Pramāṇa · Search · About · API

The Hindu Temple v1.c4.s1: Tirtha and Temple

The Hindu Temple v1.c4.s1

Language
English

Tirtha and Temple

v1.c4.s1.1

Life as a pilgrimage from birth to death has many stations. In India death is but another station and in itself does not bring final release (mokṣa). Final release from all conditions of existence, from all limitations, is gained through Knowledge (Brahmavidyā); and Knowledge, the realisation of Supreme identity, is the means and the end itself: it gives and is release. Some attain it while alive (jivan-mukti), others at death. To the great mass of people, who are without the faculties and training to make them fit for the realisation of the Supreme Principle by Knowledge, other roads lie open which also lead to the Centre. Pilgrimage is one; it brings joy (bhukti) and release (mokṣa) to those who have achieved control of their minds and of the actions of their hands and feet; who have sapience (vidyā), and who have practised austerities and have a good name.¹

v1.c4.s1.2

¹ ‘Agnipurāṇa’, ch. CIX. 1b-2a. ² ‘Mahābhārata’, Ādiparva, II. 2; Vanaparva, Tirthayātrāparva. ³ Kṣetra is sacred ground, a field of active power, a place where ‘mokṣa’, final release, can be obtained. The ‘Garuḍa Purāṇa’, I. XVI. 14, enumerates seven cities as givers of ‘mokṣa’. They are: Ayodhyā, Mathurā, Māyā, Kāśī, Kāñcī, Avantikā, Dvāravatī. The sacred geography of India recognises the whole country as a field of more than human activity. It is carried by the rivers, from the celestial region where they have their prototype and origin, down to the earth. Śaiva tradition knows the special potency of certain places (pīṭha) in India resulting from the fall to earth of the dismembered body of the dead Satī, a form which

v1.c4.s1.3

The places of pilgrimage are distributed through the entire country and are called Tīrtha and Kṣetra. The number of these sacred sites is large; the ‘Mahābhārata’ speaks of hundreds of places of pilgrimage.²

v1.c4.s1.4

Tīrtha is the name of a place of pilgrimage on the bank of a river, the seashore or a lake. The meaning of the word is a ford, a passage. Water, the purifying, fertilizing element being present, its current which is the river of life can be forded in inner realisation and the pilgrim can cross over to the other shore. The place of pilgrimage is the end of the journey to the Centre; but it is not itself the goal and only the means for crossing over to the Centre. For this reason the number of Tīrthas and Kṣetras is indefinitely large.³ For this very reason too no journey need be undertaken at all.

v1.c4.s1.5

There is one Tīrtha where one should always bathe and this is the Tīrtha of the mind (mānasatīrtha). It is deep, clear and pure; its water is truth (satya) and metaphysical knowledge (Brahmajñāna). Those who take this bath see the Principles, the true nature of things (tattvadarśin).⁴

v1.c4.s1.6

The Tīrthas and Kṣetras on Indian soil are potent sites where a presence is felt to dwell. Its support is in the place itself. Whatever makes the site conspicuous or memorable is reinforced in its effect by the attention of the people directed towards and concentrated on that spot. In such places "the gods are seen at play".

v1.c4.s1.7

"The gods always play where lakes are, where the sun's rays are warded off by umbrellas of lotus leaf clusters, and where clear waterpaths are made by swans whose breasts toss the white lotuses hither and thither; where swans, ducks, curleys and paddy-birds are heard and animals rest nearby in the shade of Nicula trees on the river banks.

v1.c4.s1.8

The gods always play where rivers have for their bracelets the sound of the flight of curleys and the voice of swans for their speech, water as their garment, carps for their zone, the flowering trees on their banks as earrings, the confluence of rivers as their hips, raised sand banks as breasts and the plumage of swans their mantle.

v1.c4.s1.9

The gods always play where groves are near, rivers, mountains and springs, and in towns with pleasure gardens." ('Bṛhat Saṃhitā', LV. 4-8; 'Bhaviṣya Purāṇa', I. CXXX, 11-15). "It is such places that the gods love and always dwell in" ('Bṛhat Saṃhitā', 8, Comm., quoting Kāśyapa).

v1.c4.s1.10

Mahāmāyā had assumed. Where its parts came to lie, the energy associated with the special part or limb was added to the earth, strengthening that particular spot and leading to an attainment of the corresponding faculty by man. Distributed in 51 centres the power of Mahāśakti is integrated in the soil of India. (Svāmī Karpātrīji has explained the 'Secret of the Sacred Places' in an article on 'Pīṭha Rahasya', in 'Siddhānt', No. 35, Benares, 1941).

