The Ram temple in Ayodhya will be inaugurated on January 22. Chandrakant Sompura, 81, and his son Ashish, 51, have designed the complex in the Nagara style of temple architecture.
A ‘language’ of architecture
The Nagara style of temple architecture emerged some time in the fifth century CE, during the late Gupta period, in northern India. It is seen in juxtaposition with the Dravida style of southern India, which too emerged in the same period.
The use of the term ‘style’, however, is debated.
“Nagara and Dravida may be called ‘styles’, but they cover vast areas and time spans,” Adam Hardy wrote in his highly influential The Temple Architecture of India (2007). Instead of ‘styles’, he refers to the two as “the two great classical languages of Indian temple architecture”.
“‘Languages’ seems a [more] suitable term, in that each is a system providing a ‘vocabulary’, a kit of parts, along with a ‘grammar’ which regulates the ways of putting the parts together,” he wrote.
Distinguished by a towering shikhara
Nagara temples are built on a raised plinth, with the garbha griha (sanctum sanctorum) — where the idol of the deity rests — the most sacred part of the temple. Towering over the garbha griha is the shikhara (literally ‘mountain peak’), the most distinguishable aspect of Nagara style temples.
As the name suggests, shikharas are human-made representations of the natural and cosmological order, as imagined in Hindu tradition.
“Meru, Mandara and Kailasa are the first three names amongst the twenty types of temples described in the early texts … all three are the names of the Mountain, which is the axis of the world,” Stella Kramrisch wrote in her pioneering work, The Hindu Temple Vol I (1946). “In these names rises the temple, the image, aim and destination of this world edifice.”
A typical Nagara style temple also comprises a circumambulatory passage around the garbha griha, and one or more mandapas (halls) on the same axis as it. Elaborate murals and reliefs often adorn its walls.
Five modes of Nagara architecture
Depending on the period and geography, there is a large variation when it comes to what a shikhara looks like, or how it is used in a temple’s design. On this basis, Hardy identifies five modes of Nagara temple architecture — Valabhi, Phamsana, Latina, Shekhari, and Bhumija.
The first two are associated with what scholars have classified as Early Nagara Style. “The Valabhi begins as a masonry rendering of the barrel-roofed [wooden] structure, simple or with aisles, familiar through chaitya halls [prayer halls, most associated with Buddhist shrines]. A formalisation of multi-eave towers, wedded to a piling up of slabs, leads to the Phamsana,” Hardy wrote.
From these modes emerged the Latina — a shikhara which is a single, slightly curved tower with four sides of equal length. “The mode emerged in the Gupta heartland, was complete with curvature by the early seventh century, and during that century spread across the entire breadth of northern India,” Hardy explained. “For three centuries it reigned supreme, the peak — literally — of Nagara temple architecture,” he wrote.
The tenth century onwards, composite Latinas began to emerge, giving rise to Shekhari and Bhumija styles. The Shekhari shape has attached sub-spires or spirelets, echoing the main shape. These may run up most of the face of the shikhara, and be of more than one size. The Bhumija, on the other hand, has miniature spires, in horizontal and vertical rows, all the way to the top, creating a grid-like effect on each face. The actual shikhara often approaches a pyramidal shape, with the curve of the Latina less visible.
Important to note is that these modes are somewhat simplified scholastic classifications. Temple architects of yore did not consciously choose to adhere to any mode — they simply followed and innovated on existing design traditions they saw around them, and over time, broader trends emerged.
Consequently, there is also immense variation within these modes. Temples can even contain multiple kinds of shikharas on top of a simple structure, with the tallest always being on top of the garbha griha.
Comparison to Dravida style
The Dravida counterpart to the shikhara is the vimana. There exists, however, a fundamental difference.
In the Dravida style temples, vimanas are typically smaller than the great gatehouses or gopurams, which are the most immediately striking architectural elements in a temple complex. Moreover, while shikharas are mentioned in southern Indian architectural sources, they refer to only the dome-shaped crowning cap atop the vimana.
The existence of gopurams also points to another unique feature of the Dravida style — the presence of a boundary wall. Few Nagara style temple complexes are lined with distinctive boundary walls that are a part of the temple’s design.
This is one of Ayodhya’s Ram temple’s ‘hybrid’ features — although no elaborate gopuram has been built (citing paucity of space), a 732m long wall runs around the temple compound.
