Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c29.3

c29.3

ONE of the most refined and finished manifestations of Indian architecture in the Indo-Aryan style is to be found in a group of temples at Khajuraho in Central India. Moreover these buildings not only represent the mode in such an elegant form, but the majority of them, in spite of the fact that they have weathered the climate for a thousand years, and withstood neglect for nearly as long, are still well-preserved and in good condition. Having now been deserted for several centuries, no regular ritual is held within their halls, so that the spectacle of such noble monuments standing isolated and meaningless amidst fields and jungle is a moving one. Situated a hundred miles south-east of the town of Jhansi, these temples are over thirty in number, most of them occupying a site measuring approximately a square mile in extent, and when first built appear to have been disposed rather unsymmetrically around the borders of an ornamental sheet of water. Unlike those of Orissa, the Khajuraho temples do not illustrate a development over a long period of time, for, as shown by inscriptional evidence, they were all erected within the relatively narrow interval of a hundred years, from about A.D. 950 to 1050. They imply therefore a brilliant episode in the history of Indian temple architecture, rather than the progressive course of a concerted movement, representing one of those rare occasions when religious emotion and unstinted patronage coincided with a flowering of artistic genius to find expression in a group of buildings of the highest aesthetic standard and the utmost significance.