The Chalukyan Architecture of the Kanarese Districts c7: Introductory Note on Chālukyan Architecture
The Chālukyan Architecture of the Kanarese Districts c7
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Introductory Note on Chālukyan Architecture
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A KIN to, and contemporaneous with the old styles of Hindu architecture as practised in North Gujarāt and the Dakhan, from the tenth to the fourteenth centuries, is the Chālukyan style of the southern parts of the present Bombay Presidency, or, more correctly, the Kanarese country.¹ It is, in fact, not easy for those not conversant with the study of these styles to distinguish readily the one from the other. The term Chālukyan does not refer exclusively to work carried out by that family of rulers, but embraces all that was erected within the country under their sway, either under their own auspices or that of their feudatories, or of other families who, for a time, supplanted them in the government of those districts—for the same architects or their descendants, no doubt, worked for all upon the same lines. The remains of buildings of this style cover an extensive range of country. The Dhārwār District, which may be taken as the birthplace of the style, is crowded with them, there being hardly a village without an example. From this they extend away north-easterly into the Nizām's territory beyond Kalyāṇi, one of the later capitals of the dynasty, while northwards they run into the Bijāpūr and Belgāum Districts where they mix, imperceptibly, with the remains of the so-called "Hemādpanti" temples. Southwards they penetrate into the old Hoysaḷa territory, right into the heart of Maisur where, especially at Haḷebīḍ, the finest and most ornate specimens of the style, in its later development, are to be found. On the east they cross the Tungabhadrā and pass into the western parts of the Bellary District, while, to the west, they are practically bounded by the Western Ghāts, though a few have strayed into the Koṅkaṇ below.
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¹ The terms Northern or Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, and Chālukyan are used as they are defined in Fergusson's work, *The History of Indian and Eastern Architecture*
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When this style first received attention it was, for want of more definite knowledge on the subject, accepted as a distinct and separate style having an origin of its own which had not been traced; but, after an examination of scores of examples of different periods, and, consequently, a much closer familiarity with the style, it has not been difficult to follow it back to its beginnings in the older Dravidian or Pallava temples of the south. In other words the Chālukyan is but an outgrowth of the earlier Dravidian style, so modified in its development by western temple builders as to have eventually attained a separate style in their hands. The different steps in the transition from the purely Dravidian of the seventh and eighth centuries are easily traced.²
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² To the villagers' untutored mind there is no difficulty in accounting for the existence of these venerable remains. If they were not built by the Pāndavas in a single night, they were erected by the mythical Jakanāchārya, a prince who, to expiate the terrible sin of killing a Brāhman, employed twenty years of his life in building temples from Benāres to Cape Comorin. In like manner old temples found in north Gujarāt are all ascribed to Siddhārāja in the Dakhan to Hemādpant in Khandesh to the Gavalī rājās and in the north to Viśvakarma.
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With the Dravidian temples, then, as their starting point, several early specimens of which had crept into the districts around Kukkanūr, Paṭṭadakal, Aihoḷe and Bādāmi, the Chālukyan builders gradually introduced changes, chiefly by an admixture of details and ideas from the northern type of building—which then existed, side by side, with the Dravidian, in those localities—until the original forms were almost lost under their alterations and additions. The Chālukyas, from the time of Pulikēśin II., at least, until their temporary eclipse by the Rāshṭrakūṭas in the eighth century, continued to use the Dravidian style, for which they most probably obtained builders from the south. During the Rāshṭrakūṭa period, about two hundred years, little was done in the way of temple building in the Kanarese districts, and what was done was, perhaps, rather repairs than original work. The Rāshṭrakūṭas had their own works in hand in the north, notably the great excavations at Ēlūra, which extended from the Das Avatāra cave to the extensive group of Jaina caves around the Indra and Jaganāth Sabhas. These included the great caves of Kailāsa, Rāmeśvara and Dumār Lēna, which must have absorbed every skilled workman in the country round, from north and south. There is no doubt that a fresh impetus was given to temple building on the return to power of the Chālukya family under Taila II., towards the end of the tenth century, and it is from this time that we notice the first definite departure from the pure Dravidian types of the time of Vikramāditya II.
