All twelve exercise questions from NCERT Themes in Indian History Part II, Chapter 7 “An Imperial Capital: Vijayanagara”, in the English edition’s own wording, each with a model answer: five “Answer in 100-150 words” questions, four short essays (about 250-300 words), one map-work question and two project questions (choose one). After them come the questions the chapter asks inside the text, beside its sources and figures and in its Discuss boxes. Write your own answer first, then check it against this one.
The Hindi edition asks these same twelve questions in the same order, but its wording is not a literal translation of the English. Students writing the paper in English should answer from this, the English edition’s own phrasing.
How to write: Questions 1-5 carry 3-4 marks each, so four to six solid points are enough. Questions 6-9 are short essays, so give them sub-headings and a conclusion. Name the source wherever you can (Abdur Razzaq, Domingo Paes, the Amuktamalyada, and so on).
1 Answer in about 100-150 words
Q. What have been the methods used to study the ruins of Hampi over the last two centuries? In what way do you think they would have complemented the information provided by the priests of the Virupaksha temple?
Answer:
Mackenzie’s survey. Colin Mackenzie’s 1800 survey map was the starting point, drawing its earliest information mainly from the memories of priests at the Virupaksha temple and the Pampadevi shrine.
Epigraphy and photography. From 1836, epigraphists began collecting the many inscriptions found at Hampi’s temples; from 1856, photographers such as Alexander Greenlaw began recording the monuments; from 1876 J.F. Fleet documented the inscriptions on the temple walls, and from 1902 conservation began under John Marshall.
Traveller accounts and literature. Historians combined all of this with the accounts of foreign travellers (Nicolo de Conti, Abdur Razzaq, Afanasii Nikitin, Duarte Barbosa, Domingo Paes, Fernao Nuniz) and with literature in Telugu, Kannada, Tamil and Sanskrit.
Twentieth-century mapping. From the early 1980s, an intensive grid-square documentation project recorded thousands of structures.
How this complemented the priests. Priestly memory preserved only what temple tradition itself had kept alive, largely religious and ritual matters; inscriptions supplied precise names, dates and donations, travellers’ accounts described the city’s physical layout, wealth and daily life, and modern mapping recovered structures no living memory recorded at all. Together, these fill in exactly what oral tradition alone could not: administration, fortification, trade and the lives of ordinary people.
Q. How were the water requirements of Vijayanagara met?
Answer:
An arid site. The city sits in a natural basin formed by the river Tungabhadra, ringed by granite hills, in one of the peninsula’s most arid zones, which made storing rainwater essential.
Embankments and tanks. Embankments were built along hill streams to create reservoirs of varying sizes. The most important, built in the early fifteenth century, is now called the Kamalapuram tank; it irrigated nearby fields and was also conducted by channel to the “royal centre”.
The Hiriya canal. This canal drew water from a dam across the Tungabhadra and irrigated the cultivated valley separating the “sacred centre” from the “urban core”; it was apparently built under the Sangama dynasty.
Scale of the effort. Paes describes a tank built by Krishnadeva Raya that brought water by pipes from more than three leagues (about 15 kilometres) away, and needed fifteen to twenty thousand labourers to construct, showing how much state effort went into managing water.
Q. What do you think were the advantages and disadvantages of enclosing agricultural land within the fortified area of the city?
Answer:
The scale of the fortification. Abdur Razzaq described seven lines of forts encircling not just the city but its agricultural hinterland and forests; between the first, second and third walls, he noted, there were cultivated fields, gardens and houses, confirmed by Paes and by present-day archaeology.
Advantage. Medieval sieges often tried to starve defenders into submission and could last months or years; most rulers prepared by building large granaries. Vijayanagara instead protected the agricultural belt itself, so a besieged city could feed itself from land inside its own walls rather than depend only on stored grain.
Disadvantage. This was a far more expensive and elaborate strategy: enclosing farmland meant the fortification walls had to run a much longer perimeter than a wall built around buildings alone, at greater cost in labour and material.
Conclusion. It was a deliberate trade-off: higher cost and a longer wall to build, in exchange for genuine food security during a long siege.
Q. What do you think was the significance of the rituals associated with the mahanavami dibba?
Answer:
Timing and form. The rituals here probably coincided with Mahanavami, “the great ninth day” of the ten-day autumn festival known elsewhere as Dusehra, Durga Puja or Navaratri.
