Buddhist Chaitya hall, if pierced with an opening in the side instead of at the end, would form a Gopura; and the Hindus, when building in a Buddhist country, still adhere to this form more closely than in their own territories, as may be seen by the woodcut No. 59, representing the gateway of a temple in Ceylon, still retaining the simple form almost lost in the complication to which their gateways have been subjected in modern times.

One of the tallest gate pyramids I know of is that belonging to the principal temple at Combaconum (woodent No. 60), which became the capital of the Chola after the temporary abandonment of Tanjore. It rises to 12 stories, including the basement, which is of granite and plain, while the whole of the pyramid is of brick stuccoed, and covered with sculpture and architectural ornaments to an extent undreamt of by European imagination. Its want of proportion, and the endless repetition of small parts, prevent its being so pleasing an architectural object as the smaller gate pyramids generally are, though it is certainly imposing from its mass.

PILLARED HALLS.

By far the most extraordinary buildings connected with these fanes are the pillared colonnades or choultries which occupy the spaces between the various enclosures of the temples. They are of all shapes and sizes, from the little pavilion supported on 4 pillars up to the magnificent hall numbering a thousand.

Their uses too are most various: in ancient times they served as porches to temples; sometimes as halls of ceremony, where the dancing-girls attached to the temples dance and sing; sometimes they are cloisters surrounding the whole area of the temple, at others swinging porches, where the gods enjoy at stated seasons that intellectual amusement. But by far their most important application is when used as nuptial halls,' in which the mystic union of the male and female divinities is celebrated once a year. Those dedicated to these festivals sometimes attain an extent of 1000 columns, and are called in consequence halls of 1000 columns, though they do not in all instances make up this complement.

At Tinnevelly the great pillared hall has 100 columns in its length, by 10 in width, so that it would have exactly that number were not 24 omitted to make way for a small temple. At Chillumbrum the hall is 24 pillars wide by 41 in length, which, adding the 16 of the porch, would make up the number; but some are omitted in the centre to admit of space for ceremonies, so that the actual number is only 930. At Tiruvalur the great hall is 16 pillars wide by 43 in depth, or 688; one-half of them, however, support no roof, so that it is probably unfinished. At Seringham the hall is of about the same extent; and several other temples have halls, the number of whose

2

In this case they are called chaöri, the same word, I believe, radically, as choultry.

2 Ram Raz, Essay on Hindu Architecture, plate xlviii.

pillars varies from 600 to 1000; in almost every instance composed of a hard close-grained granite, covered with sculpture from the base to the capital, and in most instances no two pillars are exactly alike. There is thus an endless and bewildering variety in the detail, though the general dimensions and effect are the same.

The construction of these choultries will be best understood from the annexed section of one used as a porch to a small temple at Chillumbrum; as will be seen, it is a five-aisled porch, supported by six

61. Section of Porch of Temple at Chillumbrum. From a Sketch by the Author. No scale.

square columns, about 18 in. each way and 20 ft. in height. The outer aisles are only 6 ft. in width, the inner 8 ft., and they are roofed simply by flat stones laid side by side. The whole energy of the architect, however, has been reserved for the central aisle, which has a clear width of 21 ft. 6 in.; a space so wide that it would be difficult to span it without using stones so heavy as to crush the substructure. To avoid this a bracketing shaft of singular elegance is attached to the front of the square pillar, and a system of bracketing carried up till the space to be spanned by flat stones is about equal to that of the side aisles, or in other words the space between the pillars is divided into three equal portions of about 8 ft. each, the side portion borne on the brackets, and the central space only remaining to be roofed. Lest, however, there should be a tendency to lateral weakness in so extensive a bracket, about half-way up it a stay is introduced, in the form of a slight stone beam extending from one to the other, which certainly adds extremely to the elegance, and also probably to the strength of the structure.