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It is noteworthy that from this time the favourite building material of the early rulers—the sandstone of the district—was abandoned in favour of a new material, a greenish or bluish-black stone, more tractable under the chisel, and eminently suited for the fine carving which is so characteristic of Chālukya work.¹ With the change in material came a diminution in the size of the masonry; and, with the adoption of smaller masonry, was lost the power and dignity that distinguished the older work. The great archaic-looking blocks of the early builders were supplanted by much smaller ones; but, as in the beginning, so it continued to be, that all masonry was built dry with no cementing material between the stones. The blocks were dressed to level beds and piled one upon the other. The earliest work in western India, before the date of these early Dravidian temples, was, no doubt, in brick masonry such as we find in the very old Buddhist *chaitya*-temple at Tēr, on the northern confines of the Chālukyan dominions.²
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¹ This is a Chloritic Schist belonging to the Schistose group of the Gneissic Series. It can be had from quarries at Dudḍahaḷi in the Kōḍ *tāluka*; Dēvagiri, 6 miles from Hāveri, Sāvanūr; Byādgi; Mōṭebennūr, various places in the Hāngal *tāluka*, and at Sangur in the Karajgi *tāluka* It can also be obtained from Silīśankar hill near Beldhaḍi, about 5 or 6 miles south of Gadag. This hill has a quantity of old bits of carving strewn over it, and it is probable that stone was taken from here for the old temples at Gadag, Lakkundi and Dambal in the neighbourhood. The old quarries have, during the last six or seven hundred years, become obliterated by disintegration and filling in. (From information collected and supplied by Mr. H. J. M. Cousens, B.Sc, P' W. D.)
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² See article on the Tēr chaitya in the Archæological Survey of India Annual Report for 1902-03, p. 195.
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The main characteristic of the Dravidian or Pallava style is the storeyed or horizontal arrangement of the towers. That of the northern is its perpendicular arrangement, the reduplication being obtained by vertical additions clustering around the main tower, and of vertical bands up the centre of each face. The Chālukyan builders, while retaining the storeyed arrangement of the Dravidian, reduced the height of each storey, introduced more of them, and covered them with so great a profusion of ornamental detail that they eventually became so masked that, in later examples, they are not, at first glance, apparent. At the same time they borrowed ideas from the northern tower, and so manœuvred the central panels or niches on each storey to form a more or less continuous vertical band, thus simulating the vertical bands up the centre of each face of the northern tower.
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The southern temples have, as a rule, extensive pillared halls attached to them, larger in the later buildings than in the earlier; whereas the northern ones have seldom more than a moderate-sized single *maṇḍapa*, and that generally a closed one. The Chālukyan temples attempted to retain both, but their outer open pillared halls did not approximate at all in size to some of the halls of the south.
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Dravidian temples, with their subsidiary shrines and surrounding corridors, generally formed separate groups, which, in later times, often became very extensive; the northern ones were more solitary in their distribution, the main building, with four other very small ones, occasionally forming a *pañchāyatana* or group of five. In this matter the Chālukyan temple leans rather to the northern style.
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Though less extravagant in the use of minor ornamental detail, the older Dravidian temples, as we find them within the Kanarese districts, are of finer design and more forceful outline than the later Chālukyan buildings. The vigorous and purposeful lines of the former were broken up and whittled away in the latter, until they became, with the addition of much overloaded ornament, rather a jumble of details all jostling one another in apparently aimless confusion. Nor do the Chālukyan temples compare favourably, in general appearance, with the more graceful and loftier shrines of the north of the same period, as represented in such buildings as those of Khajarāha.
