Place the garbhagriha (the small dark chamber that houses the image) over the Brahmasthana, with its walls on the ring of the gods and its door on the axis, usually to the east.
Streets wide enough for the god’s car
Make one ring of streets round the temple wide and straight enough for the temple car (ratha), on which the image is drawn round the town at the great festival.
The Mānasāra gives a chapter to the proportions of the cars of the gods, built of wood in storeys like a temple. The car sets the width and the turning corners of the streets it travels: at Madurai the Masi streets, at Srirangam the Chitrai streets, at Tiruvarur the four “car streets” round the temple. Between festivals the cars stand at the corners of these streets.
Related rules
Provide a path for circumambulation (pradakshina) in the clockwise direction, keeping the sacred object on the right, and enclose it with a railing that separates the sacred ground.
In the later temple towns of the south, raise ever taller gateways (gopurams) in the successive enclosure walls, until the outer gates dwarf the shrine at the centre.
Choose the plan of a village from eight types named for their figures (daṇḍaka, sarvatobhadra, nandyāvarta, padmaka, svastika, prastara, kārmuka and caturmukha), according to its size, its site and who is to live in it.
Make the sarvatobhadra village square, walled, with a gate in the middle of each side; run the main streets from gate to gate to cross at the centre, and put the temple there, with streets round it and round the inside of the wall.
Set the chief temple at the centre facing east; put Śiva’s temple in the north-east, the quarter of Īśāna; house guardian gods at the gates; and keep the burning ground outside, toward the south, the quarter of Yama.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “Streets wide enough for the god’s car”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/car-streets. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.