The Age of the Imperial Guptas c8.69

c8.69

The ornamentation of the niches on the three sides of the Daśāvatāra temple differs and it is apparent that the temple must have been thoroughly repaired sometime in the 7th or 8th century A.D. It is in these later additions that a definite connection can be traced between the early Gupta decorative style of niches and the slightly later Gurjjara-Pratihāra style, a very good example of which was found by Pundit Govind Mālaviya to the proper right of the great Jaina temple on the low hill to the west of the Daśāvatāra temple.¹ The original idea underlying the addition of this new member over the flat roof of the sanctum must have been to accentuate or emphasize the position of the sanctum and to distinguish it from the rest of the structure. The corners of the Śikharas of the temples at Deogadh and Sankargadh show a slight curvature, which is to be found in the earliest mediæval temples of Orissa; in the Paraśurāmesvara temple at Bhuvaneśvara and the twin temples at Gandharāḍi in the Baudh State. In these the height of the Śikhara from the point of its junction with the side walls is exactly one-and-a-half of the side walls. Unaccountably the same proportion is to be observed in the brick temples at Sirpur, in the Central Provinces which do not belong to the 6th century as Coomaraswamy¹ supposes but to the 8th century according to the Sirpur inscription of the Somavaṁśī kings.² The Śikhara became a regular feature of Indian temples from the beginning of the 7th century A.D., though even so late as the 10th, an upper chamber continued to be erected in certain cases; such as the one on the top of the sanctum of the Buddhist temple (No. 45) at Sanchi.³