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In order to follow the transition from the earlier to the later style, the purely Dravidian temple of Virūpāksha at Paṭṭadakal supplies a good starting point (Plate XLV). From this to the Jaina temple at Lakkuṇḍi, or the temple of Kallēśvara at Kukkanūr, is a small step. The storeys in the towers of the latter are a little less prominent. In Virūpāksha the crest of the shrine walls on each face are surmounted by three free-standing miniature roofs—a long wagon-vaulted one in the middle and a square one at each corner. In the Jaina temple the central one is broken up into an overlapping repetition of itself, and all are reduced in importance by being made less conspicuous. Here we find the commencement of the central niche on the upper course of each storey, which, later on, by its closer repetition, one above the other, represents, fairly approximately, the vertical band up the faces of the northern tower. The topmost member, under the finial, has more mouldings introduced and has a greater inward curve, which, if still further hollowed out, with a few more vertical corrugations, such as we see crowning the tower of Dodda Basappā at Ḍambaḷ, would resemble the ribbed *amalsari* and neck of the northern type.
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If we pass on to Kāśiviśvēśvara at Lakkuṇḍi we see a further marked development of the Chālukya tower, where the ascending line of niches is more fully expressed; and the northern tower, from which the idea was borrowed, is reproduced in miniature, as an ornament, within each. Around the walls are miniature towers of both types. It therefore seems certain, that the Chālukya builders saw some grace and beauty of line in these northern spires which they endeavoured to express in their modified Dravidian outline.
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As this development proceeded, the storeys or steps became less marked, with a smaller rise to each, until, as in the case of the star-shaped temple at Ḍambaḷ they almost lost their individuality (Plate CXXIII). They are there nevertheless, and can be disentangled from the mass of ornamental encrustation which covers their surfaces. This temple is so far removed from the original Dravidian as not, at first sight, to suggest any connection between the two.
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The walls, below the Dravidian tower, which are decorated with simple pilasters in low relief, with boldly-modelled sculptures between them, passed on to fully decorated surfaces, more deeply and frequently recessed and crowded with deeper niches and conventionalized sculpture.
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Of the various Hindu styles of architecture the Chālukyan is, perhaps, the least attractive when viewed from a distance. It has no striking outline to catch the eye, and its detail is too crowded and too small to be distinctly seen: they are just piles of chiselled stonework. An inspection at close quarters, however, reveals the qualities for which they are noted. An exuberance of lace-like carving, bands upon bands of minute scrollwork and figure bas-reliefs, and panels and niches, all elbowing each other for room, are among the chief features of the style. Except upon Jaina temples, which have comparatively plain exteriors, hardly a square yard of their walls is bare. Multitudinous lines of moulded string courses, crossed by endless vertical offsets and recesses, break up the wall surfaces into hundreds of projections and indentations which produce a remarkably sparkling effect of light and shade, not altogether unpleasing. Writing of the great temple of Haḷēbīḍ, the most ornate example in the style, Fergusson says: "A person standing between the two great *vimānas* of the western face of the temple, and looking around him, probably sees a greater amount of skilled labour than was ever exhibited in a like space in any other building in the whole world, and the style of workmanship is of a very high class. It is not, of course, pretended that it compares with Greek art or the higher utterances of European intellect, but in many respects it excels anything that Gothic art produced during the middle ages. The qualities of design exhibited at Haḷēbīḍ are certainly not the highest of which the art is capable, but in their grade they may challenge comparison with those of any known building in any other style."¹ One cannot help wondering at the amount of lovely detail, all finished with scrupulous care, tucked away in dark corners in the interiors of most of these buildings, where it is often impossible to see it without the aid of a lantern. But,
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¹ Architecture in Dharwar and Mysore, p 51.
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Fig. 1.—Sculpture on the walls of the great temple at Haḷēbīḍ.
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“In the elder days of Art,
Builders wrought with greatest care
Each minute and unseen part;
For the gods see everywhere.”
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They wrought for the whole-hearted love of their work, and its dedication to their country’s gods: their dynasties may die out, but their gods never.
