The Hindu Temple v1.c9.s2.7

v1.c9.s2.7

The buttresses have their beginning at the foot of the wall of the temple, including the socle, the Adhiṣṭhāna. The broad projection of the central buttress makes the ground plan of the Prāsāda cruciform (see ground plans, Pt. VII). This is also the form of the central part of the Gārhapatya hearth where it results from the shape itself of the bricks (plan in Part VII). On the perpendicular walls of the temple, within the buttresses, in their niches or ‘massive doors’ (ghanadvāra), are placed as images the divinity in the temple (Pls. LXXI, XLIII). Thus it appears to have stepped from within the Garbhagṛha, through the massive walls of the temple and its ‘solid doors’ for an aspect of the deity has no physical body but it is given form and is bodied forth across the wall and itself is the door, by which the devotee in his heart and mind approaches the central divinity. It is made manifest on the outside of the temple; with this exteriorisation, the Prāsāda wall itself, as it were, keeps pace; in the middle of its surface it steps forth in the shape of a buttress, a symbol of progressive manifestation in terms of architecture. In the course of time the buttresses are increased in number and in depth. Their structural significance is small, no stresses have to be counteracted for the whole monument, the Prāsāda, is built in horizontal courses which rest on their support in the vertical. They do not exert any lateral thrust. Trabeation and corbelling are employed in the Prāsāda and the Maṇḍapas for spanning spaces and constructing domes. The buttresses could be dispensed with structurally but they are indispensably part of the form of the Prāsāda, the monument of manifestation of the Supreme Principle. From the centre of the dark Garbhagṛha, it shows forth in the architectural theme and in the images on the walls of the temple. It leads from the bottom of the temple to its crown, the Āmalaka (Pl. XLIII).