History of Orissa from the Earliest Times to the British Period v2.c46.2

v2.c46.2

The earliest temples of mediaeval Orissa are not earlier than the 7th century A.D. and at that date we find that a regular temple type had already been evolved, consisting of a sanctum (*Vimāna*) with a spire (*Śikhara*) and a hall (*Maṇḍapa* or according to Orissan architectural terminology, *Jagamohana*). According to the literature on Indian Architecture, mediaeval temples are divided into three classes : (*a*) *Nāgara*, pertaining to Nāgara or Śrī-nagara, *i.e.*, Pāṭaliputra, the ancient metropolis of India, (*b*) *Drāviḍa* of the extreme south of India or the Tamil country and (*c*) *Veśara*, a term difficult to translate or denote, but which is generally taken to be South-West Indian or Early Chālukya. In the last century Fergusson divided Indian temples into three such precise classes : (*a*) Indo-Aryan, (*b*) Chālukyan and (*c*) Dravidian. His pioneer work contained the usual mistakes of all beginners. He thought that Dharwar and Orissa were the ancient seats of the Indo-Aryan style, whereas now we know there is not a single temple in the whole of Dharwar district in the Indo-Aryan or the Nāgara style. Temples of the Southern Maratha country and the Karṇāṭak are as much Nāgara in style as the great Rājarājeśvara temple at Tanjore. It remains only to be demonstrated with illustrations that the Śikhara temples of Dharwar, later than the 10th century A. D., are examples of the permeation of the Drāviḍa style in a country which was originally entirely Veśara; just as the Veśara style once permeated into the Tamil country and influenced the the earliest temples of Conjeeveram.¹ This simple mistake of the Pioneer work on the history of Indian architecture was and is still being quoted in serious works on architecture in the present century. The late Mr. Mono Mohan Ganguly, B.E., writing in 1912, quotes this mistake of Fergusson in *foto*. Mr. Ganguly was an engineer by profession and a fairly qualified student of the History of Indian Architecture. Yet only seventeen years ago he said "to whichever part of India may we turn our attention, e.g., Benares, Mathura, Brindaban, &c., we notice a curious mixture of the Indo-Aryan, Saracenic, and other styles. Orissa towers above all in solitary grandeur; this significant fact has raised it in the estimation of those who study the genesis and evolution of architecture in India from a scientific stand-point."² One is tempted to ask how many temples older than the 18th century in date exist in a complete state in Benares, Mathurā and Brindāban? The late Mr. Ganguly says nothing of the Khajuraho temple type, which is a sub-division of the *Nāgara* style, though situated in a remote out-of-the-way place of Central India. As a matter of fact, the Orissan style, though originally regarded as belonging to the *Nāgara* class, is not *Nāgara* at all. Even before the Muhāmmadan conquest the Orissan temple-type had come to be regarded as a separate style in Indian temple architecture. An inscription in the *Mukha-maṇḍapa* of the Amriteśvara temple at Hoḷal contains an interesting record. It serves as a label for the capital of a finely curved pillar, called *Śri-Kāra* in the inscription. The inscription records that the sculptor Bammoja, the pupil of Pādoja of Soge was a *Viśvakarman*, i.e., architect of the Kali age and had mastered the sixty-four *Kalās* or arts and had invented (? studied) the four types of buildings, viz., *Nāgara*, *Kāliṅga*, *Drāviḷa* (*Drāviḍa*), and *Veśara*.¹ This inscription from Hoḷal in the Bellary district proves that long before the Muhammadan conquest of Northern India the Architects of *Kāliṅga* had won for themselves separate recognition among contemporary architects all over India.