyou come to Switzerland, there is hardly

any sacred gesture at all This is why, Iwould venture to suggest, that Switzerland can never have the same impact onyou as Italy . w i s ~chocolates are sensa-

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tional, the mountains are stunning , thepeople are delightful, and yet ... there is adifference. To the Japanese, Mount Fuji issacred, is mythic; to the Swiss, MontBlanc is just a very high mountain. Thisdifference is of crucial importance toarchitecture.

Of course by Sacred, one does notmean only the religious, but the primodial as well. Religion is perhaps the mostfacile path to the world of the nonmanifest, but it is not the only one. Thisis why great artists like Picasso andMatisse, or Stravinsky in his music, have

constantly searched out the primitive, theprimodial. It was to find the sacred. Thisis why, also, Corbusier usually startedany statement of his credo with a pictogram of the di-umal pathway of the sun.n the ultimate analysis , it was this pro

found respect for the mythic that compelled him to create the chapel at Ronchamp . (Another architect - and onecloser to home - who also has a profound sense of the sacred is the greatHassan Fathy).

In the exhibition, we examined themany mythic beliefs that have found rootin India , from the earliest Vedic times(when architecture was conceived as ananalog of the Cosmos) down to this century (with its myths of Rationality , Sci-

ence, Progress, etc . The extraordinarything about India today, of course, is thatall these systems co-exist . They are likethe transparent layers of a palimpsest,with ll the colours and all the patternsequally vivid. In this sense, India is quitedifferent from, say, the us . For althoughAmerican society can also be described asmulti-religious, these are religions withmost of their myths castrated - which isof course why in any college chapel (orairport lounge) you can use the same baretable for a Christian ceremony, followedby a Jewish, followed by a Muslim, fol

lowed by a Buddhist, and so forth.Yet to disregard the mythic and thesacred is to diminish life . The impoverished architecture we create today is notdue jus t to the banality of the forms weconstruct, but also due to the prosaic andmundane briefs we address (which intum are indicative of the kind of ives welead). For instance, the magnificent kundat Modhera would undoubtedly have atotally different impact on our imagination if it had been built for some otherpurpose - say a Drive-in Theatre. Theform might be identical, but wherewould be the axis mundi qmnecting thewater in the kund below with the sacredsky above?

To try and understand the non-

Kund

at Modhera.

manifest, the unseen, is to look 'deeplyinto our own selves . It is this that concerns the sacred - whether religious orpromodial . And this is what art is about.Thus to understand architecture as history, is to search out the mythic beliefswhich have generated the builtformaround us. Otherwise, in searching forour roots, we are in danger of making

only a mere superficial transfer of thoseforms. Instead, as I have endeavoured toexplain in the essay which follows, wemust seek out the underlying myths . Wemust transform them by re-inventingthem, within the parameters of our contemporary technology and aspirations.

This distinction between transfer andtransformation is of fundamental importance. Throughout his work, Corbusierwas un homme meditereanee - yetnone of his buildings ever used a slopingtiled roof Instead, he took the mythicimages and values of the Meditarraneanand re invented them in the 20th centurytechnology of concrete and glass. This istrue transformation. And this, in the finalanalysis , is' what Architecture is about.