Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/407

 CHAP. IV. CONJIVARAM. 357 There is an antarala or vestibule, between the shrine and the Maha-mandapa ; and the roof of the latter was supported by sixteen square piers. It faces north, and has had an upper shrine, as many Jaina temples have. These three examples illustrate the different styles of early southern temples. CONJIVARAM. Conjivaram, or Kanchipuram, is a city where tradition would lead us to expect more of antiquity than in almost any other city of the south. About the middle of the 4th century, or soon after, Samudragupta claims to have overcome Vishnugopa, the Fallava king of Kanchi ; and about A.D. 640 Hiuen Tsiang visited Kanchipura, the capital of Dravida, which he describes as a large city with ruins near it ascribed to A^oka. In the kingdom he speaks of "some hundred sangharamas and 10,000 priests of the Sthavira school " of the Mahayana, and there were some eighty Hindu temples and many Jaina heretics. 1 Epigraphical research, as stated above (page 306), has brought to light the names of the Pallava sovereigns ruling here about the /th century, and their contests with the Chalukyas of Badami and other powers. Pulike^in II. of Badami had invaded the Pallava kingdom about A.D. 630; Vikramaditya II., fully a century later, took Ranch?, and has left an inscription in the Kailasanatha temple ; and again, about 870, it was taken by Krishna III., the Rashtrakuta sovereign. 2 When the rule finally passed out of the hands of the Pallavas into those of the Cholas, probably about the end of the 1 2th century, Kanchipuram became the capital of the latter dynasty. Be this as it may, the two towns, Great and Little Conjivaram, possess groups of temples as picturesque and nearly as vast as any to be found elsewhere. But by far the most interesting of the Conjivaram temples is a very early one known as Kailasanatha standing in the fields to the west of the town. 3 From its style when first seen by the editor in 1883, he at once placed it as about coeval with the " Seven Pagodas." Fortunately it contains several original inscriptions, the translation of which has established the fact that it was erected by the Pallava king Rajasimha or Narasimhavishnu, the son of Ugradanda - Lokaditya, who was a contemporary of Vikramaditya I. of Badami (A.D. 655-680), so that Rajasimha must have ruled at Kanchi in the second 1 Beal's ' Buddhist Records,' vol. ii. I Indeed the notice there given of the Con- pp. 228-230, and ' Life of Hiuen Tsiang,' pp. 138-139. 2< Epigraphia Indica,' vol. iii. pp. 36ofT, and vol. iv. pp. 280-281. 3 Mr Sewell did not notice this temple in his 'Lists of Antiquities' (p. 178). jivaram antiquities is unusually meagre. From Sir Walter Elliot's MS. copies of inscriptions, four are noted (Ibid. p. 180) but without mention of the many earlier ones.