Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/420

 368 DRAVIDIAN STYLE, BOOK III, subordinate shrines. When the last addition was made, it was intended to endow the temple with one of those great halls which were considered indispensable in temples of the first class. Generally they had or were intended to have 1000 columns ; this one has only 807, and almost one-half of these mere posts, not fitted to carry a roof of any sort. There can, however, be very little doubt that, had time and money been available, it would have been completed to the typical extent. The general effect of such a design as this may be gathered from the bird's-eye view (Woodcut No. 217). As an artistic design, nothing can be worse. The gateways, irregularly spaced in a great blank wall, lose half their dignity from their posi- tions ; and the bathos of their decreasing in size and elaboration, as they approach the sanctuary, is a mistake which nothing can redeem. We may admire beauty of detail, and be astonished at the elaboration and evidence of labour, if they are found in such a temple as this, but as an architectural design it is altogether detestable. SRIRANGAM OR SERINGAM. The temple which has been most completely marred by this false system of design is the great Vaishnava temple at Srirangam, 2| miles north of Trichinopoly, which is certainly the largest, and, if its principle of design could be reversed, would be one of the finest temples in the south of India (Wood- cut No. 219, p. 371). Here the central enclosure is quite as small and as insignificant as that at Tiruvalur, and except that its dome is gilt has nothing to distinguish it from an ordinary village temple. The plan (Woodcut No. 218) of the inner four courts will explain its arrangements. The fourth enclosure, however, is the most magnificent. It encloses the hall of 1000 columns (S), which measures some 500 ft. by 138 ft. The number of columns is eighteen in front by sixty-three in depth, and 953 altogether. 1 They consequently are not spaced more than 10 ft. apart from centre to centre ; and as at one end the hall is hardly over 10 ft. high, and in the loftiest place only 20 ft, and most of the pillars being spaced nearly evenly over 1 The plan is from Capt. Cole's, re- mantapam ; I, 6ri-pandara mantapam ; produced in ' India : Photographs and J, Surya - pushkarani ; K, Ramasvami Drawings of Historical Buildings' (Griggs, 1896), plate 53. References to the plan, Woodcut No. 218: A, South, or Kurat Alwar Gopuram ; B, East, or Vellai Gopuram ; and C, North, or Nachiyar- sanadi Gopuram, of the fourth court ; D, Vaikuntha Gopuram of the second court. E, the shrine, which, curiously enough, is circular ; F, Chandan man- temple; L, Vaikunth temple ; M, Chandra- pushkarani ; N, Dhanvantari temple ; O, O, Vasudeva Perumal temples ; P, Narasimha Perumal temple ; Q, Q, Granaries ; R, Ranganayaki temple ; S, The Thousand Pillar mantapam ; T, Seshagiri-rao mantapam ; U, Ranga- vilasam mantapam; V, Kurat -Alwar temple ; W, W, Krishna temples ; X, tapam ; G, Yajna Sala ; H, Garuda Elephant stabl es ; Y, Kada-kili mantapam.