A Hindu temple, or mandir or koil in Indian languages, is a house, seat and body of divinity for Hindus. It is a structure designed to bring human beings and gods together through worship, sacrifice, and devotion. The symbolism and structure of a Hindu temple are rooted in Vedic traditions, deploying circles and squares. It also represents recursion and the representation of the equivalence of the macrocosm and the microcosm by astronomical numbers, and by "specific alignments related to the geography of the place and the presumed linkages of the deity and the patron". A temple incorporates all elements of the Hindu cosmos — presenting the good, the evil and the human, as well as the elements of the Hindu sense of cyclic time and the essence of life — symbolically presenting dharma, artha, kama, moksa, and karma.The spiritual principles symbolically represented in Hindu temples are given in the ancient Sanskrit texts of India (for example, the Vedas and Upanishads), while their...