[Illustration: Reproduced, by permission of Mr John Murray, from Dr Burgess's _The Cave Temples of India_.
The style is distinctly of wooden origin, and of this the very attenuated pilasters on the outer walls and the square pillars of small section are evidences. As the contemporary northern styles are characterized by the prevalence of vertical lines, the Dravidian is marked by horizontal mouldings and shadows, and the towers and _gopurams_ are storeyed. The more important temples are also surrounded by courts enclosing great corridors and pillared halls.
One of the best examples of this style is the great temple at Tanjore. It would appear to have been begun on a definite plan, and not as a series of extensions of some small temple which, by accident, had grown famous and acquired wealth by which successively to enlarge its courts, as that at Tiruvallur seems to have grown by a series of accretions. The body of the Tanjore temple is of two storeys and fully 80 ft. high, whilst the sikhara or pyramidal tower rises in eleven storeys to a total height of 190 ft. This dominates the _gopurams_ over the entrances to the court in which it stands, and to an outer court, added in front of the first, but which does not, as in other cases, surround it. The central shrine, so far as we know, was erected about A.D. 1025.
The Srirangam temple in Trichinopoly, the largest in India, is architecturally the converse of this: it is one of the latest in date, the fifth court having been left unfinished in the middle of the 18th century. The shrine is quite insignificant and distinguished only by a gilt dome, whilst proceeding outwards, the _gopurams_ to each court are each larger and more decorative than the preceding. The successive independent additions, however, proved incompatible with any considered design or arrangement of parts.
Most of the Deccan was ruled by the Chalukya dynasty from early in the 6th century, and the style prevailing over this area, from the Tungabhadra and Krishna rivers to the Tapti and Mahanadi, may be styled, from them, as Chalukyan.
[Illustration: FIG. 6.--Temple at Tanjore.]
The earliest temples in this style, however, are not very clearly marked off from the Dravidian and the more northern styles. Some of them have distinctly northern spires, others are closely allied to the southern style; and it was perhaps only gradually that the type acquired its distinctive characteristics. Till a late date we find temples with towers differing so little in form from Dravidian _vimanas_ that, other details apart, they might readily be ascribed to that order.