When the assembly- or debating-hall took so great a part in civic life and state ceremonial, one can understand why the craftsmen spared no pains in its construction and ornamentation. The roof was generally very massive—sometimes with a hollow chamber to protect from the tropical sun. The deep curved cornices to which awnings were attached helped to screen from dust and glare. The designing and arrangement of the pillars and the ornamenting of the massive timber or stonework of the roof, always kept within the range of the old Vedic tradition, gave ample scope for the imagination and skill of the builders. The pillar always remained in the craftsman's mind as the mystic lotus-tree rooted in the depths of the cosmic ocean, blossoming in the highest heavens and keeping the balance of the universe. The roof was the dome of the world, Vishnu's blue lotus flower, with the sun as its golden pericarp; or Brahma's lotus, whose rosy petals were the robes of the dawn-maiden; or Siva's moon-lotus, which opens in the night, the aura of the Lord of Death as he sits absorbed in thought or dances the dance of the cosmic rhythm among the stars, the great serpent of eternity coiled round his arms.
Sometimes the temple mandapams, designed as meeting-places for crowds of pilgrims, were like forest groves, halls of a thousand pillars. Whatever might have been the use to which the mandapam was applied—a debating or royal audience hall, a town hall or parliament house, a pilgrim's hostel or place for religious ceremonies—the mystery of the primeval forest, in whose depths the Vedic Rishi, regardless of its fearsome demons and wild beasts, built his quiet retreat, seems to hang over it. The Indian craftsman's inexhaustible invention and boundless patience
