Mediaeval Temples of the Dakhan c10.s8: Śrīgunda
Mediaeval Temples of the Dakhan c10.s8
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Śrīgunda
c10.s8.1
The temples of Vitobā, Rakhamāi, Hatkeśvara and Mahālakshmī, though old, are very plain and uninteresting structures. They are examples of a decadent class which is very widespread, and probably built when funds were not available to erect them in the more ornate style. The walls are perfectly plain and the only sculpture about them is poor, it being principally confined to the pillars and door frames. (Plate LXXXVI.)
c10.s8.2
Some very good wood-carving decorates the façades of two houses at Śrīgunda, of the style, though not so old, as that found in such abundance in many of the old towns of North Gujarāt.¹ It is very similar to that upon some of the old Marāthā palaces in the city of Poona, and that which was brought from Kittur, in the Dhārwār District, when the Desāī’s palace was demolished in the insurrection of 1824, of which a beautifully carved doorway was preserved in the local Magistrate’s office at Hubli. In plate LXXXVI the brackets remind one much of those, in stone, under the cornices of the old mosques and tombs at Bijāpur. The application of the decoration on the door frames is particularly well carried out. The blank square in the middle of the lower lintel probably had a painted picture of Ganapati or some other favourite deity.
c10.s8.3
¹ See The Architectural Antiquities of North Gujarāt, by Dr. Jas. Burgess, C.I.E., and Henry Cousens, Plates IV, XX, XXI, XXII, XXXVI and XLVI.