The Hindu Temple v1.c9.s2.t3.4

v1.c9.s2.t3.4

The inner buttresses of each side show, according to the chronological sequence of the temples the single strata or cornices with their ‘attic windows’ either as separate motives or as increasingly connected amongst themselves by the ‘gavākṣas’ or attic windows forming a tracery which is cast like a net (jāla) over them, at first veiling two or three such strata and finally covering the entire length of the Śikhara offset. The body of the Śikhara enmeshed in it, clasped by a creeper (latā), shows by its lateral indentations only the strata themselves, the original roof-edges. Such ‘overgrown’ buttresses are therefore called Latinā, in Vāstu-śāstra. They are one with the tracery of the ‘creeper’, the Latā, that covers each of them. Its unit always remains the curvilinear Gavākṣa.⁶⁸