2. The porches or Mantapas, which always cover and precede the door leading to the cell.
3. Gate pyramids, Gopuras, which are the principal features in the quadrangular enclosures which always surround the Vimanas.
4. Pillared halls or Choultries, used for various purposes, and which are the invariable accompaniments of these temples.
Besides these, a temple always contains tanks or wells for water—to be used either for sacred purposes or the convenience of the priests,—- dwellings for all the various grades of the priesthood attached to it, and numerous other buildings designed for state or convenience.
CHAPTER II.
DRAVIDIAN ROCK-CUT TEMPLES.
CONTENTS.
Mahavellipore—Kylas, Ellora.
Although it may not be possible to point out the origin of the Dravidian style, and trace its early history with the same precision as we can that of Buddhist architecture, there is nothing so mysterious about it, as there is regarding the styles of northern India, nor does it burst on us full blown at once as is the case with the architecture of the Chalukyas. Hitherto, the great difficulty in the case has been, that all the temples of southern India have been found to be of so modern a date. The great building age there was the 16th and 17th centuries of our era. Some structural buildings, it is true, could be traced back to the 12th or 13th with certainty, but beyond that all was to a great extent conjecture; and if it were not for rock-cut examples, we could hardly go back much further with anything like certainty. Recent investigations, however, combined with improved knowledge and greater familiarity with the subject, have now altered this state of affairs to a great extent. It seems hardly doubtful now that the Kylas at Ellora, and the great temples at Purudkul (Pattadkul), are anterior to the 10th century.[359] It may, in fact, be that they date from the 8th or 9th, and if I am not very much mistaken the “raths,” as they are called, at Mahavellipore are as early, if not indeed earlier, than the 5th or 6th, and are in reality the oldest examples of their class known, and the prototypes of the style.
One circumstance which has prevented the age of the Mahavellipore raths being before detected is, that being all cut in granite and in single blocks, they show no sign of wearing or decay, which is so frequently a test of age in structural buildings, and being all in the same material produces a family likeness among them, which makes it at first sight difficult to discriminate between what is old and what new. More than this, they all possess the curious peculiarity of being unfinished, whether standing free, as the raths, or cut in the rock, as caves, or on its face, as the great bas-relief; they are all left with one-third or one-fourth merely blocked out, and in some instances with the intention merely indicated. It looks as if the workmen had been suddenly called off while the whole was in progress, and native traditions, which always are framed to account for what is otherwise most unintelligible, have seized on this peculiarity, and make it the prominent feature in their myths. Add to this that it is only now we are acquiring that knowledge of the subject and familiarity with its details, which will enable us to check the vagaries of Indian speculation. From all these causes it is not difficult to understand how easily mistakes might be made in treating of such mysterious objects.
If we do not know all we would wish about the antiquities of Mahavellipore, it is not because attempts have not been made to supply the information. Situated on an open sea-beach, within one night’s easy dâk from Madras, it has been more visited and oftener described than any other place in India. The first volume of the ‘Asiatic Researches’ (1788) contained an exhaustive paper on them by W. Chambers. This was followed in the fifth (1798) by another by Mr. Goldingham. In the second volume of the ‘Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society’ there appeared what was then considered a most successful attempt to decipher the inscriptions there, by Dr. Guy Babington, accompanied by views of most of the sculptures. The ‘Madras Journal,’ in 1844, contained a guide to the place by Lieutenant Braddock, with notes by the Rev. W. Taylor and Sir Walter Elliot; and almost every journal of every traveller in these parts contains some hint regarding them, or some attempt to describe and explain their peculiarities or beauties. Most of these were collected in a volume in 1869 by a Lieutenant Carr, and published at the expense of the Madras Government, but unfortunately the editor selected had no general knowledge of the subject, nor had he apparently any local familiarity with the place. His work in consequence adds little to our previous stores.