Abstract:
As a part of South Asia, Indian Hindu temples played a significant role in shaping sociocultural, economic, and political development for Indian societies in spite of varieties, externalities, and religious turmoil across space and time. The journey started with a single-cell development in Gupta period (300 AD) of central India and obtained ultimate maturity as a temple city during Nayaka period (1700 AD) in south India. Evolution of temple architecture in India has become complex due to multidimensional developments considering the styles, movements, geography, economy, and externalities.
Across space and time, spatial growth of Indian temples has been observed as significant but non-uniform corresponding to the changes in axial dimensions, in spite of strict regulatory instructions of Vedic texts. The trend of development, both in spatial (horizontal) and time-based (vertical) format, has been derived mathematically through curve fitting techniques. For running the experiment, database of 47 temples have been finalized from around 80 samples and synthesized in a master chart considering their dimensional features. Degree of interconnectivity and correlations among linear trends has been calculated from the most appropriate curve(s) from a set of linear, polynomial, exponential, and logarithmic systems for both macro and micro (zonal) level. Impacts of geography, socioeconomic strata, externalities, regulatory measures, and level of patronage on the trends in spatial growth were discussed at length.
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Mitra, S., Sadhukhan, M.C. (2020). Spatial Growth of Religious Architecture: Case of Indian Temples. In: Ghosh, M. (eds) Perception, Design and Ecology of the Built Environment. Springer Geography. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25879-5_17
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