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THE TEMPLES OF INDIA
and a temporary shelter for the participants erected. This was the period of the Vedas, the primary texts of Hinduism, which give details of the religious ceremonies but do not refer to temples.
Although Indian civilisation is very ancient its early history is still obscure. We know that four thousand years ago and more an advanced culture was present in the north, in the valley of the Indus. Excavations of two cities, Mohenjodaro and Harapps, have revealed to us some details, tantalisingly incomplete, of the material remains of the Indus valley civilisation. The lower walls of brick-built dwellings and some larger buildings have been uncovered by the archaeologists. Perhaps some were for religious use but we cannot yet be certain. The architecture, so far as the surviving remains can show, was functional and plain. If decorated at all, the decoration, perhaps, of carved wood, has long since perished. We cannot look for the origins of Indian temple architecture in the utilitarian buildings of Mohenjodaro.
The Indus valley civilisation came to an end early in the second millennium BC as the nomadic Aryan tribes moved in from what is now Afghanistan and Baluchistan. Historical research is only very slowly uncovering the early story of India and our knowledge of the long ages before the seventh century BC is very patchy. If there were temples in this period they have long since vanished: made of wood or mud-brick they would not have survived the ravages of time. Probably there were no temples: the daily rituals would be performed in a little sanctified place in the home. Communal or public sacrifices would take place in a sacred enclosure out of doors where the altar was set up according to the prescriptions in the sacred texts.
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Indian religious architecture, if such we can call it at this stage, comes into focus around 250 BC with the emperor Ashoka who made Buddhism the state of religion all over his wide dominions, which took in most of sub-continent except the extreme south. Ashoka caused to be erected in various places tall stone pillars, sometimes fifty feet high, crowned by a Buddhist symbol: the triple lions and wheel of the law on the pillar at Sarnath have been taken as the state emblems of modern India. At about the same time the stupa, a hemispherial mound over a grave or over sacred relics came to be faced in stone and became, in various forms, a characteristic Buddhist monument wherever Buddhism spread. In India the stupa stood on a round or squared base, it was faced with worked stone on a foundation of stone rubble. A mast at the top bore an umbrella-shaped finial. A stone railing with one or more entrance gates formed an enclosure around the stupa and steps led up to a circumambulatory processional path at a higher level. Some stupas were of great size, others were sufficiently small to be enclosed within a building or chaitya hall. The word 'chaitya was occasionally used to designate a stupa but more generally can refer to a shrine or temple or any sacred place. Here we have something which can be looked apon recognisably as a temple.
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From around 200 BC temples cut into rock faces appear in various parts of India. The chaitya hall at Bhaja near Bombay dates from the first century BC: it is high-arched and is cut deep into the rock with a stupa carved from solid stone at the inner end. A still grander example is at Karli, also near Bombay. Constructed some two hundred years later, like the earlier one it has a line of columns on each side of the main hall separating it from side aisles: the columns are beautifully carved.
Cave temples continued to be constructed for over a thousand years. Perhaps the most famous of all are at Elura in Hyderabad. Here there are no fewer than thirty-four temples, chaitya hall and monastic quarters cut into the rock. The earliest are Buddhist but from the early sixth century AD some seventeen Hindu temples were constructed. Perhaps the most astonishing is the Kailasa temple which is carved from a solid mass of rock 276 feet long and a hundred feet high left standing after the hillside had been trenched on three sides around this rock mass. This incredible structure took a hundred years to complete. This is a unique example, the remaining temples, including five Jain ones, are true cave temples, cut into the rock of the hillside. The cave temples vary considerably in plan but basically consist of a large hall with a small shrine at the end for the sacred image of the particular cult. Other smaller rooms may open off. or sometimes two wings give a cruciform plan. The five Jain temples are among the latest and probably were begun early in the ninth century AD though the images could have been completed
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