The Chalukyan Architecture of the Kanarese Districts c8.2

c8.2

Within its crumbling walls, which enclose a space little more than five hundred yards across, it has more than thirty ancient stone temples, all jostling one another for room. They are embedded amongst closely-packed dwellings, and are, as a rule, desecrated and ruined, many having been converted into dwellings and cowsheds. Some few have been put to the vilest use imaginable by the villagers themselves, and these once the shrines of their country's gods! The principal streets have at one time been paved, but the flagstones, which have hitherto escaped the pilferer's hands, now, in their broken and dislocated state, rather tend to retard than promote progress. Around the village, without the walls, are many more dilapidated shrines, embosomed in prickly-pear jungle or standing uncared for in outlying fields. In addition to these structural buildings there are two rock-cut temples—one Jaina, another Brahmanical—and one shrine, half excavated and half built, in two storeys.¹