CHAP. IV. AMRITSAR. 161 it is found in all the mosques at Gaur and Malda ; but we do not know of its use in Hindu temples till afterwards, though now it is extremely common all over northern India. One of the best examples of a temple in this style is that at Kantanagar, 12 miles from the station of Dinajpur. It was commenced in A.D. 1704 and finished in I722. 1 As will be seen from the preceding illustration (Woodcut No. 354), it is a nine-towered temple, of considerable dimensions, and of a pleasingly picturesque design. The centre pavilion is square, and, but for its pointed form, shows clearly enough its descent from the Orissan prototypes ; the other eight are octagonal, and their form suggests, as its origin, a number of bambus arranged in a circle or polygon, with their heads bent together and cords binding them horizontally at equal intervals. 2 The pointed arches that prevail throughout are certainly derived from Muhammadan originals, but the building being in brick their employment was inevitable. No stone is used in the building, and the whole surface is covered with designs in terra-cotta, partly conventional, and these are frequently repeated, as they may be without offence to taste ; but the bulk of them are figure-subjects, which do not ever seem to be repeated, and form a perfect repository of the manners, customs, and costumes of the people of Bengal at the beginning of the eighteenth century. In execution they display an immeasurable inferiority to the carvings on the old temples in Orissa or in Mysore, but for general effect of richness and prodigality of labour this temple may fairly be allowed to compete with some of the earlier examples. There is another and more ornate temple, in the same style at Gopal-ganj, 3 close to Dinajpur, built in 1764, but in infinitely worse taste and now ruinous; and one known as the Black Pagoda, at Calcutta, and many others all through Lower Bengal ; but hardly any so well worthy of illustration as this one at Kantanagar. AMRITSAR. One other example may serve for the present to complete what we have to say regarding the temples of modern India.
- Buchanan Hamilton, ' Eastern India,'
edited by Montgomery Martin, 1837, vol. ii. p. 628. It is a Vaishnava temple. 2 The turrets of these temples resemble somewhat the jikharas of Jugal Kishor and Madan Mohan. at Brindiban (Plate XXVII. ), which the Dinajpur Maharaja had visited just before building his Kantanagar temple. Examples of this form of construction, both for polygonal VOL. II. and square jikharas, are found among the later Jaina temples at Kundalpur in the Damoh district of the Central Provinces, at Sonagarh (Woodcut No. 297), and at Khajuraho. See Griffin's ' Famous Monuments,' plate 51 ; or G. Le Bon, <Les Monuments de 1'Inde,' p. 89, fig. 80. 3 Frontispiece to Buchanan Hamilton's 1 Eastern India,' vol. ii. and pp. 626-627.
