Indian Art and Culture — Architecture

I have recently started reading a book, very aptly titled as “Indian Art and Culture” by Nitin Singhania. I got the motivation to start reading this particular book, after watching the movie 12th fail.

It kind of reminded me of my days, years ago when I used to cram every single day for my JEE examination. Ah, the good old days. The movie put this ridiculous notion in my mind to apply for the UPSC exam and just give prelims a shot, just for fun.

Then, I started researching about the syllabus for the exam and man, I realized it’s way too much for me to casually glean through everything and give the exam a go. If things are that easy, then it is as if I am looking down on all those people who go to Delhi and waste away their good prime years on prepping.

Anyways, I came across this book on one of the reddit posts which gave a detailed list of the content and some preparation strategies too.

I am pretty sure it’s this one —

https://www.reddit.com/r/UPSC/comments/141nzc8/a_guide_to_getting_started_with_upsc_cse_2024/

I guess, enough of the backstory for today’s post. I just want to say how amazed I was to learn all these new things about India and then I figured whatever I was taught in school doesn’t even come close to the true depth of Indian history, culture, art and architecture.

I felt like documenting all the things I am learning from that book and that is the purpose of this post. Without further ado, let me dive into the amazing historical architecture of our country and peek into how life must’ve been in those days.

Architecture

Temples

I am a Hindu by religion, a very reluctantly chosen path for my life (not that I had much of a choice). Everytime, my mom drags me into temples, I always wondered even from my childhood, why are temples the way they are?

Apparently, temples didn’t always look the way they do now. Imagine, the most prominent feature of a temple, its Shikhara, the tower over the sacred sanctum (where the idol of the god lies, also known as Garbha Griha), not being present at all.

So, they used to just have the pillars and a flat roof and the whole temple complex were typically just square in shape. See below.

Buddhist Monument — Temple No. 17, Sanchi, Madhya Pradesh

And then they started going a little bit up, more raised so to say. (See below). Additionally, around the central sanctum, a sort of passageway started to appear, which is still now the norm, where we do the Pradakshina. I always get confused with how many rounds I am supposed to go around. Different people say different things. Some say three, some say five and then there are others highly devoted, sometimes roll on the ground to make these rounds.

Parvati temple — Nachna Kuthara in Madhya Pradesh

Now, I am not really sure if these can be called as the oldest temples or the earliest ones to be built over the entirety of the Indian subcontinent. These temple images I am sharing are only a reference to understand the evolution of our temple architecture.

Moving on, the next stage is when the towers started to show up on the top of the central sanctum, albeit relatively small. One other notable development, is the emergence of Mandapa, the pillared structure in front of the sanctum, attached to it, giving the full structure a rectangular shape now.

During this time, some temples were built in the Panchayatan style, with the idea of adding four more shrines, like subsidiaries to the main shrine in the center.

Durga temple — Aihole, Karnataka

I am sure, there were lots of temples that came in every different shape and every little variation you can imagine, but the above mentioned features (Garbha Griha, Shikhara, Mandapa) remain common to the most of the temples you see in the Indian landmass.

Also, if you look at things deeply, you can study the same thing by asking different set of questions. Like what kinds of stones were used? or the sculptures, the design and the patterns carved out of the pillars, the walls? or are there more interesting features, like the Dhvajasthamba (the flagstaff in the front of the temples) and Vahana (the mount of the main deity), which is placed just before the central sanctum.

A detailed explanation of all these variations is out of scope for this post. Instead, let’s see what different styles of temple architecture can be seen.

Broadly, we have two styles — Nagara (mostly North and West India) and Dravidian (mostly seen in South India).

Nagara style

Some common features you can see with temples following this style are :-

• At the top end of Shikhara, a horizontal fluted disc (called as Amalaka) shaped stone is placed and a spherical shaped ball with pointy spire (called as Kalasha) becomes the highest point. Sometimes, a flag is hoisted here.
• Shikharas and Mandapa, are built in such a way that it looks as if it is a continuous structure, with what I like to call mini-shikharas over the top of the mandapa.
• And finally, the inner walls of the temple are shaped in a way that it follow a repetitive geometrical pattern on all three sides of the idol, except for the front which is where you enter obviously. These are called Rathas — like Triratha, Pancharatha, Saptharatha etc., (See below)

Anatomy of a temple in Nagara style

Types of Rathas — when viewed from the top

Some of the most famous temples that are built in this style are Vishvanatha Temple in Khajuraho, Konark Sun Temple in Odisha and Somnath Temple in Gujarat.

One fun fact here. The sun temple in Konark, is actually built to emulate a ratha (which means a ritual cart) and so it has wheels on the sides of the temples. One of these wheels is featured on the backside of the 10 rupee currency note.

Dravidian style

This was the style developed in the southern regions of India, mostly under the Pallava and the Chola rulers. Some distinct features of this style are :-

• The main temple complex is surrounded by high boundary walls on all four sides.
• And the main entrance, features another tower known as Gopuram. There can be multiple of these, each at a different entrance to the temple.
• The shape of the shikhara is completely different from the one you see in the Nagara style. It is a sort of a stepped pyramid rising up linearly as opposed to the curved rise in the other style. Also, this tower is called as Vimana.
• You can also see a water tank inside the temple, where pilgrims take their ritual baths before going to offer their prayers.

Some of the best temples built in this style are (generally present in Tamil Nadu) Brihadeeswara temple at Thanjavur and Meenakshi temple in Madurai.

Meenakshi temple in Madurai, Tamil Nadu

References

To do.