The original house - Bedsa or Tanjore?

I decided to take this post a little further compare to what i have mentioned in my previous post about the architecture of Tanjore temple. This means we take a magnifying glass and move closer to the main tower of the temple. I had made a connect between the architectural elements of Brihadeshwara temple to the buddhist caves of Bedsa.

Now to substantiate the arguement, i managed to fish out a few pictures to show you the same thing. Explaining it was half the job, viewing it is the other half. Now lets leave behind who built it and in what century etc. and look at what was the evolution of a simple architectural house from say Bedsa in 3rd century AD or earlier to Tanjore in the 7th century.

Here is a buddhist cave at Bedsa(in black and white above), the reflection of a simple cell in which a monk would have lived, a silent retreat where he would have tried to meditate his way to enlightenment the buddhist way. A silent cell with an arched window leading to one rocky room with a stone for a bed with the pillow carved into it. The only light to his little chamber would be through that narrow door and circular window.

Now lets look at a series of these cells(or houses) in a line, with a broader house to the center, keeping two of these cells on either side of it, so we have five houses. Lets put some more add ons, for example, make a guys stand within these cell doors i.e. maybe shiva, lets make the arched window above the narrow door a lot more ornate so it will have some layers of floral designs on it, and lets enhance the shallow pillars on either side of the doorway to real proper ones and have a doorkeeper or dwarapala stand there. Now that we have these five cells, keeping in mind the central one being broader, lets add a floor to them making it two storeyed, and bring them out of the cave and put them as a free standing building. So we now have five standing houses.

Now lets take the camera up to see how many more such houses are systematically lined up behind them and, Wow that is the view of the city you get! Fantastic isn't it, the imagination of generations of people who tried so desperately hard to show us how their cities looked!!!