platform at the top of the curvilinear superstructure). Ex-
tending the dimensions of the brahmastha ̄na, the necking
above this vedi takes the form of the emerging “world pillar”
(axis mundi), which passes symbolically through the sanctum
with the body of the temple as its sheath.
As North Indian architecture evolves between the sixth
and the thirteenth centuries, the plan of the temple shows
more and more offsets, the walls gain more images, and the
central tower of the temple becomes clustered by other, min-
iature towers, increasingly giving the effect of a mountain
peak through specifically architectural means. If this variety
of constructional forms, buttresses, and images “body” forth
reality in the manifest world, the ribbed a ̄mala stone at the
top of the temple, much like the staff that sprouts in Tann-
häuser, presents the ripening seed’s potentiality for fruition.
Both the pot with germinating seeds that is buried under the
foundation and the vase finial placed on top of the temple
as an act of final consecration ritually help to perpetuate cy-
cles of cosmic growth and fruition.
PALACE, HUT, AND FORTRESS. The temple thus combines
physically the pillar that marks the axis of cosmic parturition,
the altar of sacrifice taking the shape of the created universe,
and the need for shelter of the tender divinity and the human
worshiper; it unites the cosmic mountain and potent cave.
South Indian temples, built in stone from the seventh centu-
ry CE, give emphasis to the temple’s role as shelter for anthro-
pomorphic divinities by retaining throughout their evolution
a terraced, palatial form crowned by a domed ́sikhara that
has the shape of the ascetic’s hut. As early as the A ̄j ̄ıvika caves
in the Baraba ̄r Hills of Bihar, dating from the third century
BCE, the hut of the living ascetic had been an architectural
form appropriate for presenting the concept of sacred poten-
tiality.
The temple is called pra ̄sa ̄da (“palace”) in North India,
and the architectural veneer of its superstructure, in both
north and south, allude to forms of palace architecture. In
the north, these have been completely subordinated to the
temple’s vertical ascent, becoming body for the altar that still
presents itself at the top of the temple, open to the sky. In
the south, deities sheltered within the temple’s compact, pal-
ace-like structure increasingly took on the accoutrements of
a secular ruler, through ritual and the cycle of festivals. While
divinity in the form of images (mu ̄rtis) could take on quali-
ties of royalty, and kings did validate their role by patronage
of temples, the king was considered a reflection of divine
order principally through the quality of his actions and the
nature of his responsibilities, not by divine right.
If the temple is palace for divinity, it also is fortress, pro-
tecting the world from disorder and chaos. Corners are “at-
tended with evils” according to the Br:hat Sam:hita ̄ (53.84),
and “the householder, if he is anxious to be happy, should
carefully preserve Brahman, who is stationed in the center
of the dwelling, from injury” (53.66). In the puranic leg-
end of S ́iva conquering the three worlds, he frees three “cit-
ies” of demons, making them his devotees and transforming
the cities into his temples. In fact, images of Guardians of
the Quarters (dikpa ̄las) are placed on the corners of temples
from about the seventh century, and a number of geometric
experiments with plans based on the rotation of squares seem
to play on the fort as a form for temple architecture.
Large temples in South India often enclose the sanctum
in a series of ambulatory paths and walls that simulate rings
of fortification around a walled city, and in fact use the
eighty-one-square man:d:ala appropriate for the city, with a
single square at the center surrounded by concentric rings of
squares, to define the temple’s plan. If practice in South
India increasingly emphasized the royal personality of the di-
vinity and his relation to his subjects and kingdom by use
of great festival processions, it also began to surround tem-
ples and contiguous sections of the city with walls pierced
by gateways (gopuras) that became the focus of patronage
themselves.
ACCESS AND ASPIRANT. The Hindu temple must also act as
access and approach for aspirants and worshipers. This role
changes the temple from a centralized, bilaterally symmetri-
cal structure (reflecting the nature of the cosmogonic pro-
cess) to one with a defined longitudinal axis. On that axis
the worshipers approach their personal divinity within the
sanctum; but also on that axis the aspirants increasingly can
place themselves, in halls built for that purpose, as if under
the umbrella of the sacrificer, positioning themselves for as-
cent. “The whole intention of the Vedic tradition and of the
sacrifice is to define the Way (ma ̄rga) by which the aspirant... can ascend [the three] worlds,” wrote Ananda K. Coo-
maraswamy. “Earth, Air, and Sky... compose the vertical
Axis of the Universe.... [These are] the Way by which the
Devas first strode up and down these worlds... and the
Way for the Sacrificer now to do likewise” (“Svayama ̄tr:n:n:a ̄:
Janua Coeli,” in Coomaraswamy, vol. 1, Selected Papers: Tra-
ditional Art and Symbolism, ed. Roger Lipsey, Princeton,
1977, pp. 465–467, 470). The temple is as much a monu-
ment to the procession of time as it is a static model of the
cosmos or a marker of its origin. Padadevata ̄s ringing the
va ̄stuman:d:ala (grid) are identified with the asterisms
(naks:atras) of the lunar calendar, and the temple both helps
generate and acts as a focus for the ritual time of the festival
calendar. Personal ritual within the temple involves both ap-
proach and circumambulation, and movement by the aspi-
rant through time toward release had to be a recognized part
of the architect’s program for the temple.
All sides of the temple allow access to the divinity
through imagery, but the entry that pierces and makes ritual
approach possible, most frequently on the east, is given in-
creasing importance and architectural definition as temples
evolve. Halls for ritual and assembly are added along this axis
and sometimes used for dance or music to entertain the di-
vinity, but often they serve simply as shelters for approach.
One common and potent configuration places the sanctum
(sometimes surrounded by an enclosed ambulatory path) be-
hind a closed hall that may also be fronted by an open hall
and an entry pavilion.
9040 TEMPLE: HINDU TEMPLES