Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c29.11

c29.11

Contrasting with the excessively plain treatment of the Orissan interiors, the halls of the Khajuraho temples are richly decorated with sculpture As the principal compartment is the mandapa this exhibits several notable features, functional and ornamental. The average size of the mandapas at Khajuraho is only 25 feet square, no great space to cover with a roof, but the weight of the domical mass of masonry above, and the relatively elementary structural system employed, made it difficult to achieve in a single span. The method adopted of oversailing courses could only be self-supporting within certain limits, so that a process of under-pinning became necessary. This took the simplest and most natural form of four pillars, one at each corner, with four beams in the shape of a square framework under the ceiling; on the same principle by which he would prop up his wooden hut, so the Indian mason supported the main roof of his temple. Yet this plan is structurally sound, and he proceeded to make it artistically beautiful, for the manner in which sculpture was applied over its surfaces is superb. Those portions specially selected for treatment were the capitals of the pillars, the architrave, and the ceiling itself. The capitals are structurally of the bracket order, but so overlaid with ornament and figure-sculpture that this is obscured. Above and below are the contorted forms of grotesque dwarfs, curious atlantean creatures without which no capital in the fully developed Indo-Aryan style is complete, and they are accompanied by rampant gryphons at the angles But in the spaces between these strange and unearthly beings, as a foil to their forbidding appearance, are inserted female figures of enchanting grace and loveliness, either in the act of dancing or posed in some flexuous attitude, each a finished statuette in itself carved out of a separate slab of stone and morticed into sockets prepared for its reception. If this is an effort to express the triumph of beauty over ugliness, or to contrast the bestial with the spiritual, then the artist has fully succeeded in his object. (Plate XCIII, Fig. 1).