Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them v2.c19.s2.21

v2.c19.s2.21

A modern expert on medieval Hindu architecture has speculated about the Rudramahalaya on the basis of what has survived. The Solañki tradition maintains, writes Dr. S.K. Saraswati, a rich and prolific output in the twelfth century AD which saw two eminent royal patrons of building art in Siddharaja JayasiMha and Kumarapala. With the former is associated the completion of an imposing conception, the Rudra Mala or Rudra Mahalaya, at Siddhapur (Gujarat). Unfortunately it is now completely in ruins but a picture of its former splendour seems to have survived in a Gujarati ballad which speaks of the temple as covered with gold, adorned with sixteen hundred columns, veiled by carved screens and pierced lattices, festooned with pearls, inlaid with gems over the doorways and glistening with rubies and diamonds. Much of this is, no doubt, exaggeration full of rhetoric; but the impressive character of the conception is evidenced by the scanty, though co-lossal, remains. They consist of groups of columns of the pillared maNDapa, which seems to have been in more than one storey, and had three enterance porticos on three sides. The surviving foundations suggest that the conception with the usual appurtenances occupied a space nearly 300 feet by 230 feet. In front there stood a *kirti-toraNa* of which one column still remains. From the dimensions the Rudra Mala seems to have been one of the largest architectural conceptions in this area. The rich character of its design is fully evident in the few fragments that remain.¹¹