Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/424

 372 DRAVIDIAN STYLE. BOOK III. quite finished it is in severe and good taste throughout. 1 Its date, fortunately, is perfectly well known, as its progress was stopped by its being occupied and fortified by the French during our ten years' struggle with them for the possession of Trichinopoly ; and if we allow fifty years for its progress, even this would bring the whole within the limits of the i8th century. The other three gopurams of this enclosure are in the same style, and were commenced on the same scale, but not being so far advanced when the work was stopped, their gateposts project above their walls in a manner that gives them a very singular appearance, and has led to some strange theories as to their design. Looked at from a distance, or in any direction where the whole can be grasped at once, these fourteen or fifteen great gate towers cannot fail to produce a certain effect, as may be gathered from the view in Woodcut No. 219; but even then it can only be by considering them as separate buildings. As parts of one whole, their arrangement is exactly that which enables them to produce the least possible effect that can be obtained either from their mass or ornament. Had the four great outer gopurams formed the sides of a central hall or court, and the others gone on diminishing, in three or four directions, to the exterior, the effect of the whole would have been increased in a surprising degree. To accomplish this, however, one other defect must have been remedied : a gateway even 1 50 ft. wide in a wall nearly 2000 ft. in extent is a solecism nothing can redeem ; but had the walls been broken in plan or star-shaped, like the plans of Chalukyan temples, light and shade would have been obtained, and due proportions of parts, without any inconvenience. But if the Dravidians ever had it in them to think of such things, it was not during the i/th and i8th centuries, to which most things in this temple seem to belong. The shrines and inner prakaras, however, must be of much earlier date, for we find Jatavarman Sundara Pandya, about 1254, making large gifts and additions to the temple; and in 1371 Kampana Udaiyar of Vijayanagar was engaged repair- ing it. 8 As mentioned above, the great Vaishnava temple of 5rirangam owes all its magnificence to buildings erected during the reign of the Nayyak dynasty, whose second capital was Trichinopoly, and where they often resided. Within a mile to the east, however, of that much-lauded temple is another, dedicated to Siva, under 1 A drawing of it was published in i 2 See the inscriptions from the temple my ' Picturesque Illustrations of Indian j in ' Epigraphia Indica,' vol. iii. pp. 7^- > Architecture.' It has since been frequently vol. vi. pp. 324, 330; and vol. vii. pp. photographed. 176, 177.