Did you know that Karnataka’s trio of temple towns — Badami, Pattadakal, Aihole — showcase a practical textbook of the oldest recorded temple architecture?
“The three towns show an evolution of India’s temple-styling where the Northern, Dravidian and Deccan approaches have been hand-worked in stone in the Chalukya period way back in 500 AD. Even now, they serve as curriculum modules for architects,” says architect Nalini Kembhavi of Kembhavi Architects, Hubli.
Ms. Kembhavi has undertaken extensive research on the subject. She will be presenting a lecture for the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts on the rock-cut temples and sculpture of the Badami caves on June 28, 6 p.m., at the Bangalore International Centre. She will fuse in descriptive features of the stone marvels of the trio of towns that “mirror visual nectar in stone”.
Badami-Pattadakal-Aihole fall in a region where ample natural reserves of sand stone in eye-catching tonal shades are available. Stones were the essence of these temple constructions, including the sculpting work that spoke poetry, mirroring a prehistoric age where local material was extensively used. These stone temples were the first free-standing structure of a fully-evolved place of worship, says Kembhavi. “Several cave, brick and wooden temples did exist during this period of Buddism and Jainism. The ‘Rekha Nagara’ of the Northern styling, ‘Vimana’ of the Dravidian and Karnataka’s ‘Kadamba Nagara’ (a fusion of Northern and Dravidian) approaches reflect the fundamental grammar of temple architecture,” says Kembhavi.
