Brabmanical Art: the end of the fifth century Brahmanism again became prominent, and occupied itself in monumental works. Toward the close of the tenth century it triumphed, and in the fourteenth century it drove with bloodshed the followers of Buddhism entirely out of India; they took refuge among other nations of Eastern Asia, particularly in China. Some of the Ellora caves are Bralimanical, as is at once apparent from their greater exuberance of fanciful detail. All the Brahmanical grottos are temples.
The mightiest is the colossal Kailasa, the true triumphal monument of Brabmanism—a vast court hewn out of the rock, with a huge mass left in its midst and hewn into temple-shape with an interior grotto; the exterior is adorned with architectonic forms in fantastic mag nificence. We cannot be certain whether the accepted age (early in the ninth century) is correct, and think it possible it may be more recent. The ground-plan is presented in Figure 6. More recent, perhaps, is the Dhumnar-Lena Grotto (fip,-. 5), which is more severe in style. The Indra Temple (figs. 1-3) is ascribed to the twelfth century.
The most recent group of grottos is on the Coromandel coast, not far from Sadras, and is known as the Raths of Mahavellipore (" the City of the Great Mountain"); these, which are of fantastic form, are ascribed to the thirteenth century.
The grotto-temples of Kailasa, Dhumnar-Lena, and Indra are detached buildings—small temples in the midst of the rock-courts. These, though only masses of stone left standing and hewn into shape, like the architec ture of the grottos themselves, give us an image of the forms which archi tecture employed for external decoration—forms in which even more than in the grottos luxuriance of decoration overwhelmed correct sim plicity. Their characteristic shape is that of a pyramid of many low stages. Such structures often rise to a considerable height. Thus, near the last-named group of cave-temples rises a towering temple-building of stone of fanciful form. The Hindus call such temples " vimanas;" the Europeans, "pagodas." The best-known and most celebrated is the colossal and fantastic Temple of Juggernaut, which is said to have been built in I I9S A. D.
Chalembaram is especially in the South of Hindustan that a wealth of forms the most capricious and fanciful finds expression in the pagodas. Most celebrated is that of Chalembaram, which encloses
a lofty columned hall of considerable circuit, and is alike noticeable from its magnificent design and from the richness and artistic grace of its details. Travellers as well as pious pilgrims have wondered at the mighty stone chains which, worked out of the same block with the two massive stone pillars, reach from the staircase doors to the interior of the pyramid.
Little less famous are the pagodas of Caujeveram, Tanjore, Madura IS, jig. 1), Tiravalur, etc. Such a pagoda is an aggregation of separate greater and smaller halls and temples surrounded bv one or more square walls, which are broken by tower-like, lofty pyramidal structures contain ing the entrances. Columned halls of several aisles with flat roofs alter nate in the interior with steeply-rising pyramidal chapels, courts, and spaces planted with trees and flowers. The buildings are covered with sculptured figures of every kind. Gigantic halls called choultries (fig. 2), set apart for the reception of pilgrims, are characteristic accom paniments of the enclosures of these temples. (See p. 121.) Jain third sect, the Jains, have in the sumptuous structures brought the dome of the topes into fanciful hut organized connection with the rich system of forms of Brahmanical architecture. Certain buildings of this sect may be of great age, but the most characteristic are quite recent.
Temple of most flourishing period of Jain art is the fifteenth century, during the reign of Khumbo-Rana of Oudeypore, who built the temple at Sadree at the foot of the Aravnlli Mountains. In the centre of the temple stands a shrine containing four niches below and four above, to which access is obtained through four magnificent halls, to which lead four principal entrances. The porticoes, borne on four hundred and twenty columns, spread around cruciform groups of five cupolas, most of them with hemispherical domes; but some (the central ones of each group) have a barrel-like shape.' Numerous chap els, all roofed with single cupolas, surround the entire group, which both as a whole and in its details is among the most beautiful of Hindu buildings.