Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/311

CHAP. I. BUNIAR. 267 it seems doubtful whether General Cunningham was justified in restoring the roof of the temple, or of the central cell at Martand in stone. My impression rather is, as hinted above, that the temple-roof was in wood ; that of the side-cell in stone, but flat. At a place called Waniyat or Vangath 32 miles from .Srinagar, near the sacred Haramukh peaks are two groups of temples, together about seventeen in all, which were carefully examined and described by the Rev. Mr. Cowie, 1 and plans and photographs are found in Lieutenant Cole's book. 2 They differ somewhat from those we have been describing, inasmuch as they do not seem to have been enclosed in colonnaded courts, and each group consists of one large and several smaller temples, unsymmetrically arranged. The larger ones are 30 ft. and 32 ft. square in plan over all ; the smaller 10 ft. or 12 ft. They are of various ages, and the two principal temples are most probably those of Bhute-ra in the east group, and Jyeshtha in the other. 3 There are no inscriptions, nor any historical indications that would enable us to fix the date of the Waniyat temples with certainty, and the stone has decayed to such an extent that the details cannot be defined with the precision necessary for comparison with other examples ; but whether this decay arises from time or from the nature of the stone there are no means of knowing. 4 This Ttrtha at Haramukh was famous from very early times, and we learn that Lalitaditya-Muktapida built here a stone temple to Jyeshtha in the 8th century, and made gifts to the Bhute.ya temples. The Jyeshtha shrine is thus probably among the earliest. Early in the nth century the temples were plundered, after which they were probably restored and modernised by Uchahala (A.D. noi-nii), and again plundered by hillmen before 1150. They would almost certainly suffer also at the hands of Sikandar Shah at the end of the 1 4th century. Among the remaining examples, perhaps the one that most clearly exhibits the characteristics of the style is that at Pandrethan, about 3 miles from Srinagar (Woodcut No. 152). It still is a well-preserved little temple, standing in the middle of the village, and is in all probability the Vaishnava temple built during the reign of King Parthva (A.D. 906-921) by his 1 'Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal,' vol. xxxv. (1866), pp. 101 etseqq. 2 ' Illustrations of Ancient Buildings in Kashmir,' pp. iiff., plates 6 to II. 3 Stein's ' Rajatarangini,' bk. v. vv. 55- 59 and note, and bk. i. v. 107, note. 4 Lieut. Cole, basing his inferences on certain similarities he detected between them and the temple on the Takht-i- Sulaiman, which he believed was erected B.C. 220, ascribed their erection to the first century after Christ.