Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/477

 CHAP. I. DHARWAR TEMPLES. 423 the remains in the Haidarabad districts to define the northern boundary with any certainty. From the remains that have escaped entire destruction in this area, we gather that the earlier Chalukyan temples pre- served on the whole the general plan of the Dravidian shrines, but the corners were made more prominent by flat increments placed on them, whilst the projections on the walls were but slight, the central one on each face of the shrine being made much broader and important. The .nkhara and roof soon lost the distinctively southern storeyed form and became stepped, forming pyramids of different heights, with breaks corresponding to those of the walls, and with broad bands up the sides of the j-ikhara answering to the larger face in the middle of each side of the shrine. Later, the plan often became star-shaped, the pro- jecting angles lying in circles whose centres were in the middle of the shrine and mandap respectively. 1 The broader faces on the sides, however, were retained for the principal images of the cult. The pillars supporting the roof of the halls or mandaps were arranged in squares ; the device of placing twelve pillars so disposed in a square that eight of them could be connected by lintels to support a roof or dome of larger dimensions was almost unknown to the style. 2 A favourite arrangement in the later temples was the group- ing of three shrines round a central mandapa or hall. The pillars are markedly different from the Dravidian type ; they are massive, often circular, richly carved and highly polished. They are usually in pairs or fours of the same pattern, the whole effect being singularly elegant. Their capitals are wide with numerous thin mouldings immediately below the abacus ; and under these is a square block, whilst the middle of the shaft is carved with circular mouldings. Frequently the capitals and shafts have been actually turned in a sort of lathe in which the shaft was held vertically. In Dravidian temples at Badami, Pattadakal, Elura, and elsewhere, pierced stone windows are not unfrequent, but the most richly carved examples of these belong specially to the Chalukyan style. Generally the temples stand on a terrace, sometimes 10 to 15 ft. wide, quite surrounding them, and from 1 ' Archaeological Survey of Western India,' vol. iii. p. 21 and plate 18. The star-shaped plan is obtained by the over- lapping of equal squares having a common centre with their corners all equidistant ; and as projecting angles must always correspond to the corners of the cella and mandapa, the number of angles between the wider faces on two adjacent sides are usually three or five. The re-entrant angles will then always be larger than right angles. With unequal projections the corners, in a plan similar to that in the Northern style, may also lie in a circle. 2 In the outer mandapa of the great temple at Hangal, however, it was intro- duced.