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Judged from a western point of view, the lighting of their interiors was very bad; it might almost be said it was left to chance. There was, perhaps, after all, a purpose in this omission. In the outer open hall a fair amount of light was admitted through the open sides all around, when these were not, as was so often the case, built up with mud walls. The closed *maṇḍapa* was frequently lighted from but one entrance doorway, which itself often opened into the subdued light of the outer hall. Sometimes there were two other side doorways screened with porches; but, even with all three, the interior of this inner hall with its black stone walls, pillars and ceilings, was very inadequately lighted, and was, consequently, so gloomy that any detail in the corners was quite lost. The shrine was still darker, being recessed back from this gloomy hall by the depth of the antechamber, and receiving as its only supply of light the feeble rays that struggled in through its own doorway. Consequently a small oil lamp was usually burning day and night to illumine, by its fitful glimmer, the object of worship, which thus gained in mystery what it lost in visibility. This palpable darkness, pierced only by the reflected light from the most prominent portions of the image, was calculated to impress the approaching worshipper with that wholesome awe which was becoming to the occasion; and, wrapt up in his religious fervour, he could believe he saw the sentient movement of the deity’s grim features as the light’s rays flickered over them. Enveloped in the dimly illuminated gloom of the shrine it is a god; brought out into the open it would be nought but a stone image.
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The ventilation was no better than the lighting. Were it not that the masonry of these temples is porous, being built without any cementing material, and thus allowing the air to percolate through to some extent, the atmosphere would soon become absolutely unbearable. As it is, laden with the smells from the burning lamp and the crude oil and unguents used in the worship, it is not, by any means, pleasant to a person entering straight from the outer air. In the deserted temple, as so many of them are, these smells are replaced by the stench of bats, which crowd in, and hang, like stalactites, to the fretted ornament of the domes.
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Every Chālukyan temple consists, necessarily, of a shrine and a porch to protect the entrance thereto. But, usually, a closed hall is added before the shrine, and, often, another open hall before this again. The buildings, as a rule, run east and west, the majority facing east; but some are found facing the north, and a very few the south. There are none in any intermediate position. Śaiva temples face either east or west; Vaiṣṇava temples may also face the same directions, though many face the north, the direction to which temples of some of the goddesses turn. Temples to Gaṇapati, as well as Jaina temples, sometimes face the south, the latter sect not being particular as to which of the cardinal points they turn their shrines.
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The object of worship now found in most of the old Kanarese temples is the *linga*, its constant occurrence being due to the rise of the Liṅgāyat sect in the twelfth century, who appropriated to their own use every temple they could lay their hands upon whether Brahmanical or Jaina. The original dedication of a temple can usually be ascertained from an inspection of the image carved upon the little projecting block on the lintel of the shrine door—Śaiva temples by Śiva in some form other than the *linga*, or by Gaṇapati; Vaiṣṇava by Śrī or Gaja-Lakṣmī, Garuḍa carrying Viṣṇu or by Garuḍa alone; and Jaina temples by a seated or standing figure of a Jina. Upon the outer or *maṇḍapa* doors Gaja-Lakṣmī is often found upon the temples of all of these sects, she having been a favourite goddess in the Kanarese country. (See Frontispiece.) Another indication is the image in the great arched niche placed in front of the base of the tower.
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Between these two extremes there were many modifications, such as those having one hall and two shrines and single-shrined temples with two or three doorways and porches giving entrance to the main hall. Temples with *pradakṣiṇās*, or circumambulatory passages, around the shrine, such as Virūpākṣa at Paṭṭadakal, are mostly confined to the older and larger buildings. A further insight into these arrangements will be gleaned from the descriptions that follow of the separate temples.
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One of the prettiest features in a Chālukyan temple is the domical ceiling which is often found in the central bay of the hall. It is not a dome in the European sense of construction, that is, it is never built of voussoirs with radiating joints. It is constructed of ring upon ring of stones laid with horizontal or level bedding, each ascending ring smaller than the lower, and closing in towards the top which is closed by a single slab. These rings are held in their place by the immense weight of roofing material above them pressing down upon the haunches of the dome all around. The inside of the dome is carved into ascending concentric circles, each circle being beautifully cusped. From the apex hangs a graceful pendant or rosette. As the dome springs from the square formed by the four beams resting upon the four central pillars of the hall, there are left triangular spaces at the corners which are generally filled in with very rich arabesque. This is, sometimes, as in the case of the Ittagi ceiling, so undercut as to hang away from the body of the slab like so much petrified foliage. Beside these domical ceilings there are flat ones which are divided by cross ribs into small square compartments filled, as in the case of the Ganjigatti one, with images of the *aṣṭadikpālas* or regents of the eight points of the compass, or, as in the case of that at Baṅkāpur, with lotus rosettes arranged to form very dainty designs.¹
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¹ The methods of arranging the columns to support these ceilings are explained fully in Fergusson's *Indian and Eastern Architecture*.
