Samarangana Sutradhara
Topic: Early Medieval North India: Harsha to the Rajputs · NCERT: Class 7, Ch 4 "Turning Tides: The 11th and 12th Centuries"
Meaning
The Samarangana Sutradhara is a Sanskrit book on architecture. It is credited to Bhoja, the Paramara king of Malwa (r. c. 1010–1055). It covers building houses and temples, town planning, sculpture and painting. It also describes yantras, which means mechanical devices such as moving figures. It shows how much technical knowledge was valued at early medieval courts.
Example
The book explains how to plan a town and how to build a temple. It even describes machines such as mechanical birds and figures that move on their own. Bhoja's own building works, such as the Bhojeshwar temple at Bhojpur and the great lake near Bhopal, show the same interest in planning on a grand scale.
Don't confuse with
- Manasollasa: a 12th-century work by Someshvara III. It is an encyclopaedia of royal life, not a book mainly about architecture.
- Arthashastra: an older Sanskrit book on statecraft and government, not on building.
Related concepts
- Agnikula legend
- Paramaras
- Raja Bhoja
- Bhojeshwar temple
- Bhojshala
- Chandela dynasty
- Khajuraho group of monuments
- Kandariya Mahadeva temple
- Chaulukya dynasty
- Modhera Sun temple