Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c17.5

c17.5

This anthropomorphic conception of a deity naturally called for some habitation, and so a structural shrine came into being. The various stages through which the embryo Hindu temple passed are common to the growth of such edifices, first a leafy bower, then a reed hut, and afterwards a cella of wood and brick. Eventually, in the Gupta period it appears as a sanctum of stone, called the *garbha-griha*, literally "wombhouse", a small chamber, square in plan, its interior walls perfectly plain and without any other opening except the doorway, the darkness inside providing the requisite atmosphere of solemn mystery. Within was placed the effigy of the god. Contrasting with the bare walls of the interior, the outer side of the doorway was often richly carved, and in front of this was usually a shallow porch, in the later Gupta examples enlarged into a pillared portico. Such a beginning was in accordance with that of more than one civilization, the earliest sacred buildings consisting of a flat-roofed chamber with a porch in front, Egyptian and Greek temples both showing evidences of having been derived from similar rudimentary origins. In India, on the same principle, some of the first Brahmanical sanctuaries have either flat roofs, or appear to have been evolved from a flat-roofed prototype, and it was not long before the other essential features, such as the pillared vestibule, were added. These early Hindu sanctuaries are comparatively small structures, in size much inferior to the monumental religious edifices which rose later, so that it seems more appropriate to classify them, not as temples, but as shrines or chapels. They are obviously only a beginning, but they are important, because they were the nucleus of the temple proper, being in themselves merely a prelude to such a structure in its more matured form. A number of small sanctuaries of this order, the earliest in the country to be built of dressed stone, have been found in various places in Central India, and there are fragments of others, further afield, which seem to show that buildings of a similar type were fairly common in the Gupta dominions. Included with these stone-built structures is a series of excavated chambers, having structural porticos attached, but all clearly in the same tradition. (Plate XLI, Fig. 1).