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Updated: May 12, 2025
The height of the Pandrethan temple of the cloistered recesses, porch pediments, and niches of Marttand itself were all just double their respective widths. This agreement in the relative proportions of my restored roof of Marttand with those deduced from other examples, is a presumptive proof of the correctness of my restoration.
Without being able to boast, either in extent or magnificence, of an approach to equality with the temple of the sun at Palmyra, or the ruins of the palace at Persepolis, Marttand is not without pretensions to a locality of scarcely inferior interest, and deserves to be ranked with them as the leading specimen of a gigantic style of architecture that has decayed with the religion it was intended to cherish, and the prosperity of a country it could not but adorn.
The interior decorations of the roof can only be conjecturally determined, as I was unable to discover any ornamented stones that could with certainty be assigned to it. Baron Hugel doubts that Marttand ever had a roof; but, as the walls of the temple are still standing, the numerous heaps of large stones that are scattered about on all sides can only have belonged to the roof.
I have therefore ventured to call it the Arian order a name to which it has a double right; first, because it was the style of the Aryas, or Arians, of Kashmir; and, secondly, because its intercolumniations are always of four diameters an interval which the Greeks called Araiostyle. Extract from Vigne's "Travels in Kashmir." The Hindu temple of Marttand is commonly called the House of the Pandus.
The vast extent of the scene makes it sublime; for this magnificent view of Kashmir is no petty peep into a half-mile glen, but the full display of a valley sixty miles in breadth and upwards of a hundred miles in length, the whole of which lies beneath "the ken of the wonderful Marttand."
As the main building is at present entirely uncovered, the original form of the roof can only be determined by a reference to other temples, and to the general form and character of the various parts of the Marttand temple itself.
In situation it is far superior to either. Palmyra is surrounded by an ocean of sand, and Persepolis overlooks a marsh; but the temple of the sun in Marttand is built upon a natural platform at the foot of some of the noblest mountains, and beneath its ken lies what is undoubtedly the finest and the most PRONONCE valley in the known world. We are not looking upon the monuments of the dead.
The angle of the roof in the Temple of Pandrethan, and in other instances, is obtained by making the sides of the pyramid which forms it parallel to the sides of the doorway pediment, and in restoring the Temples of Patrun and Marttand I have followed the same rule.
The object of erecting the temples in the midst of water must have been to place them more immediately under the protection of the Nagas, or human-bodied and snake-tailed gods, who were zealously worshipped for ages through Kashmir. Marttand. Of all the existing remains of Kashmirian grandeur, the most striking in size and situation is the noble ruin of Marttand.
The mass of building now known by the name of Matan, or Marttand, consists of one lofty central edifice, with a small detached wing on each side of the entrance, the whole standing on a large quadrangle surrounded by a colonnade of fluted pillars, with intervening trefoil-headed recesses. The central building is sixty-three feet in length, by thirty-six in width.
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