Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c28.32

c28.32

There are other features in the Jagannath temple at Puri, some of considerable significance and implying affinities of a widely separate kind. One of these concerns the character of its inner enclosure, for like the Lingaraja it stands within a spacious courtyard surrounded by a high wall, forming a rectangle 440 feet by 350 feet. Around the main building in the centre, distributed over the remaining area are some 30 or 40 edifices of various shapes and sizes, each a shrine or chapel, the whole representing the same system as that at Bhubaneswar, but in this instance as all the structures are grouped on higher ground, they approach still nearer to the Buddhist stupa tradition Another feature is connected with the outer enclosure, as there are three of these encircling walls, known poetically as the "Three Garlands", a reference to the custom, universal in India, of adorning divinities and high personages with wreaths of flowers. The outer wall 20 feet high, was added at a later date concentric with an inner one and containing a space 665 feet by 640 feet, having a gateway in the centre of each side. These gateways, although substantial structures with pyramidal roofs, bear no resemblance to the gopuram type of the southern style, but the principle of such architectural entrances, and the additional enclosed area, is analogous to the arrangement of pylons and *prakarams*, which about this time were becoming a characteristic of the Dravidian temple, seems more than a coincidence.