Mediaeval Temples of the Dakhan c9.s1: Sinnar

Mediaeval Temples of the Dakhan c9.s1

Language: English

Sinnar

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SINNAR, twenty miles south of Nāsik, is an ancient town, and has been mentioned in old records under the names Sindinagara, Seuṇapura and Sindīnera. In A.D. 1025 the Mahāsāmanta Bhillama III of the Yādava family was ruling his hereditary province of Seuṇadesa, at his capital of Sindīnagara, as a feudatory of the Western Chālukya king Jayasiṃha II. Later, according to the Vrata-khaṇḍa and the Bassein grant of A.D. 1069, it is recorded that Seuṇachandra I founded the town of Seuṇapura. It would appear that his son Dhadiyappa was born in the town of Sindīnera. This is about all that we know of it. According to tradition Sinnar was founded by a Gavali (Yādava) chief Rāv Shinguni about seven hundred years ago. His son Rāv Govinda is supposed to have built the great temple of Goṇdeśvara, at a cost of two lakhs of rupees. It is possible it may be named after Govindarāja, one of the Yādava Princes, who ruled about the beginning of the 12th century. (Plates XLII—LII and LV.)

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This great temple of Goṇdeśvara, outside the town of Sinnar on the north-east, is the largest and most complete of its class in the Dakhan. It is a pañchāyatana temple, that is, a group of five shrines dedicated to five deities—Śiva, Viṣṇu, Gaṇapati, Sūrya and Devī, the central main temple being dedicated to the first and the four small surrounding shrines to the others. Before the main entrance stands the Nandi pavilion. The buildings stand upon a long rectangular platform, the main temple in the centre and the four smaller around it, one at each corner. The whole group has been surrounded by a wall, now mostly destroyed, with two entrance porches or gateways—one on the south and one on the east—enclosing a large and ample courtyard. The great temple faces east, and the shrine contains the usual Śaivite liṅga. It is built of the ordinary amygdaloidal trap rock of the locality, and this has not weathered well in respect of the smaller carvings, the softer particles having disintegrated, leaving the surfaces of the exposed portions rather honeycombed.

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The plan of the main building is practically the same as that of Ambarnātha, its length, over all, being 78 feet. The exteriors are also remarkably alike, the style and general disposition of the mouldings being the same. The elephant band in the basement of the Sinnar temple is bolder and far more effective than it is at Ambarnātha, but the latter has a much greater display of images on its walls. In Gondeśvara the porches are deeper and have had dwarf side walls, inside, which form benches; these did not exist in the other.

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Of figure sculpture upon the temple there is very little, and what there is is chiefly confined to small images in little panels around the porches. These consist of representations of scenes from the Rāmāyaṇa, female dancing figures, and others of the different manifestations of the various gods and goddesses. The few images that occur upon the main walls are very poorly carved and savour much of later work than that of Ambarnātha. Little pilasters and lozenge-shaped flowers occupy, for the most part, the niches usually reserved for images. The principal images upon the temple are those upon the outside of the shrine walls. These are, above the gargoyle on the north side, and under the large niche, a four-handed devī or goddess, and, on the south side of the shrine, Brahmī with three faces and a goose below her. The corresponding image on the west or back of the temple has been removed. Upon each face of the temple, above these, is a deep canopied niche in which were placed the more important of the images, but they are now empty. Each has Gaja-Lakshmī above its cornice. On either side of the mass of masonry standing out before the base of the śikhara, that is, between the latter and the pyramidal roof of the hall, are two niches one above the other. In those on the north side of the temple are Śiva above, and what looks like Bhairava below. While the lower niche on the south side is empty, the upper one contains Śiva dancing the tāṇḍava. Attached to the pillars of the porches were ornamental bracket figures of females, but of these, of which there were four in each porch, two remain in the east or main porch—one very much damaged—and three in the north porch. The pilasters also had bracket figures, but they were of lions or griffins, and, of these, three remain out of six. On the whole, the images are very poorly carved and shew to very great disadvantage beside those on the small temple of Aeśvara to the north-west of the town. The ornamental gargoyle, through which the waste water from the shrine passes out, upon the north side of the temple, is, though mutilated, a particularly fine piece of work. It is in the shape of the conventional makara so frequently introduced into temple decoration.

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The east or main porch is much damaged. The forward beam is cracked, and the immense mass of masonry above, which would otherwise collapse, is propped up by a slender square column of stone. The upper part of the parapet wall on the north side has disappeared and the forward steps and flanking masonry have been entirely renewed. The side walls of the north porch have gone, but portions of the forward steps and their flanking walls remain. The forward beam in this porch is also cracked and is propped up by the insertion of a pillar. The door lintel, too, is cracked, and is supported by two pillars, one of which, a carved pillar from elsewhere, has a curious and uncommon arrangement of foliage around its shafts, which looks like work of several centuries earlier. The flanking walls on the east side, and most of the steps of the south porch, have gone. Here, again, the forward beam has cracked and has been supported by stone props.

