Hindu temples are not halls for crowds like churches or mosques. A temple is the home of a god, whose image lives in a small, dark inner room, the sanctum (in Sanskrit garbhagriha, "womb-house"). Above the sanctum rises a tower, and the whole temple is shaped like a sacred mountain, the dwelling of the gods.
In southern India, the Chola king Rajaraja I built the Brihadishvara Temple at Thanjavur, dedicated to the god Shiva and completed in 1010. Its granite tower, the vimana, rises in many stepped stories to about 66 meters, capped by a dome-shaped stone weighing tens of tons, an astonishing feat for its time. Inscriptions on its walls record the gifts the king and his family gave it. (It is described here in words; we do not yet have an approved picture.)
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Why it works
Looking closely: Angkor Wat. King Suryavarman II of the Khmer Empire built Angkor Wat, beginning in the 1110s, as his state temple, dedicated to the god Vishnu. A huge moat surrounds it, and layer after layer of galleries rises toward five towers shaped like lotus buds, the tallest at the center: Mount Meru with its peaks. In the photograph you see stone galleries with columns, stepped roofs and carved towers around a stone courtyard. The outer gallery holds low reliefs of Hindu epics running about 800 meters around. Unusually, the temple faces west, which may relate to Vishnu or to its role as the king's funerary temple. It is the largest religious monument in the world by area.
Worked example: Hindu or Buddhist?
- Suryavarman II dedicated it to Vishnu, a Hindu god, in the 1100s.
- Later Khmer kings turned to Buddhism, and the temple was gradually adapted.
- Buddhist monks have used it ever since, so its use changed over time.
Answer: No: it was built as a Hindu temple to Vishnu and later became Buddhist.
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