Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 10.djvu/645

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INDIANAPOLIS.
563
INDIAN ART.

an's building devoted to literary and social purposes, and, perhaps the finest of all, the public library, with 100,000 volumes. Three of the city's bridges possess more than ordinary beauty; they span Fall Creek at Illinois and Meridian streets and at Central Avenue, and are of stone.

Indianapolis is the seat of the University of Indianapolis, with an academic department known as Butler College, and departments of law, medicine, and dentistry. Here are also a Roman Catholic theological seminary, a negro Baptist college, a college under the control of the United Brethren Church, the Heron Art Museum and Art School, the State institutions for the education of the deaf and dumb and for the blind, a number of medical, dental, and law schools, etc. Public philanthropic institutions are numerous—a State reformatory for women, a State hospital for the insane, and many smaller hospitals, homes, and refuges for the sick and unfortunate. The public-school system includes, besides common schools, an academic high school and a manual-training high school, and a normal training-school. Its inventorv of assets amounts to $2,398,766; its indebtedness (July 1, 1902), $868,000; its annual budget (1901), $934,337. Although far inland, Indianapolis is a port of entry and a point for the receipt and distribution of foreign as well as domestic commerce. Its chief articles of trade are grain and its products, live stock, meats, and the output of its extensive manufactories—milling machinery, engines, drugs, vehicles, furniture, bags, woolens, starch, and terra-cotta.

The government of the city is vested in a mayor, a council of twenty-one members (fifteen elected by wards and six at large), and a police judge, all chosen biennially. Appointments to the subordinate administrative departments are made by the Mayor. A school board of five, elected by popular vote and serving four years, governs an independent school corporation through an educational executive, the superintendent and a business executive (termed business director) each serving four years. The municipal budget (1901), including school expense, balances at about $2,700,000. the main items being: For fire department, $194,000; for police, $160,000; for parks, $100,947; for light, $113,273; for public health, $54,154; for water, $90,000. The tax valuation of all property, at perhaps three-fourths actual value, is $129,000,000, and the total debt of the city, exclusive of school debts, is about $2,300,000. Population, in 1850, 8091; 1860, 18,611; 1870, 48,244; 1880, 75,056; 1890, 105,436; 1900, 169,164. The population in 1900 included 17,100 foreign born and 15,900 negroes.

Settled in 1819, Indianapolis received its name in 1821, and became the capital on January 1, 1825, the seat of government being removed from Corydon. The opening of the first railroad in the State from Madison, on the Ohio River, occurred on October 1, 1847, and gave the little town its first impetus. The growth since 1889, when the introduction of natural gas revolutionized manufacture in Indiana, has been remarkable. Here Henry Ward Beecher served as pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church (1839 to 1847); Benjamin Harrison made Indianapolis his home from 1856 until his death, in 1901. Consult: Indiana Gazetteer (Indianapolis, 1849); Nowland, Early Reminiscences of Indianapolis (Indianapolis, 1870); Sulgrove, History of Indianapolis and Marion County (Philadelphia, 1884).

INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO, ärkĭ-pĕl′ȧ-gō. See Malay Archipelago.

INDIAN ARMY. See Armies, section on British Empire, and East India Army.

INDIAN ART. India cannot compete with the peoples of Western Asia in the antiquity of its existing monuments, largely because the earliest constructions were of wood, as is shown by the report of Megasthenes, Greek Ambassador of King Seleucus (c.300 B.C.) to the Court of Pataliputra, who admired the vast halls of the wooden palace of the Indian King, with their gilded columns. Stone and brick came into use c.250 B.C., under Asoka, and here Indian architectural history begins. It falls into three main periods: (1) Buddhist (B.C. 300 to c.700 A.D.), in which architecture begins to decline in the fifth century; (2) Neo-Brahmanic, ruling alone, in harmony with Buddhism in certain regions, from A.D. 700 to 1000, and then dividing the field with the (3) Mohammedan style, which began with the Afghan invasion in the early eleventh century. Since the English conquest Indian architecture has lost all vitality. There is no unity in India under these periods or styles. Local differences are enormous. The two main geographical divisions are North India, which was the earlier to develop, and South India. At the same time Indian art as a whole has a very characteristic style. It far excels in architecture at least the art of China and Japan, and it governs the art of neighboring regions like Tibet, Cambodia, Burma, and Siam, and islands like Java and Ceylon, which owe their civilization to India.

ARCHITECTURE.

In seeking to explain the origin of Indian architecture, some traces of Greek influence have been found in the north, filtering through the Greek Kingdom of Bactriana, and visible in early monuments of Kabul and Kashmir in the Ghandara monasteries of Jamalgiri and Takht-i-bahi, and in India proper at the Amravati Stupa; but both Egypt, and especially Assyria, exercised far more fundamental influence, through the intermediary of Persia, which was flourishing when Indian art commenced. But whatever suggestions were received, they serve but to bring out the originality of Indian art, which stands at the antipodes of Greece in its exaggeration of forms, its multiplication of details, its love of complicated and confused lines. At the beginning comparative simplicity reigned, and it was not until long after the Christian Era that the richness of design was reached which remained characteristic. This was partly due to the use of brick, instead of stone or marble, in nearly all open-air structures before the tenth century A.D., which diminished the opportunity for elaborate surface ornamentation. The principal classes of monuments are the chaityas, or temples, the viharas, or monasteries, and the stupas, or mound sanctuaries. The temples are at first excavated in the rock; not until the fifth century were any built above ground (except that of Buddha Gaya), to judge from remaining examples.

Buddhist Period. Of the earliest monuments, those of the Buddhist period, aside from the memorial columns or lats (e.g. those of Asoka),