History of Indian and Eastern Architecture v2.c25.s2.18

v2.c25.s2.18

Throughout the province, from the time we first meet it, about the 7th century, if so early, till it dies out about A.D. 1300, the style seems to be singularly uniform in its features, and it requires considerable familiarity with it to detect its gradual progress towards decay. Notwithstanding this, it is easy to perceive that there are two styles of architecture in Orissa, which ran side by side with one another during the whole course. The first is represented by the temples of Parasurâmeswar and Mukteswar (Woodcuts No. 312, 313); the second by the great temple (Woodcut No. 315). They are not antagonistic, but sister styles, and seem certainly to have had at least partially different origins. We can find affinities with that of the Mukteswar group in Dhârwâr and most parts of northern India: but I know of nothing exactly like the great temple anywhere else. It seems to be quite indigenous, and if not the most beautiful, it is the simplest and most majestic of the Indo-Aryan styles. And I cannot help suspecting a wooden origin for it—the courses look so much more like carved logs of wood laid one upon another than courses of masonry, and the mode and extent to which they are carved certainly savours of the same material. There is a mosque built of Deodar pine in Kashmîr, to be referred to thereafter, which certainly seems to favour this idea; but till we find some older temples than any yet discovered in Orissa this must remain in doubt. Meanwhile, it may be well to point out that the majority of the older temples in Orissa follow the type of the great temple, and the rest that of Parasurâmswar; but the two get confounded together in the 9th and 10th centuries, and are mixed together into what may almost be called a new style in the Râjarânî and temples of the 11th and 12th centuries.