Art & Culture Quiz: Temple Architecture

The garbhagriha, the womb house, is the small square windowless cell that holds the image of the presiding deity. Every other part of a temple is added around it: the tower rises over it, the hall stands in front of it and the circumambulatory passage runs around it.

Hampi on the Tungabhadra in Karnataka was the capital of the Vijayanagara empire, and its Virupaksha, Vittala and Hazara Rama temples are Dravidian work of the most elaborate kind: walled enclosures, towering gopurams, pillared kalyana mandapas, the famous stone chariot and the musical pillars.

Elephanta, on Gharapuri island near Mumbai, is a Shaivite rock-cut group whose panels tell Shiva stories: the Trimurti Sadashiva, Ardhanarishvara, Gangadhara, the marriage of Shiva and Parvati and Shiva as Nataraja.

The twin hills of Udayagiri and Khandagiri stand near Bhubaneswar and hold Jain rock-cut cells cut for monks in the first century BCE.

The Kanheri caves are cut into a basalt hill inside the Sanjay Gandhi National Park in Mumbai.

The Brihadeshwara or Rajarajeshwara temple at Thanjavur was completed about 1010 CE by Raja Raja I. Its vimana rises in shrinking storeys to over sixty metres and is crowned by a single huge capstone, the whole structure is of granite, and the courtyard holds one of the largest monolithic Nandi…

In the Nagara style of north India the tower over the garbhagriha is the shikhara.

Cave 16 at Ellora, the Kailasa temple, was cut for the Rashtrakuta king Krishna I in the eighth century.

Pattadakal on the Malaprabha was a coronation city of the Chalukyas of Badami, and its temples stand side by side in both idioms: the Papanatha and Galaganatha temples carry curving Nagara towers, while the Virupaksha temple, built by queen Lokamahadevi to mark Vikramaditya II's victory over the Pallavas, and the…

The Konark Sun Temple in Odisha was raised in the thirteenth century by Narasimhadeva I. The plan is the chariot of Surya: a high platform carrying twelve pairs of carved stone wheels drawn by seven horses.

The Hoysalas ruled southern Karnataka from Belur and Dwarasamudra, today's Halebidu, and their temples are unmistakable: a raised star shaped platform called the jagati, shrines on a stellate plan, soft chloritic schist or soapstone that allowed jewellery and hair to be carved in minute detail, lathe turned pillars, and bands…