Roofed Temples in Architecture
Where roofed structures were built enshrining such platforms, cult objects, symbols or iconic representations, they imitated secular buildings in the plan and style of construction. The only difference was that the temples were made of more permanent material, like brick and wrought timber, more lavishly decorated with plaster, stucco, carving and painting, and often larger in dimensions in contrast to the humbler mud-and-wattle-walled, thatch-roofed houses of the common folk.
None of these temples has survived in the Tamil land though we have enough word pictures of these simple or storeyed constructions in the Tamil Sangam classics. One, for example, describes a temple with high brick walls and wooden beams, containing inside, on its back wall, the painted picture of the deity or Kadavul that was worshipped, indicating that it was either a mural painting or a stucco figure, or sometimes a carved wooden plaque that constituted the principal object of worship in the more sophisticated temples of the time. Such temples of shirnes, mostly of brick and timber, are variously designated in the Sangam work as Kottam, Nagaram, Koyil and Palli. Evidently these names indicate different plans and styles of construction. The epic Manimekalai speaks of temples built of brick and having imposing entrances or gopuras. Some of these temples were storeyed madams, and these included memorial shrines also. The custom of building such memorial shrines, called Palli-p-padai in Tamil, continued even in the ninth and tenth centuries AD as testified by the Tamil and Kannda inscriptions.
In the ancient Tamil country of the far south, as its early literature also reveals, various gods are represented as presiding over different tracts of the country, namely, the hilly, the sylvan or pastoral, the riverine or agricultural, the desert or arid zones, and the littoral or seaside. Such gods were Seyon, Mayon, Vendan, Valiyon, Korravai or Kadukal. There were, in addition, other minor gods. It was in the centuries preceding and following the Christian era that the dynamic religious of the Vedic Hindus, the Jains, the Ajivikas, and the Bauddhas of the north made definite and vital impacts on the cultural, linguistic and religious substratum of the south. This also coincided with the extent of the political map of the Mauryass, with the extreme south beyong the limits maintaining a strong indigenous core with a viable culture, language and a fast-growing literature under organized kingdoms. The incoming people found it expedient to cultivate the local languages in order to expound better their ideas of religion and ritual and actively contributed by taking a large share themselves in the growth of the literature and grammar of the Tamil language. There are many amont the Sangam poetss, who were Brahmins or Jains. The same happened to the Kannada language a little later. Thus, the impact resulted in the importation and infusion in various degrees of new thoughts and ideas by the incoming religious cultures, as also a simulaneous absorption of much that was local. The phenomenon that occurred as a result of such impact of the culture and religious of India in the countries of the Far East such as Ceylon, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia, producing a synthesis of godheads and local modified versions of the legends, iconography and ritual, occurred here also more or less. For example, Hinduism, particularly in the Tamil country, which included much of Kerala also, became eclectic by absorbing the local deities and concepts in the pantheon and ritual, or by identifying them with many of its own. The local Mayon was identified with Krishna or Vishnu, Valiyon with Balabhadra, Korravai with Durga, Seyon or Murugan with Kartikeya, and Vendan with Indra. The Sangam and post-Sangam poetry extending up to about the seventh century speaks of temples-kottams, nagarams a and koyils- dedicated to these gods,besides temples for Siva, Indra’s mount-Airavata, and his thunderbolt Vajra, the celestial boon tree Kalpataru, the sun and the moon. The beginnings of the slow evolution of agamic worship are also to be found here. Similar, but to much lesser degree, was the effect in the case of local Jainism, which was mainly and for long Digambara, and Buddhism. Iconic forms of Siva, Vishnu, Surya, Kartikeya, Sri, Durga and other gods were also evolved. This synthesis, in effect, resulted, after due growth during the five succeeding centuries (between the eighth and the thirteenth), in the contribution of the south to the common heritage of India of unique forms and concepts, for example, the form and concept of Siva as Nataraja and Dakshinamurti, Devi as Lalita, the bhaki cult of the Nayanmars and Alvars-the Saiva and Vaishnava hagiologists- and the great philosophies of Advaita, Visishtadvaitaaaa and Dvaita of Sankara, Ramanuja and Madhva. The same can be said of the contributions of the south of Jainism and Buddhism of later times.
