The Hindu Temple v1.c9.s6.2

v1.c9.s6.2

Hamlets, villages, market towns, citadels, cities, capitals and suburbs, all these walled habitations,¹⁵ as the Prāsāda itself, are laid out on the Vāstupuruṣa-maṇḍala, and the temples of the village or city have their place assigned on it. In practice, equal in Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava texts, the main position of a Śiva temple is in the North-East, in Īśāna, and that of a Viṣṇu temple in the West, in Varuṇa; the Centre is the place for the temple of Brahmā, or of Viṣṇu or of any other form of God as the main divinity of the temple. Buddha and Jina temples, which belong to the heretics, are assigned generally to the South-West. On all other points there is as much agreement as diversity in the different Śāstras, so that the "Kāmikāgama", ch. XXVI. 6 lays down that in this, the 'Kāmikāgama', the situation of a temple of Gaṇeśa is in the West, or South-West or between the North-West and the North or elsewhere.¹⁶ In the chart on p. 234, several texts are put together which are more or less explicit on the positions of the temples. Where the temple of a divinity is set up depends upon the branch and phase of the tradition followed at the time and place of building. The worship of the Mothers, for example, whose temples and images the 'Kāmikāgama' gives as stationed in the North-East or the North (XXVI. 8), and other texts in the South, is said in this text (ib. 18) to have been performed but recently by the Brāhmaṇas. Apart from the positions of the Śiva principle in the North-East, Sūrya in the East, the Viṣṇu principle in the West and the Brahmā principle in the Centre, the temples of the many forms of God are frequently assigned more than one place even in each single text. The temple of Brahmā moreover according to South Indian tradition, it is explicitly enjoined in the 'Kāmikāgama', should not be in the centre; its place is in the SSW. and S. (ch. XLIX) or in the NE. (ch. XXVI. 2).