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MONUMENTS & SCULPTURE A.D. 600 TO 1000
[PART IV relief on the ceiling now converted into a Subrahmanya temple and the other with Jvälamalin! Yakal, are other notable examples.
The last quarter of the sixth century was eventful in that it marked a new era when the concept of rock and stone as the main fabric in the make-up of the religious edifices of the non-Buddhist sects-Brahmanical and Jaina-set up a new milieu. This was initiated under royal patronage. In 578, Calukya Mangalesa excavated the first cave-temple for Visņu at Badami in the local soft sandstone rocks.
CAVE-TEMPLES
The cave-temples of the Calukyan vintage consist essentially of a rectangular pillared verandah or mukha-mandapa, a more or less square pillared hall or maha-mand apa and an almost square shrine-cell or garbha-gṛha, all in an axial plane, excavated into the prepared vertical rock-face and constituting the mandapa-type of temples. The last and topmost of the series of four such cavetemples excavated on the northern scarp of the Badami cliff is the solitary Jaina example, which is chronologically also the last, excavated in the middle of the seventh century (plate 113A). While essentially of the same plan as the other three Brahmaṇical ones on the cliff, it is the smallest and the most lavishly-embellished. The cut-back to the pillared façade provides a small platform below in front and the kapota or cornice above on the top of a rough exterior and finished and curved undersurface, with ribbings with a relief of Kubera at its centre. The façade of the mukha-mandapa has four pillars and two pilasters, one at either extreme, the central pair of pillars with greater intercolumniation as is characteristic of the Calukyan style and its derivatives. As against the other caves, the basal squares of the rather massively-shaped pillars have circular relief medallions variously carved as lotuses, mithunacouples, foliage-scrolls, makara-scolls and the like. The pillars have well-formed capitals with the kalasa, tadi and kumbha and, in this respect, resemble the Pallava forms. The kalasas are ornate with carvings of mithunas on the facets. and from their outer faces spring rampant vydla-caryatids butting against the ribbing of the cornice. The potikas or corbels are of the double or superposed type, as in the Călukyan forms, while the lower face is an extended doublevolute. A second set of four pillars and two pilasters separate the outer and the inner mandapas, and the ceiling of the front mand apa is divided into five bays by cross-rafters. The central bay of the ceiling of the outer mandapa has a large Vidyadhara couple in relief. The entrance-openings into the inner mand apa are reduced to three, the two extremes between the outer pillars and
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