No remains of these gods, mostly painted or carved in wood, or of their temples of brick and timber, have survived in the far south. This was because of the perishable nature of the fabric of whoch they were made.
The northern half of the peninsula which comprises the Deccan and the Andhra and Kannada areas, that is, roughly those parts that came under the Mauryan empire, naturally imbibed more from the penetrating cultures, religions and languages (Prakrit and Sanskrit) than others. This resulted in the delayed development of its indigenous literatures which thus do not supply much material regarding the purely local traditions and beliefs of the very early times. But many contemporary material relics indicating the religious forms and places of worship are extant and have come up, as in north India, in the latest excavations in Nagarjunakonda have revealed the existence also of Hindu temples side by side, showing hthe popularity of the Saivite, Vaishnvite, and other cults. These relics also reveal the fact that the temples or shrines had a common plan, design and mode of construction, irrespective of the creeds to which they belonged. The credal difference was marked onyly by the gods or objects that were installed for worship an their appropriate symbols or the plastic representations that formed the decorative elements of such temples. Jainism seems to have had more congenial homes in the Kannada, Tamil and Kerala areas. In their plans their religious structures, particularly their temples, did not differ much from those of the Hindus, a feature that has persisted through the centuries to the present day. The traces of Buddhisst temples that were perhaps fewer have been lost in these areas, though a number of Buddha images of later periods have been found in different parts of south India. Had their templees survived, they too would not have differed much in form from the Hindu or Jain temples of those days.
Architecturally, these simple shrines, replicas of contemporary secular dwellings, were square, oblong, circular, elliptical and apsidal, rarely hexagonal or octagonal and were built of timber or brick. Such religious and secular structures are indicated in the early bas-relief sculptures belonging to the centuries immediately before and after Christ, e.g. Barhut and Sanchi in the north and Amaravati and Nagarjunakonda and other places in the south. They have already been indicated as being plans in the representation of tree-temples or uriksha-chaityas, Buddhist stupas, and Bodhi-mandas) Podi-manram in Tamil).
The square buildings have their roofs converging to a point (kuta), the circular or octagonal ones likewise have domical roofs (kuta), the oblong ones have vault-like or wagon-top0like(sala) or occasionally gabled roofs (sabha), as in Sitamarhi and Sone Bhandar, and the elliptical ones have inverted keel-shaped roofs with a long ridge and a number of finials (also called sala). The front view of the apsidal structures can be noted in many of these relief sculptures.
From the extant literary descriptions, from the sculptural representations in relief, and from the few excavated relics (as, for example, the circular shrine at Bairat, others at Nagarjunakonds and Salihundam, and the standing ones in Chejerla and Ter in Andhra and western Deccan), one can infer that the roofs of these brick-and-timber structures were either supported on their pillars, the intervening space being covered by screen walls, or they were raised totally on their walls with the pillars, if any, represented only as ornamental pilasters externally. Often the brick wall had an internal system of pillars standing close to them to form additional supports for the beams and timbering of the superstructure and the roof. The entire structure was often built over a solid masonry platform or adhishthana.
The apsidal Guntupalle chaitya (second century AD) is wholly brick-built. The entrance has brick work jambs into which a wooden door-frame was fitted. The foof was evidently a vault made up of corbelled brickwork that was plastered and perhaps also cribbed inside with wooden ribs and crosspieces-on the analogy of an earlier rock-cut chaitya of the same plan. The remains of another chaitya noticed near Vidyadharapuram, near Vijayawada, are of like nature. A somewhat better preserved stupa-shrine or stupa-chaitya, where the central object of worshkp was the representation of a stupa, has come up from the excavations at Salihundam (Srikakulam district, AndhraPradesh). The circular chaitya is brick-built. The massive wall has a stepped up base provided with a narrow vestibule for approach in front, resembling the antarala of later temples. Several subsidiary shrines of identical shape also exist there.
In Nagarjunakonda and other Andhra Buddhist sites, the brick built chaitya temples are associated with uiharas or monasteries, where they are often found as apsidal structures on either side of the passage behind the main uihara entrance, or are foun in pairs in front of the major stupas or maha-chaityas, which were themselves open or hypaethra; temples, facing each other. Often one of them enshrines a stupe and is called stupa-chaitya. The other enshrines the feet or, later, figures of the Buddha, and is known as Buddha-chaitya Independent apsidal chaityas or temples, the earliest of that possibly enshrined a Buddha image, has been noticed in Nagarjunakonda. In a Fes other case the shrines have square plan.
