Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/392

 344 DRAVIDIAN STYLE. BOOK III. of the raths at Mamallapuram, but on closer inspection we find everything so modified at Elunl as to make up a perfect and 200. Kailas Elura. (From a Sketch by the Author.) well-understood design. The vimana with its five surrounding cells and the porch in front of it, with its side balconies, make a complete Hindu temple, such as are found in hundreds in India, and instead of the simulated cells that surround the upper storey in the Madras example, they become realities, but used for widely different purposes. Instead of being simulated residences, the five cells that surround the central temple, on the same platform, are each devoted to a separate divinity, and complete the whole as a Sivalaya or " abode of Siva," whilst they group most pleasingly with the central vimana. 1 Here, too, they are independent, and separated from the temple itself. 1 These shrines are now empty, but their purposes are thus explained : North and south of the shrine are doorways leading out upon the platform, on which they stand, and which forms a pra- dakshina round the Linga shrine; and passing out by the south door the first shrine on the soulh was appropriated to the Matris or seven mothers, arranged along the back wall with Kartikaswamin or .Siva at the left end, and Ganeja with Bhringi at the right ; the next at the