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The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation c14: Chapter VIII. Vishnu and Siva Shrines—The Allegory of the Dawn-maiden—The Brahmâ Shrine—Orientation of Indian Temples

The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation c14

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Chapter VIII. Vishnu and Siva Shrines—The Allegory of the Dawn-maiden—The Brahmâ Shrine—Orientation of Indian Temples

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It has been made evident in the last chapter that in ancient Indian monasteries the groups of cells inhabited by the monks were always very small and of no structural importance. All the architectural interest of the monastery was centred on the shrine or shrines around which the monastic cells were grouped, and on the Sangha halls, or the pillared pavilions, which belonged to the former. We have seen what the sacred symbol, the chaitya, or stûpa, venerated by both the Jains and disciples of the Buddha, was like. It is necessary now to describe in greater detail the shrine of Vishnu, the ancient symbol of the holy Mount Meru, which was also adopted by Buddhists and Jains, just as many pagan symbols were adopted by early Christians with a different connotation.

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Whatever century historians may assume to be the beginning of the period when the followers of orthodox Hinduism who took either Vishnu or Siva as their patron deity (*Ishta-dêva*) began to be sufficiently numerous and powerful in the State to take political and social precedence over other sects, it is certain that the philosophical and dogmatic differences typical of Vaishnavism and Saivism not only belonged to Buddhism, but prevailed in the earlier schools of Indo-Aryan thought. They were probably very much the same as those which in Greek philosophy distinguished the Epicureans from the Stoics.

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To go back to the Indian village: if one divides the southern half of the pradakshinâ path, which followed the movement of the sun had accepted, more abstruse metaphysical and philosophical theses, so that both the Hînayâna and Mahâyâna schools merged into modern Hinduism in the same way as the earlier schools of Vedic India had merged into Buddhism. The Hînayâna, which was then the southern school of Buddhism, grew into the modern Saivaite school, which inherited the ascetic traditions of pre-Buddhist times; while the Vaishnavaites, who represent the reforming schools of northern India, absorbed the following of Mahâyânist philosophy. It must, however, be remembered that in modern times the two main sects, or groups of sects, have intermingled at so many points that the old distinctions have been largely superseded by others which individual Hindu teachers, like Sankarâcharya, Râmanûja and Chaitanya, have introduced.

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The apparent anomaly, which has confused Fergusson and many others, is that a Vishnu shrine is not necessarily Vaishnavaite in the sectarian sense, but only one that is dedicated to the Vaishnava aspect of Brahmâ, Buddha, or Siva, as the case may be. Similarly, a Siva shrine may be Saivaite, Buddhist, or Vaishnavaite. Fergusson did not perceive that throughout all these sectarian changes there prevailed the great architectural tradition which was Indo-Aryan, and that these symbols represent philosophical concepts accepted by all the chief schools of Indo-Aryan religion.

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The idea of the Vishnu mystic pillar, or holy mountain supporting the sky, is of very remote antiquity and common to Europe and Asia. The Christian church tower and steeple, and the Indian Vishnu sikhara are one and the same symbol with different implications. The Vedic philosophers took it as the symbol of the equilibrium of the two opposing cosmic forces, which they named Brahmâ and Siva, or evolution and involution. The three symbols together, the Trimûrti, are not separate "gods," but three Aspects of Ishwara, the first manifestation of the cosmic creative power proceeding from the Unknowable, Brahman. But the man in the Indian village, though not a polytheist, as is popularly believed,¹ would always think of a Vishnu shrine as the holy Mount Meru, or as Mount Mandara, Vishnu's abode in the Himâlayas.

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¹ See Introduction, p. xxxv.

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FIG. 40.—Vishnu Temples and Royal Tombs at Nineveh (Layard's "Nineveh," 2nd series, Pl. 16).

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Architecturally we are not concerned with the primitive Aryan rite of circumambulating a sacred hill or mountain with which the Vishnu shrine is connected, but certainly the Indian sikhara is of far greater antiquity than the sixth or seventh century, the date which Fergusson erroneously gave to the great Buddhist shrine of Bodh-Gayâ. What is perhaps the earliest and most interesting representation of it seems to have escaped the notice of orientalists altogether. It occurs in one of the bas-reliefs of Nineveh discovered by Layard, and described by him as the Palace of Sennacherib.

