Vishnu temple must be placed on the Rājapatha, the King's Road, with its entrance facing east. The geographical distribution of the sikhara temple corresponds with that of the Vaishnava cult; it is the almost universal form in Northern India, where the Vaishnavaites are in the great majority, whereas the temples in Southern India, where the Saivas predominate, are as frequently crowned by the stūpa dome.
In the Buddhist temple architecture the sikhara became the distinctive mark of the Bodhīsattva cult, associated with Mahāyānist doctrine, while the stūpa was the architectonic symbol of the Hīnayānists, for whom the Buddha was a yogi and a teacher rather than a king. Mahāyānists pursued the path of bhakti, or loyalty to their spiritual king; orthodox Hīnayānists sought salvation in the jnāna-marga, the way of knowledge of the Law. The distinction between the Buddha as a king and as a guru is very clearly marked in Indian painting and sculpture.[1]
As to the peculiar Indian form of the sikhara, there can be little doubt that it was derived from bambu and thatch construction. The amalaka was probably the straw cap bound with strings to make it watertight, and the kalasa, or jar, was an inverted water-pot placed over the ends of the bambu supports to protect them from the rain, according to the practice still followed by native thatchers in Bengal and Southern India. The symbolism of the lotus and the nectar or soma jar was a decorative treatment of these practical constructive details.
There is good reason to believe that this most characteristic feature of Indo-Aryan architecture was not, as Fergusson was convinced, indigenous in India, but was introduced by the Aryans from Mesopotamia,
- ↑ See below, section ii ("Sculpture"), chapter i.