What happened. Ceremonies included worship of the image and of the state horse, the sacrifice of buffaloes and other animals, dances, wrestling matches, and processions of caparisoned horses, elephants, chariots and soldiers.
A display of power. Ritual presentations were made before the king by chief nayakas and subordinate kings, and on the final day the king inspected his own army and the armies of the nayakas in a grand open-field ceremony, receiving rich gifts and the stipulated tribute. The occasion let the Vijayanagara kings publicly display their prestige, power and suzerainty over subordinate rulers.
An unresolved question. Scholars have pointed out that the space around the surviving platform does not look adequate for processions on the scale described, so whether this exact structure hosted the full ritual remains genuinely disputed; it remains, in the chapter’s own words, an enigma.
Q. Fig. 7.33 is an illustration of another pillar from the Virupaksha temple. Do you notice any floral motifs? What are the animals shown? Why do you think they are depicted? Describe the human figures shown.
Answer:
Floral motifs. Yes. The capital at the top of the pillar is shaped like a lotus bud with open petals, the bracket beside it curls outwards like a large leaf or bud, and narrow bands of flower-like rosettes and curling scrolls run across the shaft between the panels. The body of the big animal is also covered with curling, leaf-like scrolls.
Animals. The largest figure is a rearing mythical beast, a yali: it has a lion-like face with a thick, curled mane and rises on its hind legs against the side of the pillar, with a small crouching figure at its feet.
Why they are depicted. Such fierce, rearing beasts suggest strength and protection, guarding the sacred space of the temple. They also fit the imperial style of the period: temples were built on an immense scale to display the power of the rulers, and animals such as horses and elephants, vital to warfare and royal processions, appear again and again in Vijayanagara sculpture.
Human figures. The shaft is divided into small panels, one above the other. The top panel shows a figure in a dancing pose with one leg raised; the middle panel shows a figure beside a Shiva linga on a pedestal, one hand raised in worship; the bottom panel shows a seated, crowned figure with heavy ornaments and a round belly, holding a club. The dancing and worship scenes match the chapter’s description of halls where music, dance and drama were performed before the images of the gods, and the linga fits a temple dedicated to Virupaksha, a form of Shiva.
2 Write a short essay (about 250-300 words) on the following
Q. Discuss whether the term “royal centre” is an appropriate description for the part of the city for which it is used.
Answer:
What the royal centre contained. Located in the south-west of the settlement, the royal centre held over 60 temples and about 30 identified palace complexes, along with the most impressive ceremonial platforms of the city, the “audience hall” and the mahanavami dibba.
The case for the name. This concentration of temples and palace-like structures, together with the ceremonial function suggested by the mahanavami dibba’s rituals, does point to a zone dominated by royal power, patronage and display.
The case against. The “king’s palace” enclosure, the largest in the area, has not yielded definitive evidence of actually being a royal residence. The audience hall’s closely spaced wooden-pillar slots leave little clear floor space, so its precise use is unclear. The exact ritual use of the mahanavami dibba is itself disputed, since the surrounding space seems too small for the scale of procession described in traveller accounts. Temples, meanwhile, were not exclusive to this zone; several also stood in the sacred centre.
Conclusion. “Royal centre” is a useful, convenient label given by historians to describe the area’s dominant character, palaces, temples and ceremonial structures associated with rulership, but it does not mean every building in the zone is definitively understood, or that royal residence and ritual use have been proved for each one. The name describes a general impression more confidently than it describes every particular building.
Q. What does the architecture of buildings like the Lotus Mahal and elephant stables tell us about the rulers who commissioned them?
Answer:
The Lotus Mahal. Named by British travellers in the nineteenth century, historians are not certain of its original use; one suggestion, from a map drawn by Mackenzie, is that it may have been a council chamber where the king met his advisers. Its Indo-Islamic architectural features (arches, seen in Fig. 7.14) show that Vijayanagara’s rulers were familiar with, and willing to borrow, the architectural language of the neighbouring Deccan Sultanates.
The elephant stables. Large structures identified as elephant stables similarly reflect a ruling elite concerned with managing and displaying military and ceremonial resources on a grand scale; elephants mattered both for warfare and for the Mahanavami-season processions described elsewhere in the chapter.
What this reveals about the rulers. Together, these buildings suggest rulers confident enough to adopt foreign architectural styles without anxiety about their own religious or political identity, and concerned with visibly showcasing resources, whether architectural sophistication or military assets, to visitors and subjects alike.
