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Hindu Temple Architecture- 200 BCE-300 CE

2020-03-17T05:20:00.000-07:00

Many small dynasties became powerful during the period between 200 and 300 BC. At this time that a dramatic change is seen in field of architecture sculpture. Most of the architectural arts we see in India were made during this time.

Religion was given more importance in architectural sculpture during this period. However, there are differences between some Eastern and Western researchers in this field. As Anand Kumaraswamy and Stella Kamorrez point out, architecture is a new aspect of deep spiritual Indian doing.

Many times the architecture and sculpture of the Yaksha, Yaksini, Naga, Nagis are sculpted by them. In that case, people used to worship their God at that time.

According to the sources of the Mahaparinirana of the Buddha, it is known that many Chaityas were built in Vaishali. Two engraved broken pillars have been found in Amravati . One of these is to do the carved of a tree that is covered by railing. Here is a 2nd century BCE Brahmi inscription, which depicts the Bahuputa Chaitya.

In another place it is seen that people worship the feet & tree of the Buddha. Here is an inspection which indicates that it is a Chopla Chaitya.

Early Hindu temple & sculpture

Central India:

Speaking of the Hindu temples of this period, it is necessary to say first that many temples have been destroyed during archaeological excavations.

A Vishnu temple was found near Herodotus pillar in Bidisha, Madhya Pradesh.

This temple dates to the 3rd century BCE.

The temple has a brick pillar and is made of clay, wood, and leaves.

It was one of the largest mud platforms of the time, which was destroyed by floods.

At this time a place called dangwada was found in central India where two elliptical architectures were found. One of which has a pillar boulder.

One of which has a clay seal mentioned that it was a Shiva temple.

Another temple has two mud pillars carved with mud seal that was a Vishnu temple.

Rajasthan:

Madhyamika is an ancient city situated in the city of Chittorgarh district.

Here is an inscription from the 1st century BCE.

According to this inscription a stone building has been found here and it has been identified as Vishnu Temple

Below it is found another old building dating to the 3rd century BCE.

They have two elliptical structures.

These structures are mainly made of clay, and a broken and limestone floor has been found here.

Uttar Pradesh

Archaeologists excavated a small mound on the side of a large mound in Atranjikhera in the Eta district and found a dome-shaped temple, which dates to the late NBPW phase period iv D (200-50 BCE).

On the surface of this temple is found the relief of a gaja-lakshmi.

Where two elephants are pouring water on the goddess.

Therefore, it is said that this temple is dedicated to Goddess Lakshmi.

Mathura:

The temple was discovered in a city complex in Sonak, Mathura.

There are many settlements and roads around the aspidal number 1 temple.

Here are 9 structures found in which time is 1st and 2nd century CE.

Here is an image of the altar covered with large pillars.

In addition there is a mother plaque, made of red sandstone and found on the floor.

Also in this temple are many plaque of Mahisasurmardini and goddess Durga.

The temple was square types.

Aspidal number 2:

It was found in the Sonak's main area, where a pond with a large brick platform was found.

The roof inside is a arch-shape ceiling.

The enternce is arch-shapped and a musical presence is seen there.

The temple is surrounded by stone walls. Which has carved on both sides

The architectural fragment found here carries a figurine of boar on the lower lintel of gateway and Naga, Nagis sits on the throne.

Many stone sculptures, terracotta plaques, inscriptions, and seven-headed naga images were found in this temple.

That's why it is considered as the Naga Temple

Andhra Pradesh:

Parashurameswara temple has been found in Goodimalam in Chitto district of Andhra Pradesh.

It was a Shiva temple of the 2nd century BCE.

Sharma, which was excavated in 1994.

In ancient times Shivling was depicted in a stone

This temple was hypaethal, means that it had no roof on its head.

Here are the bones of some livestock sheep whose cut marks indicate that the animals were sacrificed here.

Based on the architecture of this temple in phase-ll, it is believed to date from the 1st to 3rd century CE.

