Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c31.22

c31.22

Passing on to the productions of the following century, the eleventh, many large and beautiful temples were erected, some in Kathiawar, others in Rajputana, and several in Gujarat, from the character of which it seems that now was the time when the art of temple building in these regions had found its supreme expression. In none of these temples was this more perfectly achieved than in the temple of Surya at Modhera in Gujarat. (Plates CV, CVI and CVII). Modhera itself at the present time is little more than a collection of huts some eighteen miles south of Patan, but this temple and other remains testify that, when its founders set up a tabernacle to the Sun God, it was a site of no little sanctity. Misfortune, or perhaps neglect, has attended most of the great temples dedicated to this deity, as the ruins of Konarak in Orissa, and Martand in Kashmir, among others, are eloquent proofs, and Modhera is no exception This Sun Temple has lost its tower so that there is no soaring grandeur, while the roofs of its pillared halls are damaged, and its surroundings generally are decayed, yet even with these disabilities, derelict, and away from the sounding world, it is still a monument of incomparable beauty. According to an inscription, found within its broken walls, its exact date has been revealed as 1026-27, probably signifying the year it was consecrated, when Bhima I of the Solanki dynasty ruled in Gujarat.¹