A caution. Because even the precise function of both buildings remains debated among historians, architecture alone cannot fully settle what these rulers intended; it can only point to the values, openness and resources they wished to project.
Q. What are the architectural traditions that inspired the architects of Vijayanagara? How did they transform these traditions?
Answer:
Earlier temple traditions. Vijayanagara’s architects drew on the temple-building traditions of the Pallavas, Chalukyas, Hoysalas and Cholas, whose finest examples included the Brihadishvara temple at Thanjavur and the Chennakeshava temple at Belur.
A new scale of gateway. Building on these traditions, Vijayanagara’s architects developed the raya gopuram, a royal gateway that often dwarfed the temple’s own central shrine tower, signalling the temple’s presence from a distance and displaying the ruler’s command of resources, skill and technique.
Elaborated interiors. Temples also grew elaborate mandapas (pillared pavilions) and long pillared corridors, expanding the scale of ritual and public space within the temple complex.
Borrowing from Indo-Islamic architecture. The arch and dome, introduced by the Turkish Sultans and developed through interaction with local building practice, were adapted for gateways in both religious and secular structures, such as those of the royal centre.
New ideas of their own. Royal portrait sculpture was now displayed in temples, the king’s visits to temples became important state occasions, and new deities were brought in, such as Vitthala, a form of Vishnu generally worshipped in Maharashtra, whose temple has a unique shrine designed as a chariot and a straight chariot street lined with pillared pavilions for merchants.
Conclusion. Vijayanagara’s architects did not simply repeat older models; they scaled them up dramatically (the gopuram), added new functional spaces (mandapas), and combined them with contemporary Indo-Islamic elements, producing a distinctive imperial style that expressed the empire’s own power and cosmopolitanism.
Q. What impression of the lives of the ordinary people of Vijayanagara can you cull from the various descriptions in the chapter?
Answer:
Housing. Barbosa described ordinary housing, none of which survives today, as “thatched, but nonetheless well built and arranged according to occupations, in long streets with many open places,” suggesting orderly, occupation-based neighbourhoods rather than chaotic settlement.
Trade and markets. Paes called Vijayanagara “the best-provided city in the world”, describing bazaars filled with rubies, diamonds, pearls, cloth, and every kind of fruit and grain sold cheaply; Fernao Nuniz likewise describes markets “overflowing with abundance” of fruit and even meat of many kinds, pointing to a lively, well-supplied urban economy that ordinary residents shared in.
Religious life. Field surveys have found the urban core dotted with numerous small shrines and temples, suggesting many parallel cults supported by different communities, alongside wells and temple tanks that served ordinary residents’ water needs, evidence of an active local religious and social life beyond the grand royal and sacred centres.
A qualified impression. Because almost nothing of ordinary housing survives archaeologically, this picture is built mainly from travellers’ accounts, not the buildings themselves. The chapter itself cautions that buildings alone cannot tell us what ordinary men, women and children actually thought, or whether they had any access to the royal or sacred centres at all; the impression of a busy, well-provided, occupation-organised city is real but necessarily incomplete.
3 Map work
Q. On an outline map of the world, mark approximately Italy, Portugal, Iran and Russia. Trace the routes the travellers mentioned on p.176 would have taken to reach Vijayanagara.
Answer: This answer is a table and steps, not a printed map: draw it on your own outline map of the world.
Travellers named on p.176: Nicolo de Conti, a trader from Italy, Abdur Razzaq, an ambassador sent by the ruler of Persia (present-day Iran), and Afanasii Nikitin, a merchant from Russia, all in the fifteenth century; Duarte Barbosa, Domingo Paes and Fernao Nuniz from Portugal in the sixteenth century.
Routes to trace: from Italy across the Mediterranean and West Asia to the Persian Gulf or the Red Sea, then by sea across the Arabian Sea to the west coast of India; from Iran by sea from the Persian Gulf to Calicut (Abdur Razzaq was sent to Calicut, present-day Kozhikode); from Russia south across the Caspian Sea and Iran to the Persian Gulf, then by sea to the west coast; from Portugal by sea round the southern tip of Africa and across the Indian Ocean to the west coast (the Portuguese arrived there from 1498 and took Goa in 1510). From the western ports, all of them travelled inland to Vijayanagara.
