Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/438

 3 86 DRAVIDIAN STYLE. BOOK III. with which the tale is adorned, is one of the favourite legends of the south, and is abundantly illustrated in sculptures of Tirumalai Nayyak's chaultri and in other buildings of the capital. For our present purposes it is not worth while to attempt to investigate the succession of the dates of the seventy-three kings who are said to have succeeded one another before the accession of the Nayyak dynasty, in 1559, inasmuch as no building is now known to exist in the kingdom that can claim, even on the most shadowy grounds, to have been erected by any of these kings. It may have been that, anterior to the rise of the great Chola dynasty, in the loth and I ith century, that of Madura may have had a long period of prosperity and power ; but whatever they did build has been destroyed or so altered that its existence cannot now be identified. After that, for a while they seem to have been subjected to the Ballala dynasty of Mysore, and the same Muhammadan invasion that destroyed that power in 1310 spread its baneful influence as far as Ramnad, and for two centuries their raids and oppressions kept the whole of southern India in a state of anarchy and confusion. Their power for evil was first checked by the rise of the great Hindu state of Vijayanagar, on the Tungabhadra, in the I4th century, and by the establishment, under its protection, of the Nayyak dynasty by VLrwanath Nayyak, in the i6th. After lasting 177 years, Mtnakshi, the last sovereign of the race a queen was first aided, and then betrayed, by Chanda Sahib the Nawab of the Karnatik, who plays so important a part in our wars with the French in these parts. It may be indeed, probably is the case that there are temples in the provinces that were erected before the rise of the Nayyak dynasty, but all those in the capital, with the great temple at 5rirangam, described above, were erected or extended during the two centuries of their supremacy, and of those in the capital nine-tenths at least were erected during the long and prosperous reign of the seventh king of this dynasty, Tirumalai Nayyak, or as he is more popularly known, Trimal Nayyak, who reigned from 1623 to f6$g. 1 Of his buildings, the most important, for our purposes at least, is the celebrated Vasanta or Pudu Mantapam, 2 known as ' Tirumalai's chaultri,' which he built for the reception of the 1 'Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society,' the ' Archseologia,' vol. x. p. 457; and vol. iii. pp. 230 et seqq. by Wilson, ' Journal of the Royal Asiatic a Fortunately this chaultri is also one Society,' vol. iii. p. 232. Volumes of of the best known of Indian buildings. I native drawings exist in some collections It was drawn by Daniell in the end of < containing representations of every pillar, the 1 8th century, and his drawings have A model in bronze of a porch exists at been repeated by Langles and others. I South Kensington Museum, and it has It was described by Mr. Blackadder in been abundantly photographed.