Page:A Handbook of Indian Art.djvu/163

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MYSORE TEMPLES
89

temple have disappeared. Another Saiva temple, at Balagāmi (Pl. XXX, a), in the north of Mysore, also of the eleventh century, has the tower of the shrine intact. The heraldic lion and figure on the top of the roof of the antarāla was the ensign of the famous Hoysala Ballāla dynasty of Mysore, one of the most powerful in the Chalukyan country from about a.d. 1000 to 1300.

The name of one of the master-builders of the Hoysala court, Jakanāchārya, has been recorded, and many of the Mysore temples have been attributed to him. Followers of Fergusson, like Dr. Vincent Smith, now distinguish a Hoysala Ballāla style as a sub-variety of the "Chalukyan"; but this dynastic system of temple classification which takes no account of the religious character of the building must always be unsatisfactory, if not misleading, to the student of Indian art history, for it leaves untold all that the temple craftsmen have revealed of their craft-ritual and of the spiritual impulses of the times.