Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/458

 404 DRAVIDIAN STYLE. BOOK TIL gopurams belonging to the second, which is now a deserted temple on the banks of the river, about a quarter of a mile from the other. One of these was apparently quite finished, the other on the north never carried higher than the perpen- dicular part. In almost all the gopurams of India this part is comparatively plain, all the figure-sculpture and ornament being reserved for the upper or pyramidal part. In this instance, however, the whole of the perpendicular part is covered with the most elaborate sculpture, cut with exquisite sharpness and precision, in a fine close-grained hornblende (?) stone, and produces an effect richer, and on the whole perhaps in better taste, than anything else in this style (Woodcuts Nos. 237, 238). It is difficult, of course, to institute a comparison between these gopurams and such works as Tirumalai Nayyak's chaultri, or the corridors at Ramejvaram ; they are so different that there is no common basis of comparison but the vulgar one of cost ; but if compared with Halebid or Belur, these Tadpatri gopurams stand that test better than any other works of the Vijayanagar Rajas. They are inferior, but not so much so as one would expect from the two centuries of decadence that elapsed between them, and they certainly show a marked superiority over the great unfinished gopuram of Tirumalai Nayyak, which was commenced, as nearly as may be, one century afterwards. About fifty miles still further east, at a place called Diguva Ahobalam, in Karnal district, there is a large unfinished mantapam in plan and design very like that of the temple of Vithoba at Vijayanagar, but its style and details are much more like those of the Nayyaks, though local tradition assigns it to Pratapa Rudra about 1300. Traditions, however, usually refer to the original shrine, and if we are guided by style, it could hardly have been erected before the destruction of that capital in A.D. 1565. The dynasty, however, continued to exist for one or two centuries after that time, till the country was finally conquered by Tipu Sultan. The inscriptions have not yet been examined, but seem mostly to belong to the latter part of the i6th century. 1 Whoever may have built it, it is a fine bold specimen of architecture, and if the history of the art in the south of India is ever seriously taken up, it will worthily take a place in the series as one of the best specimens of its age, wanting the delicacy and elegance of the earlier examples, but full of character and merit. 2 1 Among the Mackenzie MSS. at Madras there are copies of the inscrip- tions and other notices of the Ahobalam temples. 8 For long the temple of Vishnu on the hill of Tripetty or Tirupati, in North Arkat district, was reputed to be the richest, the most magnificent, as it was