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NOVEMBER, 1883.)
THE OLD PALACE OF CHANDRAGIRI.
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Vikramaditya-Saivat or of the years of Vikramaditya,' is furnished by-26, a Gaya inscription" (1.1) Vikra. máditya nripatéh sasivat 1257 ) Jyé(jyai). shtha va di 15(?) Ravau. Finally, the last technical expression, via.
Vaikrama-Saka or the era belonging to Vikrama,' is furnished by-27, the Nepal inscription of Lalitatri- purasundaridevi," Véda-sapta-gaj-éndu-mité
1874 Vaikramé táké Sachi-sukla-naramydın Som-anvitáyásir. A little further on, the inscription uses the simple word Saka,--tasminnéva saké Bhadra-krishna-navamyam Suklé (kré) bilápravésain vidhaya bana-svara-naga-bhu-mit& 1875 saké Magha-mási trittyáyárn Gurau &c. ;but it seems to be used in the sense of year,' rather than of 'era ;' and, at any rate, it can hardly be taken as furnishing a technical name for the era of Vikrama or Vikramaditya.
THE OLD PALACE OF CHANDRAGIRI. BY R. F. CHISHOLM, F.R.I.B.A., GOVERNMENT ARCHITECT, MADRAS. Chandragiri, in the Madras Presidency, domes. Each floor is projected 6 or 7 feet in the Collectorate of Chittur or North beyond the face of the external row of piers, the Arkat, is situated 30 miles N.N.E. from projecting portion resting on strong stone Chittar, and is the head-quarters of a tâluqa of corbels. the same name.
It will be seen from the plan, that the rooms The town of this name is some distance from are all small. The largest which, no doubt, the building which forms the subject of this served as a Darbar Hall, is only 21 ft. square. article. The old Palace and the Zenâna buildings This apartment rises through two storeys, the now stand amid cultivated lands; the fort on the upper tier of arches forming a kind of clerestorey, adjoining hill and the remains of gateways and conveying a lesson on light and ventilation, other ruins which lie about are the only other in which might be advantageously studied by dications of former greatness. Chandragiri greater architeots than those old builders possesses peculiar interest to the British, for here professed themselves to be. resided the Raja who gave us the first foothold in As usual in Eastern domestic art, the buildIndia by granting to the representatives of the | ing, as it stands, is a perfect puzzle. There are
ing, as it standa, is a perfect. East India Company the Sanad which permitted two different kinds of work, executed apparently them to erect Fort St. George at Madras. at two different periods, the earlier being stone, The date of this Sanad was 1639 and the Raja and the later brick. It is not necessary, who granted it Sri Ranga Raya, the last re- however, to place these periods at a wide inpresentative of the Vijayanagar dynasty. He terval, as both kinds of work may have been was himself subdued by the Muhammadan king executed contemporaneously. In nearly all the of Golkonda in 1645, only six years after this temples and other structures in Southern India, event.
brick is always used in the upper parte, and The main building (shown in the accompany generally in those places where the strains and ing illustrations) is about 150 ft. long, presenting loads are insignificant. Most of the civil builda well-balanced facade of three storeys sur- ings in the south havé rough stone piers, mounted by tarrets in the form of gồpuras, wooden corbels, and brick arches. Wooden which break the sky-line pleasingly. With the corbelling was resorted to when the octagonal exception of the angles (of comparatively solid form had to be worked out from the square in a construction) each floor consists of a pillared limited vertical space; only one kind of hard hall, the piers are arched across both ways, wood was used, - a wood which neither rots nor corbelled at the angles, and closed with flat expands. The exterior was invariably covered
Archæol. Surv. of India, Vol. III. p. 127, and Plate XXXVIII, No. 22. - Ind. Ant. Vol IX. pp. 193 f. After the battle of TAlikota in 1565, their repre.
sentatives made Pennakonda, in Anantapur district, their capital, and it continued so until 1592 A.D. when Venkatapati Raya retired to Chandragiri.
