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Eternal India
encyclopedia
ARCHITECTURE
PRINCIPLES OF TEMPLE ARCHITECTURE
Emperor Ashoka inaugurated the use of stone as a building
material in Indian architecture and set up schools of stone crafts-
manship, most likely supervised by the Persian architects who had
built the marvellous stone palaces of Darius and Xerxes. The
graduates from these colleges ultimately built monuments of stone
to the enduring glory of Ashoka's state patronised religion of Bud-
dhism. Toranas, chaityas, stupas, stambhas and vedikas dotted the
countryside of Buddhist India of the Ashokan period.
Inspired by the wooden totem poles of the primitive tribes, he
ordered the inscriptions carved on columns of stone instead of mere
slabs and they were set up at regular intervals along roads leading
to places of Buddhist pilgrimage. Columns, some 40 feet (12 m) in
length and weighing as much as 50 tonnes were carved out from a
single block of sandstone. These massive pillars were then carried
unbroken and intact to sites over hundreds of miles away.
The tapering shaft of the column once it had reached its destina-
tion, was painstakingly varnished and polished to give it a mirror-
like lustre, a fantastic achievement indeed, with a sedimentary rock
like sandstone.
Buildings were needed to house the resident monks. In contrast
to the richly sculptured gateways of the stupas, the places of resi-
dence in their bareness reflect rather the inherent austerity of mo-
nastic life. These were built as a series of individual cells or dormi-
tories enclosing a rectangular or square court open to the sky. The
open court served all the community facilities, at places including a
well for drinking water. The cells on the other hand, allowed the
monks sufficient privacy for the practice of meditation.
Chaitya Halls
: The need was felt for an enclosed hall in which a
minature stupa, could be conveniently worshipped the year round.
The simplest solution was to place the stupa at the end of a long
rectangular hall. The walls behind the stupa were then made semi-
circular to echo the profile of the stupa.
The roof of such a structure was the familiar barrel vault in
timber, covered with tile and supported on brick walls framed by
timber pillars. The entire composition was built on a high plinth
enclosed by the inevitable sacred railing.
Evolution of the Sikhara
: The many variations of the parabolic
profiled sikhara devised over the ensuing years adorn all Hindu
places of worship in the north. It is a four-sided pyramid with
parabolic instead of straight edges.
The Evolution of the Vimana
: The combination of a stepped
pyramid and dome with a cubic or prismatic base was to become the
hallmark of South Indian temple architecture, symbolising the
Shaivite aspect of the Hindu trinity, which enjoyed great popularity
in the south just as the
Vaishnavite
did in the north.
The Parasurameswara Temple
: Inevitably the need was soon
felt for attaching a Mandapa or covered hall to single roomed
shrines wherein worshippers could congegate and sing devotional
hymns to the enshrined deity . For this purpose often an existing
simple shrine would be expanded. In the eighth century temple of
Parasurameswar, the earliest known example of such a modifica-
tion, an extremely ponderous structure was attached together by
stone lintels to provide an intermediate ring of support for the
pyramidal roof, constructed as ever by concentric rings of corbelled
stone work.
This is a plan taken from Brihat Samhita, a sixth century Gupta treatise on
architecture. It consists of a big square split into 81 squares (9 X 9). The central
9 squares are alloted to Brahma, the Creator, who is bounded on all sides by
various planetary deities.
The Magic of the Square
: Confronted with the myriads of ex-
otic forms of the Hindu temple it is difficult to believe that the crux
of the guiding philosophy of design of the Mandala was the square,
most basic, rational and elementary of geometric forms. The square
mandala was divided into so many equal squares, that containing 64
or 81 being the most popular. The priest then invested each of the
squares with metaphysical and magic powers by locating an indi-
vidual deity in each. The position of each subdivided square in the
total represented the power or otherwise of the deity attributed to
it. Thus Brahma, the Supreme God, creator, preserver and de-
stroyer, invariably occupied the central square or group of squares.
Lesser deities were placed in the four corners (the germ of the
Pan-
charatna
plan) and more minor one filled up the balance. To invest
the square with a human quality, apart from its divine one, it was
shown as being able to accommodate within itself a human figure,
though in a contorted yogic pose.
Having acquired magical, geometric as well as human proper-
ties, the emerging chart called the
"Vastu purush mandala”
was
now fit to be transformed into an architectural ground plan for a
temple. In its simplest form the outer ring of squares could denote
the thickness of the walls of the
garbagriha.
On another scale four
central squares could constitute the inner cell surrounded by a ring
of 12 squares which became the walls and the next 16 or 28 the
pra-
dakshina
path and outer wall and so on.
With a bit of artistic license, the Mandala could be expanded to
generate the most elaborate of forms the basic unit of these always
being the square. And so the large square was sub-divided into
thousands of small squares by the architect.
THE HOYSALAS
The famous Star-shaped temples
: To highlight the distinct-
iveness of their temples, the architects with due encouragement of