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The doorways are also profusely decorated. Bands of delicately chiselled fretwork, moulded pillarettes and interminable scrolls filled with tiny figures, form quite a bundle of mouldings running up the sides and across the lintel and architrave above. Narrow, deeply-channelled grooves separate them into groups and these lines of deep shadow form effective contrast with the mouldings themselves. Above, upon the centre of the lintel, projects the small dedicatory block, already alluded to. Unlike the northern temples these have no *kirtimukha* mask upon the front of the doorstep, but in front of it there is often a very ornamental low step such as that at Ḍambal (Plate CXXVI) upon which a good deal of work was lavished, even though hardly seen in the gloomy interior. Above the lintel there is generally found a deep richly-wrought architrave, in which, beneath arched rolls of arabesque, are found the images of Brahmā, Śiva and Viṣṇu--Śiva or Viṣṇu occupying the centre according to the deity to whom the temple was dedicated. Gaṇapati and Kārtikēya may be added at the ends, or the male deities may be represented by their *śaktis* or female counterparts. At the foot of the doors of the earlier temples, one on either side, are often found the river goddesses Gaṅgā and Yamunā. In still earlier temples in other parts of India, like those of the Guptā period, they are found at each side at the top of the door.
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A peculiar feature in the later Chālukyan temples is the turned pillar. The stone used--Chloritic Schist--being of a very fine homogeneous texture, and not too hard, is easily cut or pared with a sharp tool. It seems, therefore, to have occurred to some inventive stone-worker, more alive to possibilities than his fellows, to save a very great amount of mere labour by turning his pillar shafts in a lathe. This would seem to have been carried out with the block in an upright position, and would, of course, be only the finishing process, the stone being first roughed out as near as possible to the round. They appear to have got so fond of playing with their material in this manner that they were tempted to whittle down the central square block of the shaft to the round, producing a bulbous swelling in its place. Compare the pillars on Plate CXXXI with those on Plate XCVIII. Many of these were never polished after the cutting tool, and, in these cases, the fine grooves from the point of the tool are left upon them. Others have been so well polished that they reflect the light from their surfaces. Such pillars are found in the temples at Baṅkāpur, Tillivaḷḷi, Ittagi, Hāngal and other places.
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The other type of pillar, with the square block in the middle of the shaft, as seen in the temples at Dēgāmve and Belgāum, is a more lineal descendant of those in the Navaliṅga temple at Kukkanūr. Pillars of this class show more vigour and strength of outline than the round ones which are, nevertheless, not without a certain elegance of their own.
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The size of Chālukyan temples was, probably, governed by the height of the pillar, and that again by the most convenient length of block obtainable from the quarries. It was a hard and fast rule with the builders to use a single stone for the shaft of a pillar, that is, the portion between the top of the base stone and the neck under the capital; they never built this part up of two or more stones. Thus, since it was incumbent upon them to maintain the usual proportions between the different parts of the pillar, the height was dependent upon the length of shaft. The fact that all their masonry was erected dry, with no cementing material, and few bonding stones with no clamps as were used in the north, militated against the raising of much loftier buildings. A rise in the height of the tower would mean an immense additional weight of material upon the walls of the shrine which would necessitate their thickness being increased out of all proportion to the other parts of the plan. This has, to some extent, been obviated in some of the northern temples by the hollowing out of the backs of the individual stones, and thereby reducing the weight.