At this time, the temple was surrounded by shivling.

Nagarjunakonda:

It is located in the ancient city of Vijayapura, which is called the capital of the Ikshaku dynasty(225-325CE).

It was situated in the valley of NalaMalai. The river Krishna flows along it, which has a palace, bathing, monuments, Hindu temples and Buddhist stupas on its banks.

Sarkar and Mishra in 1972 discovered in this area and also contributed soundarya.

But unfortunately most of these structures were destroyed during the construction of the Nagarjuna Sagar dam.

Here, 9 Hindu temples were seen in the citadel and ten were seen on the banks of the river Krishna.

Some temples have been found inscription that determine the time of construction of these temples

Of these, five shrines have been dedicated to Shiva, Kartik and Devasena, and another major temple of Vishnu is dedicated to the goddess Sarva Deva, that is, all the deities.

A square, rectangular and arch-shaped temple has been found at Nagarjunakonda.

There was a porch and the temple gateway was to the east.

These temples were mainly made of brick, but stones were also used to make the pillars of the temple.

One of these temples was made of wood.

The pillars of the porch were made of limestone and the roof was flat.

Scarcely a fraction of the sculpture was found here, indicating that its walls were flat.

ARCHAEOLOGY & THE EARLY INDIAN PAST

2019-12-06T10:37:00.001-08:00

What is Archaeology?

Archaeology is the study of human past. Study of grand palaces, temples , discarded product of everyday human activity, broken pottery, different structures, artefacts, bones, seeds, pollen, seals, coins, sculptures & Inscriptions.

Archaeological related 3 technical terms are-

Artefact

Industry

Assemblage

Artefact : An artefac is any portable object made or altered by human hands like pottery, tools.

Industry : Similar artefacts made of the same material found at a site comprise an Industry like Microlith industry, Blade & Burin Industry.

Assemblage : All the Industries found at a site from its Assemblage.

If similar assemblages are found at several sites – this called archaeological culture.

Type of archaeology

Field Archaeology

Marine/ under water Archaeology

Cognative Archaeology

Ethno-Archaeology

Salvage Archaeology

Palaeontology

Paleopathology

Paleobotanical

Field Archaeology : This type of archaeology deals with Exploration & Excavation of sites. Sites are places where material remains of past human activity can be identified.

They discovered by using clues in literature, by regional or village surveys or with the help of aerial photography. Another process is remote – sensing techniques such as LANDSAT imagery. Scanners of LANDSAT satellites create digital images of the earth’s surface and can help identify features such as ancient river courses, canals, embankment & buried settlements.

Archaeological reconstruction depends on the amount and kind of material that is preserved, and this in turn depends on the objects themselves & on environmental factors , particularly soil and climate. Tropical regions with heavy rains, acidic soils, warm climates, & dense vegetation are not favourable for preservation .

Sites are not excavated just to see what they contain, but rather to uncover their stratiographic sequence. It’s a very important to know the stratigraphic context of artefacts, like the precise level at which they were found & what other kinds of things were found along with them.

Two type of Excavation –

1. Horizontal

2. Vertical

§ Horizontal- Where a large surface area is exposed

§ Vertical- Where the digging involves a small surface area

Recording is very important because excavation is distructive- some features of the upper layers have to be destroyed as archaeologists move from one layer to next. Regional surveys are conducted by walking over carefully selected sections of an area, observing the distribution & nature of surface features & finds.

Marine/ underwater Archaeology : In most other countries marine archaeology deals mainly with shipwrecks. Marine archaeology involves many specialists such as oceanographers, geologists, geophysicists, & driver- photographers. It’s also require special equipment like Echo sounding system, under water metal ditectors.

In recent times exciting under water discoveries have been made of the coast of Dwarka & bet Dwarka in Gujarat. There are remains of a submerged port-city, including fortification walls & stone anchors, perhaps going back to 1500 BCE.

