Discuss the salient Features of the Temple Architecture of Badami Chalukyas and Western Chalukyas.

The Badami Chalukya era was an important period in the development of South Indian architecture. Their style of architecture is called “Chalukyan architecture” or “Karnata Dravida architecture”. The building material they used was reddish-golden Sandstone found locally. They concentrated most of their temple building activity in a relatively small area within the Chalukyan heartland – Aihole, Badami, Pattadakal and Mahakuta in modern Karnataka state.
These temples are a mixture of Northern and Dravida style of temple architecture and represent a transition as well as experimentation in the temple architecture. The temples are located on the banks of River Tungabhadra and Malprabaha in Karnataka and Alampur in Andhra Pradesh.
 Virupaksha Temple is the earliest example of Shiva temples, which have a Nandi pavilion in front of the temple.
The western Chalukya temples show an improvement over the previous experiments. These temples are show a transition from the Nagara to Dravida style and create a new style called Karnatadravida.
The ornate columns are seen as one of the most important features and that is why some of thetemples such as “Mahadeva Temple” are called finest in Karnataka after Halebid. The Temple plan in most of the plans is star shaped. Most temples are dedicated to Shiva and Nandi at the entrance of the shrine appears as a main feature.

Topics: GS-I: Indian Architecture