Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/493

 CHAP. I. DAMBAL. broad, carved with a male figure with two arms and attended by four females. All the details are sharp and the carving so good that even at Halebid it would be difficult to point out any individual piece showing more complete mastery over the material than the brackets representing female figures with encircling wreaths on the fronts and inner sides of the capitals at the east entrance. 1 The temple is probably of somewhat later date than the preceding. Dambal, some 13 miles south-east from Gadag, and 16 miles south-west from Ittagi, must have been, in early days, a seat of Buddhism, for we find that in A.D. 1095 a Buddhist inscription there makes mention of a vihara built by sixteen Settis, and of another vihara of Taradevi at Lakkundi. 2 It has still three old Saiva temples all much injured. That of Dodda Basappa or Basavanna, outside the town to the north-east, differs in plan from any of the known temples in Dharwar districts (Woodcut No. 251). It presents us with what appears to be a late form of the Chalukyan jikhara, without the broad faces on the north, west and south sides. The plan is star-shaped on the outside, being formed of numerous rectangular points, which represent the corners of six squares whose diagonals vary round a common centre by 1 5 degrees each. The plan of the mandap is similarly formed with eight squares at equal angles. The angles are carried up the walls and roofs of shrine and hall. The smaller string-courses of the roof being left in block, may indicate that the work was not entirely finished, though the effect is as sparkling as if they had been completed to the extent originally intended. But even as it stands it would not be easy to point to a more graceful form of roof for the shrine. At first sight it may appear somewhat strange and outre, but its form gains with familiarity on the judgment of the architectural critic. The hall measures 23^ ft. square inside, and, like the Some^var temple at Gadag and others of the same class, it has an entrance from the south as well as from the east. A long porch has been roughly built at some late date, projecting from the front to cover a Scale 50 ft. to i in. gigantic Nandi or bull of Siva. The two pillars of the south porch and the doorway have been 1 Rea's ' Chalukyan Architecture,' pp. 21-24 and plates 56-68. 2 'Indian Antiquary,' vol. x. pp. 185- 190.