Cognitive Archaeology : Which deals with ways of thinking, beliefs & religion it’s a fact developing area within archaeology. An archaeological culture need not necessarily correspond to a linguistic group, political units or a social group such as a lineage, clan or tribe.

Ethno Archaeology : Ethnography is the study of living cultures & communities. Ethno-archaeology studies the behavior & practices of living communities in order to interpret the archaeological evidence related to communities of the past.

The Indian subcontinent is an area where many traditional features & methods survive for instance in agriculture, animal husbandary, house building , the clothes people wear & the food they eat. Modern craftpersons are an important guide for understanding the ways in which ancient craftpersons made things.

For instance a tradition of carnelian bead manufacturing exists in khambhat in Gujarat. Studying modern bead making in this region gives valuable clues about the way in which the Harappan beads may have been made & the possible social organization of the bead makers. Studies of modern communities of hunter-gathers & shifting cultivators can help understand the life-ways of people who followed similar subsistence strategies in the past.

Salvage Archaeology : This archaeology aims at identifying endangered sites & saving them from destruction.

The site of Nagarjunikonda in the Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh was submerged water when the Nagarjunasagar dam was built across the Krishna. 1954 & 1960 officers of the Archaeological Survey of India thoroughly explored & excavated. 9 of the most important structures were transplanted & rebuilt on top of the nagarjunikonda hill & on the banks of the reservoir. Replicas of 14 other structure were made. Protecting the archaeological heritage is not just the responsibility of the Archaeological Survey of the Government. It is essential for ordinary people to realize the importance of protecting & cherishing these fragile links to the past.

Palaeontology : It’s the study of the remains of dead organisms over enormous spans of time . It’s a actually molecular biology & DNA studies have been use to understand homind evolution.

Bones provide a great deal of information. The distribution of faunal remains (animal bones) at a site can indicate which areas were used for butchering, cooking, eating, bone tool making and refuse dumping. Faunal analysis gives information about the animals people haunted & domesticated. Faunal remains can lead to inferences about aspects of environment such as a climate, vegetation & the season during which a site was occupied.

Marine fish bones & shells at Inamgaon at least 200 km from the sea shows that its inhabitants had contacts with coastal communities. The dental structure of humans is connected to subsistence patterns & methods of food preparation. Trace element analysis of human bones & scanning electron microscoping (SEM) analysis of tooth enamel can help identify the kind of food people ate & whether they suffered from nutritional deficiencies.

Palaeo-pathelogy : It’s the study of diseases ancient people suffered from by analysing their bones. Diseases such as arthritis & tuberculosis leave their mark on bones. Human bones are also examined to make inferences about population size, density, mortality, fertility & life expectancy.

Palaeo-botanical : It’s a studies including the analysis of pollen and other minute plant remains, seeds, charcoal, sediments & geological strata. Environmental archaeology, which aims & understanding how societies adopted to their environment & how they used environmental resources, involves the collaboration of scientists & archaeologists.

Archaeological Dating Process

Two type of dating process like

Relative Dating

Absolute Dating

Relative Dating : This techniques which identify the order in which sites or artefacts were used in a sequence from earliest to latest.

Absolute Dating (or chronometric) : This dating techniques that try to establish an exact or approximate calendar date for a site or artefact.

Historical Dating : Any written or artistic evidence which can provide precise dates & the original language can be decoded. For example, coins, seals, inscriptions and clay tablets were used by any civilizations

Relative dating

Geoarchaeological dating : some cases archaeologist borrowed Geo science technique. Because environment, soil, water & other resources are helped to identified evidence like bones, structure, pollen etc. This dating proses help to know how was the climate, soil- this time.

Obsidian hydration : This is one of the cheaper laboratory dating techniques. Obsidian is a volcanic glass that can be worked to provide razor-sharp cutting edges. As soon as a piece of obsidian is broken it begins to absorb water from the atmosphere at a known rate (in much the same way as a stick of rock which goes soft on the outside). By measuring how far water has penetrated into the obsidian (hydration) on one site a relative date can be estimated compared to other sites.