The excavations in Nagarjunakonda have also revealed large non-Buddhist temple complexes of the Ikshvaku kings (third and fourth centuries AD) dedicated to Siva, Vishnu, Kartikeya and Devasena. They have mostly four-sided or apsidal garbha-grihas mandapa in front of them, a raised platform at the fore part of the mandapa indicating a ranga-mandapa, and often an ambulatory court round the mandapa. The whole is enclosed by a brick-wall with entrance on the frond side (east or west) on the gopura pattern, with simpler additional entrances on the south and north sides. The pillars of the mandapa were made from palnad limestone, rectangular in section, chamfered at the corners for some lengtj from a point above the middle height of the shaft, and terminating again in an apex of a rectangular section. On top is cut a wide rectangular notch for fitting the wooden beams, which were mostly longitudinal. Over the beams, the local veinschist slabs, called Macheria slabs, were laid, and this ceiling was, perhaps, covered over by a brick-and-mortar terrace. The apsidal shrines, sometimes in pairs, are entirely brick-built. Only sometimes as in the Pusbabhadrasvami temple, the superstructure is supported by a parallel row of limestone pillars set inside the straight sides of the apse with similar pillars arranged in a semi circle at the rear curved end, the pillars carrying longitudinal beams over the parallel sides and short curved beams over the rear pillars. The intervening spaces between the pillars were walled up. In front of the shrines there is often a rectangular ardha-mandapa interposed between the shrine and the pillared maha-mandapa. The maha-mandapa in some cases is often extended laterally by one or more bays and, in some instances; there were pillared cloisters (malikai or malika) inside the enclosure walls surrounding the court round the three sides of the maha-mandapa. The temple complexes have a single main shrine or sometimes more that one main shrine. The single shrines are oblong, square or apsidal in plan. In cases with multiple shrines there are some examples with two shrines, both apsidal, and others having both rectangular and apsidal shrines? The walls of the temples do not appear to have been adorned with much sculpture. While the mandapas had flat roofs, the shrine superstructures, particularly of the apsidal ones, were gaja-prishta, i.e. with forms resembling the hind-quarters of an elephant. It cannotbe said for certain the tupical storeyed superstructure as found in the later uimanas of the south. One cannot fail to notice from the remains of this extensive site a close similarity between the Buddhist and non-Buddhist types in architectural traditions.
The Karikeyasvami temple had a square brick-built shrine facing east with a closed rectangular ardha-mandapa of bricks in front. Its longer axiz north-south was preceded by a closed maha-mandapa with six rows of five pillars each. Another temples of Kartikeya, to the north of the Pushpabhadrasvami temple., had a rectangular closed mandapa with a square pedestal close to its hind wall at its centre, and a pillar at each corner. It suggested a pillared mandapa shrine. The image in the Pushpabhadrasvami temple, referred to by that name in the inscription on the duajasthamba as ‘Mahadeva Pushpabhadrasvamin’, was enshrined in an apsidal garbha-griha.
The icon of Ashtabhujasvamin, according to the inscription relating to its installation, dated AD 278 was of wood, eight-armed, and was installed on a stone pedestal that carried the inscription. The inscription on a conch (sankha) found at the same site also bears the same name. The temple with its two sanctuaries, one oblong and the other apsidal, each with a pillared mandapa in front, distinct from the independent one of larger dimensions at the rear, had a dvajasthamba surmounted by the chakra emblem of Vishnu. The east-facing temple complex on the river bank and close to the village of putlagudem, near the olf ferry ghat, is interesting, in that in the court on the south and north sides of the pillared maha-mandapa were found the basements of parivara shrines, all brick-built and topped by thin stone slabs forming the floors of the subsidiary shrinees of square, circular, and octagonal plans.
Similar brick temples of the post-Ikshvaku and pre-Chalukyan (sixth century) period, have been excavated in the submersible Srisailam project area in Vivapuram, Rungapur, Gumakonda, Kudavelli and Siddesbaram, all in the kurnool and Mahboobnagar districts. The shrines are invariably square on plan with or without an attached ardha-mandapa in front. The lingas are of rolled natural sandstone pebbles with or without linga-pithas. The spout of the latter where present is oriented north. Otherwise the consecrated image alone appears to be of stone, while the construction was of brick and timber. The soles (adhishthana) are of moulded bricks and moulded parts of the superstructures too have come out in the excavations (Dr R. Subrahmanyam and Dr. I.K. Sharma).
