Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/471

 CHAP. V. CIVIL ARCHITECTURE. Examples of Indian civil architecture are so few in the south, that some notice may be included here of the old palace at Chandragiri, about 30 miles N.N.E. from Chittur in North 243- Garden Pavilion at Vijayanagar. (From a Photograph. Arkot district It was from Chandragiri in 1639 that Sri Rangaraya, the last representative of the Vijayanagar dynasty, granted the British permission to erect the fort at Madras : six years later he was overthrown by Jamshid Qutb Shah of Golkonda. 1 The principal building now left, as shown in Woodcuts Nos. 244 and 245, presents a well-balanced facade of three storeys surmounted by turrets which pleasingly break the sky- line. Each floor consists mainly of a pillared hall the piers arched across both ways, corbelled at the angles and closed with flat domes. The floors have projections of 6 or 7 ft. beyond the face of the outer pillars and rest on stone corbels. On the north side the walls pierced by the arches are built of brick ; but the vaults, especially in the lower storey, are worked 1 After the battle of Talikot in 1565, the representatives of the dynasty made Pennakonda in Anantapur district their VOL. T. capital till 1592, when Venkatapati- Raya removed to Chandragiri, where the family resided till 1645. 2 D