Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c34.7

c34.7

The other group of temples, recalling the style that appertains to the country of Nepal is still more distant from the Himalayas, as it is situated in the coastal region of Malabar. Of these examples decidedly the most remarkable is located in the small seaport of Beypore, south of Calicut. Here is an ancient Siva temple, the Mahadeva Kovil, which in both design and construction appears to be a deliberate copy of a double roofed Nepalese temple of the late mediaeval period. (Plate CXVIII, Fig. 5).¹ As both types are over thirteen hundred miles apart, the one in a seaside town and the other in a remote valley in the Himalayas, the resemblance is difficult to explain. One theory is that a presumed anthropological connection existed between the Nayars of Malabar and the Newars of Nepal, while another accounts for the pagoda-like attribution by a contact with China by sea as proved by the Chinese type of fishing nets used on this coast.²