Indian Architecture

Indian architecture is rooted in its history, culture and religion. Among a number of architectural styles and traditions, the best-known include the many varieties of Hindu temple architecture, Indo-Islamic architecture, especially Mughal architecture, Rajput architecture and Indo-Saracenic architecture. Much early Indian architecture was in wood, which has not survived. Instead the earliest survivals are from the many sites with Indian rock-cut architecture, most Buddhist but some Hindu and Jain.

Hindu temple architecture is mainly divided into the Dravidian style of the south and the Nagara style of the north, with other regional styles. Housing styles also vary between regions, partly depending on the different climates. Haveli is a general term for a large townhouse.

The first major Islamic kingdom in India was the Delhi Sultanate, which led to the development of Indo-Islamic architecture, combining Indian and Islamic features. The rule of the Mughal Empire, when Mughal architecture evolved, is regarded as the zenith of Indo-Islamic architecture, with the Taj Mahal being the high point of their contribution. Indo-Islamic architecture influenced the Rajput and Sikh styles as well.

During the British colonial period, European styles including neoclassical, gothic revival, and baroque became prevalent across India. The amalgamation of Indo-Islamic and European styles led to a new style, known as the Indo-Saracenic style. After independence, modernist ideas spread among Indian architects as a way of progressing from the colonial culture. Le Corbusier, who designed the city of Chandigarh influenced a generation of architects towards modernism in the 20th century. The economic reforms of 1991 further bolstered the urban architecture of India as the country became more integrated with the world's economy. Traditional ''Vastu Shastra'' remains influential in India's architecture during the contemporary era.See Raj Jadhav, pp. 7–13 in ''Modern Traditions: Contemporary Architecture in India''.

Neolithic Period

In South India, the Neolithic began by 6500 BC and lasted until around 1400 BC when the Megalithic transition period began. South Indian Neolithic is characterized by Ash mounds from 2500 BC in Karnataka region, expanded later to Tamil Nadu.

Neolithic settlements have been found in North-Western part (Such as Kashmir), Southern part (Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Andhra Pradesh), North Eastern frontier (Meghalaya), and Eastern part (Bihar and Odisha) of India.

The earliest clear evidence of the presence of the megalithic urn burials are those dating from around 1000 BCE, which have been discovered at various places in Tamil Nadu, notably at Adichanallur, 24 kilometers from Tirunelveli, where archaeologists from the Archaeological Survey of India unearthed 12 urns containing human skulls, skeletons and bones, husks, grains of charred rice and Neolithic celts, confirming the presence of the Neolithic period 2800 years ago.

The unearthed antiquities (of art, architecture, customs and rituals) indicate that the prehistoric people of the Burzahom established contact with Central Asia and South West Asia and also had links to the Gangetic plains and peninsular India.

The interaction of local and foreign influences is demonstrated by the art, architecture, customs, rituals and language demonstrated by some engravings on pottery and other artifacts.

Megalithic burials sites have been found scattered all over the subcontinent. The ceramic Neolithic lasts up to 3300 BCE, blending into the Early Harappan (Chalcolithic to Early Bronze Age) period. One of the earliest Neolithic sites in India is Lahuradewa in the Middle Ganges region and Jhusi near the confluence of Ganges and Yamuna rivers, both dating to around the 7th millennium BCE.

Indus Valley Civilization (2600 BCE – 1900 BCE)

The Indus Valley civilization covered a large area around the Indus River basin and beyond in late Bronze Age India. In its mature phase, from about 2600 to 1900 BCE, it produced several cities marked by great uniformity within and between sites, including Harappa, Lothal, and the UNESCO World Heritage Site Mohenjo-daro.

The civic and town planning and engineering aspects of these are remarkable, but the design of the buildings is "of a startling utilitarian character". There are granaries, drains, lombadthing, water-courses and tanks, but neither palaces nor temples have been identified, though cities have a central raised and fortified "citadel". Mohenjo-daro has wells which may be the predecessors of the stepwell. As many as 700 wells have been discovered in just one section of the city, leading scholars to believe that 'cylindrical brick lined wells' were invented by the Indus Valley Civilization.Livingstone & Beach, 19

Architectural decoration is extremely minimal, though there are "narrow pointed niches" inside some buildings. Most of the art found is in miniature forms like seals, and mainly in terracotta, but there are very few larger sculptures of figures. In most sites fired mud-brick (not sun-baked as in Mesopotamia) is used exclusively as the building material, but a few such as Dholavira are in stone. Most houses have two storeys, and very uniform sizes and plans. The large cities declined relatively quickly, for unknown reasons, leaving a less sophisticated village culture behind.

