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20/01/24 06:16 AM IST

Nagara style, in which Ayodhya’s Ram temple is being built

In News
  • The Ram temple in Ayodhya will be inaugurated on January 22.
  • Chandrakant Sompura, 81, and his son Ashish, 51, have designed the complex in the Nagara style of temple architecture.
Nagara style of temple architecture
  • The Nagara style of temple architecture emerged some time in the fifth century CE, during the late Gupta period, in northern India.
  • It is seen in juxtaposition with the Dravida style of southern India, which too emerged in the same period.
  • Nagara and Dravida may be called ‘styles’, but they cover vast areas and time spans.
  • Nagara temples are built on a raised plinth, with the garbha griha (sanctum sanctorum) — where the idol of the deity rests — the most sacred part of the temple.
  • Towering over the garbha griha is the shikhara (literally ‘mountain peak’), the most distinguishable aspect of Nagara style temples.
  • As the name suggests, shikharas are human-made representations of the natural and cosmological order, as imagined in Hindu tradition.
  • “Meru, Mandara and Kailasa are the first three names amongst the twenty types of temples described in the early texts … all three are the names of the Mountain, which is the axis of the world.
  • A typical Nagara style temple also comprises a circumambulatory passage around the garbha griha, and one or more mandapas (halls) on the same axis as it. Elaborate murals and reliefs often adorn its walls.
Five modes of Nagara architecture
  • Depending on the period and geography, there is a large variation when it comes to what a shikhara looks like, or how it is used in a temple’s design.
  • On this basis five modes of Nagara temple architecture — Valabhi, Phamsana, Latina, Shekhari, and Bhumija.
  • The Valabhi begins as a masonry rendering of the barrel-roofed [wooden] structure, simple or with aisles, familiar through chaitya halls [prayer halls, most associated with Buddhist shrines].
  • A formalisation of multi-eave towers, wedded to a piling up of slabs, leads to the Phamsana.
  • Shikhara which is a single, slightly curved tower with four sides of equal length.
  • The mode emerged in the Gupta heartland, was complete with curvature by the early seventh century, and during that century spread across the entire breadth of northern India.
  • The tenth century onwards, composite Latinas began to emerge, giving rise to Shekhari and Bhumija styles.
  • The Shekhari shape has attached sub-spires or spirelets, echoing the main shape. These may run up most of the face of the shikhara, and be of more than one size.
  • The Bhumija, on the other hand, has miniature spires, in horizontal and vertical rows, all the way to the top, creating a grid-like effect on each face.
  • The actual shikhara often approaches a pyramidal shape, with the curve of the Latina less visible.
  • Temple architects of yore did not consciously choose to adhere to any mode — they simply followed and innovated on existing design traditions they saw around them, and over time, broader trends emerged.
Dravida style
  • The Dravida counterpart to the shikhara is the vimana. There exists, however, a fundamental difference.
  • In the Dravida style temples, vimanas are typically smaller than the great gatehouses or gopurams, which are the most immediately striking architectural elements in a temple complex.
  • Moreover, while shikharas are mentioned in southern Indian architectural sources, they refer to only the dome-shaped crowning cap atop the vimana.
  • The existence of gopurams also points to another unique feature of the Dravida style — the presence of a boundary wall. Few Nagara style temple complexes are lined with distinctive boundary walls that are a part of the temple’s design.
Source- Indian Express

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