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Hindu temple architecture as the main form of Hindu architecture has many varieties of style, though the basic nature of the Hindu temple remains the same, with the essential feature an inner sanctum, the garbha griha or womb-chamber, where the primary Murti or the image of a deity is housed in a simple bare cell. For rituals and prayers, this chamber frequently has an open space that can be moved in a clockwise direction. There are frequently additional buildings and structures in the vicinity of this chamber, with the largest ones covering several acres. On the exterior, the garbhagriha is crowned by a tower-like shikhara, also called the vimana in the south. The shrine building often includes an circumambulatory passage for parikrama, a mandapa congregation hall, and sometimes an antarala antechamber and porch between garbhagriha and mandapa. In addition to other small temples in the compound, there may be additional mandapas or buildings that are either connected or separate from the larger temples.[1]

The architectural principles of Hindu temples in India are described in Shilpa Shastras and Vastu Sastras.[4][5] The Hindu culture has encouraged aesthetic independence to its temple builders, and its architects have sometimes exercised considerable flexibility in creative expression by adopting other perfect geometries and mathematical principles in Mandir construction to express the Hindu way of life.[6]

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Remains of early elliptical shrines discovered in Besnagar (3rd-2nd century BCE)[10] and Nagari (1st century BCE), may be the earliest known Hindu temple structures, associated to the early Bhagavata tradition, a precursor of Vaishnavism.[11][12][13] In Tamil Nadu, the earliest version of the Murugan Temple, Saluvankuppam, north-facing and in brick, appears to date from between the 3rd century BCE and 3rd century CE.[14]

Though there are hardly any remains of stone Hindu temples before the Gupta dynasty in the 5th century CE, there probably were earlier structures in timber-based architecture. The rock-cut Udayagiri Caves (401 CE) are among the most important early sites, built with royal sponsorship, recorded by inscriptions, and with impressive sculpture.[20] The earliest preserved Hindu temples are simple cell-like stone temples, some rock-cut and others structural, as at Temple 17 at Sanchi.[21] By the 6th or 7th century, these evolved into high shikhara stone superstructures. However, there is inscriptional evidence such as the ancient Gangadhara inscription from about 424, states Meister, that towering temples existed before this time and these were possibly made from more perishable material. These temples have not survived.[21][22]

Examples of early major North Indian temples that have survived after the Udayagiri Caves in Madhya Pradesh include those at Tigawa,[23] Deogarh, Parvati Temple, Nachna (465),[22] Bhitargaon, the largest Gupta brick temple to survive,[24] Lakshman Brick Temple, Sirpur (600-625 CE); Rajiv Lochan temple, Rajim (7th-century).[25] Gop Temple in Gujarat (c. 550 or later) is an oddity, with no surviving close comparator.[26]

No pre-7th century CE South Indian free-standing stone temples have survived. Examples of early major South Indian temples that have survived, some in ruins, include the diverse styles at Mahabalipuram, from the 7th and 8th centuries. According to Meister, the Mahabalipuram temples are "monolithic models of a variety of formal structures all of which already can be said to typify a developed "Dravida" (South Indian) order". They suggest a tradition and a knowledge base existed in South India by the time of the early Chalukya and Pallava era when these were built. In the Deccan, Cave 3 of the Badami cave temples was cut out in 578 CE, and Cave 1 is probably slightly earlier.[27] Other examples are found in Aihole and Pattadakal.[25][28]

By about the 7th century most main features of the Hindu temple were established along with theoretical texts on temple architecture and building methods.[30] From between about the 7th and 13th centuries a large number of temples and their ruins have survived (though far fewer than once existed). Many regional styles developed, very often following political divisions, as large temples were typically built with royal patronage. The Vesara style originated in the region between the Krishna and Tungabhadra rivers that is contemporary north Karnataka. According to some art historians, the roots of Vesara style can be traced to the Chalukyas of Badami (500-753AD) whose Early Chalukya or Badami Chalukya architecture built temples in a style that mixed some features of the nagara and the dravida styles, for example using both the northern shikhara and southern vimana type of superstructure over the sanctum in different temples of similar date, as at Pattadakal. This style was further refined by the Rashtrakutas of Manyakheta (750-983AD) in sites such as Ellora. Though there is clearly a good deal of continuity with the Badami or Early Chalukya style,[31] other writers only date the start of Vesara to the later Western Chalukyas of Kalyani (983-1195 AD),[32] in sites such as Lakkundi, Dambal, Itagi, and Gadag,[33] and continued by the Hoysala empire (1000-1330 AD).