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In this relief (fig. 40) the palace itself is evidently the group of flat-roofed buildings on the right. To the left of this are three domed buildings which I have no doubt are meant to be royal tombs; they are prototypes of the stûpa—Siva's symbol—which was the royal tomb of ancient India. The two conical buildings behind these are temples—shrines of the holy mountain which appears in the background. To make the symbolism clearer, the flowering tree, the Tree of Life, and the pine or cedar, the Tree of Eternity, are planted close to the tombs and on the slopes of the mountain.

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I must leave others to enlarge upon the inferences to be drawn from the appearance of Aryan Vishnu, and Siva symbols, or their prototypes, in the royal tombs of Nineveh in the eighth century b.c. The most significant point to be noticed is that the juxtaposition of Vishnu's sikhara and Siva's stûpa, or the symbols of Life and Death, is exactly what occurred so frequently in ancient and medieval India. Fergusson's description of the former as “Hindu and Indo-Aryan” and of the latter as “Buddhist and Dravidian” not only misled himself, but gave to others entirely false clues to the history and chronology of Indian art.

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The earliest Indian Vishnu shrines yet discovered are the monolithic ones carved in miniature which have been dug up in great quantities on the site of Sarnath, the Deer Park where the Buddha preached the Law to his first disciples, and also at Bodh-Gayâ. They are found together with vast numbers of miniature stûpas, many of which are probably of greater age, as the stûpa was the most sacred emblem of the first disciples of the Buddha. But just as at the present day Hindus will often worship at Muhammadan shrines of great sanctity, so in early Buddhist times many who belonged to other schools of thought brought their pious offerings to the shrines of Sâkiya Muni. Then Buddhism seems to have gradually adopted the Vishnu symbol as a distinctive mark of the Mahâyâna school.

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Fig. 41 is a typical specimen of the Vishnu symbols dug up at Sarnath: it has an image of Ganêsha carved upon it. It is crowned by the amalaka; the finial, water-pot, or *kalasha*, is missing in most cases. It was probably carved in a separate piece and perhaps in a different material. Like all Vishnu shrines, the sides of the sikhara are ornamented with sun-windows: Vishnu watches for the approach of his lovely bride Lakshmî, or Srî, who is Ushas, the Vedic Dawn-maiden.

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The identity of Lakshmî with Ushas, I venture to assert, is proved by the allegory of the Churning of the Ocean, an ancient Indo-Aryan myth, the meaning of which has long been a mystery to Oriental scholars. It is really a vivid picture of the dawn and sunrise in the Himâlayas, which were evidently the cradle of one branch of the Indo-Aryan family; with Kailâsa, the great snow-capped peak of Siva, and Mount Mandara, Vishnu’s abode, in the background. The Devas, the powers of light, combine with the Asuras, the powers of darkness, to churn the cosmic ocean for the nectar of life and immortality. They use for a churning-stick Vishnu’s mountain, Mandara, and for a rope the serpent Ananta, or Eternity (the Milky Way), which encircles the earth. After a long churning, fire and poisonous smoke (the first glow upon the mountains before dawn, and the gathering together of the mists and clouds in the valleys) obscure the sky, and the Devas are disheartened. Siva drinks the poison and becomes “blue-throated,” *i.e.* the crimson glow on his snowy peak gradually turns to dazzling white and the mountain slopes below the snow-line become violet-blue. At the same time Lakshmî, the dawn, appears, seated on the Brahmâ lotus, bringing with her health, dance and song, happiness and prosperity, and the jar of nectar which Indra, the rain-god, pouring his refreshing showers upon her, takes into his keeping. As she rises from the cosmic ocean and prepares to fling herself upon Vishnu's breast, the Devas shout triumphant hymns and the powers of darkness fling themselves down into the underworld where they dwell.

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FIG. 41.—Miniature Vishnu Shrine found at Sarnath.

