"The Indian temple, an exuberant growth of seemingly haphazard and numberless forms," wrote Stella Kramrisch in 1922, "never loses control over its extravagant wealth. Their organic structure is neither derived from any example seen in nature, nor does it merely do justice to aesthetic consideration, but it visualizes the cosmic force which creates innumerable forms, and these are one whole, and without the least of them the universal harmony would lack completeness" ("The Expressiveness of Indian Art," Journal of the Department of Letters, University of Calcutta, 9, 1923, p. 67). This intuitive understanding of the temple's structure and significance has been fleshed out and confirmed by Kramrisch and others in the years since those words were penned.

Axis, Altar, and Enclosure

Hindu temples are built to shelter images that focus worship; they also shelter the worshiper and provide space for a controlled ritual. Between the fifth and the fifteenth century...