ABSTRACT
As is well known, much of the architecture influenced by Hindu and Buddhist
thought is intimately associated with myth.1 Although some of the greatest
architectural achievements in Asia are inspired and regulated by myth and
have myth engrained in every aspect of their plans and forms, these buildings
receive little or no attention in university courses on architectural history and
theory. This neglect might be the result of a Eurocentric exclusivism, now
engrained in architectural education, even in Asia, but also possibly stems
from discomfort felt when confronted by the ‘irrationality’ of the myths that
engender this architecture. Some architectural historians and theorists might
well be embarrassed by mythopoeic modes of thought, seeing them as
expressions of ‘beliefs’ that are neither true nor meaningful, but as giving
explanations of the world that modern science has rendered obsolete and
negligible. In this view, the architectural forms generated by myth are so
closely associated with exotic and antiquated beliefs and customs, now
falsified by science, that they defy translation into any terms relevant for the
present practice of architecture.
