Forms and designs of Hindu
temples
Almost all Hindu temples take two forms:a house or a palace. A house-themed temple is a simple shelter which serves as a deity's home. The temple is a place where the devotee visits, just like he or she would visit a friend or relative. The use of moveable and immoveable images is
mentioned by Pāṇini. In Bhakti school of Hinduism, temples are venues for puja, which is a hospitality ritual, where the deity is honored, and where devotee calls upon,attends to and connects with the deity. In
other schools of Hinduism, the person may simply perform jap, or meditation, or yoga,or introspection in his or her temple.Palace-themed temples often incorporate more elaborate and monumental
architecture.
Site
The appropriate site for a temple, 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.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.
Hindu temple sites cover a wide range. The most common sites are those near water bodies,embedded in nature, such as the Bhutanatha temple complex at Badami, which is next to a waterfall.
The gods always play where
lakes are,where the sun’s rays are warded off by umbrellas of lotus leaf
clusters,and where clear waterpaths are made by swans whose breasts toss the white lotus hither and thither,where swans, ducks, curleys and paddy birds are heard,and animals rest nearby in the shade of Nicula trees on the river banks.
The gods always play where groves are near, rivers,mountains and springs, and in towns with pleasure gardens.
While major Hindu temples are
recommended at sangams (confluence of rivers), river banks, lakes and seashore,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 isneither 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 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.
Manuals
Ancient builders of Hindu temples created manuals of architecture, called Vastu-Sastra (literally "science" of dwelling; vas-tu is a composite Sanskrit word; vas
means "reside", tu means "you"); these contain Vastu-Vidya (literally, knowledge of dwelling)
and Sastra meaning system or knowledge in Sanskrit. There
exist many Vastu-Sastras on the art of building temples, such as one by Thakkura Pheru, describing where and how temples should be built.
By the 6th century AD, Sanskrit manuals for in India.Vastu-Sastra manuals included chapters on home construction, town planning,and how efficient villages, towns and kingdoms integrated temples, water bodies and gardens within them to achieve harmony with nature.While it is unclear, states Barnett,as to whether these temple and town planning texts were theoretical
studies and if or when they were properly implemented in practice, the manuals suggest that town planning and Hindu temples were conceived as ideals of art and integral part of Hindu social and spiritual life.
Ancient India produced many Sanskrit manuals for Hindu temple design and construction, covering
arrangement of spaces (above) to every aspect of completion.Yet, the Silpins were given wide latitude
to experiment and express their creativity.
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