After collapse of mature harappan urban period, some cities still remained urban and inhabited. sites like Bet Dwarka in Gujarat, Kudwala(38.1 ha) in Cholistan and Daimabad (20 Ha) in Maharashtra are considered urban. Daimabad (2000–1000 BC) developed a fortification wall with bastions in its jorwe culture period (1400–1000 BC) and had public buildings such as an elliptical temple, an apsidal temple and shows evidence of planning in the layout of rectangular houses and streets or lanes and planned streets. The area had risen to 50 hectares in with a population of 10,000 people. A 580 meter long protection wall dated 1500 BC was found at Bet Dwarka which was believed to be damaged and submerged following sea storm.

600 BCE—250 CE

After the Indus Valley Civilization, there are few traces of Indian architecture, which probably mostly used wood, or brick which has been recycled, until around the time of the Maurya Empire, from 322 to 185 BCE. From this period for several centuries onwards, much the best remains are of Indian rock-cut architecture, mostly Buddhist, and there are also a number of Buddhist images that give very useful information.

Buddhist construction of monastic buildings apparently begins before the death of Buddha, probably around 400 BCE. This first generation only survives in floor-plans, notably at the Jivakarama vihara in Bihar.

Walled and moated cities with large gates and multi-storied buildings which consistently used chaitya arches, no doubt in wood, for roofs and upper structures above more solid storeys are important features of the architecture during this period. The reliefs of Sanchi, dated to the 1st centuries BCE-CE, show cities such as Kushinagar or Rajagriha as splendid walled cities, as in the ''Royal cortege leaving Rajagriha'' or ''War over the Buddha's relics''. These views of ancient Indian cities have been relied on for the understanding of ancient Indian urban architecture.

In the case of the Mauryan capital Pataliputra (near Patna), we have Greek accounts, and that of Faxian; Megasthenes (a visitor around 300 BCE) mentions 564 towers and 64 gates in the city walls. Modern excavations have uncovered a "massive palisade of teak beams held together with iron dowels". A huge ''apadana''-like hall with eighty sandstone columns shows clear influence from contemporary Achaemenid Persia. The single massive sandstone Pataliputra capital shows clear Hellenistic features, reaching India via Persia. The famous Ashoka columns show great sophistication, and a variety of influences in their details. In both these cases a now-vanished Indian predecessor tradition in wood is likely.

Such a tradition is extremely clear in the case of the earliest-known examples of rock-cut architecture, the state-sponsored Barabar caves in Bihar, personally dedicated by Ashoka circa 250 BCE. The entrance of the Lomas Rishi Cave there has a sculpted doorway that clearly copies a wooden style in stone, which is a recurrent feature of rock-cut caves for some time. These artificial caves exhibit an amazing level of technical proficiency, the extremely hard granite rock being cut in geometrical fashion and given the Mauryan polish, also found on sculpture.Buddhist Architecture, Le Huu Phuoc, Grafikol 2009, pp. 97–99 Later rock-cut viharas, occupied by monastic communities, survive, mostly in Western India, and in Bengal the floor-plans of brick-built equivalents survive. The elaborately decorated facades and "chaitya halls" of many rock-cut sites are believed to reflect vanished free-standing buildings elsewhere.

The Buddhist stupa, a dome shaped monument, was used in India as a commemorative monument associated with storing sacred relics.Encyclopædia Britannica (2008), ''Pagoda''. The stupa architecture was adopted in Southeast and East Asia, where it became prominent as a Buddhist monument used for enshrining sacred relics. Guard rails—consisting of posts, crossbars, and a coping—became a feature of safety surrounding a stupa.Chandra (2008) Temples—build on elliptical, circular, quadrilateral, or apsidal plans—were constructed using brick and timber. The Indian gateway arches, the ''torana'', reached East Asia with the spread of Buddhism. Some scholars hold that ''torii'' derives from the torana gates at the Buddhist historic site of Sanchi (3rd century BCE – 11th century CE).

