In all the Jaina temples the salient feature is the sikhra or vimana. This is a tower of approximately square plan, tapering by a graceful curve toward a peculiar terminal ornament shaped like a flattened melon. Its whole surface is variegated by horizontal bands and vertical breaks, covered with sculpture and carving. Next in importance are the domes, built wholly in horizontal courses and resting on stone lintels carried by bracketed columns. These same traits appear in relatively modern examples, as at Delhi.
FIG. 227.—TOWER OF VICTORY, CHITTORE.
TOWERS. A similar predilection for minutely broken surfaces marks the towers which sometimes adjoin the temples, as at Chittore (tower of Sri Allat, 13th century), or were erected as trophies of victory, like that of Khumbo Rana in the same town (Fig. 227). The combination of horizontal and vertical lines, the distribution of the openings, and the rich ornamentation of these towers are very interesting, though lacking somewhat in structural propriety of design.
HINDU STYLES: NORTHERN BRAHMAN. The origin of this style is as yet an unsolved problem. Its monuments were mainly built between 600 and 1200 A.D., the oldest being in Orissa, at Bhuwanesevar, Kanaruk, and Puri. In northern India the temples are about equally divided between the two forms of Brahmanism—the worship of Vishnu or Vaishnavism, and that of Siva or Shaivism—and do not differ materially in style. As in the Jaina style, the vimana is their most striking feature, and this is in most cases adorned with numerous reduced copies of its own form grouped in successive stages against its sides and angles. This curious system of design appears in nearly all the great temples, both of Vishnu and Siva. The Jaina melon ornament is universal, surmounted generally by an urn-shaped finial.
In plan the vimana shrine is preceded by two or three chambers, square or polygonal, some with and some without columns. The foremost of these is covered by a roof formed like a stepped pyramid set cornerwise. The fine porch of the ruined temple at Bindrabun is cruciform in plan and forms the chief part of the building, the shrine at the further end being relatively small and its tower unfinished or ruined. In some modern examples the antechamber is replaced by an open porch with a Saracenic dome, as at Benares; in others the old type is completely abandoned, as in the temple at Kantonnuggur (1704–22). This is a square hall built of terra-cotta, with four three-arched porches and nine towers, more Saracenic than Brahman in general aspect.
The Kandarya Mahadeo, at Khajuraho, is the most noted example of the northern Brahman style, and one of the most splendid structures extant. A strong and lofty basement supports an extraordinary mass of roofs, covering the six open porches and the antechamber and hypostyle hall, which precede the shrine, and rising in successive pyramidal masses until the vimana is reached which covers the shrine. This is 116 feet high, but seems much loftier, by reason of the small scale of its constituent parts and the marvellously minute decoration which covers the whole structure. The vigor of its masses and the grand stairways which lead up to it give it a dignity unusual for its size, 60 × 109 feet in plan (cir. 1000 A.D.).
At Puri, in Orissa, the Temple of Jugganat, with its double enclosure and numerous subordinate shrines, the Teli-ka-Mandir at Gwalior, and temples at Udaipur near Bhilsa, at Mukteswara in Orissa, at Chittore, Benares, and Barolli, are important examples. The few tombs erected subsequent to the Moslem conquest, combining Jaina bracket columns with Saracenic domes, and picturesquely situated palaces at Chittore (1450), Oudeypore (1580), and Gwalior, should also be mentioned.
CHALUKYAN STYLE. Throughout a central zone crossing the peninsula from sea to sea about the Dekkan, and extending south to Mysore on the west, the Brahmans developed a distinct style during the later centuries of the Chalukyan dynasty. Its monuments are mainly comprised between 1050 and the Mohammedan conquest in 1310. The most notable examples of the style are found along the southwest coast, at Hullabid, Baillur, and Somnathpur.