Architecture of India  
The Temple Cities of the South

In our last article, we explained how the typical south Indian city came to be surrounded by a ring of walls because of the need for defense, and then population growth. This led to a number of interesting solutions in city planning and the most visible architectural feature of this expansion was the Gopuram. 

Gopurams

The Gopuram (literally Cow-Gate), was erected primarily to emphasize the importance of the temple within the city precincts without in any way altering the form of the temple itself. The formal aspects of the Gopuram were evolved slowly over time. It had to be towering, massive and impressive. But it was not felt necessary to repeat verbatim the square-based form of the temple Vimana. This could be due to the fact that the square was a essentially a static form, signifying calm and rest, while the entrance gateway needed to have some dynamism. Elongating the square and converting into a rectangle with an open entrance in the middle solved this problem. Above this base could be raised tier upon tier of a pyramidal structure comprised of brick and plaster with the topmost tier also a rectangle, albeit much smaller. 

This rectangular top was crowned by a barrel-vaulted shape of Buddhist origin, crowned with a row of finials. 

As time went by, cities all over South India could be discerned from afar by the distinctive shape of their Gopurams dominating the skyline. 

The temple-city had evolved from a place of pilgrimage to the hub of political, cultural, social and secular activity of the region. 

The 'Annular' Growth of Cities

Such an increase in importance of the city led to a natural population increase as well as demands for more resources. But growth was also constrained by the huge battlements thrown up around, punctuated by the massive Gopurams. The only viable solution was to erect yet another wall around the existing one. The new wall, too, had its own huge Gopurams. In this way the city grew much like the annular rings of a tree, with successive perimeters being added as population growth dictated. Thus, the great temple of Srirangam at Tiruchirapalli acquired several concentric rings of growth over a period of 500 years. Ultimately, the concentric city and Gopurams, which evolved out of necessity rather than conscious design, came to be accepted as the standard 'form' of temple construction in the south. 

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