The Early History of the Deccan (Parts I–XI) v2.c16.20.4

v2.c16.20.4

There is thus some possibility that the apsidal plan of the house of God of the Phoenicians was copied in India as it was at Mecca, which was situated in the middle of the caravan route from Palestine to the Yemen. The form may indeed have sprung up independently here, for the offering of sacrifices would have required at the beginning a circular pit, which at a later period might have become a conventional form for the altar. But against the latter view are the facts that the apsidal form of the temples disappeared from India with the waning of the Buddhist religion, and that except in the case of one or two temples in South India this plan is not to be noticed among Brāhmanic temples elsewhere. The offering of sacrifices to gods was an essential feature of the Brāhmanic faith from the beginning, and if the apsidal form of temples had originated and developed in the Deccan or in India, it would not have been given up on the extinction of the Buddhist religion.