Mayamata

A South Indian treatise on dwelling, architecture and images, attributed to Maya, the mythical architect of the titans. Clearer and more compact than the Mānasāra, it is the most used guide to the traditional practice of the Tamil sthapatis, and its account of the squared site diagram and the parts of the temple is the classic one.

The Mayamata is written for practitioners. In thirty-six chapters it moves from the choice and testing of the ground, the rites of taking possession of it, and the finding of the cardinal points with a gnomon, to the diagrams of squares on which villages, houses and temples are laid out; then to the elements of buildings from foundation to finial; then to temples, gateways, halls, houses and palaces; and finally to vehicles, thrones and images.

Its diagrams are the fullest statement of the vāstupuruṣa-maṇḍala: the site as a square divided into 1, 4, 9, … up to 1,024 squares (pada), of which the 64-square (maṇḍūka) and 81-square (paramaśāyika) grids are used most often. The central squares belong to Brahmā; the rings around them to the gods, to men and to lesser spirits; and across the whole lies the vāstupuruṣa, the being whose body the site is, with his head to the north-east. Walls, doors and columns must avoid his vulnerable points.

The text divides a temple elevation into six parts from bottom to top: base (adhiṣṭhāna), wall or pillar zone (pāda), entablature (prastara), neck (grīva), crowning roof (śikhara) and finial (stūpi); it describes shrines of one to twelve storeys in the terms still used by South Indian builders. It gives the parapet of miniature pavilions, the gateways (gopura) and the enclosing walls (prākāra) that frame the great temple towns of the south.

Bruno Dagens published a critical edition with a French translation in 1970–1976 and an English translation in 1985; the dating (somewhere between the ninth and the twelfth century) rests on its vocabulary and on its correspondence with Chola-period buildings.

The book, part by part