Fortunately there are two apsidal shrine of this period of original Buddhist dedication and subsequent convrsion to the Hindu creed, still existing in their entirety. They are the Trivikrama temple at Ter in western Deccan, and the Kapotesvar temple at Chejerla, in coastal Andhra. Both are dated earlier than AD 600, but not earlier than AD 300. Of the two, the Kapotesvara may be the earlier one judged from the stylistic and architectural points of view. This temple built of large-sized bricks shows no external pilaster markings on its wall, except at the two front ends which are not original. Internally the ceiling of stone slabs is supported by a system of ten stone pillars, ranged five, each along the straight sides of the apsidal structure and spanned by thick stone beams, in contrast to the Nagarjunakonda structures which had wooden beams, thus making an advance in the use of stone in construction and thereby indicating a later date. The valued brickwork sikhara is supported inside byuprights of either brick-work or stone and, perhaps also by fillings in between over the ceiling slabs. The cornice moulding (kapota) and the clerestory-like griva as well as the blunted ridge of the sikhara shows a backward slope.
Recent excavations have reevealed that the original foundation of this temple was Saivite and not Buddhist, later converted into Saivite, as was hitherto believed. The Ter temple now containing a Trivikrama image shows more advanced features. It is entirely brick-built, without internal pillars or ceiling slabs, and the sikhara ridge is quite horizontal. Externally the wall surface is relieved by pilasters with evolved capital components. Internally the vault is formed by a system of corbelling of the successive courses of brickwork from all sides, thus gradually diminishing the gap and ultimately closing it on top. This mode is called kadalika karana in Indian Silpa parlance. The front end of the sikhara of the Ter chaitya shows the barge-board and barge-plate with a median transverse supported on four pilasters, and a central light-opening, all in imitation of timber orignals, while the Chejerla sikhara façade shows the relief of the shrine. In these respects, these approximate to the motifs of the sikhara facades of the Visvakarma at Ellora and the Naakula Sahadeva ratha in Mamallapuram.
None of these temples has survived in the Tamil land though we have enough word pictures of these simple or storeyed constructions in the Tamil Sangam classics. One, for example, describes a temple with high brick walls and wooden beams, containing inside, on its back wall, the painted picture of the deity or Kadavul that was worshipped, indicating that it was either a mural painting or a stucco figure, or sometimes a carved wooden plaque that constituted the principal object of worship in the more sophisticated temples of the time. Such temples of shirnes, mostly of brick and timber, are variously designated in the Sangam work as Kottam, Nagaram, Koyil and Palli. Evidently these names indicate different plans and styles of construction. The epic Manimekalai speaks of temples built of brick and having imposing entrances or gopuras. Some of these temples were storeyed madams, and these included memorial shrines also. The custom of building such memorial shrines, called Palli-p-padai in Tamil, continued even in the ninth and tenth centuries AD as testified by the Tamil and Kannda inscriptions.
