Avantisvara Temple

The village of Avantipru-, situated at a distance of i8 miles from Srinagar on the Anantnag cart-road, represents the town of Avantipura, founded by Avantivarman, who reigned from a.d. 855 to 883. Its chief interest centres in two magnificent temples with which its founder embellished it. The first and larger is the temple of Siva-Avantisvara, whose massive walls rise in forlorn grandeur outside the village of Jaubror, half a mile below Avantipur. The temple, which has been sadly mutilated, is situated in a courtyard enclosed by a massive stone wall, the western face of which is adorned externally with a row of fluted columns, but without any recesses behind. The gateway is in the middle of this wall, and is divided into two chambers by a cross wall. Its walls are not decorated with figure sculpture. The niches and the panels are quite plain.

The base on which the shrine in the centre of the courtyard stands is 57' 4'" square and 10' high. To each of its corners was attached a platform about 16' square, which must originally have supported a small subsidiary shrine. It has a stair on each of its four sides like the temple of Pandrethan. The stairs have a width of 28^', and are supported on either side by Hank walls 17^' in length. The sanctum has been reduced to a “confused mass of ruins.”

The platforms seem to have originally been attached to the plinth of the temple at one point only, but afterwards they were completely joined with it by means of a connecting wall built of architectural fragments which had fallen from the temple. This arrangement can best be seen at the south-eastern corner of the base.

The sole exterior decoration of the temple base, the only part of the building that exists, is a series of projecting facets, the larger of which were originally surmounted by plain rectangular capitals.

In the two rear corners of the courtyard are two subsidiary shrines.

There is a large assortment of architectural fragments strewn about in the courtyard, the most interesting of which are (i) the spandrel of an arch in front of the southern stair, (2) the flower-and- vase capital of a dodecagonal pilaster, (3) the spa^nckeL of '^another arch by its side, and (4) the base of a pilaster decorated with two seated rams and a dancing girl who plays upon a damar^ (small hand- drum) standing on a throne ornamented with two lions at the sides and an elephant, facing, in the middle.