Temples History in BHARAT
The English word temple, for example, is used only in some contexts.
It was initially used by European Christians for religious edifices of “others”—Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and later Hindus, Buddhists, and the like.
You never hear of a Christian temple.
The identity game in the use of “temple” becomes clear when we look at a book of synonyms.
For ‘temple’, we have church, synagogue, mosque, sanctuary, shrine, chapel—the list goes on.
Each of these terms carries nuances of meaning and a whole set of cultural baggage.
Even in Indian English, one rarely uses the term ‘temple’ for a Sikh gurdwara or a Muslim mosque
the Vishnu Smriti (30.15) when it says that Vedic recitation should not be carried out “in a temple, in a cemetery, at a crossroads, or on a road.
Ritual specialists associated with temples were called devalaka.
They were despised by the authors of Dharmashastras.
The devalaka is listed among those who should not be invited to an ancestral offering (shraddha), Manu listing them between physicians and butchers.
The most common function of a temple mentioned in early texts relates to the places where wandering ascetics spent the night.
The Vasistha Dharmasutra (10.3) gives a list: outskirts of a village, temple, abandoned house, and foot of a tree.
Similarly, the Vaikhanasa Dharmasutra (3.6): outside the village in an empty matha, in a temple, and at the foot of a tree.
monumental religious architecture was first associated with Buddhist sites. Beginning with Ashoka (3rd century BCE) and culminating in the Kushan empire (2nd century CE), Buddhist architecture was well developed when Hindu temples began to be constructed probably around the 1st or 2nd century CE.
There is no archaeological evidence for Hindu temples until at least the time of the Kushans.
By the Gupta period, that is, around the 5th century CE, large Hindu temples became commonplace in the Indian landscape, especially at sacred sites
