Administration and Social Life under Vijayanagar c16.7

c16.7

The Hindus appear to have preferred the lintel and the corbel principle in the construction of the maṇṭapas. When the Muhammadan styles of architecture had begun to affect the South Indian style appreciably, the Hindus adopted on a larger scale the method of constructing halls with barrel-shaped domes and arched gateways. As Havell says, "in the ruins of Hindu Vijayanagar will be found not only the proto-types of Muhammadan Bijapur, but illustrations of the process by which the Arab architecture of the seventh, eighth and following centuries gradually became the style of the pointed arch."²