The Chalukyan Architecture of the Kanarese Districts c22.s1.1

c22.s1.1

THE temple of Arvattukambhada, or the ' Temple of the Sixty Columns,' is situated in the west side of the old fort of Baṅkāpur (Plate XCIV). When the fort was built the ramparts were carried right across the back wall of the temple, so that the latter is partly buried in it. This, in its time, was a very fine temple, similar, in plan and general style, to the temple of Tārakēśvara at Hāngal, but it has suffered greatly at the hands of iconoclasts and vandals. The great pillared hall was converted into a mosque when the fort was held by a Bijāpur garrison, but they appear to have built another mosque, subsequently, which stands at the other end of the fort near the gateway. We are told by Farishtah¹ that, when Baṅkāpur fell before the assaults of the troops of ‘Ali ‘Ādil Shāh of Bijāpur, “ The Sultan ordered a superb temple within it to be destroyed, and he laid the first stone of a mosque, which was built on the foundation, offering up praises for his victory,” and, further, “ Four months after the reduction of Baṅkāpur, when the country was properly settled by the royal officer, and the different chiefs had submitted to pay tribute, Ali Adil Shaw took up his residence in the fort, where he spent his time in a round of amusements.” To convert this temple to their use, the Muḥammadans squared off the back corners of the hall, which were originally recessed like the front (see plan, Plate LXXXIX). They then built up a wall upon the bench to meet the beams under the cornice, and finally inserted a *miḥrāb*, or prayer niche, within the doorway that led towards the shrine, thus cutting off the latter from the great hall. As it was against their religion to have any figure sculpture about their places of worship, they chiselled away the scores of little images which filled the numerous panels and niches round the outside of the basement wall of the hall. Upon the pillars are little figures outlined very lightly in little *pippala*-leaf scrolls, which have been pitted over with a blunt-pointed instrument, while the scrollwork around them is untouched. The central portion of the floor of the hall had been taken up and relaid very clumsily. Possibly the Muḥammadans expected to find treasure buried there beneath the great bull *Nandi*, which, if there had been no pavilion for it as at Hāngal, would have occupied this position. Outside the hall, and around about it, are several old Muḥammadan graves.