Belur & Halebid Temples

We reached Belur at around 2pm. It was a bright sunny day. There were no sign posts to guide us to the temple. I was bit frustrated with the way our tourism department works. Anyway all these frustrations and the scorching sun was ignored when we went inside the temple.
I was overwhelmed by the mix of architecture. The entrance of the temple(the gopuram) was in Dravidian style. There were small shrines in Jain Architecture and the main temple is in a pure Koysala Architecture. The temple has three gates which leads to the main mandap. There is a circular platform before the main God. It is said that the princess used to perform dance in this platform for God. The temple is named as "Chennakeshava" which means handsome Vishnu. Each and every sculpture in the temple was done with utmost dedication and perfection. I feel even the masters of the master of arts could find no fault in these sculptures. The artists of those days were highly intellectual. They have portrayed the ancient history, life style, culture that prevailed during those days. It took 100 years to finish this temple.

The temple is designed as per vaastu. There is a deep pond, food offering place, Lord Ram temple, miniature model of the main temple, devi temple, a lengthy corridor.
There were two things that surprised us.
1) A tall pillar that was supported just on its corners and was being held by gravitational force. We couldnt imagine how they erected it during those time when there were no cranes and good construction equipments.
2) A pillar in the main temple was rotatable.

The pillars in the main temple had lots and lots of designs engraved on it. It is said that the existing bangle and tyre designs are taken from this pillar designs.
There was nandi in groundnut size and ganesha in a pulse size.
The stones of the pillars are so polished and shinining even after hundreds of centuries. The design of the outer structure was excellent. All the corners were triangle shaped and had three layers.
The design was very complicated and just shows the excellence of the architect.
The expressions of the sculptures were carved so beautifully. The bottom three layers has rows of elephants, horses and warriors.

One section is for depicting the civic life which has beautiful sculptures of ladies with various hair styles, in different dance poses.
Other section has all sculptures of deities. The narasimha avathara sculpture was astonishing.
Even a day will not be enough to appreciate all this sculptures.
I was wondering how the artists of those days got such a perfection. When I saw the temples surrounding the main temple, I got the answer for that. It was through streneous practice they have attained this perfection. In the miniature model we could see how they have gradually got their perfection.

Halebid is also a Hoysala style temple which is older than this. The style and works remains same. The only difference is this has big sculptures in its outer wall and belur has many smaller ones.

We returned back nourished with the excellence of ancient architecture. Even today the beauty of the temple and the gracefulness of the sculptures are in my mind.