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The pillars, ceilings and door frames were the principal parts of a temple which were reserved for special decoration. Figure 2 shows a pillar from a temple at Rāmappā lake, some thirty miles to the north-east of Warangal, as an example of extreme decoration. In the detail, thus lavishly applied, it is generally the workmanship and beautiful patterns used rather than the scheme of distribution that pleases most. In the more ornate examples the amount of ornamental detail crowded over the surface of one temple would suffice for two or more if sparingly and judiciously applied. The great temple of Haḷēbīḍ is an example of this excess, for it has no plain surfaces to act as a foil to the fretted detail (Fig. 1).
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A very remarkable feature in these temples is the heavy cornice of double curvature used around the great open halls. A deep cornice was necessary to keep out the sun's hot rays and prevent the rain from beating in between the pillars. Very good examples of this are seen in the Baṅkāpur and Kundgol temples (Plates XCVI and XCVII). The underside is ribbed in imitation of a wooden frame-work. Some temples, like that of Sarasvatī at Gadag, have straight-slabbed cornices which are lighter looking and, sometimes perhaps, more elegant than the heavier curved ones.
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Figure sculpture which, in very early temples, is very naturalistic and free from restraint in its poses, is found, in the later Chālukyan work, crystallized into stiff conventional forms, which are repeated over and over again. Each principal deity has its own stereotyped pose according to the particular incarnation or form depicted; and, beyond an occasional exaggerated representation of action, they are very lifeless indeed. Like all Indian sculpture, human figures are deficient in muscles and drapery. In these later forms the legs, from the knees downward, are veritable drumsticks. But in this respect the sculptors followed their models, for the average Indian is not remarkable for muscular development. Still they were so fond of displaying the figure that they reduced the drapery so much that in many of their images it is difficult to find it, a line or two being sufficient to indicate its presence.
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Fig. 2.—Pillar from the temple at Rāmappā lake.
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The image of the goddess Sarasvatī, in her temple at Gadag, is a very fair example (Fig. 3). Her clothing, it will be noticed, is very scant indeed, and reminds one of that of Tennyson's Vivien which more expressed than hid her and clung about her lissome limbs—a star veiled in grey vapour. But even the grey vapour has melted away from the circlet that engirdles Sarasvatī's waist to the pearls around her throat, and has condensed into sparkling dewdrops of costly jewelry which is just sufficient to save her from the suspicion of immodesty. From the waist downwards she is fully clothed, but with such a diaphanous material, woven in the looms of the gods, that, were it not for the delicate pattern of embroidery traced over it, it would be difficult to tell where it begins and where it ends. Her coiffure is an elaborate pile of curls, four of which, escaping from the rest, trail down
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Fig. 3.—Image of Sarasvatī from her temple at Gadag.
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upon her shoulders, like epaulettes, two on either side. Above her curly tresses rises a six-tiered coronet of jewels, while behind the head is just seen the curved edge of a halo. About her waist she wears a jewelled band, which is hung around with festoons of pearls, from the centre of which depend several ropes of the same, partly covering her bejewelled feet which are tucked away beneath her. She sits upon a lotus cushion placed upon a high peacock throne, the bird being depicted in the central panel below.
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On the walls of the earlier temples are found sculptures of heroes and warriors from the Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata, but they dropped out of the later work, where the walls, with the exception of narrow string courses of tiny figures, are occupied entirely by images of the deities. Now and again *yogis* and dancing girls are found stowed away in some of the more retired recesses, and the latter are often used as brackets against the pillars under the beams or cornices. Animals are sparingly introduced except in small ornamental bands. The sculptor does not seem to have been very happy with them, more especially with the horse, whose limbs worried him sadly. The best portrayed is the elephant, with whose massive proportions they were very much more at home. Immense time and patience were expended over the minute details of jewelry and personal ornaments, and the trappings of the elephant.¹
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¹ Indian sculptors were quite conscious of their failing in this respect. At the great Kārli cave, groups of men and women, seated upon elephants, crown the pillars in the Chaitya and look down into the well-lighted central nave, but behind them are groups on horses which look into the very dark side aisles where their clumsy limbs car. hardly be seen at all.
