The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation c18: Chapter XII. The Great Temple of Elephanta—The Trimûrti
The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation c18
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Chapter XII. The Great Temple of Elephanta—The Trimûrti
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AJANTÂ is only one splendid episode in the history of the classic age of Indian art—an age so rich in achievement and so pregnant in inspiration for the whole civilised world that it would be quite impossible in one volume to more than briefly summarise it. Ajantâ reveals the wreck of the great masterpieces of Indian painting. The contemporary Siva temple at Elephanta, a rocky island overlooking the harbour of Bombay, possesses the fragments which now remain of the achievements of India's Michelangelo—her Pheidias and Praxiteles.
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Archæologists have been undecided as to the age of this temple, but I am convinced that both Fergusson and Dr. Burgess are very much at fault in attributing it, from evidence of "style," to the eighth or beginning of the ninth century of our era.¹ It is certainly more than a century earlier than Chaitya-house XXVI at Ajantâ, which they date *circa* A.D. 600—but that date is probably a century too early. I think it would be safe to assume that the great sculpture of the Trimûrti had been completed a century before Harsha of Thanesar celebrated the feast of the Indian Trinity on the sands at Prayâga, which Hiuen Tsang attended in A.D. 644. It was probably known in the seventh century as a famous masterpiece throughout Western India, so that the artist of Ajantâ had it in his mind when he painted the wonderful An empty page (blank).
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¹ "Cave Temples," p. 467.
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head of Prince Siddhartha on the walls of the first college hall, about the beginning of the seventh century.
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Elephanta was the name given to the island by the Portuguese on account of a great stone elephant which formerly stood near the landing-place on the south side of the island. Its Indian name is Ghârâpurî, which seems to be a corruption of Ghârîpurî, "the town of the Ghârîs, or Guruvas," who are people of the Sudra caste performing priestly duties at Saivaite temples. Probably at one time the island, which contains several other rock-cut shrines besides the great temple, was a sacred city dedicated to the cult of Siva. It is still visited by pious Hindu pilgrims on the occasion of the great Saivaite festival in February, but no regular service has been held at the temple since it was desecrated in the sixteenth century by the Portuguese, who are said to be responsible for most of the barbarous mutilation of the sculptures.
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The island, which is formed of a species of hard trap-rock about four and a half miles in circumference, consists of two long hills with a narrow valley between them. The great temple is carved out of the western hill, at a height of 250 feet above high-water level. It has three entrances: the principal one, opening to the central aisle (Pl. LIII), the end of which is filled by the Trimûrti, faces north—like the first cycle of monastic halls at Ajantâ. This northern aspect commands a splendid view over the sea and mainland, with the silhouette of the Western Ghats bounding the horizon.
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Fig. 53 shows the plan of the temple. Excluding the pillared porticoes which form the north, east, and west entrances, and the shrine of the Trimûrti which fills the place of the southern porch, the interior of the temple is a pillared hall about 91 feet square, the roof being supported by six rows of pillars with six pillars in each row, except for the space occupied by the Brahmâ shrine (Pl. LIV), which takes the place of four pillars. If the temple had been a structural one, it would therefore have been itself a Brahmâ shrine, with entrances on each of the four sides opposite the cardinal points.
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In classic dignity and restraint these massive Vishnu pillars, with their usual amalaka capitals, contrast strongly with the rich elaboration of the first two college halls at Ajantâ,
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FIG. 53.—Plan of the Great Temple at Elephanta (from Fergusson's “Cave Temples”).
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though the symbolism is precisely similar. They resemble rather closely the pillars of No. VII (fig. 48), and it may be assumed that the Elephanta temple is of about the same age as the latter.
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Entering at the northern entrance, and passing up the central aisle, attention is first arrested by the wonderful Brahmâ shrine on the right (Pl. LIV), placed near the entrance, so that the glow of light from the western court falls upon it. It is a cubical cell—a symbol of the universe—pierced by four doors, the ends of the four arms of the cosmic cross, each guarded by two colossal regents of the quarters, like gods of Olympus, which are among the most striking of the Elephanta sculptures. The shrine now contains only the modern lingam of Siva, placed there probably to placate the iconoclasts in early Muhammadan times, or perhaps after it had been desecrated by
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THE BRAHMÂ SHRINE, ELEPHANTA
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FIG. 54.—The Mahâyânist Brahmâ Stûpa.
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FIG. 55.—The Stûpa Anthropomorphosised. (The Brahmâ Image of Elephanta restored.)
