English: This is a JPEG format plan and architectural drawing of a historic Indian temple or monument. An alternate SVG format (scalable vector graphics) version of this file – for web graphics, design studies, print, dynamic and interactive applications – has also been uploaded to wikimedia commons.

This drawing:

• Lakkundi also known as Lokkugundi is now a village, but was a major city before the 14th-century. It is about 12 kilometers east-southeast of Gadag in north central Karnataka. The earliest inscription discovered here is from the 8th-century. As the Shaiva Hindu dynasty of Kalyana Chalukyas came to power in the second half of the 10th-century, a period of political stability emerged with economic prosperity. Among the towns that grew into major cities from 11th and 13th-century, Lakkundi was the most prominent. It hosted a royal mint, numerous Hindu and Jain temples, and then becoming the capital of Hoysalas in late 12th-century. In and after 14th-century, it became a target of raids and plunder during the wars between Islamic Sultanates and Hindu kingdoms. The area was under the control of Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan. The British archaeologists rediscovered what had become a small village of Lakkundi in the 19th-century with a galaxy of temples, a broken fort and public water works in ruins. It was in a mutilated, "filthy condition" and some temples were home to "a colony of bats".

• The Nanneswara temple has been restored and is found in southern part of the village near the Kasivisvesvara temple. It is a simpler temple dedicated to Shiva but important in tracing the early history of "imperial style Kalyana Chalukya style Hindu architecture", according to Dhaky, the editor and author of many Indian temple architecture books.

• It is highly ornate, finely carved and most sophisticated among the Lakkundi temples. According to 19th-century architecture and art historian James Burgess, it has "one of the finest surviving illustration of Hindu decorative artwork in India". The temple was completed about 1025 CE.

• The temple's architectural plan follows the square and circle principle found in historic Sanskrit texts.

• GPS location of the monument:

  15° 23′ 14.4″ N, 75° 43′ 01″ E

  View this and other nearby images on: OpenStreetMap

  15.387333; 75.716944

• The relative scale and relative dimensions in this architectural drawing are close to the actual but neither exact nor complete. The plan illustrates the design and layout, but some intricate details or parts of the temple may not be shown. In cases where exact measurements were not feasible, the drawing uses best approximations and rounds the best measurements feasible. This drawings uses some of measurements made and published by Mysore Archaeological Department before 1915.

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