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The whole site of Sarnath was covered with innumerable brick-built and monolithic stûpas of different dimensions, and it is probable that pairs of Vishnu and Siva symbols were often placed there by the same devotee. Perhaps some of the brick bases now remaining will prove to have belonged to Vishnu shrines, instead of stûpas, for the tall sikharas which crowned them were much easier to destroy than the more solid structure of the stûpa.

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The structural importance and historical interest attaching to the great Vishnu shrine of Bodh-Gayâ are unique. Seeing that all the symbolism of Buddhist art was derived from the ancient Indo-Aryan tradition, the fitness of building a shrine to symbolise the Vaishnava aspect of the Blessed One at the spot where the Buddha had overcome the powers of Mâra, the Evil One, needs no further explanation. It was an immemorial tradition to mark the site of a famous Bodhi tree with a Vishnu shrine, and the place where the yogi who sat under it was cremated with a Siva shrine, or stûpa. Fergusson's chronological estimate of the building is an amusing attempt to reconcile the inconsistencies of his stylistic categories. He had to explain how the "Hindu" sikhara, typical of "a Dasyu province," came to be built on one of the most sacred sites of Buddhism. He surmounted the difficulty by calling the Vishnu sikhara a stûpa: in the "Cave Temples of India" he declared that it was "evidently of foreign design, as there is nothing of the same style in India, either before or after it." He adds that "anyone at all familiar with the architecture of the East would know that it was built by the Burmese in the thirteenth or fourteenth century A.D.” In the first edition of his “History of Indian and Eastern Architecture” he revised this estimate by attributing it to the sixth century A.D.

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ARCHES IN THE SIKHARA OF THE BODH-GAYÂ TEMPLE

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Dr. Burgess, in the revised edition of Fergusson’s work,

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FIG. 42.—The Temple of Bodh-Gayâ, Restored (from Cunningham’s “Mahâbodhi”).

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published in 1910, observes that the date of the erection of the “chaitya” is still obscure. When all the misconceptions of Fergusson and his followers regarding the origin and symbolism of the stûpa and sikhara are cleared away, General Cunningham’s contention that the Bodh-Gayâ temple was built in the reign of the Kushan King Huvishka, or in the first century B.C., may after all prove to be nearer the mark than any other conjectures. Moreover, there need be no hesitation in believing that the arches in the interior (Pl. XXV) belonged to the original structure and were not, as Fergusson supposed, placed there by the Burmese restorers in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

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When further progress is made in the study of Indian craftsmanship, it will, I am sure, be proved conclusively not only that Fergusson was again in error in laying down the axiom that Hindu builders never used the arch structurally before Muhammadan times, but that the Muhammadans in India were themselves the borrowers and derived the Indian forms of the pointed arch from the brick buildings of Hindu Gaur.¹

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¹ ^1 This question is discussed in greater detail in my previous work on Indian Architecture.

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I have mentioned above that pairs of temples with an antithetical or complementary significance, like the dhwaja-stambhas at the gateways of stûpas, were often built side by side in India, as they were near Sennacherib's palace at Nineveh. Mâmallapuram furnishes one instance (Pl. XXVI), which is interesting as it gives a clue to the derivation of the most usual method of constructing a sikhara, *i.e.* with stone ribs built up in short sections and tied together at regular intervals by through horizontal courses of masonry.

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These two shrines are, like the other Raths at Mâmallapuram, monolithic models. The popular traditional names given to them, Arjûna's and Draupadi's Raths, should be very significant to Indians who study their own history, but convey nothing to Europeans who are misled by arbitrary archæological terms of Western origin. Arjûna was the hero of the Mahâbhârata who won victory for the Pândavas by the

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MONOLITHIC MODELS OF SIVA AND DÛRGÂ SHRINES, MÂMALLAPURAM (*circa* A.D. 670)

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magic weapons he obtained from Mahâdeva himself, through the practice of austerities in the depths of the Himâlayan forests. Arjûna's Rath is, therefore, only a poetical synonym for a Siva temple; the adjoining one, Draupadi's Rath, named after the common wife of the five Pândava brothers, is dedicated to Pârvatî, Umâ, or Dûrgâ, which are all poetical names for Siva's nature-force or *sakti*, popularly called his wife.¹ Draupadi's Rath is not, therefore, a Vishnu shrine, but symbolises Pârvatî, the Creatrix, as she is represented in the famous sculpture of the Trimûrtî at Elephanta.²

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¹ Compare the similar Dûrgâ shrine built outside the Kârlê chaitya-house (Pl. XVIII) as a substitute for one of the pair of dhwaja-stambhas.