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the Portuguese, when the magnificent Brahmâ image (Pl. LV) for which it was designed was knocked down and flung into the adjoining courtyard. It remains there, I believe, until the present day.
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Here is plain evidence of the form which Siva's lingam took about the sixth or seventh century a.d. It was a Brahmâ image, which at this time took the form of an anthropomorphosised stûpa : *i.e.* the early stûpa of the Mahâyâna type (fig. 54), with a square or octagonal base and the four shrines—the symbol of the universe, or Brahmâ's temple—was converted into the four-headed image of Brahmâ, in which the dome of the stûpa remained as the top of his *mukuta* or tiara (fig. 55). When the Muhammadan iconoclasts came, the Brahmâ symbol reverted to its ancient aniconic form, and, the original symbolism having been forgotten in the decadence of Hinduism which set in after the Muhammadan conquest, the phallic ideas now popularly connected with it were read into it by the low-caste guardians of Siva temples.
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This grand sculptured symbol of the cosmic forces conveys a vivid impression of another great masterpiece of the Aryan genius—the Hermes of Praxiteles. The two might appropriately be placed side by side to show the similarity in artistry and the difference in spiritual insight of the two schools of Aryan sculpture; for they sum up the highest art of the Western naturalist and of the Eastern mystic.
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Some day, perhaps, if the Eastern masterpiece still exists and when the Aryan of the West has begun to understand the art which belongs to him better, reproductions of it may be made for a museum in which Indian art will take its proper place side by side with that of Hellas. The Hermes of Elephanta will not suffer by comparison with that of Praxiteles.
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Elephanta is India's Parthenon, and when the eye has become accustomed to the dim light of the interior, the colossal bust of the Trimûrtî (Pl. LVI), carved in the rocky wall which ends the central aisle, will be seen looming out through the mysterious gloom. But it is difficult in the present state of the great temple to realise how awe-inspiringly beautiful it must have been when lighted up by the glow of the bronze temple-lamps and the silver shimmer of the snow-white pillars, finished like marble with the finest polished plaster, and when This page is completely blank; there is no text or printed matter to transcribe.
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IMAGE OF BRAHMÂ, ELEPHANTA
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the chanting of that great Hymn of the Rig-Veda (X. 129) echoed through the aisles:
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There was neither Existence nor Non-Existence;
The Kingdom of Air, nor the Sky beyond.
What was there to contain, to cover in—
Were there but vast unfathomed depths of Water?
There was no Death there, nor Immortality;
No Sun was there, dividing Day from Night:
Then was there only THAT, resting within ITSELF;
Apart from IT there was not anything.
At first within the Darkness veiled in Darkness,
Chaos unknowable, the All lay hid:
When sudden from the formless Void emerging,
By the great power of Heat was born that Germ.
Thereafter came Desire, the primal root of Mind;
Being from non-Being proceeded—this our Rishis know:
What was the Cause—above, below?
What vital force impell'd this parting here?
Who knows whence this was born, or how it came?
The Gods themselves are later than this time:
He only, the Creator, truly knoweth this;
And even He, perhaps, may know it not.
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The Indian conception of the Trimûrti, the Three Aspects of the One, may be considered from many different standpoints. Originally, like all other Indo-Aryan conceptions, it was derived from the life of the ancient Indian village community. The first Aspect was Brahmâ, the Creator, whom all Aryans worshipped as the Cause of all things; or Buddha, the great Aryan Guru. It was the symbol of the spiritual wisdom of the Aryan race. The second Aspect was Justice, the pillar of Aryan society, represented by the village council, or by the head of the tribe. The third was the Dharma, the Law spiritual and temporal, revealed and recorded by the Vedas. And as all three Aspects were interchangeable, and manifestations of the universal Law, together they represented God, as Three in One, or One in Three.
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As an abstract or philosophical concept the Trimûrti represented the Vedantic theory of the Evolution of the Universe from the
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THE TRIMÛRTI, ELEPHANTA
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zenith, and at setting, which are the three times at which every orthodox Brahman recites his daily prayers.
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Though a Siva temple, Elephanta is, as I have said, the Indian Parthenon; for in the Trimûrti sculpture Brahmâ's place is taken by Parvati, as Creatrix, just as in Mahâyâna Buddhism it is taken by the Buddha. The legend of the marriage of Siva and Parvati—the springtime of the Himâlayas, whose loveliness lures once a year the Great Ascetic from his meditation on the snow-clad mountain peak—as told by Kalidâs in the poem of the Birth of the War-God, fills one of the sculptured panels in an adjoining aisle; and her head in the Trimûrti, mistaken by archæologists for Vishnu, is the one on the right of the spectator, or facing west.
