The Age of the Imperial Guptas c8.75

c8.75

The oldest known temples of Northern India, belonging to the earlier part of the 7th century A.D., are the second temple at Nachna Kuthara and the temple of Mundeśvari, near Bhabua, in the Shahabad or Arrah district of Bihar and Orissa. At Nachna Kuthara the second temple possesses a fine Śikhara. It lies to the south-west of the early Gupta Temple and enshrines one of the largest four-faced Lingas (Caturmukha-Mahādeva) ever discovered. In front of the sanctum there was a small porch of twelve pillars which had collapsed when the present writer saw it in 1919. The sanctum is a plain square cell without an Antarāla, on the top of which is a modest Śikhara. The upper part of the Śikhara, consisting of the pinnacle, is damaged. From a distance this temple looks like other temples of the mediæval period of Northern India (800–1200 A.D.), but a closer scrutiny reveals certain features, which tend to prove that this temple must be very closely allied in date to the fifth and sixth century temples described in the preceding pages. The most important feature is the door-frame. The resemblance of the plastic work and the arrangement of its door-frame to that at Bhumra is so complete that it is extremely difficult to believe that they are even slightly different in date. The arabesque of the first band with the climbing Amorini, the flying figures of the lintel and the false recesses at the ends of the lintel containing female figures all point out to a contiguous building period and not a distant one. There was no path of circumambulation in this case and the exterior of the walls of the sanctum are perfectly finished and decorated with small niches. The stone door-frame of the sanctum is one of the very rare examples of 7th century art discovered up-to-date in Northern India. The presence of the river goddesses, Gaṅgā and Yamunā, in the case of the early Gupta temples at Bhumra, Besnagar,¹ Deogadh² and the earlier temple at the same place show that it was a constant feature in Gupta architecture proper. But these figures are absent at the bottom of the jambs of the post-Gupta temple at Nachna Kuthara, though they are present in the Mundesvari temple. The stone door-frame of the 8th century temples at Dhamtari and Sirpur in the Central Provinces are slightly different from that of the post-Gupta temple of Nachna Kuthara.