The art and architecture of India - Buddhist, Hindu, Jain (Art Ebook)

298 THE HINDU RENAISSANCE
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231. Gwalior, Teli-ka-Mandir, relief
Fort. The earliest of these is the Teli-ka-Mandir
of the eleventh century [230]. The structure as
it stands today is better described as a shrine
than a complete temple. The building rises to a
height of eighty feet and is in the shape of an
oblong, a plan repeated in the cella and the
porch. Not only is this design unique in later
Hindu architecture, but so, too, is the roof that
it necessitated : the crowning member is in the
shape of a barrel-vaulted chaitya with the sunwindows
of the Buddhist type plainly indicated
at each end; the resemblance to the Buddhist
basilica type extends to the representation of
arcades in memory of the nave columns of the
chaitya on the lateral facades. This is one of the
last appearances of the rare vesara type of temple
which we shall note again among the rock-cut
sanctuaries at Mamallapuram. The deeply
sculptured panels on either side of the main
entrance, although badly damaged by iconoclasts,
are magnificent examples of later relief
carving [231]. In both we see a female personage,
possibly a river goddess, with three attendants,
one of whom holds an umbrella over her; in
the subtly swaying movement of the elegantly
attenuated figures and the contrast between the
broadly realized forms and exquisitely defined
details of ornament, the style is a prolongation
of the magnificent Gupta workmanship in
western India which we have already examined
in a relief from the Gwalior region [180].
Also at Gwalior are the remains of two buildings
known as the Great and the Small Sas Bahu
temples. Only the former of these, dedicated to
Vishnu in 1093, need detain us [232]. It is not
a complete sanctuary, but only the porch or hall