WEBVTT 00:00:00.046 --> 00:00:03.739 A Hindu temple is not planned as one room with a roof on top. 00:00:03.843 --> 00:00:05.329 It is set out from a single point 00:00:05.329 --> 00:00:08.859 on the ground, and everything else is arranged around that point. 00:00:09.656 --> 00:00:12.397 By the end there will be three parts to point at: 00:00:12.593 --> 00:00:17.494 a small room at the centre, a hall in front of it, and a tower over the top. 00:00:17.690 --> 00:00:20.083 All three are set out from this square. 00:00:20.566 --> 00:00:24.886 The plan begins as a square, divided into a grid of equal cells. 00:00:25.082 --> 00:00:28.949 This one is nine cells each way, which makes eighty one. 00:00:29.862 --> 00:00:32.068 The grid is squared to the compass. 00:00:32.265 --> 00:00:37.443 On this drawing east is the side nearest us, and the doorway goes in that side. 00:00:38.240 --> 00:00:39.808 Now the middle cell. 00:00:40.121 --> 00:00:41.607 It is the most important square 00:00:41.607 --> 00:00:45.543 on the plan, because the heart of the temple is built exactly there. 00:00:46.247 --> 00:00:49.429 That centre has a name: the brahmasthana. 00:00:49.742 --> 00:00:54.584 The grid stands for an ordered world, and the sacred is placed at the middle of it. 00:00:55.636 --> 00:00:57.831 One more line matters as much. 00:00:58.027 --> 00:01:00.617 Run it through the middle and out through the doorway. 00:01:00.814 --> 00:01:04.889 That is the line you walk in along, and the whole building is arranged on it. 00:01:06.207 --> 00:01:08.925 The square is marked out and the centre is settled. 00:01:09.121 --> 00:01:11.882 The first room built is the one that stands on that centre, 00:01:11.966 --> 00:01:14.312 and it is smaller than you would expect. 00:01:15.108 --> 00:01:18.116 This is the garbhagriha, the womb chamber. 00:01:18.220 --> 00:01:23.711 A plain cube of a room, usually with no windows, thick walls, and one door. 00:01:24.326 --> 00:01:26.997 The image of the god stands inside it. 00:01:27.794 --> 00:01:29.768 And it is dark on purpose. 00:01:29.965 --> 00:01:31.773 You come in out of bright sunlight, 00:01:31.857 --> 00:01:35.202 and the room you are walking toward is the darkest in the building. 00:01:35.998 --> 00:01:40.596 The outer wall is set back from it, which leaves a passage all the way round. 00:01:41.048 --> 00:01:43.089 Walking that circuit is part of a visit, 00:01:43.173 --> 00:01:45.728 and you keep the shrine on your right as you go. 00:01:46.525 --> 00:01:49.567 In front of it, on the same line, comes the hall. 00:01:49.880 --> 00:01:53.894 This is the mandapa, and it is the opposite kind of space: 00:01:53.978 --> 00:01:56.928 wide, open, and carried on pillars. 00:01:57.631 --> 00:01:59.614 The hall is where people gather. 00:01:59.698 --> 00:02:04.180 It is where you wait, where music is played, where a crowd can stand. 00:02:04.493 --> 00:02:06.932 Larger temples have two or three of them. 00:02:07.473 --> 00:02:10.353 And this is the line they are all arranged on. 00:02:10.457 --> 00:02:14.672 It runs from the outer door, through the hall, to the door of the sanctum. 00:02:15.584 --> 00:02:18.325 So a visit is a walk from the outside in. 00:02:18.429 --> 00:02:19.506 Through the entrance, 00:02:19.590 --> 00:02:24.687 along the hall, past the pillars, and up to the threshold of the small dark room. 00:02:25.739 --> 00:02:27.807 Most visitors stop about here. 00:02:28.003 --> 00:02:30.210 The plan narrows as you go in: 00:02:30.406 --> 00:02:34.180 wide and open at the front, small and shut at the heart. 00:02:35.577 --> 00:02:37.122 Three names, then. 00:02:37.574 --> 00:02:40.199 Garbhagriha for the sanctum at the centre. 00:02:40.395 --> 00:02:42.973 Mandapa for the hall in front of it. 00:02:43.077 --> 00:02:46.688 And pradakshina patha for the path that goes round it. 00:02:47.485 --> 00:02:49.959 So the plan is read from the middle outward. 00:02:50.155 --> 00:02:54.115 Find the sanctum, and the rest of the building tells you where it is. 00:02:55.152 --> 00:02:58.055 Now turn the same temple and look at it from the side. 00:02:58.252 --> 00:03:02.049 One thing dominates it, and it sits over one room only. 00:03:02.845 --> 00:03:03.925 The whole building stands 00:03:03.925 --> 00:03:07.746 on a raised platform, which lifts it clear of the ground you walk on. 00:03:08.658 --> 00:03:13.291 Here is the sanctum block again, the small closed room at the centre of the plan. 00:03:13.488 --> 00:03:16.531 And this is what is built directly on top of it. 00:03:17.327 --> 00:03:20.100 This is the shikhara, the tower over the sanctum. 00:03:20.183 --> 00:03:24.106 It rises straight from the walls of the small room, narrows as it goes, 00:03:24.189 --> 00:03:26.547 and curves inward near the top. 00:03:27.088 --> 00:03:32.046 Two more pieces finish it: a ribbed stone disc, and a pot above that. 00:03:32.150 --> 00:03:35.181 They stand exactly over the centre of the room below. 00:03:35.978 --> 00:03:39.368 The hall in front is kept low, under a modest roof. 00:03:39.565 --> 00:03:42.364 So the height is not spread across the building. 00:03:42.560 --> 00:03:44.454 It is given to one room. 00:03:45.157 --> 00:03:47.317 That is the idea worth keeping. 00:03:47.630 --> 00:03:52.263 The tower is read as a mountain, with the sanctum as the cave at its heart. 00:03:52.460 --> 00:03:54.376 The plan pointed inward. 00:03:54.573 --> 00:03:56.002 This points up. 00:03:57.305 --> 00:04:01.079 This tower is the northern kind, called nagara. 00:04:01.532 --> 00:04:05.547 Southern temples, called dravida, build the same thing another way, 00:04:05.630 --> 00:04:07.442 and they give it another name. 00:04:08.238 --> 00:04:10.315 It is built as a stack of storeys, 00:04:10.398 --> 00:04:15.251 each one smaller than the storey below, so the outline steps in instead of curving. 00:04:16.048 --> 00:04:20.391 A small domed cap sits on top, with a finial above it. 00:04:20.587 --> 00:04:24.501 Tower and sanctum together, this is called the vimana. 00:04:25.204 --> 00:04:27.304 Two ways of building one idea. 00:04:27.387 --> 00:04:31.474 The tower says which room matters, and it says so by height. 00:04:32.871 --> 00:04:34.660 So, the whole of it. 00:04:34.973 --> 00:04:37.873 A square plan, set out from its centre. 00:04:37.956 --> 00:04:40.848 A small dark sanctum standing on that centre. 00:04:41.161 --> 00:04:43.356 Open pillared halls in front of it. 00:04:43.552 --> 00:04:45.887 And a tower over the sanctum alone. 00:04:47.101 --> 00:04:49.343 A real temple has far more: 00:04:49.446 --> 00:04:52.976 gateways, smaller shrines, carving everywhere. 00:04:53.591 --> 00:04:56.283 But find the sanctum, the hall and the tower, 00:04:56.366 --> 00:04:58.595 and you can read almost any of them.