Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c32.9

c32.9

Even the largest of these Deccani temples is of very moderate size, that at Sinnar one of the most spacious, being barely eighty feet in its entire length; but these limited dimensions were occasioned, to some extent, by the manner of their construction. The proportions of the building were determined by a unit, this unit being the height of the monolithic shaft of the pillar in the interior, which, in its turn, depended on the greatest length of stone it was economically possibe to extract from the quarry. As all parts of the temple were proportioned strictly according to rule, each member being in fixed ratio to all the others, the pillar shaft served as a standard for the purpose of measurement, and the entire composition was therefore executed to that scale. In view also of the relatively large extent of the territory concerned, the temples of this type are not numerous. Of all kinds there are less than fifty, only ten of which are of real significance. From this selection it is however possible to illustrate each phase of its development, extending over a period of three centuries.