The Chalukyan Architecture of the Kanarese Districts c8.s3: Kont-Guḍi Temple
The Chālukyan Architecture of the Kanarese Districts c8.s3
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Kont-Guḍi Temple
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Our next temple is that known as Kont-Guḍi, which is of the same type as the last, and, like it, situated in the village (No. 4). " Kont-Guḍi," again, is not the original name of the temple, but has been applied to it because the last occupant of the building, as a residence, was the man whose privilege it was to carry the konta or triśūla of Śiva to the village boundary at the time of the annual Dasara festival. It was found in the same state in which he left it, the walls and pillars, within, being thickly coated with cowdung plaster which has covered up all the surface carving; and it is thick with soot, grime and cobwebs. It is a smaller building than Lāḍ Khān's, but, except for the pillars, it is hardly less massive in construction. Like the last it is square in plan, but has only four central pillars. The shrine is, if anything, more awkwardly contrived than Lāḍ Khān's, for it is formed against the east wall by screen walls from it to the nearest two pillars, and across between the pillars to form the front, in which is set the door frame. The shrine faces the west, although the entrance doorway to the hall is on the north side. The roof in the middle, above the four pillars, is flat, and it slopes away from this square space, all around, to the four walls. The shrine is, therefore, as at Lāḍ Khān's, under the sloping roof.
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Upon the flat central portion of the roof have been laid a few courses of a śikhara, the first storey in fact, but this is probably an addition of a rather later period. The flat ceiling immediately under this, inside the temple, is an aṣṭadikpāla ceiling, that is, it is divided into nine panels, in the central one of which is Brahmā, while the surrounding eight contain images of the eight regents of the compass. This is a very favourite design of ceiling in later Chālukyan temples, but does not accord well with the heavy massive style of this temple (see Plate V). It was very probably put in at the same time that the śikhara or tower was commenced.
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This first storey of the śikhara is about five feet high, and has an image niche on each of its four sides. That, on the north, seems to contain an image of the tāṇḍava of Śiva, but it is damaged; on the west is Varāha, the boar avatāra of Viṣṇu; on the south is Bhairava, while, on the east is the Vāmana avatāra of Viṣṇu. Vaiṣṇava sculptures occupying the east and west niches, together with Garuḍa presiding over the shrine door, point to the temple being, originally, Vaiṣṇava. A great heavy stone ladder, standing against the side of the temple, was very likely set up for the workmen who were engaged upon the building of the śikhara. There was no intention of constructing a shrine upon the roof, for no doorways are left.
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Fig. 7.—A pillar in Kont-Guḍi, Aihole.
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The four pillars in the temple are of one pattern, and shew a distinct advance on that of Lāḍ Khān, but are not so far advanced as those in Cave III at Bādāmi. The shafts are of the same type as those in the former temple, having no bases, and being square all the way up; but they are provided with a round squat cushion capital between the shafts and the brackets above. These are rather clumsy, and have not the more graceful proportions of those in the cave.¹ The surface decoration on the bands round them, of bead festoons and lozenge-shaped ornament, has been executed with a firmer and much more certain touch than that of Lāḍ Khān, where the prentice hand is apparent. There seems to have been no figure sculpture upon the original building.
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¹ See Plate XXV of the First Report of the Archæological Survey of Western India (Burgess)
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Within the temple, placed against a pillar, is an inscribed slab containing a record of Chāmuṇḍa II. (A.D. 1169), one of the Sinda chiefs. It is much worn, and little of it can be deciphered, but it begins with an invocation to Śiva. This must have been engraved about the time of Basava, the founder of the Liṅgāyat sect, and may possibly be connected with the conversion to their use of some of the old temples here.
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By the side of Kont-Guḍi is another of these early temples, with the same unusual arrangement of the shrine (Plate VIII). The building is more like a long open verandah, facing east, with three rows of columns in its depth; in fact, it is, in plan, remarkably like a simple early Muḥammadan mosque. The shrine is just where the miḥrāb would have been, being formed by enclosing the space between the central pair of back pillars and the back wall, the doorway being between the pillars. The pillars in this temple are of the same type as those at Lāḍ Khān's, and are decorated with broad bands around the shafts, with medallions above them and vertical strips on the face of each connecting them with medallions below. These have been all richly chased with arabesque.
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In each of the three central bays of the ceiling, before the shrine, is a finely carved image slab. That in the centre bears a representation of Śiva, that on the north of the centre has Viṣṇu upon Śesha, and in the southern bay is Brahmā (Fig. 8). The images of these three deities occur in the panels of the ceilings of several of the oldest temples here. Upon the two side walls of the shrine, outside, are other images, namely, a standing image of Viṣṇu on the north side, and an image of Bhairava on the south, while presiding upon the door lintel is Garuḍa. Upon the front of one of the pillars, in the front row, is an image of Narasiṃha, and there are dvārapālas upon the two pillars which flank the shrine door.
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Kont-Guḍi, and this temple, are linked together by an intervening porch, which may or may not be coeval with the temples. Its masonry is not built into that of the temples, and it is not placed on the centre line of either temple. Moreover, there is no entrance into Kont-Guḍi from it; and, as the two temples are not on the same centre line, it is evident that they were erected independently of one another.
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A few yards to the south of the last is another, rather smaller, built upon the same open verandah plan, and also facing east. The shrine is formed in precisely the same manner against the back wall. But there has been an attempt here to enclose an inner hall by a cross wall built along, from end to end, against the middle row of pillars, leaving a doorway in the middle opposite the shrine. This cuts off a long outer verandah from the rest of the building, and thus provides a porch and closed hall.
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Above the shrine doorway, upon the dedicatory block, is the usual Garuḍa. This doorway is the most elaborate of those in these four old temples, and I am not so sure that the lower frame is not somewhat later work. It partakes very much of the character
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Fig. 8.—Images in the ceiling of the temple beside Kont-Guḍi, Aihoḷe.
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of Vijāyanagar work. The dvārapālas, below, are each four-armed, and, by their symbols, represent Śiva and Viṣṇu. Beyond these, on either side in the corner, sits a squat fat figure such as is seen at the bottom of one of the doorways at Kailāsa at Eḷūrā.¹ As in the case of the Kailāsa doorway, this one has Gaja-Lakshmi, not, however, upon the dedicatory block which holds Garuḍa, but away, high up above, on the beam. Both doorways have the heavy roll cornice, which is of an early type, heavier and deeper in this Aihoḷe example. This temple is known by the name of the Sarang-Guḍi after some late occupant.
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¹ See The Eḷūrā Cave Temples, Burgess, Plate XXV, Fig. 1.
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In front of the last is yet another old temple, but it is in the occupation of some private individual, and is closed against intruders.
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These four early temples seem to stand apart by themselves both as regards age and type, and may safely be looked upon as the oldest erections in the place, preceding Mēguṭi, perhaps, by a century and a half.
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Though they do not help us so much in our study of the development of what is known as the Chālukya style from the early Dravidian, yet we must take up a series of temples of about the same age as those we have been considering, which have been built after the Northern style, at least so far as their towers are concerned. At Aihoḷe and Paṭṭadakal the two styles overlap. Though the two types of towers, used in these early temples, differ entirely from each other, the rest of the buildings differs in no respect in their other features, and they were probably built by the same people at the same time. The builders of those days seem to have had no particular reason for selecting the one tower or the other: certainly, no temple, that we know for certain was originally Jaina, in this district, has a tower in the northern style, but Brahmanical temples, both Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava, are found with both. In the case of Jaina temples, the northern class of tower did not lend itself so readily to the formation of an upper shrine.