Administration and Social Life under Vijayanagar c16.10

c16.10

In course of time, the idal which supports the capital of a pillar similarly underwent changes in design. While in the Pallava and Cōḷa periods it was plain, in the Vijayanagar period it was represented with opened petals, and these petals look like a series of indentations. In the same way the nāgabandham, so called because of its resemblance to the "hood of a cobra", was a feature of the later Cōḷa and the Vijayanagar architecture. The floral designs and the foliage which surround the kūḍu differ from period to period. While in a kūḍu of the Pallava period there is less of ornamentation, but generally is sculptured in it a gandharva who resembles a man looking through a window, a kūḍu of the Vijayanagar period has greater ornamentation and the gandharva has no place in it. Even this ornamentation has disappeared in the modern period, and we have only plain Kūḍus now.