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CHAPTER 24)
THE DECCAN & SOUTH INDIA
by a vedi, with the rajasenaka part carrying mithunas, musical and dancing groups, between each of the paired pilasters. A perforated screen-wall encloses the mand apa-sides over the vedi and kaksäsana, up to the cornice.
The door-frame of the entrance of the mand apas is of the panca-sakha variety, ornate, with the cornice of the uttaränga projecting well forward and the lalaţa-bimba showing seated Tirtharkaras, flanked by Yakşas and Yaksis The main vimana and the ardha-mand apa section, however, do not have the vyālavari scheme on their plinth, which is found only in the maha-mand apa and the nava-ranga with triple porch, thus indicating even in its present layout two stages of addition. The wall-decoration of the garbha-gpha and the ardha-mandapa also is plain with single bhitti-stambhas carrying vimana-motif on the top, with a niche under makara-torana in the bhadra section, over which is an outer torana-model with the pediment of a vimāna-motif on the crest. The exterior of the temple has been badly and extensively renovated from time to time. Vestiges of seated Yakşas of the early Cāļukyan type and phase are fortunately preserved along the south-east corner. There is a mana-stambha on the outer court in front of the temple. Even in their utter desolation and nominal worship, the temple-ruins present a grandeur befitting its famed past from the sixth to the thirteenth century.
HOYSALA MONUMENTS
The most outstanding character of the Hoysaļa architecture is that, apart from being spell-binding in its ravishing charm, virility and grandeur in its heyday, its artistry has a blend of the vimāna-composition, to which it is firmly moored, and the Rekha-Nāgara northern präsåda, whose several elements it willingly and imaginatively adopted. There is no doubt that the Later Cåļukyan region culturally, as politically, influenced it. It was thus a congeries of parts, having partly imbibed, by the age in which it operates, the Cola-Pandya formal modulations, the Ganga-Nolamba elegance, the Kadamba-Aļupa manipulations and sculptural verve. It was thus a hybridization of the Kalyani Calukya format in this area of south Mysore, sophistication in carving being combined with conformism in architectural core. In the medium or the raw material, it again displayed an ambidexterity, using greenish and soft schist in its main efforts particularly in the northern part of its empire where such rock is available, and hard and stately granite in the southern fringes bordering on Tamil Nadu. The style itself, conditioned by these two variable raw materials, was divergent in its scope for decoration and its dimensions, and even in its basic enunciation.
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