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² See below, p. 163.

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It is, doubtless, an exact reproduction of an ancient Indian village shrine. The form of the roof was derived from primitive construction of bambu and thatch, but very skilfully adapted to the technique of brick and stone, and not, as amateur European craftsmen consider it, an unintelligent imitation. When the up-to-date building craft of Anglo-India equals the magnificent work of ancient and medieval India, or even that of living Indian master-builders, there may be some show of reason in the neglect and disparagement of the Indian building tradition.

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Siva and Vishnu shrines occur in pairs at Pattadakal in the south-west of India (Pl. LIX); at Khajurâho in Central India; at Bhuvanêshwar in Orissa; and no doubt many other instances could be cited in every part of India had the great quantity of archæological material collected since Fergusson wrote not been arranged according to his unscientific categories. In every instance where these pairs are found, archæologists, Indian as well as European, have described the Vishnu shrine as northern, or Indo-Aryan, and the Siva shrine as southern, or Dravidian, regardless of the locality in which they are placed and of the obvious fact that the craftsmanship of both belongs to the same school and often is of precisely the same date—the only distinction between the two temples as regards style being in the symbolism.

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This symbolic distinction had an important bearing upon the respective constructive principles of Vishnu and Siva shrines. The distinction is also recognised in the sectarial marks painted on the foreheads of Vaishnavaites and Saivaites. As Vishnu, regarded as a nature-symbol, is the sun at its zenith and nadir, the Vaishnava schools of philosophy generally took for their sectarial marks various lines which stood for the upright arm of the cosmic cross,¹ and the sikharas of Vishnu shrines (whether Buddhist, Jain, Vaishnavaite or Saivaite

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A RUINED SIKHARA, SHOWING CONSTRUCTION

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shrines, consisting of a cell—the holy of holies—and an antechamber; but without the splendid halls of worship (*mandapams*) which belong to the larger and more famous ones. It would take volumes to do justice to the intuitive sense of beauty and splendid craftsmanship which they display. A complete study of their structure would be a valuable addition to architectural knowledge, but would form a considerable monograph in itself. In some of them a cone of brickwork, suggestive of the structures shown in the Nineveh bas-relief (fig. 40), forms the core upon which the stone facing of the sikhara is built. Many are built entirely of exceedingly fine brickwork, with cut or moulded ornaments, finished with fine polished stucco.

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Pl. XXXIV is a beautiful example of a brick sikhara, illustrating the composite style, called by Fergusson "Chalukyan," in which both the Vishnu and Siva principles of construction are combined in one sikhara. The amalaka, Vishnu's symbol, is used as an ornament in the horizontal courses of the brickwork, and the sikhara would be crowned with Siva's symbol, the stûpa dome, instead of by the amalaka. In the present instance the dome has fallen. Pl. XXXV, from another temple, shows the fine brickwork on a larger scale, with some of the white stucco which covered it.

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Pl. XXXIII shows a fine stone-built Vishnu shrine, possibly of the eighth century, at Barwar Sagar, in the Jhansi district, Central Provinces. Here small porches are added in the north, south, and west sides, making it a *chaumukh* (fourfaced), as in a Brahmâ shrine; but the principal entrance on the east, the sikhara, and the miniature sun-windows skilfully used as ornaments in combination with the amalaka, indicate that the Vaishnava aspect of the Trimûrtî is specially worshipped.

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A ruined temple at Khajurâho (Pl. XXVII) shows very clearly the usual method of constructing a ribbed sikhara when stone is the material. The core is made of rough coursed rubble, without mortar or cement, bound together at intervals by larger horizontal slabs of stone. The weight of the heavy amalaka which crowns the sikhara acts as a key-stone.