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The ceilings of the porches are very neat, being formed of rings of cusped ornaments, with a small central pendant, which have fallen. On the face of the octagonal band, under the lowest circular moulding, are little figures, representing various scenes, such as the churning of the ocean by the gods and demons and processions. On the dedicatory blocks of all the doorways is Gaṇeśa. Kīrttimukha masks and florid arabesque fill up the corners of the ceilings.

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The interior of the temple is of the usual style. Four central pillars support the central dome of the ceiling, and upon them and the walls rests the whole weight of the hall roof. These four pillars, which are 9 feet 6 inches in height, are very elaborately carved, the general plan, all the way up, being square with recessed corners. The shaft, base and capital are divided up by horizontal mouldings. Among the images on the lower parts are dancers, male and female, amongst which are seen Bhairava and other deities. Higher up on the columns is a band, on the four sides of which are small groups of figures, among them being two very indecent representations. The pillar, at the north-west corner of the square, differs slightly in two of the bands about the middle of the shaft, but this is due to a flaw in the stone which necessitated their being drawn in to form a kind of neck to the pillar at that point. The pilasters are much plainer in design, all the elaborate work of the interior being concentrated upon the four pillars. These are of a very different style to those at Ambarnātha and Balsāne; they are far less graceful in outline, and the distribution of the various bands and panels of sculpture is not carried out with the same taste and eye to the general balance of parts. The spreading towards the base in the earlier pillars gives a better feeling of strength and stability. There seems to be a want of a definite plan about the sub-divisions of these columns.

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The great cential dome of the ceiling, which rises to a height of nearly 20 feet, is precisely like that of the porches and the antechamber—neat and chaste but not elaborate. Being so high above the beams compared with its span, and, having a deep projecting cornice round the inside of the beams, verp little light gets into the dome, which is, therefore, very dark and gloomy. The side ceilings rise in four tiers of concave cusped mouldings from the side walls to the central square.

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In the walls of the hall, on either side of the entrance to the antechamber, are large framed niches for images, but these are absent. There are also larger ones in the side walls of the antechamber itself, one in each side. The beam across the entrance to the antechamber is cracked and is supported by a stone prop. The shrine doorway is of the same pattern as the outer or main doorway, being rather more elaborate than that of temple No. I at Balsāne, and a great deal more so than that of the Jaina temple at Añjaneri. Save for the clumsy threshold stone, which seems to have been an after insertion, the Balsāne doorway is a stronger and more chaste design than the Sinnar one. In this, the pilasters, on either side, which support the cornice, are less prominently marked, and are more or less lost in the group of mouldings which surrounds it. The kīrttimukha face, which is, as a rule, found upon the threshold, does not occur here. The interior of the shrine is plain, the floor being on the same level as the hall floor; and in the middle of it is a large liṅga. The present Nandi, in the Nandi paviliōn, appears to be a comparatively new one; another one about the same size, with the headless fragments of two others, lie below on the pavement.

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It is difficult now to say, with absolute certainty, to what deities the four surrounding shrines were dedicated, but, judging from the sculptures which remain upon them, the nort-west one was assigned to Pārvatī, the south-west to Gaṇapati, the north-east to Sūrya, and the south-east to Viṣṇu. Among the smaller images, around the Nandi pavilion, are two of the *avatāras* of Viṣṇu, namely, Varāha and Narasimha.

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The *śikhara* has lost its own finial and has been capped with an incongruous Muhammadan dome in brick and mortar, which is to be removed. The small shrines have also lost the whole or part of their finials. What the original was like may be seen, to some extent, in the photographs of the temples at Jhodgā and Ratanvāḍi. The masonry of the roof of the hall, shown in black in the section, is built hollow, and the main tower is also hollow above the shrine ceiling.

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The temple of Āeśvara, upon the north-west of the town, just above the rivulet, is in the Chālukyan style and, so, does not belong to the class of work usually found in the Dakhan. It is the most northerly Chālukyan structure that has been found. Nothing is known of its origin, and even tradition gives us no clue to the reason for it being found so far north of its natural habitat.

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Fig. 9—The temple of Āeśvara, looking towards the shrine.

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It has the appearance of a temple of the best period of Chālukyan work, that is, about the eleventh century, and is possibly older than that of. Gondēśvara. There are some details it seems to have borrowed from the northern style, such as, for instance, the kichaka bracket above the capital of the pillars—the little squat figure in the act of supporting the beam. This is not found in Chālukyan work.¹

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¹ Compare the walls and pillars with those in the temple of Malikārjuna at Kuruvaṭṭi, and with some of the pillars in Nannesvara at Lakkundi. The Chālukyan Architecture of the Kanarese Districts, plates LXXIII and CVIII.

