Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 2.djvu/118

 NORTHERN OR INDO-ARYAN STYLE. BOOK VI. where. Even in its modern form (Woodcut No. 310), it still retains the same characteristics, and all the lines of the pyramid or .yikhara are curvilinear, the base polygonal. No trace of utilitarianism is visible anywhere. If Woodcut No. 310 is compared with that at vol. i. page 339 (Woodcut No. 195), the two styles will be ex- hibited in their most modern garbs, when, after more than 1000 years' practice, they have receded furthest from the forms in which we first meet them. Yet the Madras temple retains the memory of its storeys and its cells. The Bengal example recalls nothing known in civil or domestic architecture. Neither the pyramid nor the tumulus affords any suggestion as to the origin of the form, nor does the tower, either square or circular ; nor does any form of civil or domestic 310. Modern Temple at Benares. 311. Diagram Plan of Hindft Temple. architecture. It does not seem to be derived from any of these, and, whether we consider it as beautiful or otherwise, it seems certainly to have been invented principally at least for aesthetic purposes, and to have retained that impress from the earliest till the present day. The plan of a northern temple is always a square internally, and generally the same form is retained in the exterior ; but very rarely, if ever, without some addition. In some instances it is only a thin parallel projection, as at A in the diagram