File:11th century Kasivisvesvara temple plan Lakkundi Karnataka.svg

English: This is an SVG format plan and architectural drawing of a historic Indian temple or monument. An alternate high resolution JPEG version of this file has also been uploaded to the wikimedia commons.

The drawing:

• Lakkundi also known as Lokkugundi is now a village, but was a major city before the 14th-century. It is about 12 kilometers east-southeast of Gadag in north central Karnataka. The earliest inscription discovered here is from the 8th-century. As the Shaiva Hindu dynasty of Kalyana Chalukyas came to power in the second half of the 10th-century, a period of political stability emerged with economic prosperity. Among the towns that grew into major cities from 11th and 13th-century, Lakkundi was the most prominent. It hosted a royal mint, numerous Hindu and Jain temples, and then becoming the capital of Hoysalas in late 12th-century. In and after 14th-century, it became a target of raids and plunder during the wars between Islamic Sultanates and Hindu kingdoms. The area was under the control of Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan. The British archaeologists rediscovered what had become a small village of Lakkundi in the 19th-century with a galaxy of temples, a broken fort and public water works in ruins. It was in a mutilated, "filthy condition" and some temples were home to "a colony of bats".

• The Kasivisvesvara temple has been restored and is found in southern part of the village. It is a Hindu twin temple – one for Shiva and the other for Surya.

• It is highly ornate, finely carved and most sophisticated among the Lakkundi temples. According to 19th-century architecture and art historian James Burgess, it has "one of the finest surviving illustration of Hindu decorative artwork in India".

• The Kasivisvesvara temple is one of the best illustrations of Kalyana-Chalukya style of Hindu architecture.

• In historic texts and some inscriptions, it is called the Kavatalesvara temple.

• The temple's architectural plan follows the square and circle principle found in historic Sanskrit texts.

• The relative scale and relative dimensions in this architectural drawing are close to the actual but neither exact nor complete. The plan illustrates the design and layout, but some intricate details or parts of the temple may not be shown. In cases where exact measurements were not feasible, the drawing uses best approximations and rounds the best measurements feasible. This drawings uses some of measurements made and published by Mysore Archaeological Department before 1915.

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