A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c8.71

c8.71

The Bengal variety is characterized by the use of the bent cornice, obviously copied from the bamboo eaves of an ordinary Bengal hut, and by a peculiar arrangement of the curvilinear steeples; one lofty steeple placed over the centre being surrounded by four, eight, or sixteen smaller towers of the same form. Figure 10 illustrates a seventeen-towered temple in the Dinājpur District. Some of the details are Muhammadan. Fergusson has described a large similar temple at Kāntonagar in the same District, finished in 1722, and decorated with applied terra-cottas of slight artistic merit. This variety of the Āryāvarta style is peculiar to Bengal.¹ The only example recorded outside that province is one at Bilhari, Central Provinces, built to the order of a Bengālī immigrant.