Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 2.djvu/133

CHAP. II. KANARAK. 105 perceive that there are two styles of architecture in Orissa, which ran side by side with one another during the whole course. The first is represented by the temples of Para^urame^war and Mukte^war (Woodcuts No. 312, 313); the second by the great temple (Woodcut No. 315). They are not antagonistic, but sister styles, and seem certainly to have had at least partially different origins. We can find affinities with that of the Mukte^war group in Dharwar and most parts of northern India : but I know of nothing exactly like the great temple any- where else. It seems to be quite indigenous, and if not the most beautiful, it is the simplest and most majestic of the Indo- Aryan styles. And I cannot help suspecting a wooden origin for it the courses look so much more like carved logs of wood laid one upon another than courses of masonry, and the mode and extent to which they are carved certainly savours of the same material. There is a mosque built of Deodar pine in Kashmir, to be referred to thereafter, which certainly seems to favour this idea ; but till we find some older temples than any yet discovered in Orissa this must remain in doubt. Meanwhile, it may be well to point out that the majority of the older temples in Orissa follow the type of the great temple, and the rest that of Para.mram.rwar ; but the two get confounded together in the pth and loth centuries, and are mixed together into what may almost be called a new style in the Rajarani and temples of the nth and I2th centuries. KANARAK. With, perhaps, the single exception of the temple of Jagannath at Puri, there is no temple in India better known, and about which more has been written than the so-called Black Pagoda at Kanarak, 19 miles north-east from Puri; nor is there any one whose date and dedication is better known, since the literature on the subject can here be depended upon. Stirling's statement that the present edifice was built by the Raja Narasingh-deva I., who ruled from about 1238 to 1264, is supported by copperplate inscriptions. 1 Complete as this evidence appears, one is almost tempted to question it, for the simple reason that it seems improbable after the erection of so inferior a specimen of the art as the temple of Puri (dr. A.D. 1 1 oo) appears to be the style could have reverted to anything so beautiful as this. In general design and detail it is so similar to the Jagamohan of the great temple at Bhuvane^war that at first sight I should be inclined to place it in the same century ; 1 ' Asiatic Researches,' vol. xv. p. 327; and 'Journal Asiatic Society of Bengal,' vol. Ixxii. (1903), part i. p. 124. Rajendralal Mitra, ascribed it to Nara- singha II., who began to reign, A.D. 1278. ' Antiq. of Orissa,' vol. ii. p. 156,