Indian architecture in the context of "Indo-Saracenic architecture"

The ambulatory (Latin: ambulatorium 'walking place') is the covered passage around a cloister or the processional way around the east end of a cathedral or large church and behind the high altar. The first ambulatory was in France in the 11th century but by the 13th century ambulatories had been introduced in England and many English cathedrals were extended to provide an ambulatory.

The same feature is often found in Indian architecture and Buddhist architecture generally, especially in older periods. Ritual circumambulation or parikrama around a stupa or cult image is important in Buddhism and Hinduism. Often the whole building was circumambulated, often many times. The Buddhist chaitya hall always allowed a path for this, and the Durga temple, Aihole (7th or 8th century) is a famous Hindu example.

A roof lantern is a daylighting architectural element. Architectural lanterns are part of a larger roof and provide natural light into the space or room below. In contemporary use it is an architectural skylight structure.

A lantern roof will generally mean just the roof of a lantern structure in the West, but has a special meaning in Indian architecture (mostly Buddhist, and stretching into Central Asia and eastern China), where it means a dome-like roof raised by sets of four straight beams placed above each other, "arranged in diminishing squares", and rotated with each set. Normally such a "lantern" is enclosed and provides no light at all.

Chhatri are semi-open, elevated, dome-shaped pavilions used as an element in Indo-Islamic architecture and Indian architecture. They are most commonly of square, octagonal, and round shapes.

Originating as a canopy above tombs, they largely serve as decorative elements as opposed to functional elements. The earliest examples of chhatri being used in the Indian subcontinent were found in the Shrine of Ibrahim in Bhadreswar, constructed between 1159 and 1175 AD.

Percy Brown (1872–1955) was a renowned British scholar, artist, art critic, historian and archaeologist, well known as an author on Indian architecture and art, especially for his studies on Greco-Bactrian art.

Ancient Indian architecture ranges from the Indian Bronze Age to around 800 CE. By this endpoint, Buddhism in India had greatly declined, and Hinduism was predominant, and religious and secular building styles had taken on forms, with great regional variation, which they largely retain even after some forceful changes brought about by the arrival of first Islam, and then Europeans.

Much early Indian architecture was in wood, which has almost always decayed or burnt, or brick, which has often been taken away for re-use. The large amount of Indian rock-cut architecture, essentially beginning around 250 BCE, is therefore especially important, as much of it clearly adapts forms from contemporary constructed buildings of which no examples remain. There are also a number of important sites where the floor-plan has survived to be excavated, but the upper parts of structures have vanished.