Western Chalukya architecture

The centre of cultural and temple-building activity lay in the Tungabhadra region, where large medieval workshops built numerous monuments.

None of the military, civil, or courtly architecture has survived; being built of mud, brick and wood, such structures may not have withstood repeated invasions.

The only exceptions to this motif can be found in the area around Kalyani, where the temples exhibit a nagara (North Indian) articulation which has its own unique character.

During the first phase, temples were built in the Aihole-Banashankari-Mahakuta region (situated in the early Chalukya heartland) and Ron in the Gadag district.

A typical Western Chalukya temple may be examined from three aspects – the basic floor plan, the architectural articulation, and the figure sculptures.

These include projections, recesses, and representations that can produce a variety of patterns and outlines, either stepped, stellate (star-shaped), or square.

[30] The height of the temple was also constrained by the weight of the superstructure on the walls and, since Chalukyan architects did not use mortar, by the use of dry masonry and bonding stones without clamps or cementing material.

[31] From the 11th century, newly incorporated features were either based on the traditional dravida plan of the Badami Chalukyas, as found in the Virupaksha and Mallikarjuna Temples at Pattadakal, or were further elaborations of this articulation.

[37] However, the finish of the architectural components compared to the earlier sandstone temples is much finer, resulting in opulent shapes and creamy decorations.

[41] As developments progressed, the Chalukyan builders modified the pure dravida tower by reducing the height of each stepped storey and multiplying their number.

The sanctum receives diffused light through pierced window screens flanking the doorway; these features were inherited and modified by the Hoysala builders.

These towers are of the dravida tiered type, and in the nagara style they were made in the latina (mono aedicule) and its variants; the bhumija and sekhari.

[33] The Kasivisvesvara Temple at Lakkundi embodies a more mature development of the Chalukyan architecture in which the tower has a fully expressed ascending line of niches.

This development is exemplified in the Dodda Basappa Temple at Dambal, where the original dravida structure can only be identified after reading out the ornamental encrustation that covers the surface of each storey.

[27] The walls of the vimana below the dravida superstructure are decorated with simple pilasters in low relief with boldly modeled sculptures between them.

The walls, which are broken up into hundreds of projections and recesses, produce a remarkable effect of light and shade,[52] an artistic vocabulary inherited by the Hoysala builders in the decades that followed.

The rings are not cemented but held in place by the immense weight of the roofing material above them pressing down on the haunches of the dome.

These decorations appear as bands of delicately chiseled fretwork, moulded colonettes and scrolls scribed with tiny figures.

[26] The temple plan often included a heavy slanting cornice of double curvature, which projected outward from the roof of the open mantapa.

[58] In what was a departure from convention, the Western Chalukyan figure sculptures of gods and goddesses bore stiff forms and were repeated over and over in the many temples.

[60] From the waist down, the image is dressed in what seems to be the most delicate of material; except for the pattern of embroidery traced over it, it is difficult to tell where the drapery begins and where it ends.

[33] The miniature towers bear finer and more elegant details, indicating that architectural ideas traveled fast from the north to the south.

Gaja Lakshmi, however, on account of her importance to the Kannada-speaking regions,[26] is found on the lintel of the entrance to the mantapa (pillared hall) in all temples irrespective of faith.

[26] The sukanasi or great arched niche at the base of the superstructure (Shikhara or tower) also contains an image indicative of the dedicators' sect or faith.

[26] Occasionally, Ganapati and his brother Kartikeya (Kumara, Subramanya) or the saktis, the female counterparts, can be found at either end of this carving.

Carvings of the river Goddesses Ganga and Yamuna are found at either end of the foot of the doorway to the shrine in early temples.

[30] The Western Chalukya dynastic rule ended in the late 12th century, but its architectural legacy was inherited by the temple builders in southern Karnataka, a region then under the control of the Hoysala empire.

[18][67] The Hoysala builders used soapstone almost universally as building material, a trend that started in the middle of the 11th century with Chalukyan temples.

Recently however, scholars have returned to the modern Karnataka region to focus on a longer chronology, investigating a larger geographical area, making detailed studies of epigraphs and giving more importance to individual monuments dating from the 11th through 13th centuries.

These forms to them appeared "exotic", but they learned to reproduce them with more or less mastery, depending on the extent of their familiarity with the other regions' building traditions.