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Standing at the approach to the courtyard of the temple of Galagnātha at Aihoḷe is an ornamental entrance which is composed of two upright pillars carrying a sculptured beam or architrave across the top (Plate XXIV). These erections, which can hardly be called gateways, pass under the names of *toraṇas* and *kīrtistambhas* neither of which terms are strictly correct in their application to them. The former really means the light and delicate cusped arch or inverted garland, thrown across from pillar to pillar under the beam in similar structures in Gujarāt and the north, while the latter has reference more to a single pillar or tower set up by itself. One of the finest examples of these ornamental entrances in India, apart from the famous ones at the Sānchi Tōpe, is at Vadnagar in North Gujarāt where the true *toraṇa* is seen.² There is another of these at Aihoḷe at the entrance to an old well in the western quarter of the village. Smaller and more insignificant ones are occasionally met with in the Kanarese districts, most of them, like that at Galagnātha, having the images of Brahmā, Śiva and Viṣṇu on the face of the architrave. Some were used as ornamental entrances to courtyards around temples or to the temples themselves, some for holding swings for the god, while others may have been used from which to suspend scales when a king had himself weighed against gold to distribute in charity.³ They may also have been used for hook-swinging.
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² See History of Indian and Eastern Architecture, Vol. II, Pl. XXIV.
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³ The Rāṣṭrakūṭa king Indra III. had himself weighed against gold.
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When Chālukyan temples first attracted attention it was assumed that the majority of them were Jaina, and that sect were credited with a great deal more than their fair share in their erection. But this was a mistake; the great majority were Brahmāṇical. The old Jaina temples are so distinctly Jaina that a careful observer on the spot has little trouble in recognizing them, even when in the possession and use of other sects. Before the days of dry plate photography, when the long exposures required by the old process made it practically impossible to get views of the interiors, one had to be content, in the absence of a personal acquaintance with these buildings, to draw one's conclusions from views of exteriors only. Again, it was considered that the little group of Gaja-Lakshmi,¹ when it occurred upon the dedicatory block over a temple door, was a sure sign that the temple was a Jaina one. That is not so, for she was a general favourite both with Jains and Hindus, who gave her the place of honour over their doors impartially; but, while she may be found over the outer door of a Jaina temple, she is never seen presiding over the shrine door, this position being reserved for an image of a Jina. In Hindu temples she may or may not be found over shrine doors.
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¹ See Frontispiece. One of the earliest representations is upon one of the great gateways of the Sānchi Tūpe, a Buddhist structure.
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We have practically no examples of civil, domestic or military architecture left to us from Chālukyan times. It is probable that they never built, even their palaces, in solid stone masonry, but were content with mud, brick or wood, supplemented with plaster, whitewash and paint. The reason for such impermanent structures may have been that the rulers of those days considered it very risky to sink their wealth in expensive buildings of this kind which, at the hands of an enemy—and they swarmed around their borders—would not be respected but thrown down and demolished. With their sacred buildings it was otherwise, for, they all being Hindus, until the Muḥammadans appeared, the temples were equally sacred to friend and foe. Now and again, but very rarely, some damage was done to these buildings locally when bitter sect rivalry was acute, but there was never anything equalling the devastation caused by the iconoclastic soldiers of Islām when they were let loose over the land.
c7.48
The artistic sense of the people has now passed away or is relegated to those few whose business it is to care for these things. They now produce their wares to order, not so much by quality as quantity—so many square feet per rupee. In days gone by, as we have seen, there seems to have been a desire for better and more conscientious work, more taste being shewn by the people themselves, so that, when the buildings were erected which we now see in ruins, the double demand of religious fitness and artistic taste was satisfied. Now the former alone remains, while the latter has died out. Hence it is that we find that, where these old shrines have been desecrated and abandoned as places of worship, there is no feeling left strong enough to rescue them from the basest and foulest purposes to which they are freely put, or to attempt to arrest the effects of the ravages of time and the elements.