1. Introduction and Types of Temples in India

CHARACTERISTICS FEATURES OF ORISSN TEMPLES Orissa is a land of temples and it is also believed to be the Epic centre of pancopasana of Hinduism. All through the ages, Orissa has retained a cultural identity much more prominent than her geographical situations and political establishments. The political stability by periodic order and economic vitality through a larger part of history were responsible for the growth of culture. The enormous wealth of the country led to the development of art and architecture. The importance given to image worship in India and belief in personal god led to the erction of temples. Temple is a abode of Hindu gods and goddesses. Etymologically, the word temple is derived from the Latin word Templum, which means an open or consecrated space or a building inaugurated by an augur. It is generally conceived that a building used for the worship of Hindu gods and goddesses. In its primitive sense, this word corresponds to a place marked off as sacred to a god, in which the house of god may be erected. In its usage, it is rather employed in a restricted sense to denote various religious affiliations except Christianity and Islam.¹ The temple according to the Brahminical concept is not merely a place of devotion, but also an object of devotion like an image and the invisible spirit. Hence the temple is visualized as the human body. Accordingly, various parts of the temple are termed after the names of various limbs of human body with architectural connotations. 2 It is true that temples in some form must have originated as soon as the image worship came into vogue. When god was universally conceived in human form, such an anthropomorphic form required a habitation; a shelter and this probably resulted in a structural shrine.³ 1. Types of Temples in India: The Indian Silpasastras recognize three main types of temples known as the Nagara, the Dravida and the Vesara.* All the available texts are agreed on the point that the Nagara Style was prevalent in the region between the Himalayas

and the Vindhya. The Dravida country is well known and the texts rightly confine the Dravida Style to that part of the country lying between the river Krsna and the cape of Kanyakumari. The Nagara and the Dravida Styles can thus be explained with reference to Northern India and the Dravida country respectively, and the characteristic form and features of each easily determined. The term Vesara, however, is not free from vagueness. Some of the texts ascribe the Vesara Style to the country between the Vindhyas and the river Krsna. This separate style of temple architecture may be recognized a Style known to the archaeologists as the "Calukyan Style". The Vesara or Calukyan Style, however, is a hybrid one, borrowing elements and features both from the Nagara and the Dravida. The Nagara Style developed in North India and the Dravida Style in South India. But the indegenous scholars have classified the entire temple architecture of India into four types such as the Nagara, the Dravida, the Vesara and the Kalinga. Some eminent scholars like R.D.Banerjee, R.P.Das and K.C.Panigrahi have accepted the temples of Orissa as a subclass in the category of Indo-Aryan Nagara Style temples of Central and North India.5 In the Dravida Style the sikhara (spire) of the temple is marked by a succession of gradually receding storeys. The Nagara Style of temple architecture is characterized by curvilinear sikharas. The Kalinga Style temple architecture of Orissa appears to have been a product of the Nagara Style temple architecture of North India. But it has also some distinctive characteristics of its own. This Kalinga Style architecture shows that even in the pre-Muslim period, the pre-dominant temple style of Orissa came to be recognized as a distinct one. The Kalinga country, in its stages of art and cultural growth assiduously preserved to transcribe its own artistic environment, which we find reflected in the entire gamut of its temple creations, which in the sequel, have become the cynosure of attracts and examination of the world of scholars, artists, artisans and the intellectual elite.6 The treatment of the temple art of Kalinga is in order to revivify its manifold graces of the past, its changing affiliations in religious cults and trends, its underlying fidelity to a co-ordinated life Style, depicting dance, music, devotion, sensualism, esoterics and all that humankind envisions in its persistent quest after the meaning of life. 25