The Early History of the Deccan (Parts I–XI) v2.c16.s1.42

v2.c16.s1.42

For the reasons given above it becomes clear that from the close of the third century A.D. up to the beginning of the fourteenth, the Deccan, owing to its political conditions, was influenced in artistic matters by both North and South India. To demonstrate this influence in the domain of architecture the salient features of the temples built during this period are given below. The Lokeśvara or Virūpāksha temple of Paṭṭadakal, referred to several times above, is one of the oldest structural temples of the Deccan and has a striking resemblance to its earlier prototype, the Rājasimheśvara temple of Kāñchī. The type of architecture is pure Pallava evolved from the wooden ratha style, the earlier examples of which may be noticed in the rock-hewn shrines of Māmallapuram. The spire consists of a square pyramid, divided into distinct stories which decrease in dimensions as they rise one above the other and are ultimately crowned with a round tower. The storied or horizontal arrangement of the spire is a Pallava or South Indian feature, while the North Indian spire has a perpendicular arrangement, the reduplication being obtained by vertical additions, clustering round the main structure of the spire. The architects of the Deccan in building their spires adopted a middle course; whilst retaining the storied arrangement of South India, they reduced the height of the stories but increased their number, and covered them with so great a profusion of ornamental detail that at first glance the storied arrangement itself is not apparent to the eye. Again, to make the spires resemble their prototypes in Northern India, the architects so manœuvred the central panels, or niches on each story, as to form a more or less continuous vertical band, thus simulating the perpendicular arrangement of the North. The spire of the Mahādeva temple at Ittagi, in the Raichur District (Plate XV *a*), built in A.D. 1112, shows a middle course, but the spires of the temples of Ālampur, constructed about the same period (twelfth century A.D.), are so ingeniously overladen with decorative detail that they appear to be almost replicas of the Liṅgarājā temple at Bhuvaneśvar, in Orissa (Plate XV *b*).