Mahamandapa

Vitthala Temple, Vijayanagara

This view of just one corner of the temple's pillared hall, with its piers cut out into clusters of numerous colonettes, illustrates why Vitthala Temple is considered the finest of the Vijayanagara series.

Apparently the colonettes, when lightly tapped by a wooden stick, produce "musical" tones (Huntington, p.575), but the popular notion that these tones form part of a scale is deprecated by the Blue Guide (p.251).