Mediaeval Temples of the Dakhan c6.1

c6.1

WITH but few exceptions the ancient Hindu temples of the Dakhan belong, as a class, to the style denominated by Fergusson the Northern or Indo-Aryan, which was practised under the auspices of the various dynasties that ruled over that part of the country which extends from the borders of the Chālukyan and Drāviḍian districts through North Gujarāt, Central India and Rājputāna to the United Provinces and Orissa, during the period from the sixth to the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries A.D.¹ But it is, more particularly, with that branch of it which was fostered by the Yādava rulers of the Dakhan and their feudatories, to which, in many parts, the term "Hemāḍpanti" has been loosely and indiscriminately applied, that we are now interested. For the purposes of this account the term "Dakhan" is taken to embrace all that country between the Kṛishṇā river, on the south, and the Taptī on the north; and from the Koṅkaṇ, on the west, almost up to Haidarābād on the east.²