Report of a Tour through the Bengal Provinces/Bándá
About 8 miles north by a little east of Párá, near the large village of Chailyámá, is the village of Bándá; here is a stone temple in the middle of some low jangal; in plan, it resembles the temples of Barâkar, and, like them, it consists of a single cell; like them, too, it once had a mandapa, in front of which the fragments, misarranged into a long pillared hall, still exist, but it differs from them in many particulars; the front of the temple has three tiers of openings, first and lowest the entrance of the sanctum, leading as usual into a square chamber, roofed over with a flat roof; over this, a smaller opening leading into a small chamber, whose floor forms the roof of the sanctum; this opening is further surmounted by another opening, which again leads into another chamber, whose floor forms the roof of the next lower one.
As the chambers and their several floors and roofs are not later additions, but form essential, and indeed constructively essential, portions of the original design, the several openings above the doorway of the sanctum cannot be, and never could have been, intended as illuminating windows; this temple, and temples of this class, differ, therefore, in a vital point from the Magadha type of temples, and are not amenable to the laws that govern them in the matter of the openings. This may be perceived at a glance from the photograph, where the thrce openings are in proportions widely different to the three openings of the Buddha Gáyá temple. Indeed, the Buddha Gáyá temple has three openings, only because later repairs and alterers found it expedient to cut up the two tall upper openings, which properly should not be divided into two portions, as I have shown before. What law, however, governs the size and disposition of the openings in this class of temples, I am unable to state; examples of temples with three tiers of openings are extremely rare, and from one or two examples a law cannot safely be deduced.
The walls of temples of this type being very thin, as may be seen from plans, and more impressively from the photograph of a half-broken temple at Telkupi, and the towers, having these thin walls as sides, being very high, it became a constructive necessity to tie the walls together at intervals, to give the necessary rigidity and stability to the tower; this is most easily, economically, and unobtrusively done by floors extending across, internally cutting up the tall tower into a number of more stable low chambers, and, as may be seen, this has been the expedient universally adopted; constructively, therefore, at least one, and preferably several, floors, extendng across the tower, opening internally, is a necessity; the tiers of openings over the entrance are also constructively necessary, to relieve the lowest architrave from the weight of a great mass of superincumbent masonry; and where this expedient has not been adopted, failure has resulted, as may be seen from the temples of Central India and elsewhere; more of which have failed through the single fault of the architrave giving way, than through all other natural causes put together.
But, though constructively correct, it cannot be denied that the front elevation of the temple under discussion is any thing but beautiful; the temple has, it is true, lost the mahamandapa, the roof of which would have been, and was probably designed with a special view to hide away these ugly openings; but how this was effected in this particular temple, where the openings extend a long way up, is doubtful. Remembering, however, that the numerous pillars, now built into a long pillared hall in front, are not likely to have been brought from elsewhere for the purpose, but must have been lying on the spot, and therefore belonged to the mahamandapa, &c., of the temple, I am inclined to think that the mahamandapa of this temple was of much more than the usual size, and, therefore, had necessarily a larger and higher roof,—high enough to keep the openings out of sight. Whether the temple, as a whole, looked well or ill with this overgrown mahamandapa, is a question which it would be idle to attempt answering, till we can find out the size of the mahamandapa,—a desideratum we do not now possess.
The temple is poor in ornamentation, and the pillars forming the colonnade in front are all quite plain, nor are the mouldings of the basement bold or elegant; it is interesting chiefly as being singular in the elevation of its present façade.