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We will now proceed to analyse the structure and symbolism of a Siva B

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SHRINES AT AJANTA AND MÂMALLAPURAM

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The shrines behind the porch differ in shape of plan : in the Ajantâ model it is circular, or of the vesara type, according to the definition of the Silpa-sâstras,¹ while Siva's shrine is square, or shrine, built in three stories; the other a cylindrical shrine built in one storey. One was crowned by a Brahmanical symbol which was also Buddhist; the other by a Buddhist symbol which was also Brahmanical.

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There is no need to demonstrate the fact that the sculptured Mahâyâna chaitya of Ajantâ was a development of the Hînayâna chaitya of K

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H. H. Wilson and Monier Williams, have been puzzled to account for the Saivaites using a symbol associated with the licentious orgies of Western paganism; for not only, as Monier Williams observed, is the relation between the sexes in India regarded as a sacred mystery and never held to be suggestive of indecent ideas, but Saivism is one of the most austere cults of all India and preaches asceticism as a religion. I believe the explanation is this: the original symbols of Saivism in ancient India were the bull and the stûpa—life, death and sacrifice. But the ideas connected with symbols are always interchanging, especially in the case of those which, like the bull and the stûpa, represent pairs of opposites. The oldest Saivaite lingams yet discovered¹ (apart from the stûpa itself) have no phallic suggestions of any kind. They consist of four carved heads, arranged crossways on a short pillar which is fixed in the centre of a square lustration salver, and evidently correspond to the Mahâyânist Brahmâ symbol of a stûpa with four shrines facing the four cardinal points (fig. 54). This was the first step in the transference of the Brahmâ, or procreative, attributes of the bull to the Saiva or tâmasic attributes of the stûpa—or rather, their combination in one and the same symbol. When it is considered that the low-caste priests who attend Saiva temples are generally illiterate, and on that account held in great contempt by the learned Brahman pandits who expound the philosophy of the Saiva cult, it is easy to understand how vulgar phallic notions became associated with the symbol. The influx of Scythian tribes into India probably tended towards the corruption of the popular aspects of Hinduism; but it was not until Muhammadan times, and as a concession to the hatred of Islam for anthropomorphic symbolism, that the lingam in its present form was substituted for the four-headed Brahmâ image, like the splendid sculpture at Elephanta (Pl. LIV and fig. 55).

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¹ The Indian Museum, Calcutta, has many examples of them; they are probably contemporary with the rise of Mahâyâna Buddhism about the first century of the Christian era, when the aniconic symbols of Vedic India began to be anthropomorphosised.

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The symbolism of the stûpa is, however, still retained in the domes surmounting the high pyramidal roofs of Siva shrines ; but as these no longer serve a structural purpose, they are built in solid masonry and brickwork, and only give in their external sculptured form the evidence of their structural origin.

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While innumerable Vishnu and Siva shrines are thus dedicated to the last two persons of the Hindu Trimûrtî, it might seem as if Brahmâ, the Creator, remains without any structural symbol of worship. It is a fact that there are very few temples in India dedicated exclusively to Brahmâ, but every chaumukh shrine, or that which has four doors facing the cardinal points, covered by a Vishnu sikhara or a Siva dome, is a Brahmâ-Vishnu or Brahmâ-Siva temple, as the case may be. It is only the uninformed European who regards Brahmâ, Vishnu, and Siva as three “gods,” instead of the three Aspects of the One.

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An important point to which the attention of archæologists seems never to have been directed is that the orientation of an Indian temple invariably indicates the particular Aspect of the Nature-force (*Prakriti*), or Soul-force (*Purusha*), to which the temple is dedicated ; for the worshipper must place himself or herself “in tune with the Infinite,” just as an Indian singer always knows, either by intuition or by study, the time of day or night and season of the year at which the râga he sings must be sung. A Brahmâ temple has four entrances, facing the four cardinal points ; a Vishnu temple one entrance, facing the rising sun ; and a Siva temple one entrance, facing the setting sun. But the three Aspects are often combined in one temple. Thus the mandapam of a temple will symbolise Siva in its constructive principle; the shrine itself with four doors will symbolise Brahmâ; while the image and the sikhara which covers the shrine will symbolise Vishnu. The north and south aspects and the intermediate points also have their special dedications.

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