In the ancient Tamil country of the far south, as its early literature also reveals, various gods are represented as presiding over different tracts of the country, namely, the hilly, the sylvan or pastoral, the riverine or agricultural, the desert or arid zones, and the littoral or seaside. Such gods were Seyon, Mayon, Vendan, Valiyon, Korravai or Kadukal. There were, in addition, other minor gods. It was in the centuries preceding and following the Christian era that the dynamic religious of the Vedic Hindus, the Jains, the Ajivikas, and the Bauddhas of the north made definite and vital impacts on the cultural, linguistic and religious substratum of the south. This also coincided with the extent of the political map of the Mauryass, with the extreme south beyong the limits maintaining a strong indigenous core with a viable culture, language and a fast-growing literature under organized kingdoms. The incoming people found it expedient to cultivate the local languages in order to expound better their ideas of religion and ritual and actively contributed by taking a large share themselves in the growth of the literature and grammar of the Tamil language. There are many amont the Sangam poetss, who were Brahmins or Jains. The same happened to the Kannada language a little later. Thus, the impact resulted in the importation and infusion in various degrees of new thoughts and ideas by the incoming religious cultures, as also a simulaneous absorption of much that was local. The phenomenon that occurred as a result of such impact of the culture and religious of India in the countries of the Far East such as Ceylon, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia, producing a synthesis of godheads and local modified versions of the legends, iconography and ritual, occurred here also more or less. For example, Hinduism, particularly in the Tamil country, which included much of Kerala also, became eclectic by absorbing the local deities and concepts in the pantheon and ritual, or by identifying them with many of its own. The local Mayon was identified with Krishna or Vishnu, Valiyon with Balabhadra, Korravai with Durga, Seyon or Murugan with Kartikeya, and Vendan with Indra. The Sangam and post-Sangam poetry extending up to about the seventh century speaks of temples-kottams, nagarams a and koyils- dedicated to these gods,besides temples for Siva, Indra’s mount-Airavata, and his thunderbolt Vajra, the celestial boon tree Kalpataru, the sun and the moon. The beginnings of the slow evolution of agamic worship are also to be found here. Similar, but to much lesser degree, was the effect in the case of local Jainism, which was mainly and for long Digambara, and Buddhism. Iconic forms of Siva, Vishnu, Surya, Kartikeya, Sri, Durga and other gods were also evolved. This synthesis, in effect, resulted, after due growth during the five succeeding centuries (between the eighth and the thirteenth), in the contribution of the south to the common heritage of India of unique forms and concepts, for example, the form and concept of Siva as Nataraja and Dakshinamurti, Devi as Lalita, the bhaki cult of the Nayanmars and Alvars-the Saiva and Vaishnava hagiologists- and the great philosophies of Advaita, Visishtadvaitaaaa and Dvaita of Sankara, Ramanuja and Madhva. The same can be said of the contributions of the south of Jainism and Buddhism of later times.
No remains of these gods, mostly painted or carved in wood, or of their temples of brick and timber, have survived in the far south. This was because of the perishable nature of the fabric of whoch they were made.
The northern half of the peninsula which comprises the Deccan and the Andhra and Kannada areas, that is, roughly those parts that came under the Mauryan empire, naturally imbibed more from the penetrating cultures, religions and languages (Prakrit and Sanskrit) than others. This resulted in the delayed development of its indigenous literatures which thus do not supply much material regarding the purely local traditions and beliefs of the very early times. But many contemporary material relics indicating the religious forms and places of worship are extant and have come up, as in north India, in the latest excavations in Nagarjunakonda have revealed the existence also of Hindu temples side by side, showing hthe popularity of the Saivite, Vaishnvite, and other cults. These relics also reveal the fact that the temples or shrines had a common plan, design and mode of construction, irrespective of the creeds to which they belonged. The credal difference was marked onyly by the gods or objects that were installed for worship an their appropriate symbols or the plastic representations that formed the decorative elements of such temples. Jainism seems to have had more congenial homes in the Kannada, Tamil and Kerala areas. In their plans their religious structures, particularly their temples, did not differ much from those of the Hindus, a feature that has persisted through the centuries to the present day. The traces of Buddhisst temples that were perhaps fewer have been lost in these areas, though a number of Buddha images of later periods have been found in different parts of south India. Had their templees survived, they too would not have differed much in form from the Hindu or Jain temples of those days.
Architecturally, these simple shrines, replicas of contemporary secular dwellings, were square, oblong, circular, elliptical and apsidal, rarely hexagonal or octagonal and were built of timber or brick. Such religious and secular structures are indicated in the early bas-relief sculptures belonging to the centuries immediately before and after Christ, e.g. Barhut and Sanchi in the north and Amaravati and Nagarjunakonda and other places in the south. They have already been indicated as being plans in the representation of tree-temples or uriksha-chaityas, Buddhist stupas, and Bodhi-mandas) Podi-manram in Tamil).
The square buildings have their roofs converging to a point (kuta), the circular or octagonal ones likewise have domical roofs (kuta), the oblong ones have vault-like or wagon-top0like(sala) or occasionally gabled roofs (sabha), as in Sitamarhi and Sone Bhandar, and the elliptical ones have inverted keel-shaped roofs with a long ridge and a number of finials (also called sala). The front view of the apsidal structures can be noted in many of these relief sculptures.