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The central head, majestic and calm in expression, has always been mistaken for Brahmâ, the Creator; but it is really the râjasic Aspect of the Trimûrti, Vishnu the Preserver, with the shining symbols of His three footsteps ¹ upon the splendid jewelled crown, the holy Mount Meru. He wears also His necklet of pearls, the worlds innumerable in the making ² which are strung together on their orbits in His firmament—and the glorious panch-ratna collar of gold glittering with His jewels³—ether, air, fire, water, and earthy matter.
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¹ The three positions of the sun.
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² The pearl is the symbol of the cosmic element *akâsha*, ether, and thus also of the planets which are born from it; Vishnu being known as Akâsha-garbha, Container of Ether.
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³ The precious stones which symbolise the elements are pearl, sapphire, ruby, emerald, and diamond.
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Siva, with frowning brows, parted lips, and protruding tongue, holding the Serpent, a symbol of life, death, and re-incarnation, is the third or tâmasic Aspect of the Trimûrti. His tiara contains a human skull, and floral emblems which belong to Saivaite ritual are wreathed in it.⁴
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⁴ These include the trefoiled leaf of the bel tree (*Cratæva religiosa*), and that of the nirgundi (*Vitex trefoliata*).
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Dr. Burgess states that behind the mukuta of Siva the rock is cut away into a recess in which two persons could lie stretched out at length without being seen from below. The Trimûrti of Elephanta was probably the Delphic Oracle of Western India!
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It is difficult to compare the magnificent sculpture of the Elephanta temple with any of the masterpieces of the West, for it belongs to a plane of æsthetic thought, not entirely peculiar to India, but one in which Indian artists were supreme. Greek art had its centaurs, fauns, and satyrs, and its pantheon of deified heroes, but left the profoundest mysteries of creation to the speculation of philosophers. Egyptian art, marvellous as it is, can only be regarded from a philosophic standpoint as glorified totemism. Indian philosophy, rising to a far higher intellectual plane, seems to take the monumental art of Egypt at the point where it stopped short, and to raise it, with an equivalent power of technical expression, to the loftiest heights ever yet attained by human thought. The mystics of India reconciled the aims of the artist and philosopher, which Greece and Italy were content to regard as belonging to different planes of thought.
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If the Brahmâ image might have been created by the chisel of Praxiteles, it seems as if a reincarnation of Pheidias, inspired by the profound philosophy of the Upanishads instead of by the child-like conceptions of the Homeric Olympus, had been born again to carve this masterpiece of Indo-Aryan genius at Elephanta. There are other great sculptures at Elephanta; but the art of the unknown sculptors of the Brahmâ shrine and of the Trimûrti stands out from the rest, as Valmiki and Kalidâs shine pre-eminently in Indian poetry and drama.
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And it is impossible to doubt that these great artists, though their names were consigned to oblivion through the contempt of Islam for the sculptor's art, were in their day held in as high honour as the poets and dramatists of Vikramâditya's court, and as the miniature painters whom Akbar and Jahângîr counted among their intimate friends. Great art like this could hardly have been created under the social stigma which now attaches to the master-craftsmen of India. The blindness of Anglo-Indian critics has not allowed them to perceive the wide gulf which separates the fine sculpture of the Indian temple images from the popular art of ordinary architectural decoration—a gulf fully as wide as that which separated the great masters of Europe from the apprentices or common craftsmen of their guilds.
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It is almost miraculous that, in the wholesale destruction of works of the classic age of Indian art, which went on unchecked for centuries after the Muhammadan conquest, any of those which must have been once counted the most precious of them all should be amongst those which have suffered least from the blind fury of the iconoclast. But one sculpture like the Trimûrti of Elephanta and one painting like the Prince Siddhartha suffice to show that Indian artists may stand among the greatest of the world.
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Orientalists, looking only at the outside of things, have worked with untiring zeal to show Greek influence in Indian art and literature, as a mark of Western superiority, without being able to realise where the true resemblances lie; just as the secret links which bind Greek and Gothic art together remain hidden from the book-learned student who sees the form but fails to grasp the inner spirit.
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Indo-Aryan art was Greek because it was born of the common parent of European and Indian civilisation. Greek art remained a child always, with childish dreams of life and beauty. Let us ever cherish those dreams of childhood which belong to the springtime of humanity. But the art of India grew to maturity and put away childish things. The art of Gandhara was her plaything as a child.
Linked texts (2)
- Ṛgvedasaṃhitā — Sanskrit
- Kumārasaṃbhava — Kālidāsa, Sanskrit