Rock-cut stepwells in India date from 200 to 400 CE. Subsequently, the construction of wells at Dhank (550–625 CE) and stepped ponds at Bhinmal (850–950 CE) took place.Livingston & Beach, xxiii Cave temples became prominent throughout western India, incorporating various unique features to give rise to cave architecture in places such as Ajanta and Ellora.

A very important development, the emergence of the shikara or temple tower, is today best evidenced by the Buddhist Mahabodhi Temple. This was already several centuries old when the first very vertical structure replaced an Ashokan original, apparently around 150–200 CE. The current brick-built tower, probably a good deal larger, dates to the Gupta period, in the 5th or 6th centuries.

Gupta architecture

For reasons that are not entirely clear, for the most part the Gupta period represented a hiatus in Indian rock-cut architecture, with the first wave of construction finishing before the empire was assembled, and the second wave beginning in the late 5th century, after it ended. This is the case, for example, at the Ajanta Caves, with an early group made by 220 CE at the latest, and a later one probably all after about 460. Instead, the period has left almost the first surviving free-standing structures in India, in particular, the beginnings of Hindu temple architecture. As Milo Beach puts it: "Under the Guptas, India was quick to join the rest of the medieval world in a passion for housing precious objects in stylized architectural frameworks", the "precious objects" being primarily the icons of gods.

The most famous remaining monuments in a broadly Gupta style, the caves at Ajanta, Elephanta, and Ellora (respectively Buddhist, Hindu, and mixed including Jain) were in fact produced under other dynasties in Central India, and in the case of Ellora after the Gupta period, but primarily reflect the monumentality and balance of Guptan style. Ajanta contains by far the most significant survivals of painting from this and the surrounding periods, showing a mature form which had probably had a long development, mainly in painting palaces. The Hindu Udayagiri Caves actually record connections with the dynasty and its ministers, and the Dashavatara Temple at Deogarh is a major temple, one of the earliest to survive, with important sculpture.

Examples of early North Indian Hindu temples that have survived after the Udayagiri Caves in Madhya Pradesh include those at Tigawa (early 5th century), Sanchi Temple 17 (similar, but respectively Hindu and Buddhist), Deogarh, Parvati Temple, Nachna (465),Michael Meister (1987), Hindu Temple, in ''The Encyclopedia of Religion'', editor: Mircea Eliade, Volume 14, Macmillan, , page 370 Bhitargaon, the largest Gupta brick temple to survive, and Lakshman Brick Temple, Sirpur (600–625 CE). Gop Temple in Gujarat (c. 550 or later) is an oddity, with no surviving close comparator.

There are a number of different broad models, which would continue to be the case for more than a century after the Gupta period, but temples such as Tigawa and Sanchi Temple 17, which are small but massively built stone prostyle buildings with a sanctuary and a columned porch, show the most common basic plan that continues today. Both of these have flat roofs over the sanctuary, which would become uncommon by about the 8th century. The Mahabodhi Temple, Bhitargaon, Deogarh and Gop already all show high superstructures of different shapes. The Chejarla Kapoteswara temple demonstrates that free-standing chaitya-hall temples with barrel roofs continued to be built, probably with many smaller examples in wood.

File:Sanchi temple 17.jpg, A tetrastyle prostyle Gupta period temple at Sanchi besides the Apsidal hall with Maurya foundation, an example of Buddhist architecture. 5th century CE.
File:Tigowa 1999 Kankali-Devi-Tempel.jpg, The Hindu Tigawa Temple, early 5th century.
File:Mahabodhitemple.jpg, The current structure of the Mahabodhi Temple dates to the Gupta era, 5th century CE. Marking the location where the Buddha is said to have attained enlightenment.
File:Vishnu temple mandapa at Eran, Madhya Pradesh.jpg, Vishnu temple in Eran, 5th-6th century
File:KITLV 87946 - Unknown - Pataini temple in British India - 1897.tif, Pataini temple is a Jain temple built during the Gupta period, 5th century CE
File:Kakandi.jpg, Relief of Jain tirthankara Parshvanatha on the Kahaum pillar erected by Skandagupta in 461 CE
File:Eran Budhagupta pillar built circa 476–495 CE.jpg, The Buddhagupta pillar at Eran (c.476–495 CE)

Temple architecture

The basic elements of the Hindu temple remain the same across all periods and styles. The most essential feature is the inner sanctuary, the '' garbha griha'' or womb-chamber, where the primary ''Murti'' or cult 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 may include an ambulatory for ''parikrama'' ( circumambulation), one or more mandapas or congregation halls, and sometimes an antarala antechamber and porch between garbhagriha and mandapa.