| Traveller | Mark this country | Century | Route to trace to Vijayanagara |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nicolo de Conti | Italy | 15th | Mediterranean → West Asia → Persian Gulf or Red Sea → Arabian Sea → west coast of India → inland |
| Abdur Razzaq | Persia (Iran) | 15th | Persian Gulf → Arabian Sea → Calicut → inland |
| Afanasii Nikitin | Russia | 15th | South across the Caspian Sea and Iran → Persian Gulf → Arabian Sea → west coast → inland |
| Duarte Barbosa, Domingo Paes, Fernao Nuniz | Portugal | 16th | Atlantic Ocean → round the southern tip of Africa → Indian Ocean → west coast (Goa) → inland |
How to draw it: (1) shade and label Italy, Portugal, Iran and Russia; (2) mark Vijayanagara on the Tungabhadra in south India and the west-coast ports Calicut and Goa; (3) draw each route as an arrowed line, solid over land and dashed over sea, one colour per traveller; (4) add a key and a title.
4 Project (choose one)
Q. Find out more about any one of the major cities which flourished in the subcontinent during c. fourteenth-seventeenth centuries. Describe the architecture of the city. Are there any features to suggest that these were political centres? Are there buildings that were ritually significant? Is there an area for commercial activities? What are the features that distinguish the urban layout from that of surrounding areas?
Answer (how to do the project): Choose a city of this period, for example Bijapur, Golconda, Ahmadnagar, Madurai or Fatehpur Sikri. Use the chapter’s own method: (1) political centre: look for palaces, audience halls, fortification walls and gateways, like Vijayanagara’s royal centre; (2) ritual buildings: temples, mosques, tombs or shrines and the festivals held there; (3) commercial area: bazaars, streets lined with shops or pillared pavilions, like the chariot streets and the bazaar described by Paes; (4) urban layout: walls, water works, roads and zones that set the city apart from the surrounding villages and fields. Add a plan or sketch and list your sources (travellers’ accounts, inscriptions, photographs, surveys).
Q. Visit a religious building in your neighbourhood. Describe, with sketches, its roof, pillars and arches if any, corridors, passages, halls, entrance, water supply, etc. Compare these features with those of the Virupaksha temple. Describe what each part of the building is used for. Find out about its history.
Answer (how to do the project): Draw a simple plan (a horizontal view) and an elevation (a vertical view), as the chapter does for the Virupaksha temple and the Lotus Mahal. Label the entrance, halls, corridors, pillars, arches, roof and the source of water. Then compare, feature by feature, with the Virupaksha temple: its towering gopurams, the hall built by Krishnadeva Raya with carved pillars, pillared corridors round the shrines, halls for music, dance, divine weddings and swinging the deities, and the temple tank. Note what each part of your building is used for today, and find out who built it and when, from inscriptions, records or older people.
5 In-text questions
The chapter also asks questions inside the text, beside its sources and figures and in its Discuss boxes. They are answered here in the order they appear in the book.
Q. How has the artist portrayed Mackenzie and his indigenous informers? What ideas about him and his informants are sought to be impressed upon the viewers?
Answer: Mackenzie stands tall in the centre, in a bright red uniform, lit up and looking confident; his assistants, the peon Kistnaji with a telescope and his Brahmana assistants, stand to the sides and behind him, in darker colours and partly in shadow. The painting impresses on the viewer that Mackenzie is the leader and the real discoverer of knowledge, while the Indian informants who supplied much of it appear only as helpers.
Q. Why do you think the king was interested in encouraging trade? Which groups of people would have benefited from these transactions?
Answer: Warfare depended on cavalry, so imported horses and elephants were vital, and the king wanted them to reach him and not his enemies. Trade also brought revenue that contributed to the prosperity of the state, and the city’s wealthy people demanded precious stones and jewellery. Those who benefited included the king and the state, foreign merchants and sailors, local merchants such as the kudirai chettis, port towns, and the wealthy buyers of these goods.
Q. Identify the present-day states that formed part of the empire.
Answer: The empire stretched from the river Krishna in the north to the extreme south of the peninsula, so it covered present-day Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, and the parts of Telangana south of the Krishna.
Q. Locate Chandragiri, Madurai, Ikkeri, Thanjavur and Mysore, all centres of nayaka power, on Map 1. Discuss the ways in which rivers and hills may have facilitated or hindered communication with Vijayanagara in each case.
