Like the religions that inspired them, India's temples humble the observer with their grandeur and baffle him with their varied complexity. Some of the oldest are shadowy caverns cut into rocky cliffs by Buddhist monks. Others, erected later by various Hindu sects, are extravagant, many-cham-bered structures topped by cathedral-like spires. In still other parts of India, temples grew into sprawling walled cities that doubled as artistic and commercial centers, where sages gave classes in the Hindu scriptures and merchants erected bazaars to sell their wares.
The temples were not only complex in layout, but were covered with ornamental carving, often in such abundance that it obscured the basic structure. Each of these carvings had its own symbolic meaning, derived from one of the many different sources of India's cultural tradition. Buddhist lotus flowers, Hindu gods and representations of spirits from India's earliest folk myths were often crowded together in a single sculpted panel, together with figures of elephants, monsters, princes and erotic nymphs. It is as though the sculptors had tried to incorporate the whole spectrum of Indian culture into their work. They seem to have succeeded; Indians, at least, thought of their temples as replicas of the entire universe in stone.
A PROFUSION OF CARVING embellishes the capital of a stone column and a lintel inside a Buddhist cave-temple at Ajanta. From the lintel, stone ribbing springs upward along a vaulted ceiling.
World History