The earliest examples of Pallava architecture are rock-cut temples dating from 610 to 690 CE and structural temples between 690 and 900 CE. The greatest accomplishments of the Pallava architecture are the rock-cut Group of Monuments at Mahabalipuram at Mahabalipuram, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, including the Shore Temple. This group includes both excavated pillared halls, with no external roof except the natural rock, and monolithic shrines where the natural rock is entirely cut away and carved to give an external roof. Early temples were mostly dedicated to Shiva. The Kailasanatha temple also called Rajasimha Pallaveswaram in Kanchipuram built by Narasimhavarman II also known as Rajasimha is a fine example of the Pallava style temple.

In the north, Muslim invasions from the 11th century onwards reduced the building of temples, and saw the loss of many existing ones.[30] The south also witnessed Hindu-Muslim conflict that affected the temples, but the region was relatively less affected than the north.[37] In late 14th century, the Hindu Vijayanagara Empire came to power and controlled much of South India. During this period, the distinctive very tall gopuram gatehouse, (actually a late development, from the 12th century or later), was typically added to older large temples.[30]

Possibly the oldest Hindu temples in South East Asia dates back to 2nd century BCE from the Funan site of Oc Eo in the Mekong Delta. They were probably dedicated to a sun god, Shiva and Vishnu. The temple were constructed using granite blocks and bricks, one with a small stepped pond.[38]

The earliest evidence trace to Sanskrit stone inscriptions found on the islands and the mainland Southeast Asia is the V Cnh inscription of Champa dated to 2nd or 3rd century CE in Vietnam or in Cambodia between 4th and 5th-century CE.[39][note 1] Prior to the 14th-century local versions of Hindu temples were built in Myanmar, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. These developed several national traditions, and often mixed Hinduism and Buddhism. Theravada Buddhism prevailed in many parts of the South-East Asia, except Malaysia and Indonesia where Islam displaced them both.[41][42]

Hindu temples in South-East Asia developed their own distinct versions, mostly based on Indian architectural models, both North Indian and South Indian styles.[43] However, the Southeast Asian temple architecture styles are different and there is no known single temple in India that can be the source of the Southeast Asian temples. According to Michell, it is as if the Southeast Asian architects learned from "the theoretical prescriptions about temple building" from Indian texts, but never saw one. They reassembled the elements with their own creative interpretations. The Hindu temples found in Southeast Asia are more conservative and far more strongly link the Mount Meru-related cosmological elements of Indian thought than the Hindu temples found in the subcontinent.[43] Additionally, unlike the Indian temples, the sacred architecture in Southeast Asia associated the ruler (devaraja) with the divine, with the temple serving as a memorial to the king as much as being house of gods.[43] Notable examples of Southeast Asian Hindu temple architecture are the Shivaist Prambanan Trimurti temple compound in Java, Indonesia (9th century),[44] and the Vishnuite Angkor Wat in Cambodia (12th century).[45]

At the centre of the temple, typically below and sometimes above or next to the deity, is mere hollow space with no decoration, symbolically representing Purusa, the Supreme Principle, the sacred Universal, one without form, which is present everywhere, connects everything, and is the essence of everyone. A Hindu temple is meant to encourage reflection, facilitate purification of one's mind, and trigger the process of inner realization within the devotee.[2] The specific process is left to the devotee's school of belief. The primary deity of different Hindu temples varies to reflect this spiritual spectrum.

The appropriate site for a Mandir, suggest ancient Sanskrit texts, is near water and gardens, where lotus and flowers bloom, where swans, ducks and other birds are heard, where animals rest without fear of injury or harm.[2] These harmonious places were recommended in these texts with the explanation that such are the places where gods play, and thus the best site for Hindu temples.[2][46]

While major Hindu mandirs are recommended at sangams (confluence of rivers), river banks, lakes and seashore, the Brhat Samhita and Puranas suggest temples may also be built where a natural source of water is not present. Here too, they recommend that a pond be built preferably in front or to the left of the temple with water gardens. If water is neither present naturally nor by design, water is symbolically present at the consecration of temple or the deity. Temples may also be built, suggests Visnudharmottara in Part III of Chapter 93,[49] inside caves and carved stones, on hill tops affording peaceful views, mountain slopes overlooking beautiful valleys, inside forests and hermitages, next to gardens, or at the head of a town street. ff782bc1db