Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/309

CHAP. I. AVANTIPUR. 265 The central shrines of both have been reduced to heaps of stones, and it is now impossible to determine which was the Vaishnava and which the Saiva shrine. Of the smaller temple, owing to part of the court having been long since silted up, there are more remains than of the other, from which every pillar has been removed, possibly by Shah Jahan and other Mughal emperors, for their summer palaces and Shalimar gardens near Srinagar. Portions of the gateways of both still remain. 1 The characteristic that seems most clearly to distinguish the style of the temples at Martand from that of those at Avantipur is the greater richness of detail which the latter exhibit ; just such a tendency, in fact, towards the more elaborate carvings of the Hindu style as one might expect from their difference in date. Several of these have been given by the three authors to whose works I have so often had occasion to allude, and to which the reader is referred ; but the annexed fragment (Woodcut No. 1 50) of one of its columns is as elegant in itself, and almost as interesting historically, as the Doric of the examples quoted above, inas- much as if it is compared with the pillars of the tomb of Mycenae 2 it seems difficult to escape the conviction that the two forms were derived from some common source. At all events, there is nothing between the Peloponnesos and Kashmir, so far as we now know, that so nearly resembles it. At -Sankarapura, now Patan, between Srinagar and Baramula, Sankaravarman (A.D. 883-902) the son and successor of Avanti- varman, with his Queen Sugandha, erected two -Saiva temples which still exist, though the corridors that doubtless once enclosed their courts have disappeared. Like most other Kashmiri temples they consisted only of a shrine or vimana, without mandapa, but had recessed porches forming small chapels on three sides. 5ankaravarman is said to have brought the materials for his buildings here from Parihasapura, about 7 miles off. 3 150. Pillar at Avanti- pur. (From a Draw- ing by Mr Wilson, B.C.S.) latter gives the dimensions inside the court of the one as 191 ft. by 171 ; and of the other as 172 ft. by 146^. The second is in the village, and he proposed to identify it with the Avantiswamin temple and the first, about half a mile to the north-west, as the Avantuvara or Saiva temple. 1 Cunningham, loc cit. pp. 276 et seqq., and plate 17; Bernier's 'Travels A.D. 1656-1668' (ed. 1891), p. 400. 2 ' History of Ancient and Mediseval Architecture,' vol. i. Woodcut 125, p. 244. 3 Gen. Cunningham has given de- scriptions and outline plans of these