Chemical dating of bones : Buried bones absorb fluorine and uranium from water in the ground whilst their nitrogen content declines as collagen in the bones decays. These processes occur at a uniform rate so it is possible to establish the relative age of different bones by measuring the proportions of these chemicals.

Dendrochronology (tree ring dating) : This is the most accurate chronometric dating method. Every year trees produce a ring of new wood under their bark. The rings are wider in good conditions than in poor ones and can provide a record of local climatic variation. Trees in the same area will have similar ring patterns which means wood from different periods can be matched in overlapping sequences. These are tied to historical dates by modern trees.

Thermoluminescence (TL) : Radioactive decay in the quartz crystals found in clay leads to a build up of electric charge at a known rate. The electrical charge is released as light when the crystals are heated. When pottery is heated in a laboratory the energy in the flash of light is measured and used to calculate the time since it was fired. The technique can be used for materials such as glass and burnt flint or stone for periods from the present to around 400,000 years ago.

Potassium–argon dating : As potassium in rock crystals decays it produces argon gas at a known rate. Measuring the amounts and ratios in a laboratory provides a date at which the crystal was formed. It has been used in volcanic regions to date layers of rock which sandwich human remains. For instance, at Koobi Fora in East Africa early hominid remains.

Radio carbon dating : Discovered by an American chemist named Willard Libby in 1949, radiocarbon dating is today a very widely used dating method in archaeology. The atmosphere contains a fixed ratio of carbon-12 (ordinary carbon) & carbon-14 (radioactive isotope of carbon). Plants absorb C-14 in the atmosphere through their intake of carbon di oxide during the process of photosynthesis. C-14 passes into animals as they feed off plants or other animals. C-14 stops when the plant or animal dies.

By measuring the amount of c-14 remaining in the organism, scientists can figure out when it died like how old it is. The radiocarbon method can be used to date various organic materials such as wood, charcoal, bone and shell. Scientists have know for some time that the amount of radiocarbon produced in the atmosphere has not been constant over time.

1960 the traditional cultural history perspectives were challenged by the emergence of what came to be known as New Archaeology & school known as ‘processualism’. This school tried understand cultures & cultural processes holistically, especially in relation to ecology, human adaptation, & the interaction of different kinds of variables. It advocated a problem-oriented approach, emphasizing the importantce of explanation, generalization, & theory building.

Post-processual school of archaeology- Post-processualists question the possibility of objective knowledge about the past. They point out that material culture can be used by social groups not only to reflect but also to disguise existing social relations.

Archaeometry refers to a range of scientific techniques & analyses involving the use of measurement to analyse ancient objects or materials. The chemical analysis of pottery & metal artefacts can give clues about how they were produced. Chemical composition of metal artefacts & ores can help identify the source of ores. Chemical analysis of soil can be used to determine the degree of human presence & activity at a site. The chalcolithic site of Inamgaon in Maharashtra, the soil in the courtyards had higher nitrogen content than that inside the house.

Gundiyali & Lodai are two pottery manufacturing villages in Kutch, Gujarat.

Dating Method	Use on
Carbon -14	Organic materials like charcoal, wood, seeds, plant remains, bones
Optically stimulated for infared stimulated luminescence	Any sediment which is belived to have been undistributed after its burial under other sediments.
Dendrochonology(Tree-ring dating)	Timber in areas outside the tropics.
Amino acide analysis	Bone
Palaeomagnetic dating	Magnetized sediments, volcanic lava, clay baked to 650-700 degree C
Fission Track	Certain kinds of rocks & minerals, obsidian, glass,mica etc
Uranium series	Rocks rich in calcium carbonate
Electron spin resonance	Bone, shell
Potassium-Argon	Volcanic rocks older than about 100,000 years
Thermoluminescence	Inorganic material that has been heated rapidly to 500 degree C or above like pottery, terracotta, burnt flint