Mediaeval Temples of the Dakhan c7.s1.7

c7.s1.7

The floor of the shrine is sunk below the outside ground level, and some eight feet lower than that of the hall. It is approached by a flight of steps, space for which is obtained by sacrificing nearly the whole depth of the usual antechamber, thus bringing the shrine door considerably forward. There seems to be little doubt that the original shrine was on the same level as the hall, but that the fall of the *śikhara* crushed down through its floor and destroyed it. Upon both the north and south walls, at a height of eight feet above the present floor, and on the same level as the hall floor, is a broken ledge of masonry which might well be the remains of the slabs of the upper floor where they were built into the wall. Another broken ledge beneath this on the north wall only, four feet seven inches from the floor, will no doubt be all that is left of the broad shelf which is generally found in these shrines. A temple of the same age as this—that of Sūrya at Mudhera in north Gujarāt—was similarly provided with an upper and a lower shrine, the upper, with its śikhara, having been blown up with gunpowder by the Muḥammadans. The modern shrine of Somanātha at Paṭṭan in Kāṭhiāwād has a lower shrine in which the principal liṅga is placed, a duplicate, for every day worship, being placed in the upper shrine. This was so arranged at a time when Muḥammadan aggression was feared, when the entrance to the lower was closed and the iconoclasts were allowed to wreak their vengeance upon the upper or dummy liṅga.