Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c20.5

c20.5

With the establishment of the temple type about the eighth century A.D., the people proceeded to embark on an era of temple building, which can have few equals, so much so that before long in all parts of the country superb creations fashioned in stone and, in some instances, hewn out of the living rock, could be counted by the score, if not by the hundred. It was an epoch which implied great religious concentration and intensity of purpose, corresponding in some respects to that wave of passionate building which swept over much of Europe in the Middle Ages, and of which it has been said that it was as if the whole population had to a man, been apprenticed to the stone mason. And, to continue the occidental parallel, as Ralph Glaber in his famous history speaks of the "white robe of churches which covered Europe in the eleventh century", so in India every hamlet had its cluster of shrines, and in every town the tall spires of temples rose singly and in groups, as proved by the remains observable all over the country to the present day. With these structural religious edifices were also rock-cut monuments, showing that this method, previously the monopoly of the Buddhists, was in the eighth and ninth centuries, continued by the Hindus and Jains, notably at such famous sites as Ellora and Elephanta. Although the rock-cut form of production displays many instructive features, as will be shown in due course (Chapter XV), it is in the examples of the structural form of expression that the temple architecture of the country may be most intelligibly estimated.