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Thus the Indian temple is weighty, solid and the grounded, not fashioned and soaring like the later Gothic cathedral in the West with precisely calculated stresses on its keystone arches and minimal columns and buttresses. The solidity of the Indian temple is concealed by its decoration, with its walls and columns, internal and external, often richly carved with breathtaking splendour.
The most noticeable difference between the northern and southern styles of temple architecture lies in the treatment of the sikhara. The north Indian tower commonly has the 'sugar-loaf shaped, tapering with gentle convex upward curves to a rounded finial or capstone at its apex. Basically square in plan, such a tower can have smaller versions of the same shape surrounding it, giving a star-shaped plan and, where there are several levels of these smaller elements, producing an elegant curved cone with a vertical emphasis which leads the eye upwards. It has been suggested that the shape of this tower developed from an early canopy for an image, the framework of which was made by setting four bamboo rods vertically in the ground and then bending and tying them together at their apex. This derivation sounds fanciful but certainly the resultant form is very pleasing to the eye.
Over the main hall, the pavilion of the northern temple, the roof may be flattened or a pyramid, or may perhaps have a low dome. In some examples, two or three pyramidshaped roofs rise from the porch to the main hall and may lead the eye up to the towering pinnacle.
For the Dravidian style, the tower rests on a square base and is a pyramid in form, commonly with two sides steeper than the others so that the summit of the pyramid is a curved capstone, rather than an apex. Marked horizontal emphasis is given by lines of ornament and figures repeated around the sides of the tower so that it seems to rise in a series of hierarchical horizontal bands. But the straight lines, although broken by ornament, of these towers are not as pleasing to the eye as the magnificently proportioned convex-sided towers of the northern style. It is probably safe to say that the finest gems of Indian temple architecture, whether Hindu or Jain, are in the northern style.
Another characteristic of the southern temples is the development after around 1000 CE of magnificent gate towers to the temple enclosure, sometimes exceeding in size the central tower itself.
Temple building continues in India today. Families of hereditary temple architects still design temples along traditional lines. Indeed, construction and the endowment of temples has always been seen as a pious religious work; many of the finest examples, both Hindu and Jain, were built in relatively recent times. The Indian temple may be a small structure or a vast edifice of cathedral-like proportions. It is highly stylised, traditional and conventional, but nonetheless usually beautiful, however, what does seem to be lacking is any really innovative modern style comparable to that of some of the more successful modern churches in the West. One thing we must not forget is that the temple is not constructed as a museum piece, or as a work of art per se, it is the house of the supreme beings whose image is found within the inner shrine. It is a religious building and its artistic qualities are there at the service of, and subsidiary to, its spiritual function.
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