From the extant literary descriptions, from the sculptural representations in relief, and from the few excavated relics (as, for example, the circular shrine at Bairat, others at Nagarjunakonds and Salihundam, and the standing ones in Chejerla and Ter in Andhra and western Deccan), one can infer that the roofs of these brick-and-timber structures were either supported on their pillars, the intervening space being covered by screen walls, or they were raised totally on their walls with the pillars, if any, represented only as ornamental pilasters externally. Often the brick wall had an internal system of pillars standing close to them to form additional supports for the beams and timbering of the superstructure and the roof. The entire structure was often built over a solid masonry platform or adhishthana.
The apsidal Guntupalle chaitya (second century AD) is wholly brick-built. The entrance has brick work jambs into which a wooden door-frame was fitted. The foof was evidently a vault made up of corbelled brickwork that was plastered and perhaps also cribbed inside with wooden ribs and crosspieces-on the analogy of an earlier rock-cut chaitya of the same plan. The remains of another chaitya noticed near Vidyadharapuram, near Vijayawada, are of like nature. A somewhat better preserved stupa-shrine or stupa-chaitya, where the central object of worshkp was the representation of a stupa, has come up from the excavations at Salihundam (Srikakulam district, AndhraPradesh). The circular chaitya is brick-built. The massive wall has a stepped up base provided with a narrow vestibule for approach in front, resembling the antarala of later temples. Several subsidiary shrines of identical shape also exist there.
In Nagarjunakonda and other Andhra Buddhist sites, the brick built chaitya temples are associated with uiharas or monasteries, where they are often found as apsidal structures on either side of the passage behind the main uihara entrance, or are foun in pairs in front of the major stupas or maha-chaityas, which were themselves open or hypaethra; temples, facing each other. Often one of them enshrines a stupe and is called stupa-chaitya. The other enshrines the feet or, later, figures of the Buddha, and is known as Buddha-chaitya Independent apsidal chaityas or temples, the earliest of that possibly enshrined a Buddha image, has been noticed in Nagarjunakonda. In a Fes other case the shrines have square plan.
The excavations in Nagarjunakonda have also revealed large non-Buddhist temple complexes of the Ikshvaku kings (third and fourth centuries AD) dedicated to Siva, Vishnu, Kartikeya and Devasena. They have mostly four-sided or apsidal garbha-grihas mandapa in front of them, a raised platform at the fore part of the mandapa indicating a ranga-mandapa, and often an ambulatory court round the mandapa. The whole is enclosed by a brick-wall with entrance on the frond side (east or west) on the gopura pattern, with simpler additional entrances on the south and north sides. The pillars of the mandapa were made from palnad limestone, rectangular in section, chamfered at the corners for some lengtj from a point above the middle height of the shaft, and terminating again in an apex of a rectangular section. On top is cut a wide rectangular notch for fitting the wooden beams, which were mostly longitudinal. Over the beams, the local veinschist slabs, called Macheria slabs, were laid, and this ceiling was, perhaps, covered over by a brick-and-mortar terrace. The apsidal shrines, sometimes in pairs, are entirely brick-built. Only sometimes as in the Pusbabhadrasvami temple, the superstructure is supported by a parallel row of limestone pillars set inside the straight sides of the apse with similar pillars arranged in a semi circle at the rear curved end, the pillars carrying longitudinal beams over the parallel sides and short curved beams over the rear pillars. The intervening spaces between the pillars were walled up. In front of the shrines there is often a rectangular ardha-mandapa interposed between the shrine and the pillared maha-mandapa. The maha-mandapa in some cases is often extended laterally by one or more bays and, in some instances; there were pillared cloisters (malikai or malika) inside the enclosure walls surrounding the court round the three sides of the maha-mandapa. The temple complexes have a single main shrine or sometimes more that one main shrine. The single shrines are oblong, square or apsidal in plan. In cases with multiple shrines there are some examples with two shrines, both apsidal, and others having both rectangular and apsidal shrines? The walls of the temples do not appear to have been adorned with much sculpture. While the mandapas had flat roofs, the shrine superstructures, particularly of the apsidal ones, were gaja-prishta, i.e. with forms resembling the hind-quarters of an elephant. It cannotbe said for certain the tupical storeyed superstructure as found in the later uimanas of the south. One cannot fail to notice from the remains of this extensive site a close similarity between the Buddhist and non-Buddhist types in architectural traditions.
