Raths with Draupadi's Rath on right
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Rowland, Benjamin
Photographer: Arthur Llewellyn Basham
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Mamallapuram, or 'Seven Pagodas', rock-cut temples on the sea coast below Madras, built under King Narasimha. The principal buildings are five temples or raths that are really free-standing sculptural replicas of contemporary structural buildings carved from the granulitic outcrops on the shore. These monuments are of the greatest importance for the later development of Dravidian architecture because they reveal the dependence of the later Hindu style on pre-existing types of Buddhist architecture. Draupadi's Rath consists of a one-storey square cell surmounted by an overhanging, curvilinear roof, suggestive in its shape of the modern Bengali huts. There is every reason to believe that this, like so many forms of structural Indian architecture, is an imitation of a prototype constructed of bamboo & thatch. The resemblance to the stupika suggests that this most characteristically Dravidian element may also have had its origin in the form of a bamboo hut or temple car.
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Archives Series
Basham Collection
Date created
1953
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This item is provided for research purposes. Contact the Australian National University Archives at butlin.archives@anu.edu.au for permission to use.
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