Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/440

 3 88 DRAVIDIAN STYLE. BOOK III. Chidambaram has become attached to the square central pier, and instead of the light elegance that characterised that example, has become a solid pier, 5 or 6 ft. in depth richer certainly, but far from being either so elegant or so appropriate as the earlier example. The view of the interior (Woodcut No. 228) gives some, but only a faint, idea of the effect. The sides are now closed with screens ; but in effect, as in detail, it is identical with the corridors at Rame^varam, where the light is abundant. As the date of this hall is known it took twenty -two years to erect it, 1623 to 1645 it becomes a fixed point in our chronology of the style. 1 We can, for instance, assert with perfect certainty that the porch to Parvati's shrine at Chidambaram (Woodcut No. 221) is certainly anterior to this, probably by a couple of centuries, and, with equal certainty that the corridors at Ramejvaram are contemporary. From the history of the period we learn that the rajas of Ramnad were at times independent, at others at war with the Nayyaks ; but in Tirumalai Nayyak's time they were either his allies or dependants ; and the style and design of the two buildings are so absolutely identical that they must belong to the same age. If the king of Madura had indeed been allowed any share in making the original design, that temple would probably have been a nobler building than it is ; for, though the details are the same, his three aisled hall leading to the sanctuary would have been a far grander feature architecturally than the single - aisled corridors that lead nowhere. The expense of one of the single-aisled corridors at Rame^varam, almost 700 ft. long, would have been about the same as the triple - aisled chaultri at Madura, which is half their length. Consequently the temple must have cost between three and four times as much as the chaultri ; and the actual cost must have been immense when we consider the amount of labour expended on it, and that the material in both is the hardest granite. The facade of this hall, like that of almost all the great halls in the south of India, is adorned either with Vyalis monsters of the lion type trampling on an elephant or, even more generally, by a group consisting of a warrior sitting on a rearing horse, whose feet are supported on the shields of foot soldiers, sometimes slaying men, sometimes tigers. These groups are 1 According to Wilson the mantapam Oriental Historical Manuscripts states was begun in the second year of I the cost of it at a lakh of Pons or Tirumalai's reign, and completed in ^"20,000, and that it was finished in twenty-two years, at a cost of upwards seven years, 1626-1633. of a million sterling. But one of the i