Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c31.28

c31.28

In viewing the Modhera temple the aesthetic sense at once responds to the elegance of its treatment and its proportions as a whole, the entire composition being lit with the living flame of inspiration. But apart from its material beauty, its designer has succeeded in communicating to it an atmosphere of spiritual grace. The temple faces the east so that the rising sun at the equinoxes filters in a golden cadence through its opening, from doorway to corridor, past columned vestibules finally to fall on the image in its innermost chamber. In its passage the rays of the heavenly body to which the shrine is consecrated, quiver and shimmer on pillar and archway, giving life and movement to their graven forms, the whole structure appearing radiant and clothed in glory. To see this noble monument with its clustered columns not only rising like an exhalation, but mirrored in the still waters below, is to feel that its creator was more than a great artist, but a weaver of dreams.