Eternal India Encyclopedia

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

: To highlight the distinct-

The famous Star-shaped temples

iveness of their temples, the architects with due encouragement of