Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c21.22

c21.22

It was probably less than fifty years after the foregoing, that the temple of Virupaksha was produced, but the progress made in such a relatively short period in architectural composition is noteworthy. (Plate LIII, Fig. 2). So much so that it has been implied the increasing power of the Chalukyan rulers enabled them to call in outside experts to aid the local artisans in their building efforts. If this is correct it was help of a nature which could only have been obtained from those in the employ of the contemporary Pallava rulers on the eastern seaboard, where a movement not unlike that now being described was also taking place. That there were close contacts between the Chalukyans and the Pallavas is a matter of historical knowledge, and that these influenced the architectural productions of the two peoples has also been a subject of considerable research. Confirmation of these influences is presumed to be derived from two sources (a) the evidence of inscriptions, and (b) points of style. With regard to the former there is an inscription on the Papanatha temple which reads that one Chattara-Revada-Ovaja of the Sarvasiddhi-Acharyas, and presumably the architect of the temple, was a builder from the south, possibly, though not necessarily in the Tamil country, and that he was also versed in the technical practices hitherto only known to a certain guild of Kanarese stone-masons. Two inscriptions on the Virupaksha temple also relate to a craftsman from the southern country who built this temple for the queen of Vikramaditya, and whose qualifications are defined in the most fulsome terms. But in no sense can these make it quite clear as some authorities have interpreted, that the Chalukyan king Vikramaditya II, when he conquered the Pallava capital of Conjeeveram in 740, was so struck by the architectural masterpiece of the Kailasnatha temple, that he brought back with him a Tamil architect who was responsible for the Pallava elements in the two temples built by his queens at Pattadakal. As a matter of fact there is in these temples no contribution "from the Dravidian style that was not already in regular use in the Chalukyan country, the only new feature being its combination of elements from both the local styles which previously seem to have influenced one another remarkably little."¹ What happened was that architecture, as this art developed in the south of India, evolved, appropriated, devised and invented certain forms which eventually resolved themselves into buildings now known as in the Dravidian style. During this early primitive period intercourse between the various peoples of the south led to imitations and borrowings, the system of universal technical canons and of craftsmen's guilds were the means by which this intercourse was maintained in the sphere of the building art, and in this manner the style of architecture in the regions of the south came into being.