Page:Report of a Tour Through the Bengal Provinces of Patna, Gaya, Mongir and Bhagalpur; The Santal Parganas, Manbhum, Singhbhum and Birbhum; Bankura, Raniganj, Bardwan and Hughli in 1872-73.djvu/192

168 Singh, who is said to have built the curious stone temple noticed at the west end of the village; to him I have also attributed the repairs of the two great temples of brick and stone, and, on the whole, it appears that the later flourishing days of Párá were during or about the period he exercised sway as Akbar’s General in these parts.  About 8 miles north by a little east of Párá, near the large village of Chailyámá, is the village of Bándá; here is a stone temple in the middle of some low jangal; in plan, it resembles the temples of Barâkar, and, like them, it consists of a single cell; like them, too, it once had a mandapa, in front of which the fragments, misarranged into a long pillared hall, still exist, but it differs from them in many particulars; the front of the temple has three tiers of openings, first and lowest the entrance of the sanctum, leading as usual into a square chamber, roofed over with a flat roof; over this, a smaller opening leading into a small chamber, whose floor forms the roof of the sanctum; this opening is further surmounted by another opening, which again leads into another chamber, whose floor forms the roof of the next lower one.

As the chambers and their several floors and roofs are not later additions, but form essential, and indeed constructively essential, portions of the original design, the several openings above the doorway of the sanctum cannot be, and never could have been, intended as illuminating windows; this temple, and temples of this class, differ, therefore, in a vital point from the Magadha type of temples, and are not amenable to the laws that govern them in the matter of the openings. This may be perceived at a glance from the photograph, where the thrce openings are in proportions widely different to the three openings of the Buddha Gáyá temple. Indeed, the Buddha Gáyá temple has three openings, only because later repairs and alterers found it expedient to cut up the two tall upper openings, which properly should not be divided into two portions, as I have shown before. What law, however, governs the size and disposition of the openings in this class of temples, I am unable to state; examples of temples with three tiers of openings are extremely rare, and from one or two examples a law cannot safely be deduced.

The walls of temples of this type being very thin, as may be seen from plans, and more impressively from the photograph of a half-broken temple at Telkupi, and the towers, having these thin walls as sides, being very high, it became a constructive necessity to tie the walls together 