TEMPLES THAT BECAME CITIES

While the builders in northern India were raising mountainlike shrines, a different type of temple architecture was evolving in the far south. In its own way it was as complex and universal as the styles of northern and central India. Its massive gateways and labyrinthine walls sprawled over many acres and embraced whole communities of religious buildings, as in the 14th Century Arunacalesvara Temple (right), some 100 miles from Madras.

The great southern temples grew up around small sanctuaries that were located in central courtyards and enclosed by heavy stone walls. In time, their precincts were expanded by the addition of concentric rings of newer and larger walls. Gateways developed into monumental rectangular pyramids with 100-foot superstructures of brick, their outer surfaces entirely smothered in stucco carvings of gods and fanciful beasts.

Often the expanding temples grew to encompass entire towns. Merchants set up bazaars in the shadow of pillared halls built for religious festivals. Children scurried among the shrines and dormitories erected for pilgrims, and men and women performed ritual ablutions in huge stone pools. Within the walls of these temple cities the mystical religion of the Hindu priests was merged completely with the bustling vitality of daily life.