Temple Architecture: Nagara, Dravida, Vesara and Regional Styles
Evolution of the Hindu, Jain and Buddhist structural temple from Gupta beginnings to regional medieval styles
Basic Hindu Temple Components
The Basics
Hindu worship in the post-Mauryan and Kushana periods centred on housing the image of a god so that devotees could see and honour it. The earliest shrines, at sites like Besnagar, Sanchi and Nagarjunakonda, were small single cells built to hold just one image, with a porch for entry. This cell is the garbhagriha, literally the 'womb-house', a small chamber with a single entrance where the main icon of the temple is installed and where the central rituals are performed.
Before the Gupta period, worship of Vishnu, Shiva and goddesses had grown around simple shrines at places like Besnagar, Nagarjunakonda and Sanchi, but these were small and overshadowed by the great Buddhist stupas and viharas of the age.
By the time the Gupta-period shrines at Deogarh and Bhitargaon had fixed a curving tower over a raised plinth, builders across the land between the Himalayas and the Vindhyas began repeating and refining this form. This region-wide pattern came to be called the Nagara style, one of three major temple styles named in the early medieval architectural texts known as the Shilpashastras, alongside Dravida in the far south and Vesara in the Deccan.
By the early 9th century, the Nagara style already had a mature vocabulary of a curvilinear shikhara, a square sanctum, and no boundary wall. In Central India, a new ruling family, the Chandelas of Bundelkhand, was about to take this vocabulary further than anyone before them. The Chandelas began as feudatories of the Gurjara-Pratiharas of Kannauj and were drawn into conflicts with the Pratiharas, the Palas, and the Kalachuris of Chedi who bordered them to the south. The dynasty was founded in the first quarter of the 9th century by Nannuka, who set up his capital at Kharjjuravahaka, the place known today as Khajuraho.
By the 11th century, the region of ancient Kalinga, roughly modern coastal Odisha, had become a major centre of temple building. Power here lay first with the Somavamshi kings, also called Kesaris, who ruled over a predominantly Shaiva land centred on Bhubaneswar, ancient Tribhuvanesvara.
By the time Nagara temples rose in Kashmir, Central India, Western India and Odisha, a different style took shape in the far south. This is the Dravida style, found between the Krishna and Kaveri rivers. Like Nagara temples, Dravida temples have a garbhagriha, a mandapa and a pradakshina patha. But their outer form and vocabulary differ.
The Pallavas rose in the Andhra region from the 2nd century CE. They later moved south to rule from Kanchipuram. Their history becomes well documented from the 6th to the 8th century, through inscriptions and monuments. Their power at times reached towards Odisha and extended by sea to South-East Asia. They were mostly Shaivite but also built some Vaishnava shrines. The long Buddhist history of the Deccan influenced their art.
The Cholas ruled the Kaveri delta and beyond from the ninth to the thirteenth century. They inherited a Dravida temple tradition the Pallavas had founded at Kanchipuram. In the early Chola phase, under Vijayalaya in the mid-9th century, temples remained modest. The Shiva temple at Narttamalai was built around this time. It had a simple vimana (the sanctum and its superstructure) joined to a small pillared hall. Its outer walls showed little ornamentation, since the style was still forming.
The Pandya kings ruled the far south around Madurai. The Cholas had overshadowed this region but never fully absorbed it. Pandya power revived after the Cholas declined, from about the 13th century. Madurai then became the centre of a new temple building effort, centred on the Meenakshi Sundareswarar temple.
The Vijayanagara empire was founded in 1336. Its capital, Vijayanagara, meaning city of victory, stood at Hampi. It drew visitors from far away, including the Italian Niccolo di Conti, the Portuguese Domingo Paes, Fernao Nuniz and Duarte Barbosa, and the Afghan Abd al-Razzaq, who recorded its wealth and splendour.
By the mid-seventh century, temple builders in Karnataka and the Deccan sat between North India's Nagara style and South India's Dravida style. This location shaped a new, blended style.
Pulakeshin I founded the Western Chalukya kingdom around Badami in 543 CE. His dynasty ruled most of the Deccan until the mid-eighth century. Badami, along with nearby Aihole and Pattadakal in modern Karnataka, became the main centres of Chalukyan temple building. Here Nagara and Dravida ideas met and mixed, long before the term Vesara was used for this Deccan style.
Kerala lies on a narrow coastal strip between the Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea. It receives very heavy rainfall from the south-west monsoon. It also has abundant wood and laterite stone. These conditions shaped Kerala's temple architecture, not the Dravida style of neighbouring Tamil Nadu. This style developed from around the medieval period. It was patronised by local rulers, including the Zamorins of Calicut and the rulers of Travancore and Cochin.