1

The general effect of the arrangements of this porch will be seen from the woodcut No. 62, though it cannot do justice to its singular elegance and grace. This is the oldest example I have seen of the arrangement, dating probably from the tenth century, and therefore the most elegant. The more modern examples, though richer, have lost much

of the beauty, and nearly all the constructive propriety and grace, which we find in this. One of the most remarkable of these is the hall built by Trimul Naik at Madura, and tolerably well known to the English public from Daniell's illustration of it. It was commenced in 1623, is said to have cost nearly a million sterling, and occupied twenty-two years in its erection.' As will be seen by the annexed plan (woodcut No. 63), the building is 333 ft. long by 81 ft. 10 in. wide, and is supported by 128 pillars or piers, all of which differ, and all are covered with the most elaborate and minute architectural ornaments-many having figures attached to the fronts of them, as well as groups on their sides. In this instance the bracketing shaft has

1 J. R. A. S., vol. iii. p. 232.

merged into the pillar; the whole becomes a pier from 5 ft. to 6 ft. in width, with scarcely a reminiscence of the original arrangement from which it sprang. The accompanying elevation of one of these (woodcut No. 64) will show the form which the piers took about this time, and which is common to them all, after this date, though not found before. The object in building this magnificent choultry was to provide a suitable abode for the god, who consented to leave his temple for ten days every year, and visit the king, on condition of his providing a suitable building for his reception.

63 Plan of Trimul Naik's Choultry.

64. Pillar in Trimul Naik's Choultry. From drawings in the possession of the Royal Asiatic Society.

Between these two arrangements-the more modern, where the square pillars merge into flat piers, and the older one, in which the square shape is never lost sight of-come the pillared halls of the celebrated temple of Ramisseram on an island between Ceylon and the mainland. These are 5-aisled choultries, and encircle the temple twice, and with their various junctions extend to near 4000 ft. in length, with every variety of light and shade and complexity of form

Н

and effect, making up one of the most vast and elaborate of all the temples in the south of India.'

Where the subordination of parts is preserved, the general effect of these choultries is pleasing, and, from their vastness, sometimes almost reaches to sublimity. But in the more modern times this quality is neglected, and, as at Tinnevelly and Chillumbrum, both of which were erected during the last century, the choultries are mere collections each of 1000 columns, placed at equal distances, generally no more than 6 ft. apart, without any variety or harmony of arrangement whatever. Such a forest of pillars, carved and elaborated as these are, cannot fail to produce some effect, but it would be difficult to conceive any design on which so much labour could be bestowed productive of so little of either beauty or grandeur.

In other instances, as at Seringham, Conjeveram, and elsewhere, a middle course is followed between these two extremes, the great hall being traversed by one wide aisle in the centre for the whole of its greater length, and intersected by transepts of like dimension running across at right angles. There still remain seven side-aisles on each side, in which all the pillars are equally spaced out. In these, looking outwards from the centre aisle, the arrangement is not without a certain magnificence of effect, but it neither has the sublimity of the long-drawn vistas of Ramisseram, nor the spacious exuberance of Trimul Naik's choultry at Madura.

The mode in which those various parts are generally grouped together will be understood by the two following illustrations, one a plan of the temple at Tinnevelly, the other an isometric view of that at Tiruvalur, both comparatively modern examples, but sufficiently characteristic to explain all that has been said above of the style.

The temple at Tiruvalur measures externally 945 ft. by 701 ft., and has 5 gate pyramids in its outer enclosure, 2 in the second, and one in the inner. The sanctuary is double, and surrounded by a cloister. The next enclosure is crowded by temples and buildings of every shape and size, placed without the least reference to symmetrical arrangement. In the outer court are several larger temples, some placed at different angles from the rest; and towards the principal entrance is the great choultry, intended apparently to have had 1000 columns, but evidently unfinished, one-half of those already erected having no roof to support. As before mentioned, the number now standing is 688. These are all equally spaced, except that there is a broad aisle down the centre, and a narrower transverse avenue in the direction of the entrance. Hence it will easily be understood how inferior, as an architectural design, this is to such an arrangement as that of the 420 columns of the temple at Sadree, or indeed of any Jaina building, however small. Their uniformly flat roofs prevent even the older choultries from reaching the beauty of these domical

A plan of this temple is given in the Journal of the Geographical Society of Bombay, vol. vii. Salt published a view of its

gopura, and in the India House are MS. views of its interior.

2 See

p. 79, woodcuts 54 and 55.