The Karikeyasvami temple had a square brick-built shrine facing east with a closed rectangular ardha-mandapa of bricks in front. Its longer axiz north-south was preceded by a closed maha-mandapa with six rows of five pillars each. Another temples of Kartikeya, to the north of the Pushpabhadrasvami temple., had a rectangular closed mandapa with a square pedestal close to its hind wall at its centre, and a pillar at each corner. It suggested a pillared mandapa shrine. The image in the Pushpabhadrasvami temple, referred to by that name in the inscription on the duajasthamba as ‘Mahadeva Pushpabhadrasvamin’, was enshrined in an apsidal garbha-griha.
The icon of Ashtabhujasvamin, according to the inscription relating to its installation, dated AD 278 was of wood, eight-armed, and was installed on a stone pedestal that carried the inscription. The inscription on a conch (sankha) found at the same site also bears the same name. The temple with its two sanctuaries, one oblong and the other apsidal, each with a pillared mandapa in front, distinct from the independent one of larger dimensions at the rear, had a dvajasthamba surmounted by the chakra emblem of Vishnu. The east-facing temple complex on the river bank and close to the village of putlagudem, near the olf ferry ghat, is interesting, in that in the court on the south and north sides of the pillared maha-mandapa were found the basements of parivara shrines, all brick-built and topped by thin stone slabs forming the floors of the subsidiary shrinees of square, circular, and octagonal plans.
Similar brick temples of the post-Ikshvaku and pre-Chalukyan (sixth century) period, have been excavated in the submersible Srisailam project area in Vivapuram, Rungapur, Gumakonda, Kudavelli and Siddesbaram, all in the kurnool and Mahboobnagar districts. The shrines are invariably square on plan with or without an attached ardha-mandapa in front. The lingas are of rolled natural sandstone pebbles with or without linga-pithas. The spout of the latter where present is oriented north. Otherwise the consecrated image alone appears to be of stone, while the construction was of brick and timber. The soles (adhishthana) are of moulded bricks and moulded parts of the superstructures too have come out in the excavations (Dr R. Subrahmanyam and Dr. I.K. Sharma).
Fortunately there are two apsidal shrine of this period of original Buddhist dedication and subsequent convrsion to the Hindu creed, still existing in their entirety. They are the Trivikrama temple at Ter in western Deccan, and the Kapotesvar temple at Chejerla, in coastal Andhra. Both are dated earlier than AD 600, but not earlier than AD 300. Of the two, the Kapotesvara may be the earlier one judged from the stylistic and architectural points of view. This temple built of large-sized bricks shows no external pilaster markings on its wall, except at the two front ends which are not original. Internally the ceiling of stone slabs is supported by a system of ten stone pillars, ranged five, each along the straight sides of the apsidal structure and spanned by thick stone beams, in contrast to the Nagarjunakonda structures which had wooden beams, thus making an advance in the use of stone in construction and thereby indicating a later date. The valued brickwork sikhara is supported inside byuprights of either brick-work or stone and, perhaps also by fillings in between over the ceiling slabs. The cornice moulding (kapota) and the clerestory-like griva as well as the blunted ridge of the sikhara shows a backward slope.
Recent excavations have reevealed that the original foundation of this temple was Saivite and not Buddhist, later converted into Saivite, as was hitherto believed. The Ter temple now containing a Trivikrama image shows more advanced features. It is entirely brick-built, without internal pillars or ceiling slabs, and the sikhara ridge is quite horizontal. Externally the wall surface is relieved by pilasters with evolved capital components. Internally the vault is formed by a system of corbelling of the successive courses of brickwork from all sides, thus gradually diminishing the gap and ultimately closing it on top. This mode is called kadalika karana in Indian Silpa parlance. The front end of the sikhara of the Ter chaitya shows the barge-board and barge-plate with a median transverse supported on four pilasters, and a central light-opening, all in imitation of timber orignals, while the Chejerla sikhara façade shows the relief of the shrine. In these respects, these approximate to the motifs of the sikhara facades of the Visvakarma at Ellora and the Naakula Sahadeva ratha in Mamallapuram.
