Hindu temple architecture

Types of Hindu temple architecture in India from left to right: Nagara style of northern India, Dravida style of southern India, Kerala style with Dravida influences and Kathkuni style of northern Indian hills with Nagara influences.

Hindu temple architecture as the main form of Hindu architecture has many varieties of style, though the basic nature of the Hindu temple remains the same, with the essential feature an inner sanctum, the garbha griha or womb-chamber, where the primary Murti or the image of a deity is housed in a simple bare cell. For rituals and prayers, this chamber frequently has an open space that can be moved in a clockwise direction. There are frequently additional buildings and structures in the vicinity of this chamber, with the largest ones covering several acres. On the exterior, the garbhagriha is crowned by a tower-like shikhara, also called the vimana in the south. The shrine building often includes an circumambulatory passage for parikrama, a mandapa congregation hall, and sometimes an antarala antechamber and porch between garbhagriha and mandapa. In addition to other small temples in the compound, there may be additional mandapas or buildings that are either connected or separate from the larger temples.^[1]

Hindu temple architecture reflects a synthesis of arts, the ideals of dharma, values and the way of life cherished under Hinduism. The temple is a place for Tirtha—pilgrimage.^[2] All the cosmic elements that create and celebrate life in Hindu pantheon, are present in a Hindu temple—from fire to water, from images of nature to deities, from the feminine to the masculine, from kama to artha, from the fleeting sounds and incense smells to Purusha—the eternal nothingness yet universality—is part of a Hindu temple architecture.^[2] The form and meanings of architectural elements in a Hindu temple are designed to function as the place where it is the link between man and the divine, to help his progress to spiritual knowledge and truth, his liberation it calls moksha.^[3]

The architectural principles of Hindu temples in India are described in Shilpa Shastras and Vastu Sastras.^[4][5] The Hindu culture has encouraged aesthetic independence to its temple builders, and its architects have sometimes exercised considerable flexibility in creative expression by adopting other perfect geometries and mathematical principles in Mandir construction to express the Hindu way of life.^[6]