There may be further shrines or other buildings, connected or detached, in large temples, together with other small temples in the compound. The whole temple compound is usually enclosed by a wall, and the temple itself, or sometimes the whole compound, is often raised on a plinth ('' adhiṣṭhāna''). Large areas of the structure are often decorated with carving, including figurative images of deities and other religious figures. Beyond these basic but crucial similarities, the visible stylistic forms of the temple vary greatly and have a very complicated development.Rowland, 275–276

By about the 7th century CE most main features of the Hindu temple were established along with theoretical texts on temple architecture and building methods. Already three styles of temple were identified in these: ''nagara'', ''dravida'' and ''vesara'', though these were not yet associated with regions of India, and the original meanings may not fully align with modern uses of the terms. In Karnataka, the group of 7th and 8th-century temples at Pattadakal famously mixes forms later associated with both north and south, as does that at Aihole, which still includes apsidal chaitya hall-type plans.

For most modern writers, ''nagara'' refers to north Indian styles, most easily recognised by a high and curving ''shikhara'' over the sanctuary, ''dravida'' or Dravidian architecture is the broad South Indian style, where the superstructure over the sanctuary is not usually extremely high, and has a straight profile, rising in series of terraces to form a sort of decorated pyramid (today often dwarfed in larger temples by the far larger gopuram outer gateways, a much later development). The ancient term vesara is also used by some modern writers, to describe a temple style with characteristics of both the northern and southern traditions. These come from the Deccan and other fairly central parts of India. There is some disagreement among those who use the term, as to the exact period and styles it represents, and other writers prefer to avoid it; temples some describe as vesara are mostly assigned to the northern tradition by those, but are regarded as a kind of northern ''dravida'' by others.

Nagara Style of Architecture

Early

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. The earliest preserved Hindu temples are simple cell-like stone temples, some rock-cut and others structural, as 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 CE, 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 Deogarh, Parvati Temple, Nachna (465 CE), Lalitpur District (c. 525 CE), Lakshman Brick Temple, Sirpur (600–625 CE); Rajiv Lochan temple, Rajim (7th-century CE).

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 "Tamil Architecture" (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.

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 the 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.Michell (1988), 18, 50–54, 89, 149–155; Harle (1994), 335

Later

North Indian temples showed increased elevation of the wall and elaborate spire by the 10th century.Encyclopædia Britannica (2008), ''North Indian temple architecture''. On the shikara, the oldest form, called ''latina'', with wide shallow projections running up the sides, developed alternative forms with many smaller "spirelets" (''urushringa''). Two varieties of these are called ''sekhari'', where the sub-spires extend vertically, and ''bhumija'', where individual sub-spires are arrayed in rows and columns.

Richly decorated temples—including the complex at Khajuraho—were constructed in Central India. Examples include the Lingaraja Temple at Bhubaneshwar in Odisha, Sun Temple at Konark in Odisha, Brihadeeswarar Temple at Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu. Indian traders brought Indian architecture to South east Asia through various trade routes.

Styles called '' vesara'' include the early Badami Chalukya Architecture, Western Chalukya architecture, and finally Hoysala architecture. Other regional styles include those of Bengal, Kashmir and other Himalayan areas, Karnataka, Kalinga architecture, and Māru-Gurjara architecture.

Hoysala architecture is the distinctive building style developed under the rule of the Hoysala Empire in the region historically known as ''Karnata'', today's Karnataka, India, between the 11th and the 14th centuries. Large and small temples built during this era remain as examples of the Hoysala architectural style, including the Chennakesava Temple at Belur, the Hoysaleswara temple at Halebidu, and the Kesava Temple at Somanathapura