page_title: Hindu temple architecture
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Hindu temple architecture / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Examples of ancient Hindu temple architecture. Pictured in order are Kandariya, Brihadeeshwar, and Lingaraj Temple.
context_page_description: Hindu temple architecture as the main form of Hindu architecture has many varieties of style, though the basic nature of the Hindu temple remains the same, with the essential feature an inner sanctum, the garbha griha or womb-chamber, where the primary Murti or the image of a deity is housed in a simple bare cell. Around this chamber there are often other structures and buildings, in the largest cases covering several acres. On the exterior, the garbhagriha is crowned by a tower-like shikhara, also called the vimana in the south. The shrine building often includes an circumambulatory passage for parikrama, a mandapa congregation hall, and sometimes an antarala antechamber and porch between garbhagriha and mandapa. There may further mandapas or other buildings, connected or detached, in large temples, together with other small temples in the compound.
  Hindu temple architecture reflects a synthesis of arts, the ideals of dharma, beliefs, values and the way of life cherished under Hinduism. The temple is a place for Tirtha—pilgrimage.
context_section_description: There are hardly any remains of Hindu temples before the Gupta dynasty in the 4th century CE; no doubt there were earlier structures in timber-based architecture. The rock-cut Udayagiri Caves are among the most important early sites, built with royal sponsorship, recorded by inscriptions, and with impressive sculpture. The earliest preserved Hindu temples are simple cell-like stone temples, some rock-cut and others structural, as at Temple 17 at Sanchi. By the 6th or 7th century, these evolved into high shikhara stone superstructures. However, there is inscriptional evidence such as the ancient Gangadhara inscription from about 424, states Meister, that towering temples existed before this time and these were possibly made from more perishable material. These temples have not survived.
  Examples of early major North Indian temples that have survived after the Udayagiri Caves in Madhya Pradesh include those at Tigawa, Deogarh, Parvati Temple, Nachna (465), Bhitargaon, the largest Gupta brick temple to survive,  Lakshman Brick Temple, Sirpur (600-625 CE); Rajiv Lochan temple, Rajim (7th-century).  Gop Temple in Gujarat (c. 550 or later) is an oddity, with no surviving close comparator.
  No pre-7th century CE South Indian style stone temples have survived. Examples of early major South Indian temples that have survived, some in ruins, include the diverse styles at Mahabalipuram, from the 7th and 8th centuries. However, according to Meister, the Mahabalipuram temples are "monolithic models of a variety of formal structures all of which already can be said to typify a developed "Dravida" (South Indian) order". They suggest a tradition and a knowledge base existed in South India by the time of the early Chalukya and Pallava era when these were built. Other examples are found in Aihole and Pattadakal.
  By about the 7th century most main features of the Hindu temple were established along with theoretical texts on temple architecture and building methods. From between about the 7th and 13th centuries a large number of temples and their ruins have survived (though far fewer than once existed).  Many regional styles developed, very often following political divisions, as large temples were typically built with royal patronage.  In the north, Muslim invasions from the 11th century onwards reduced the building of temples, and saw the loss of many existing ones.  The south also witnessed Hindu-Muslim conflict that affected the temples, but the region was relatively less affected than the north. In late 14th century, the Hindu Vijayanagara Empire came to power and controlled much of South India. During this period, the distinctive very tall gopuram gatehouse actually a late development, from the 12th century or later, typically added to older large temples.
caption: Examples of Hindu Temples across India
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