D AjayJ.Sinha' styles, Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, and Chalukyan, become the basis for subsequent archaeological exploration and ordering of Indian monuments. Fergusson's historical account of the three architectural styles depended on how he situated the races to which they belonged. Indo-Aryan and Dravidian styles, thus, followed a destiny of the 'primary' races of India, as they were already portrayed by contemporary linguists. Indo-Aryan (which Fergusson often interchanged with 'northern') was the architectural style of 'a people speaking an early form of Sanskrit... who entered Upper Indus from Central Asia', spreading in north India and mixing with the 'aboriginals' of India; Dravidian was the style of the 'aboriginals' who were 'at the earliest time at which we find any mention of them, the most civilized and important of their communities occupying the extreme southern point of the peninsula'.6 Both the Dravidian and Indo-Aryan, shared a line of progress which Fergusson characterized as 'invariably for the worse, the earlier specimens being in all instances the most perfect, and the degree of degradation forming... a tolerably exact chronometric scale, by which we may measure the age of the buildings.'7 There is no linguistic parallel for Fergusson's Chalukyan. The forged anomaly illustrated in his uneven account what the other two could not. Borrowing the name of a dynasty of southern Deccan or Kamataka, Fergusson used Chalukyan to define an architectural style belonging to the 'race' that controlled that region. According to him, the style became assertive as that race of Chalukyan rulers grew stronger. Fergusson found the proof of this assertiveness in the fact that temples in both north and south Indian styles were built in Kamataka in the earliest period. He explained : It is as if this intrusive race adopted hesitatingly the earlier styles of the country, hut that it was not till they had consolidated their power, and developed peculiar institutions of their own, that they expressed them in the style to which their name has been affixed.8 Fergusson's chronology of temples from their hesitation to their confidence is an original creation in the history of temple architecture. The confidence of Chalukyan is expressed in its individualistic architectural identity. Situated as it was locally, half-way between the Dravidian and Northern styles, the Chalukyan retained or borrowed occasionally a feature or form from one or from the other, but not to such an extent as to obliterate its individuality, or to prevent its being recognized as a separate and distinct style of architecture.9 While not using Vesara, Fergusson's remark is close to the idea of hybridity in Kamataka architecture. But more important for him was Chalukyan individuality. Seen in contrast to the other 'declining' styles, Chalukyan eventually not only represented a fulfilment of the Kamataka's 'race' but the innate artistic sensibility of India itself. Comparing the Hoysalesvara temple at Halebid (Illustration 1), which marked a highpoint of Chalukyan style, to the Parthenon, the classical Greek monument in Athens, Nwnbers30-31