Manasara Series (I. A Dictionary of Hindu Architecture; II. Indian Architecture according to Manasara-Shilpashastra; III. Manasara on Architecture and Sculpture: Sanskrit Text; IV. Architecture of Manasara: Translation; V. Architecture of Manasara: Illustrations; VI. Hindu Architecture in India and Abroad; VII. An Encyclopaedia of Hindu Architecture) v6.c42.s1.90

v6.c42.s1.90

Of storeyed buildings three styles are mentioned, namely, Nāgara, Vesara and Drāvida, and Dr. Acharya considers these terms as geographical and would render them as the architectural styles of North, East and South India respectively. These three terms, however, occur several times in the text in connexion with such different objects as the *linga*, *yoni* and cars, and there merely in the sense of square, circular or hexagonal. But whatever the meaning of Nāgara, Vesara and Drāvida, it is impossible to escape from the feeling that the architecture of the *Mānasāra* is, in general, that of South India, for the many-storeyed *gopura*, the clustered columns, heavy entablatures, numerous court-yards, halls of a thousand columns, etc., have still their living examples at Tanjore, Tiruvalur, and Srirangam, but are not only absent nowadays in Northern India but were equally so in the period assigned to the *Mānasāra*, as excavation at numerous sites in that region have revealed no traces of such monuments, and the buildings of Northern India described by the Chinese pilgrims, who were in India between A.D. 500 and 700, are not those of the *Mānasāra*. That eight of the eleven manuscripts consulted by Dr. Acharya were in South Indian scripts is not without significance.