Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/367

 CHAP. II. PLANS. 319 been greatly improved had its resemblance to a Hindti porch been more complete. The necessity of confining the dome and aisles within four walls greatly injures the effect as compared with the Indian examples. Even the Indian plan of roofing, explained above, might be used in such a building with much less expense and less constructive danger than a Gothic vault of the same extent. PLANS. Till the discovery of the small Buddhist chaitya halls at Ter and Chezarla and elsewhere, already described (p. 1 26), there was only one temple in India which gave us any hint of how the plans of such halls were related to those of Hindu and Jaina temples. Fortunately, however, its evidence is so distinct that there could be very little doubt about the matter. The temple in question is situated in the village of Aihole, in Bijapur district, in western India, not far from the place where the original capital of the Chalukyan sovereigns was situated, and near the caves of Badami on the one hand and the temples of Pattadakal on the other. Its date is uncertain to some extent, since an inscription on its outer gateway recording a grant to the temple, during the reign of Vikramaditya-Satya-sraya, is undated; 1 and there were two Chalukya kings of this name one ruling between A.D. 655 and 680, and the other between 733 and 746. But the grant was to a temple already established, and even if made in the 8th century the fane might well be of fifty or eighty years earlier date, as its architecture would indicate. It is thus not only one of the oldest structural temples known to exist in western India, but in fact one of the only three yet discovered that can with any certainty be said to have been erected before the beginning of the 8th century. This temple, as the sculptures testify, was dedicated to Vishnu the special divinity of the Chalukyas ; but the words carved in Kanarese on the basement " the holy Jaina temple " seems to indicate that at one time it had been claimed or appropriated by the Jains, and this, with some misconception as to the character of the sculptures, has led to the mistake of its being supposed that it was originally Jaina. Its original dedication is fortunately, however, of very little importance for our present purposes. The age when this temple was erected was the age of toleration in India. The Chinese traveller Hiuen Tsiang has left us a most vivid description of a great 1 ' Indian Antiquary,' vol. viii. pp. 285-286; and 'Archaeological Survey of Western India,' vol. i. pp. 40 et seqq.