Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c30.8

c30.8

The village of Osia,¹ thirty-two miles north-west of Jodhpur, is an example, not uncommon in India, of a considerable city whose substance has departed, and only the spirit remains. This spirit, battered and broken, still exists in the form of some sixteen Brahmanical and Jain temples, the majority now in a neglected condition, but a proof that for four hundred years religion was a very real thing in the life of its people. These relics of its past greatness occupy two sites, one consisting of a group of eleven temples of an early phase on the outskirts of the modern village, while the remainder, rather later, are on a hill to the east of it. The temples forming the earlier group appear to have been built in the eighth and ninth centuries, and although comparatively small structures, their size is compensated for by the elegance of their architecture and its applied art. What is also striking in these temples is the variety in their design, no two are alike, one and all show an individuality of conception and an originality of composition, which is unusual in a country where there is a tendency to repeat a standard pattern and where unalterable convention is strictly observed.