A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c8.68

c8.68

The Bhuvanesvar group of temples stands first in importance among the examples of the Āryāvarta style by reason of the immense number of buildings, usually in fairly good condition, and their variety, which marks the stages in the history of the style for at least three centuries. The group next in importance, situated at Khajurāho in the Chhatarpur State, Bundelkhand, although far inferior in both numbers and variety, includes some admirable buildings designed on a grand scale and richly adorned with sculpture. The temples, in more or less satisfactory preservation, numbering between twenty and thirty, were all erected by order of the Chandēl kings within a century before and after A.D. 1000. They are built of hard gneiss, an intractable material, unfavourable to the application of the exuberant ornament dear to Indian taste. Many of the details are executed in sandstone, which offers greater facilities to the sculptor. Several of the domes, constructed in the Indian manner with horizontal overlapping courses of stone, are remarkable achievements, the largest being 22 feet in diameter. The cusps hanging from the centre of some of the domes are beautiful, although, of course, not so elaborately carved as the similar works executed in more manageable marble at Mount Ābū. Plate V gives a good notion of one of the best of the Khajurāho temples, which I had the pleasure of inspecting more than thirty years ago. The steeple is nearly 100 feet high.