Tradition · architectural tradition
Nāgara temple architecture
Also known as Nagara style, Northern temple style, Latina, Shekhari, Bhumija
The northern temple order named in the Shilpa Shāstras against the southern drāvida: a square sanctum under a curved shikhara whose profile is generated by a rule of proportion, the rekhā. Its three families — latina, shekharī and bhūmija — differ in how the spire is multiplied, from one curve to a clustered range.
- Date
- c. 5th–13th century
- Function
- Archaeology & heritage
- Tradition
- Shilpa Shāstra; Samarāngana Sūtradhāra
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
Worth knowing
The curve is set out on the ground before building, by proportion rather than by eye, so temples a thousand kilometres apart share a profile. Where nāgara meets drāvida in the Deccan the result is called vesara, a third order no text quite describes.
Connections (4)
- Architectural modelKhajuraho
Kandariya Mahādeva is the shekharī spire at its most developed: eighty-four half-spires clustered around the main shikhara so the silhouette reads as a range of peaks rather than one. It is the standard example of what the nāgara order could do once the single curve was multiplied. The proportional rule that generates the curve was set out on the ground before building began, which is how temples a thousand kilometres apart came to share one profile.
- Architectural modelLingaraja, Bhubaneswar
The Kalinga school is nāgara worked out along its own lines: the rekhā deul keeps a single curved tower, largely unclustered, and grows instead by adding halls in front of it. Lingarāja is that solution complete, and the five hundred temples around it in Bhubaneswar show every stage of arriving at it.
- Architectural modelBhojeshwar Mahādev, Bhojpur
Bhojpur carries the other half of the evidence: the temple was never finished, so the earthen ramp that raised its stones is still there and the architects' drawings are still incised on the surrounding rock. It is the rarest thing in Indian architecture, a nāgara building caught in the act of construction.
- Alternative toThe Kaliṅga śilpa tradition
Kalinga building is classed within the wider Nagara family and is quite unlike the rest of it: the tower rises vertically and then curves in sharply at the top under a flat amalaka, the porch is a stepped pyramid rather than a shallow roof, and the whole is described in Odia manuals with its own vocabulary. Central Indian Nagara temples cluster their towers and Odishan ones do not, which is why Rajarani, whose tower is clustered, has never been fully explained.
Sources
Wikipedia, “Nagara architecture”. Sangeet Natak Akademi and Ministry of Textiles documentation, and the standard field studies.
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