There are also several visual connections between temple styles in India and in Southeast Asia, including similarities in architecture (e.g., the design of temple towers) and iconography (e.g., the depiction of Hindu deities, epic narratives, and dancers in carvings on temple walls).
The architect, a real iconoclast in conformist Japan, was a professional boxer drawn to the design of Buddhist temples before he apprenticed to a carpenter and then taught himself architecture.
My father describes Nikko as "the most beautiful spot in Japan, not only because of the richness and beauty of design of the temples, but most especially because of the marvelous setting.
As a key part of the overall design of the temple, the moats are important symbolically and are presumed to be contemporaneous with the associated temple.
Another one is the simplistic design of the temple.
Another key idea embodied in the design of the temple is the unity of spiritual with material, and service with worship.
The designing of Hindu temples, like that of religious images, was codified in the Shilpa-shastras (craft textbooks), and every aspect of the design was believed to offer the symbolic representation of some feature of the cosmos.
Originally, the design of the Hindu temples may have borrowed from the Buddhist precedent, for in some of the oldest temples the image was placed in the centre of the shrine, which was surrounded by an ambulatory path resembling the path around a stupa (a religious building containing a Buddhist relic).
Like some of the famous Egyptian temples, these temples were built to play with light, and many mysteries of the Mayan astronomical calendar are made clear when one understands the design of the "time temples" here.
