Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/476

4 2a CHALUKYAN STYLE. BOOK IV. Dravidian. It is as if this intrusive race adopted hesitatingly the earlier styles of the country, but that it was not till they had consolidated their power, and developed peculiar insti- tutions of their own, that they expressed them in the style to which their name has been affixed. The materials doubtless exist for settling these and most other questions connected with this style; but, unfortunately, much of them are locked up in the offices of the Archaeological Survey ; and probably more are to be found in the Nizam's territory, which is still almost a terra incognita to us in so far as architecture is concerned. No extended survey has yet been made of such remains as may exist there by any one having a knowledge of the art or of the interest attaching to the forms and age of the buildings. The Muhammadan invaders from the beginning of the 1 4th century spared no temples that came in their way on any of their raids, and doubtless the largest were the greater sufferers. But after the final conquest and the rise of the Musalman dynasties the line of their capitals Bijapur, Kulbarga, Bidar, and Haidarabad which have long occupied the native country of the Chalukyas, is painfully suggestive of the destruction of Hindu temples ; and the ruins and broken sculptures that lie all round the neighbourhood of Kalyani at N^rayanpur, Sitapur, Tiprad, etc., bear abundant testimony to the iconoclastic zeal of the conquerors. 1 But still the wealth of remains that exists in Dharwar and Mysore on the south and west, and in the Berars on the north of the Nizam's territories, is so great that all certainly cannot have perished, and many will probably yet be found to solve the historical enigmas, though they may not be sufficient to restore the style in its integrity. The Chalukyan style was naturally evolved from the Dravidian, and the earliest temples within its area are not always clearly marked off from that type : it was only by degrees that it acquired its distinctive character. Unfortunately, most of the earlier and the finer examples perished during the early Moslim invasions and under the later rule of the various Muhammadan dynasties of the Dekhan. The area over which the style extended includes Mysore and all the Kanarese country its birthplace in the west ; eastwards its southern limit was the Tungabhadra and Krishna rivers ; and on the north it perhaps extended to a line drawn from the south end of the Chilka lake towards Nagpur, and thence westwards and south-westwards to the coast. But we know too little as yet of 1 ' Archaeological Survey of Western India,' vol. iii. pp. 20, 23, 38-40.