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The temple, as it stands, consists of a shrine, with nearly the whole of its tower missing, and two groups of four pillars standing out in front of the shrine, which formed part of a long hall, or two halls, one in advance of the other. These retain their beams above them. There were enclosing walls around these, which is shewn by parts of their foundations which still remain (Plate LV).. There was also a raised platform around the shrine as the indented outline for the elephant moulding of its foundation shows. There would appear to have been images in the recesses between the pilasters all around the shrine walls, but they have been removed. The group of pillars, nearest the shrine, are octagonal in plan with recessed corners, but of the outer group of four, the inner two are six-sided in plan, and the outer pair are square. There are three-very ornamental niches in the base of the shrine, one on each side.

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Among the images still remaining on the outside of the temple, which are all small, is a devī (Pārvatī?) seated upon a tiger or a lion with curly mane up above the cornice on the south face. Little corner lion-brackets occupy the tops of the wall pilasters while, between them, in the running band, are small figures of sorts, some of which are very indecent. Around the lower part of the wing walls, a portion of which remains on the north side, there have been some very fine carved groups, some of which have been carried away and have been built into the wall of a little shrine on the bank of the stream near by.. A fragment of one of these groups still exists in the north wing wall, west face, with two on the north face representing incidents from the Rāmāyaṇa, the other being a group of three standing figures in an attitude of adoration.

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A most superb piece of carving overarches the entrance to the antechamber. Forming a semicircular arch are three bands, the centre one of little dancing dwarfs. These rise from the jaws of two makaras, one on either side, with the most wonderful tails of flowing arabesque, which turn up over their backs and forward on to the arched bands. The central semicircular panel, under the arch, is occupied by a representation of Śiva dancing the tāṇḍava. A musician on his left keeps time on his drum, and Pārvatī sits on his right amazed at his performance. Three wedge-shaped slots in the stone, under this sculpture, show that another slab had been slipped on below which probably was a sculptured band containing Śiva's gaṇa.

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The ceiling of the antechamber is flat, and is divided by deep cross bars into nine sunk squares, in each of which was a group of figures, but the central one has been destroyed. The remaining represent the aṣṭadikpālas or the regents of the eight points of the compass. This is a very favourite ceiling in Chālukyan temples and has been fully described in a previous volume.¹ The sculptor has, however, made a blunder in putting Agni, on his ram, in the north compartment which should have contained Kuvera, on his horse. Kuvera is probably in the wrong place in the south-east corner where Agni ought to be, but this sculpture is damaged beyond all recognition. The regents should be as follows:—

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¹ The Chālukyan Architecture of the Kanarese Districts.

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Above the shrine doorway, which is fairly well decorated, is a line of figures representing the *saptamātṛis* or the "Seven Mothers," another sculpture peculiar to Chālukyan temples, since the members of the Chālukya family were under the special guardianship of these divine, mothers. There are, however, eleven figures in the row. On the left side is Śiva with a standing attendant, and on the right, Gaṇapati and Śiva as Bhairava. On the dedicatory block we find the Chālukyan Gaja-Lakshmī instead of Gaṇapati who is the favourite presiding deity among the Dekhan temples. Occupying the middle of the band of mouldings, immediately above this, is Vishṇu upon Śesha. On the lower inner face of the south antechamber pilaster is Brahmā, Vishṇu occupying the north one. On the outer pilasters are *dvārapālas* or door-keepers. The larger female figures on the pillars have been well carved, and exhibit exceptional elegance of pose. Among the smaller figures are some of the *avatāras* of Vishṇu. The interior of the shrine is perfectly plain, and a *liṅga* now occupies the centre of the floor.

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In addition to the temples just described, there are two other old ones in the village of no particular interest, save that one has four doors to its shrine. It has the usual *maṇḍapa* or hall before it, into which one door enters, but the doors in the other three walls of the shrine lead out into the open. The shrine walls are complete with all their mouldings on the outside shewing that there was no other enclosing wall beyond it, and, therefore no *pradakshiṇa* to which the doors could have led. There may have been porches before each of these. Above the door leading into the hall is Gaṇapati, but above the others there are no images. The *liṅga* now occupies the shrine.

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Out in the fields, about a mile east of the town, is a small "Hemādpanti" shrine which is partly in ruins.

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Just outside the east gate, by a well, were two Jaina images, each of them being a colossal figure of a female seated on a tiger. These were half buried in the earth.

Linked texts (3)

Vālmīkirāmāyaṇa — Vālmīki, Sanskrit
Ambarnātha
Vratakhaṇḍa — Hemādri, Sanskrit