Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c32.14

c32.14

Another site containing buildings in this style, and in this instance within the Deccan, as it is in Khandesh, is that of Balsane, where there is a group of nine temples, the erection of which may have extended over a period of one hundred and fifty years Of these a triple-shrined structure (No. 1) is of much the same design as that at Ambarnatha and no doubt of approximately the same date, but it is smaller in size as it is only sixty-five feet long by fifty feet wide Although of such moderate proportions it is a building of considerable beauty, while among its many ornate features, the shrine entrance is a most striking production. At the base of this doorway are the usual groups of divinities, and rising above these on each side is the decorative "nookshaft" which characterises the shrines of this class These shafts support a prominent cornice over which is a range of miniature tabernacles and other similar ornamental motifs all carefully distributed and elegantly designed. Interposed within this scheme are patterned mouldings of figures and foliage which, together with illustrations of symbol and myth, depict all that the artist's fancy could recall and ingenuity conceive. Of the other examples at Balsane, temples Nos 2 and 3, by their style, may have been built fifty years later, at the beginning of the twelfth century, while No 4 is notable because in the plan of its shrine exterior, the star-shaped principle appears, allying it with the Chalukyan temples of Mysore. To complete this instructive group is temple No. 5 already referred to as being, in its lay out, almost an exact copy of a type of rock-cut vihara at Ajanta and Ellora, both these monumental developments of rock-architecture being barely fifty miles distant.