Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/463

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CHAP. IV. CONCLUSION. 409 this wonderful monastery, there are no traces of Buddhism there now. The earliest structures were possibly of wood, and the place has been often destroyed. It was near Chandraguptapur, the capital of an early kingdom of Sri-Sailam, occasionally mentioned in inscriptions. The present temples stand within a rectangular enclosure about 630 ft. from north to south by 510 ft. from east to west, w mpq ]Era H nff^

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i i !* I I 239- Plan of the Temples at Sri-Sailam, Scale 150 ft. to i in. with a slight extension on the west side and gopurams on the other three, all in the style of the i6th and I7th centuries, having the lower storeys in stone and the upper in brick though stone is more easily procurable in such a locality. The temples are now dedicated to Mallikarjuna, a form of Siva, and to Bhra- marambha or Madhava and Parvati. The sculptures on the walls of the court are irregularly disposed in blocks in the upper four courses on the outer face. They are almost a counterpart of those on the walls of the Hazara-Rama temple at Vijayanagar, and belong to the same period. Indeed, one is led to suppose