The Chalukyan Architecture of the Kanarese Districts c12.s2: The Temple of Kallēsvara
The Chālukyan Architecture of the Kanarese Districts c12.s2
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The Temple of Kallēsvara
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This temple is situated on the south-western outskirts of the village. While still retaining its distinct Dravidian outline, the tower, in this example, shows an early leaning towards the later Cālukyan form, and is, in fact, in transition towards it. The storeys are not so boldly marked as in the earlier buildings, and the cornices are being broken up into vertical arrangements of offsets and recesses. The excessive heaviness of the different parts, so characteristic of the earlier Dravidian work, is absent here. The cornices of the several tiers of the tower, which are blocked out into fewer but more distinct and separate masses, are here reduced in dimensions and converted into a confused congeries of projections and returns. The simple horse-shoe niche, on the centre and corner members of the cornices, has lost its old characteristic vigour of outline and depth of carving, and is becoming a flat facet or panel, which is again duplicated on the lower or smaller cornice, rising in pairs to the top. The walls continue to follow very much the same plan as those of Virūpāksha at Paṭṭadakal—plain flat offsets and recesses with pilastered corners—but, in place of the great panels of figure sculpture, we have here little elongated pavilions in relief, crowned with little śikharas in both the southern and northern styles.
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The pillars, within the temple, have round shafts and capitals, but with square bases. They are rather thick and clumsy-looking, and are a step in advance of those in the Navaliṅga temple (Plate LVI). There are six windows in the hall, two of which are formed of plain cross bars, giving eight small square lights in each, the others having circular lights produced by a tracery of floral scroll work. A colossal bull has been placed in the porch, looking inwards to the *liṅga* which occupies the shrine. The temple faces the east.
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There is a very conspicuous absence of figure sculpture upon the temple; the *tāṇḍava* on the front, and a few little squatting figures in the mouldings of the tower, are all there are. But inside the temple there are two detached well-cut standing images, placed against the wall, one on either side of the entrance to the antechamber. One is of Brahmā and the other of Śiva (Fig. 24). They are well finished, the details being very elaborately made out. These may possibly be of a later date than the temple itself.
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Two great columns of sandstone, of the type of that at Mahākūṭeśvara, stood on the outskirts of the village on the west, but they have collapsed and are broken in pieces (Plate LVI). They are described further on in the section on columns.
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Fig. 24.—Image of Śiva from the temple of Kalleśvara, Kukkaṇūr.