CHAP. I. MYSORE. 437 MYSORE. It is in the province of Mysore, however, that the Chalukyan style attained its fullest development and highest degree of perfection during the three centuries A.D. 1000 to 1300 in which the Hoysala Ballalas had supreme sway in that country. Several temples, or rather groups of temples, were erected by them one at a place called Somnathpur, a small village on the left bank of the Kaveri, south of Mysore, built by Soma, the general of Narasimha Ballala III., and was completed in 1270;* another at Belur, in the centre of the province, owed its origin apparently to Vishnuvardhana, in or about A.D. 1117; the last and greatest at a place they called Dorsamudra now known as Halebid, 10 miles east by north from the last-named, from which the capital was removed by Vishnuvardhana about 1135. It continued to be the metropolis of the kingdom, till it was destroyed, and the building of the great temple stopped by the Muhammadan invasion in A.D. 1310-1311. Like the great temple at Hanamkonda, the Kej-ava temple at Somnathpur is triple, the cells, with their jikharas, being attached to a square pillared hall, to the fourth side of which a portico is attached, in this instance of very moderate dimensions (Woodcut No. 255). The whole stands in a square cloistered court, measuring 210 ft. by 172 ft. over all, and has the usual accompaniments of entrance-porch, stambha, etc. The following woodcut (No. 256) will give an idea an im- perfect one, it must be confessed of the elegance of outline and marvellous elaboration of detail that characterises these shrines. Its height seems to be only about 30 ft., which, if it stood in the open, would be almost too small for architectural effect ; but in the centre of an enclosed court, and where there are no larger objects to contrast with it, it is sufficient, when judiciously treated, to produce a Plan of the Kesava Temple at Somnathpur. Scale loo ft. to i in. 2 1 Rice's ' Mysore Gazetteer,' vol. i. p. 514.
- From a lithographed plan in Rice's ' Epigraphia Carnatica,' vol. iii. pt. i.
