The Chalukyan Architecture of the Kanarese Districts c7.12

c7.12

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.