Pallava Architecture, Part I (MASI 17) c2.115

Language: English

c2.115.1

There are eight temples and all of them contain stone lingas showing that they were dedicated to Siva and most of them face the east. The lingas are of medium size, cylindrical in shape, polished and most of them are made of black basalt, which must have been brought from a distance as there is none in the neighbourhood. The yoni pedestals, which are hewn out of the natural rock, are square on plan and usually about 18 inches in height. The linga is fixed in a round hole cut in the centre of the upper surface of the pedestal. The shrine cells are small and plain, usually about 6 feet square on plan and 6 feet in height. On each side of the shrine doorway is a large panel or niche containing a life-size figure of a doorkeeper leaning on a huge club. All of these figures are two-armed indicating their early origin. The pose and style of these large figures, the headdress, including the bull's horns worn by some of them, the curious arrangement of the hair, extending outwards from each side of the face in a circular mass resting on the shoulders, the body ornaments and the huge clubs, are similar to those found in early Pallava monuments at Trichinopoly, Dalavānūr, Mandagapattu and elsewhere. The bull's horns worn as a headdress appear to be a feature peculiar to Pallava art. It is a common form of headdress in some of the sculptures at the Seven Pagodas and is also met with in the figures of doorkeepers of the Pallava temples at Vallam and Mogalrājapuram.

c2.115.2

At the Seven Pagodas a few years ago I found buried in the sand, one just outside the western shrine of the Shore temple and the other outside the small Siva temple next to the Durga temple at the Five Raths, two life-size stone heads of Siva decorated with bull's horns and carved in the round. Projecting downwards from the neck was a stone tenon indicating that these heads were once set up in shrines in place of the usual lingas. These horns and the strange manner of dressing the hair suggests that some peculiar Saiva cult flourished during the Pallava period. Another feature about the Bhairavakonda temples, which is very characteristic of Pallava monuments, is the presence of bas-relief images of Brahma and Vishnu carved in panels on each side of the shrine doorway which is guarded by the big doorkeepers mentioned above. Unlike the doorkeepers, these two figures are always four-armed. The image of Brahma appears on the proper right or south side of the shrine containing the linga and Vishnu on the north side, the three apparently representing the Hindu Trinity. But the important position given to the linga shows that Siva was the chief object of worship, Brahma and Vishnu being regarded as minor deities. These two deities occupy the same subordinate position in the bas-relief panels representing Sōmaskanda found in Pallava temples of the 8th century at the Seven Pagodas, Panamalai, Conjeeveram and elsewhere.

c2.115.3

In the later and more ornamental temples at Bhairavakonda, we have the cornice decorated with the gable window design and a frieze of fat little dwarfs below it and lion pillars with bracket capitals carrying the architrave spanning the facade, just as we find them in many of the temples at the Seven Pagodas. When the Pallavas became dispossessed of their Telugu province by the Chālukyas in the early part of the 7th century and were driven south, they must have passed through that region which is now called the Nellore district and it is probable that this area formed a frontier between the two countries for some years as the Pallavas never regained their northern province although their empire continued to flourish in the south. The architectural style of the earlier temples at Bhairavakonda clearly indicates that they were excavated in the 7th century or thereabouts, and as we know that the Pallavas must have occupied this part of the country about this period at least for a time, and the fact that both on plan and in design the temples are similar to Pallava monuments discovered elsewhere, it is reasonable to assume that the earlier temples at least are the work of the Pallavas. As there are eight temples all of which are dedicated to Siva and have no special names, it will be necessary to number them 1 to 8 in describing them below in detail.