Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/478

 424 CHALUKYAN STYLE. BOOK IV. 3 to 6 feet in height a feature which adds considerably to the architectural effect. The structures were erected without mortar, and the joints very carefully fitted. The whole outer surface was covered with great variety of sculpture, of floral and geometric patterns intermixed with mythological figures ; and generally the mouldings of the base were carved with the succession of animal patterns prescribed in the ' Silpa Sastras ' or architectural treatises. The Dharwar district may be regarded as the cradle of the style, and it may help to make its features better understood, if before describing the remains farther east and south, we first notice some of the larger temples near and in that district. At Ittagi, a small village in the Haidarabad districts, lying some 21 miles east-north-east from Gadag, is a large Saiva temple surrounded by the ruins of smaller shrines, etc., belonging at latest to the early half of the nth century, which, though deserted and partly ruinous, must be regarded as one of the most highly finished and architecturally perfect of the Chalukyan shrines that have come down to us. In the opinion of the late Meadows Taylor, the principal temple is perhaps superior in decorative art even to the Gadag temples. In it "the carving on some of the pillars and of the lintels and architraves of the doors is quite beyond description. No chased work in silver or gold could possibly be finer. ... By what tools this very hard, tough stone could have been wrought and polished as it is, is not at all intelligible at the present day ; nor indeed from whence the large blocks of greenstone rock were brought." 1 A plan of the group is given on Woodcut No. 246, and it may be noted that the plan of the shrine is not star-shaped, but follows the old Dravidian form. The outer walls of the small shrines have been stripped for building stone by the villagers. The temple, shown in Plate No. XII., consists of an open mandap and a closed hall with antechamber and linga shrine. The square dome that once crowned the jikhara and the super- structures on the roofs of the mandapas, with most of the screen wall round the outer one, are now lost, as well as much of the projecting cornice round the latter and over the entrance porches. The form of these cornices, it may be remarked, indicates to some extent the age of individual structures, as it is probable the flat sloping form preceded the more ornamental one with double flexure. The inner hall is 27 ft. square, and besides the entrance from the front mandap, has also doorways on the north and south sides, with pillared porches. The jambs and lintels of all the entrances, as is usual in temples from the earliest i ' Architecture of Dharwar and Mysore,' pp. 47-48. The stone is not so " very hard," however, as Meadows Taylor had supposed.