Structural Temples of Gujarat

SR No.: 006728
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Kantilal F Sompura
Publisher: Gujarat University Ahmedabad
Publication Year: 1968
Total Pages: 868
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 31 MB

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The Structural Temples of Gujarat a row of oval discs and rosary of beads. Kapotāli or Kevāla is a projecting drip with or without Caitya-window ornament; Udagama is a triangular pedjment, Kütachādya is a chief slanting ribbed roof, the Chādya being a sub-ordinate one.
The moulding Kumbhaka is prescribed by canons to have niched figures on its face and foliage on the shoulders. In the extant temples of Gujarat it is first found on Nilkantha Mahadeva temple at Sunak, which was built by the middle of the tenth century.
Kalasa is prescribed to be decorated with jewelled patterns, the kind of which again appears for the first time at Sunak.
The moulding of Janghā is usually decked with damsels, demi-gods, demi-goddesses, enshrined in the niches having square or round-shaped ringed-pilasters endowed with triangular pediment. Sculpture on Janghā are traced upto 9th cent. earliest.
In the extant temples the Bharaṇi of two shapes, square and round, are met with. The round type bharaṇi with suspended foliage prescribed by canons is available from the early part of the eleventh cent, and thenceforth only. The tenth century temples have square bharaṇis, often double, but without the hanging foliage at the extremities.
In the extant temples the mouldings Mancikā, ģirāvați and Kūțachādya appear from the beginning of the eleventh century A. D.
In the case of temple having gūdḥamandapa, the mouldings of the walls of the güdḥamaņdapa, at times correspond the mouldings of the mandovara of the shrine e. g. the temples at Modhera, Sunak etc.
Almost all the pre-Caulukyan temples manifest the plain phase of the wall-face (mandovara ). The walls of these temples are regerously plain except the heavy cornice moulding at the top from which the superstructure rises. However, exceptions are met with, for instance at Kadvar, Suvan etc.