The Hindu Temple v1.c8.s4.8

v1.c8.s4.8

and later Cola period, in South India, though younger in date, the ninth century A.D. and even later, are equally significant.⁵⁵ All these temples are built of large, well cut stones, dressed to level beds and placed one upon another without any mortar or cementing substance. Contrary to current opinion, not only in the Gupta Age in Central India, and in Western India, but also in the South,—for roughly half a millennium,—the flat or low roofed temple preserved its dignity. To this day, moreover, small flat roofed shrines abound in Central India and in South India. The prototype of these shrines is the dolmen with its one large flat slab of stone, supported by three upright slabs set on edge so as to form a small chamber with one side open to serve as an entrance.⁵⁶ It is not by chance that the shrine of Pattainī Devī at Unchahara whose doorway with its cumbrous carvings cannot be earlier than the tenth century and whose architecture is of the ‘Gupta type’, has a flat roof which is just one slab of stone.⁵⁷