The general arrangements would still remain Indian,
while many of the details, and even some of the larger forms, might
be of foreign origin.
As a whole, I think that the Kashmirian architecture, with its
noble fluted pillars, its vast colonnades, its lofty pediments,
and its elegant trefoiled arches, is fully entitled to be classed
as a distinct style. I have therefore ventured to call it the Arian
order -- a name to which it has a double right; first, because it
was the style of the Aryas, or Arians, of Kashmir; and, secondly,
because its intercolumniations are always of four diameters -- an
interval which the Greeks called Araiostyle.
Extract from Vigne's "Travels in Kashmir."
The Hindu temple of Marttand is commonly called the House of the
Pandus. Of the Pandus it is only necessary to say that they are the
Cyclopes of the East. Every old building, of whose origin the poorer
class of Hindus in general have no information, is believed to have
been the work of the Pandus. As an isolated ruin, this deserves, on
account of its solitary and massive grandeur, to be ranked not only
as the first ruin of the kind in Kashmir, but as one of the noblest
among the architectural relics of antiquity that are to be seen in
any country.
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