The Chalukyan Architecture of the Kanarese Districts c41.s1.3

c41.s1.3

roughest manner. The workmanship of the older part, though elaborate and carefully wrought, lacks the finish, delicacy and richness of design which are found in the older work. There is a clumsiness and stiffness in all the figure sculpture never found in the latter. Before the temple stands an unfinished open hall which would have been an imposing and ornate building had it been completed. It was intended to have a very fine domical ceiling, as a few lower courses of the moulding shew; but this unfinished top has been crowned in later times by a very ugly, low, crenelated rough brick parapet in the very worst taste. The whole of the spire is of similar work. It is possible that this temple occupies the site of an older one, for fragments of pillars of an older Chālukyan shrine lie about and are built into the gateway of the temple enclosure and elsewhere. The photographs shew the top-heavy clumsy pillars of this hall (Plate CLXII). They have been designed by men who had lost all sense of good proportion, and who had not even taken the trouble to follow the lines of the older and better work.