Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c26.24

c26.24

There is much the same unrestrained exuberance in the architectural treatment of the large Kalyana mandapa of the Margahasakesvara temple at Virinjipuram, in the North Arcot district, the verve and abandon of the rearing chimeras and the exquisite refinement of the detached pillars around the corner piers, appearing to be the spontaneous expression of a people of great spirit. At Conjeeveram there are two temples with pavilions in the Vijayanagar style, that in the Varadarajaswami, a "hundred pillared mandapa" being composed of a maze of closely set pillars each consisting of a bizarre grouping of imaginative statuary with stone-cutting of a high order, while the other, the Ekambaranatha contains a "thousand pillared mandapa" decorated with the same fantastic form of sculpture. To gopurams at Tadpatri belonging to the temple of Rameswara are patterned in a close filigree of convoluted carving, and finally, there is the famous so-called "Horse Court", or Seshagiri mandapam at Srirangam near Trichinopoly, with its colonnade of furiously fighting steeds each rearing up to a height of nearly nine feet, the whole executed in a technique so emphatic as to be not like stone but hardened steel. (Plate LXXI, Fig 2)