An upsurge of Hinduism during the last days of the Gupta Empire brought the Indian temple above ground and into a more elaborate stage of development. Thousands of shrines were built, each dedicated to a particular Hindu god. In one of the largest concentrations, at Bhuvaneshvar, near India's eastern coast, 700 temples were erected along the shore of a sacred lake. The older ones, which date from the Eighth Century, are simple two-room shrines, modest in size and restrained in ornament. But with time, the temples grew into multichambered complexes like the structure at the right, endowed with lofty, beehive-shaped towers and completely covered by extravagant carvings.
Like their Buddhist predecessors, the Hindu temples carried a symbolic meaning in almost every element of their design. An inner sanctum, housing a replica of the temple's deity, was built in the form of a square, the imagined shape of the universe. Above this soared the tallest of the temple's spires, which was intended to represent several different Hindu concepts: the mountain of Shiva, Universal Man or a mythological pillar connecting heaven and earth.
A SERIES OF SPACES, iticreasing in height from the entrance at far left, leads to the tiny inner sanctum of the Lingaraja Temple, shown at the base of the tallest spire in the cutaway drawing below. The largest and most elaborate building at Bhuvaneshvar, the temple was erected around 1000 A. D.
PATTERNS AND FIGURES cover a Wall of a temple at Bhuvaneshvar (left). A dwarf and a dancing girl embellish two pilasters. The stylized strings of beads at far left stand for the eternal flowing of the earth's waters.
A DECORATIVE MAIDEN from the Rajarani Temple at Bhuvaneshvar is thought to represent either a dancing girl in the retinue of one of the Hindu gods, or a goddess derived from an early Indian folk religion.
World History
