Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 2.djvu/177

CHAP. IV. SINNAR. Plan of Kandarya Mahadeva, Khajuraho. (From a Plan by Gen. Cunningham.) Scale soft, to i in. in breadth over all, and externally rises 1 16 ft. above the ground, and 88 ft. above its own floor. Its basement, or perpendicular part, is, like all the great temples here, sur- rounded by three rows of sculptured figures. General Cunningham counted 872 statues on and in this temple, ranging from 2 ft. to 3 ft. in height, or about half life-size, and they are mixed up with a profusion of vegetable forms and conventional details which defy description. The vimana, or tower, it will be observed, is built up of smaller repetitions of itself, which became at this age one of the favourite modes of decoration, and afterwards an essential feature of the style. Here it is managed with singular grace, giving great variety and play of light and shade, without un- necessarily breaking up the outline. The roof of the porch, as seen in front, is a little confused, but as seen on the flank it rises pleasingly step by step till it abuts against the tower, every part of the internal arrangement being appropriately distin- guished on the exterior. If we could compare the design of the Gwaliar temple (Woodcut No. 339) with that of this building, we cannot but admit that the former is by far the most elegant, but on the other hand the richness and vigour of the Mahadeva temple redeems its want of elegance and fascinates in spite of its somewhat confused outline. The Gwaliar temple is the legitimate outcrop of the class of temples that originated in the Great Temple at Bhuvane^war, while the Kandarya Mahadeva exhibits a complete development of that style of decoration which resulted in continued repetition of itself on a smaller scale to make up a complete whole. Both systems have their advantages, but on the whole the simpler seems to be preferable to the more complicated mode of design. SINNAR, AMBARNATH, AND UDAYAPUR. The examples already given will perhaps have sufficed to render the general form of the Indo- Aryan temple familiar to the reader, but as no two are quite like one another, their variety is infinite. There is one form, however, which became very fashionable about the nth century, and continued to a much later date, and is so characteristic that it deserves some illustration,