1SS3.] Rajendralala Mitra —On the Temples of Deoghar. 179 
point of intersection of the vertical lower portion and the inclined upper 
tower portion is so little rounded as to be painfully prominent, and promi¬ 
nent too in such a way, as to shew that the architects really did not know 
how to deal with it; they had not the courage to leave the line sharp, and 
bring it out by a bold moulding, and they had not the taste to round it 
gracefully. 
“ The form appears to be a compromise between the Muhammadan 
dome of the early type, i. <?,, without a bulge, and the Hindu spire ; if a 
semicircle be described on the top of the vertical portion of the tower, and 
if on the semicircle so described a triangle, whose base is less in width than 
the diameter of the semicircle, be slipped, till the lower extremities of its 
sides rest on the curve of the semicircle, we shall get a form that nearly 
approaches that of these towers.”* 
Elsewhere he says, “ I have described but one of the temples in the 
enclosure, that is, the best of the group, and may be regarded as the type 
of the others.”f 
These disquisitions about art and compromises and types are, however, 
thrown away. The temple is not a finished work of art; as we now see it, 
it is the result of an accident, and no general deductions can be drawn 
from it. It is, moreover, singular in appearance, and cannot have served 
as a type for any other. It is well known to the people that the temple 
was undertaken by Vamadeva Ojha, an early ancestor of the present Head 
Priest, with the ambitious object of erecting a temple of larger and 
nobler proportions than the abode of Vaidyanatha, and to dedicate it to 
Lakshmi-narayana, thereby making the Vaishnava divinity outshine the 
S'ivite lord, even in his own stronghold. The plans were settled with 
this object in view; the plinth was to be 6 feet high, the fane of Vaidya¬ 
natha having no plinth at all; the exterior dimensions were fixed at 37 
feet by 35 feet, those of Vaidyanatha’s temple being 22' x 21'; the altitude 
was to have been 120 feet against Vaidyanatha’s 70 feet. The work was 
commenced accordingly ; the plinth was completed, and the main building 
carried to a height of 5L feet, when Vaidyanatha appeared to the presump¬ 
tuous priest in a dream, and threatened dire retribution if the heterodox 
idea should be any further pushed on. None could disobey so dreadful a threats 
The original idea was abandoned, and the works were stopped at once; 
To prevent, however, the unsightly walls remaining standing as a monument 
of folly, a flat roof, 21 feet square, was put on, and the walls somehow plastered. 
The verandas on the west and the south sides were at a later time covered 
in, but not on the north and the east sides, though the plinths on those- 
* Archaeological Survey Reports, VIII, pp. 139-8> 
f Ibid, p. 142. 
