dravida
द्राविड drāviḍaThe southern style of Hindu temple architecture, with its pyramidal tower (vimana) rising in stacked storeys and its great gateway-pyramids (gopurams); the form of the major Tamil temples. It stands beside the northern Nagara and the hybrid Vesara.
Where this term appears
- Anatomy of a Hindu Temple: Gopuram to Garbhagriha Temples
The South Indian or Dravida temple is ringed by enclosure walls called prakaras , sometimes several of them, set one inside the next.
- Konark: The Sun Temple Temples
The Sun Temple at Konark, in Odisha on India's east coast, was built by the Eastern Ganga king Narasimhadeva I in the mid-13th century and dedicated to Surya, the…
- Nagara, Dravida and Vesara: The Styles of the Hindu Temple Temples
Hindu temple architecture is traditionally sorted into three families: Nagara , Dravida and Vesara .
- The Vastu-Purusha-Mandala: The Plan Behind the Temple Temples
The mandala underlies the regional styles described in Nagara, Dravida and Vesara, and the same logic of sanctum and axis governs shrines like the twelve Jyotirlingas.
- Tirupati: The Temple of Venkateshwara Temples
That tower, the Ananda Nilayam , is gold-plated and built in the Dravida style, the southern temple idiom with its stepped pyramidal vimana over the shrine.
- What is a Hindu Temple? Temples
In the Dravida style of the south, the tower over the sanctum is called the vimana , a stepped pyramid of receding storeys, and the word shikhara there names only the small domed member that crowns it.
- Why do so many temples face east? Temples
Most classical Hindu temples face east so that the deity, seated in the sanctum, looks toward the rising sun and is met by the first light of dawn. East is the…
- Shruti and Smriti: what counts as Hindu scripture? Scriptures
The collection, the Nalayira Divya Prabandham , was compiled in its present form by the teacher Nathamuni around the ninth or tenth century. The tradition calls it the "Tamil Veda," the Dravida Veda .