Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c20.9

c20.9

Such an important architectural feature as the *sikhara* or tower, which figures in all the types of temple design in the country, has evoked several theories as to its origin, especially in the form it assumes in the Northern or Indo-Aryan-style. An attempt has been made to prove that this "*spire*" evolved from the peaked or domed huts of Eastern and Central India, which prevailed in those parts before the beginning of the Christian era. "It is quite evident that such huts, whether of bamboo or wood, were the prototype of the Nagara temple with *sikhara*."¹ On the other hand it has been endeavoured to show that the *sikhara* of the Northern Indian type of temple developed out of the Buddhist stupa, gradually becoming elongated from the semi-globular mound, through the various credal changes that took place during the early centuries of the first millennium until it finally took the form of a spire or tower.² This progress has been carefully traced by means of a number of graded authentic examples illustrating that as Buddhism merged into Hinduism so the symbol of the chaitya eventually merged into the sikhara from the ceremonial umbrella through the stupa to the tower. Another theory, based on the fact that the temple is not infrequently referred to as a *ratha*, or car, and so the sikhara may have been derived from the tall covering of the processional car (*ratha*) which containing an image of the deity was carried about on ceremonial occasions. (Plate V, Fig 7).