Answer: On Map 1, Ikkeri lies to the west near the coast, Mysore to the south, Chandragiri to the south-east (near Tirupati), and Thanjavur and Madurai far to the south in Tamil Nadu. River valleys such as the Tungabhadra and the Kaveri gave natural routes and fertile land, so they could help movement; but wide rivers had to be crossed and the hills and forested uplands (like those near Ikkeri) slowed travel. The farther and more cut off a centre was, as Madurai and Thanjavur were, the harder it was for the king to control it, which helps explain why nayakas could rebel and later set up independent kingdoms.
Q. Identify three major zones on the plan. Look at the central part. Can you see channels connecting up with the river? See how many fortification walls you can trace. Was the sacred centre fortified?
Answer: The three zones are the sacred centre (north, along the Tungabhadra, near Hampi), the royal centre (south-west) and the urban core (the large area between them, to the south and east). In the central part, channels can be seen drawing water from the river through the cultivated valley. The plan shows the lines of walls round the urban core and the royal centre; the sacred centre lies along the river and is not enclosed by a wall of its own like the royal centre, so it does not appear to have been separately fortified.
Q. Would you find these features in a city today? Why do you think the gardens and water bodies were selected for special mention by Paes?
Answer: Some, like parks and a few lakes, can still be found, but most modern cities have few groves, gardens in houses or open channels of water running through them. Paes mentioned them because Vijayanagara lay in one of the most arid zones of the peninsula, so so much greenery and water was remarkable, and it showed the wealth of the city and the skill with which its rulers stored and carried water.
Q. Describe the similarities and differences between these two entrances. Why do you think the rulers of Vijayanagara adopted elements of Indo-Islamic architecture?
Answer: Similarities: both are gateways that control access to an important space and make it look impressive. Differences: the fortification gateway (Fig. 7.6) is fairly plain, with a pointed arch and a dome above the gate, features of the Indo-Islamic style introduced by the Turkish Sultans; the gopuram (Fig. 7.7) is a tall, tapering tower rising in many storeys, covered with sculpture, and has no dome. The rulers adopted Indo-Islamic elements because of the constant interaction with the Deccan Sultanates, which led to a sharing of ideas in architecture; they borrowed useful building techniques and developed them further.
Q. What kinds of vessels do you think these shards were originally parts of?
Answer: The curved, blue-and-white painted pieces of fine Chinese porcelain look like parts of bowls, plates and dishes, cups and small jars: expensive tableware used by the rich traders who lived in that area.
Q. Does the mosque have the typical features of Indo-Islamic architecture?
Answer: No. It is a flat-roofed hall with rows of square stone pillars, with no arch, dome or minaret. It looks like the mandapas of Hampi’s temples, which is exactly what the chapter says about the mosques and tombs of this quarter.
Q. Compare the layout of Vijayanagara with that of your town or village.
Answer: A model answer: Vijayanagara was divided into a sacred centre, a royal centre and an urban core, enclosed by several lines of walls that also took in fields, with tanks and canals, roads through the valleys and bazaars along the temple streets. My town has no walls; its old market grew up along the main road near a temple, as at Vijayanagara, but government offices, schools and houses are mixed together rather than set in separate zones, and water comes through pipes rather than tanks and canals.
Q. Can you identify the themes of the carvings?
Answer: The panels on the base of the mahanavami dibba show rows of horses with riders and attendants, hunting scenes with archers and animals, and processions of soldiers and people. These match the ceremonies of the festival: processions of horses, elephants and soldiers, and the display of the king’s power.
Q. Compare Figs. 7.13 and 7.15, and make a list of the features that are common to both, as well as those that can be seen in only one. Also compare the arch in Fig. 7.14 with the arch in Fig. 7.6. How many towers can you see in the photograph and how many in the elevation? If you had to rename the Lotus Mahal, what would you call it?
Answer: Common: two storeys, a row of cusped arches on the ground floor, smaller arched windows above, projecting eaves, and pyramid-like towers on top. Only in the elevation: the whole front seen straight on, drawn evenly, with the base and every arch clear. Only in the photograph: the building seen from an angle, its depth, the damage to the plaster and the surroundings. The arch in Fig. 7.14 is cusped and richly decorated with carving, while the arch of the gateway in Fig. 7.6 is a plain pointed arch. Both views show about five of the nine towers, the tall central one and some of the eight side towers; the rest are hidden behind. A possible new name: the “Council Hall”, since Mackenzie’s map suggests it may have been a council chamber.
