DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.2371#0486
464 BRAHMANICAL CAVE-TEMPLES.
quite detached, and stand by themselves on the ground, and two
more are placed on the right and left of the entrance. Owing to their
exiguity these small detached cells, for the display of the various
manifestations of the deity, have in most instances disappeared in
India, but in Brahmanical temples in Java, about the same age, the
system was carried to excess. At Brambanan the central temples
were surrounded by 16, 160, and even 238 small detached shrines.
each containing an image of the god to whom the principal temple
was dedicated, or some sculptured representation connected with his
worship.1 In India a more frequent mode of displaying these was
to arrange them in a continuous gallery, such as that round the
eastern end of the court of the Kailasa, and such as are generally
found in Jaina temples. Either of these plans was preferable to
the Dravidian mode of crowding these cells on the successive storeys
of their Gropuras or their Temples, and placing the images, or the
manifestations of the God, outside in front of the cells.
A crooked passage, 282 feet long, leads from the face of the rock
to the courtyard of the temple, so that it is not seen from the
outside at all, and all the anomalous effects of a temple in a pit
which were pointed out in speaking of the Kailasa are here
exaggerated to a ten-fold extent. Besides these defects in design,
this temple at Dhamnar is so small that it would hardly merit
notice here, were it not, that like the Kailasa it marks the final
triumph of the Brahmans over the Buddhists in the eighth century,
and was placed here for that purpose. In an architectural sense,
however, it is valuable, as being a perfectly unaltered example of
the northern, as the Kailasa is of the southern, style of architecture
as practised at an age when the idea of utilising the living rock
for the purposes of architectural display was fast dying out.
1 Hist, of Indian and East. Arch., p. 652.
quite detached, and stand by themselves on the ground, and two
more are placed on the right and left of the entrance. Owing to their
exiguity these small detached cells, for the display of the various
manifestations of the deity, have in most instances disappeared in
India, but in Brahmanical temples in Java, about the same age, the
system was carried to excess. At Brambanan the central temples
were surrounded by 16, 160, and even 238 small detached shrines.
each containing an image of the god to whom the principal temple
was dedicated, or some sculptured representation connected with his
worship.1 In India a more frequent mode of displaying these was
to arrange them in a continuous gallery, such as that round the
eastern end of the court of the Kailasa, and such as are generally
found in Jaina temples. Either of these plans was preferable to
the Dravidian mode of crowding these cells on the successive storeys
of their Gropuras or their Temples, and placing the images, or the
manifestations of the God, outside in front of the cells.
A crooked passage, 282 feet long, leads from the face of the rock
to the courtyard of the temple, so that it is not seen from the
outside at all, and all the anomalous effects of a temple in a pit
which were pointed out in speaking of the Kailasa are here
exaggerated to a ten-fold extent. Besides these defects in design,
this temple at Dhamnar is so small that it would hardly merit
notice here, were it not, that like the Kailasa it marks the final
triumph of the Brahmans over the Buddhists in the eighth century,
and was placed here for that purpose. In an architectural sense,
however, it is valuable, as being a perfectly unaltered example of
the northern, as the Kailasa is of the southern, style of architecture
as practised at an age when the idea of utilising the living rock
for the purposes of architectural display was fast dying out.
1 Hist, of Indian and East. Arch., p. 652.