What is mean by Hindu Temple

What is mean by Hindu Temple?

The temple is the center for all feature of each day life in the Hindu community - religious, cultural, educational and social. The temple is moreover the place where one can transcend the world of man.

Hindus consider that their lives are just stages in the progression to final enlightenment. The temple is a place where God might be approached and where great knowledge can be discovered. All aspects of the Hindu temple focus on the target of enlightenment and liberation - the principles of design and structure, the forms of its architecture and decoration, and the rituals performed. And all of these are determined by ancient texts called shastras compiled by the priests, the brahmins. The vastushastras were theoretical and idealised descriptions of the architectural traditions and conventions to be followed.

The temple is designed to dissolve the boundaries between man and the divine. Not merely his abode, the temple ‘is’ God. God and therefore by implication the whole universe is recognized with the temple’s design and definite structure. The ground plan is maybe the best example. The vastushastras explain it as a symbolic, small representation of the cosmos. It is based on a firm grid made up of squares and equilateral triangles which are imbued with deep spiritual significance. To the Indian priest-architect the square was a complete and spiritual type. The grid, usually of 64 or 81 squares, is in fact a mandala, a model of the cosmos, with every square belonging to a deity. The location of the squares is in unity with the importance attached to both of the deities, with the square in the center symbol the temple deity; the surface squares cover the gods of lower rank.

The structure of the temple of the temple follows in three dimensional forms closely the outline laid out by the mandala. The connection between the original symbolic arrange and the definite physical exterior of the temple can best be understood by since it from over which was of course impossible for humans until quite recently.

Another chief aspect of the design of the ground plan is that it is future to guide from the worldly world to the eternal. The principal shrine must face the rising sun and so should have its entrance to the east. Movement towards the sanctuary, beside the east-west axis and during a series of increasingly sacred spaces is of huge importance and is reflected in the architecture. A classic Hindu temple consists of the following chief elements - an entry, often with a porch; one or more attached or detached mandapas or halls; the inner study called the garbagriha, literally ‘womb chamber’; and the tower build straight above the garbagriha.