Q. Compare Figs. 7.16 a and 7.16 b with Fig. 7.17, making a list of features visible in each one. Do you think these were actually elephant stables?
Answer: Elevation (7.16 a): a long front with eleven bays, each with a large arched entrance and topped by a dome, with a raised central pavilion. Plan (7.16 b): eleven large square chambers in a row, each with a wide opening on one side. Photograph (7.17): the same long building in its setting, with some domes damaged. The chambers are large and high with wide entrances, big enough for elephants, so they could have been stables; but no direct evidence is given, so the name may, like the “Lotus Mahal”, have been given later.
Q. Can you identify scenes of dancing? Why do you think elephants and horses were depicted on the panels?
Answer: Yes, the top row shows women in dancing poses. Lower rows show marching soldiers, horses and a whole row of elephants. They were depicted because horses and elephants were the core of the army and of royal processions such as those of Mahanavami; they showed the king’s military strength and wealth in a temple meant for the king and his family.
Q. Why did the nayakas continue with the building traditions of the rulers of Vijayanagara?
Answer: The nayakas had been part of the empire and wanted to rule in the same way. Building palatial structures and temples in the imperial style let them claim the prestige and legitimacy of the Vijayanagara kings, show their power and wealth, and win support; the skilled builders of the empire were also available to them. So they continued, and even elaborated, the traditions of fortification and temple building.
Q. Using the scale in the plan, measure the distance from the main gopuram to the central shrine. What would have been the easiest access from the tank to the shrine?
Answer: Measured with the 30 m scale bar, the main (eastern) gopuram is roughly 150-170 metres from the central shrine (a rough measurement from the printed plan). The easiest access from the tank, which lies to the north, would have been through the second, northern gateway (the other one shaded in black), which opens from the tank side straight into the inner courtyard around the shrine.
Q. Describe what you see on the pillar.
Answer: Against the side of the pillar a crowned warrior rides a rearing yali, a lion-like mythical beast with a curled mane, its body covered with curling scrolls. The shaft is divided into small carved panels, one above the other, with figures such as a dancer and a figure with a raised arm holding a staff, separated by bands of flower-like decoration.
Q. Do you think chariots would have actually been built like this?
Answer: Probably not in this form. This “chariot” is a stone shrine, heavy and fixed, with stone wheels that cannot turn. Real temple chariots were made of wood so that they could be pulled through the chariot streets in processions; the stone shrine imitates their shape.
Q. How and why did the rulers of Vijayanagara adopt and adapt earlier traditions of ritual architecture?
Answer: How: they built on the temple traditions of the Pallavas, Chalukyas, Hoysalas and Cholas, but raised them to an immense scale with raya gopurams that dwarfed the towers on the central shrines, added mandapas and long pillared corridors, displayed royal portrait sculpture in temples, made the king’s temple visits state occasions, and introduced new deities such as Vitthala. Why: to associate themselves with the divine (they ruled on behalf of Virupaksha), to win support and recognition for their power, wealth and piety, and to build an imperial culture out of different traditions.
Q. Which is the letter of the alphabet that was not used? Using the scale in the map, measure the length of any one of the small squares.
Answer: The letter I was not used (the squares run A-H, J-Z, making 25). Measured against the 5 km scale bar, each square is a little shorter than the bar, about 4-4.5 km a side (a rough measurement from the printed map).
Q. What is the scale used on this map?
Answer: A linear (bar) scale marked 0, 500 m and 1 km: the length of the bar on the map stands for 1 km on the ground.
Q. Identify a temple. Look for walls, a central shrine, and traces of paths leading to the temple. Name the squares on the map which contain the plan of the temple.
Answer: A walled rectangular temple with a central shrine inside it stands in the upper-middle part of square NM, in the small square h (NMh), with smaller structures and traces of a path leading to it from the south. (Here too the letter i is not used.)
Q. Identify the gopuram, halls, colonnades and central shrine. Which areas would you pass through to reach the central shrine from the outer entrance?
Answer: The gopurams are the gateways shaded in black in the walls (the main one on the north side, with smaller ones on the east and west); the colonnades are the rows of dots (pillars) running along the inside of the inner wall; the halls are the rectangles filled with dots in front of the shrine; the central shrine is the small square chamber in the middle. From the outer entrance you would pass through the outer enclosure, then the main gopuram into the inner courtyard lined with colonnades, then the pillared hall and the antechamber, and finally reach the central shrine.