Indian Classical

A Hindu temple centers on the garbhagriha, a small, windowless sanctum that holds the image of the deity, with a tower above it and one or more mandapas, pillared halls, in front. Northern temples, in the Nagara style, have a curving tower called a shikhara. Southern temples, in the Dravida style, have a vimana, a tower rising in stepped stories, and later ones add gateway towers called gopurams. Outer walls are covered with carved gods, dancers and animals.

The Brihadisvara Temple in Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu (completed 1010), has a granite vimana 63.4 m high. At Khajuraho in Madhya Pradesh, about 25 of an original 85 Hindu and Jain temples survive; the largest, Kandariya Mahadeva (about 1029), has a shikhara about 35 m high. The Kailasa Temple at Ellora was cut downward from a single mass of rock in the 8th century. The Konark Sun Temple in Odisha (about 1250) is built as a stone chariot with 24 carved wheels and seven horses.

Surviving monumental architecture in India begins with Buddhist sites. The emperor Ashoka built the first stupa at Sanchi, a domed relic mound, in the 3rd century BCE. From about 100 BCE, monks at Ajanta cut worship halls (chaityas) and monasteries (viharas) into a cliff, with a second phase of work about 460-480 CE. The earliest surviving freestanding stone Hindu temples date from the Gupta period, including the Dashavatara Temple at Deogarh (early 6th century). By the 7th century the main parts of the temple and the texts that governed its design were established.

Rock-cut work reached its largest scale in the Kailasa Temple at Ellora, made under the Rashtrakuta king Krishna I (ruled 756-773). Regional dynasties then built the largest stone temples: the Chandelas at Khajuraho, mostly between 885 and 1000; the Cholas at Thanjavur, where Rajaraja I built the Brihadisvara Temple between 1003 and 1010; and the Eastern Gangas at Konark, under Narasimhadeva I, around 1250. Konark's main tower collapsed in 1837, and its entrance hall is the largest surviving part.