v1.c4.s1.11

The realisation of the descent of more than human power to earth makes India a sacred land. Near the water and at other definite sites its presence is more strongly felt. Some of these consequently are laid out in a particular way, such as Kurukṣetra where the 4 corners of the potent field are marked each by one place of pilgrimage and the middle is occupied by the place of central sanctity ('Mahābhārata', Vanaparva, ch. LXXXI. 207; Cunningham, 'Archaeological Survey Report', Vol. II. pp. 214-217), or Pāṭaliputra, in the middle of 4 towns (P. Mus, 'Barabuḍur', 'Bulletin de l'École Française d'Extrême-Orient', Vol. XXXII, p. 669). In view of the 'descent' of the sacred power to the earth, it is ontologically its own projection from the beyond, along the vertical axis. This symbolism belongs not only to the sacred geography but more ostensibly even to the sacred architecture of India (Pt. V).

v1.c4.s1.12

⁴ 'Mahābhārata', Anuśāsanaparva, CLXX. 2-3; 12-13.

v1.c4.s1.13

While 108 chief places on earth, etc., and in the mind, are spoken of in the 'Matsyapurāṇa' (XIII. 26-54), chapter CII. 3-5, enjoins that three and a half times ten millions of Tīrthas in heaven, earth and the atmosphere should be conceived as in the water where one takes the ritual bath by realising within it, in a square of four cubits, the sacred Ganges, the most holy of all Tīrthas (cf. ch. CVI. 53).

v1.c4.s1.14

The 'Mahānirvāṇatantra', X. 105, knows by still closer identification, that the "three and a half times ten millions of Tīrthas and all the gods, Brahmā, etc., reside in the body of the Kaula and all the shrines and holy places which are in this world they all abide in the body of the Kulasannyāsin (the highest class of ascetic)"; ib., XIV. 174.

v1.c4.s1.15

Where the gods are seen at play, in all these places, it is but ‘the one God engaged in eternal play’.⁵ Play is the modality in which the Supreme Spirit displays his presence in the world. It is in its effortless movement and in the perfection of corresponding forms. There is no other reason for the appearance of the world than that which is in Brahman itself. It shows itself most convincingly at certain places. They have beauty; for it is there that the celestial intelligence, —the gods, intermediate between the Lord and man,—has its sport and display.⁶

v1.c4.s1.16

⁵ “Eko devo nityalīlānurakta”; ‘Rādhā Upaniṣad’, IV. 3.

v1.c4.s1.17

⁶ “Na prayojanavattvāt; lokavat tu līlākaivalyam”. ‘Brahma Sūtra’, II. I. 32-33. ‘Brahmā’s creative activity is not undertaken by way of any need on his part, but simply by way of sport, in the common sense of the word”. A. K. Coomaraswamy, in ‘Līlā’, ‘Journal of the American Oriental Society’, 1941, pp. 98-100.

v1.c4.s1.18

The gods are installed not only in Tirthas, on the banks of rivers, lakes and on the seashore, at the confluence of rivers and estuaries, but also on hill-tops and mountain-slopes, in forests, groves and gardens, near the abodes of the blest or hermitages, in villages, towns and cities or in any other lovely place (‘Tantra-Samuccaya’, I. I. 28; see Frontispiece).⁷ Ritually, the site of the temple is a Tīrtha wherever it is situated. The ‘Viṣṇudharmottara’ (Part III, chapter XCIII, 25-31), an early compendium, speaks of the installation of consecrated images (arcā): “Installations should be made in forts; in auspicious cities, at the head of shop-lined streets . . . ; in villages or hamlets of cowherds where there are no shops, the installations should be made outside in gardens, . . . Installations should be made at riversides, in forests, gardens, at the sides of ponds, on hill-tops, in beautiful valleys and particularly in caves. At these places, the denizens of heaven are present. In places without tanks, gods are not present. A temple therefore should be built where there is a pond on the left, or in front, not otherwise. If a temple is built on an island, the water on all sides is auspicious.” The presence of water is essential; but if it is neither available by nature nor by artifice it is present symbolically at the

v1.c4.s1.19

⁷ More than a millennium of textual continuity and identity of metaphysical foundation accompanies the practice of building temples in all their variety in the different parts of India at the various phases of its history. The elaborated later temples and explicit texts are an exposition of the meaning which is present in the form, from its beginning.

v1.c4.s1.20

The authorities quoted are referred to in the present context not in their chronological sequence, but irrespective of it, in the meaning which they have in common. Their historical and geographical relation to the monuments however are considered in a later Part (VII) where the terminology of Indian temple architecture, their types and ‘styles’ are explained.

v1.c4.s1.21

The text-books of Vāstu-Śāstra, the science of architecture, are records of oral traditions which go back into an undefined past. The ‘Bṛhat-Saṃhitā’, for instance, compiled by Varāhamihira in the middle of the sixth century A.D. is based on the authority of master architects whose names are Maya, Viśvakarman (ch. LV, 30), Garga and Manu. The ‘Bṛhat Saṃhitā’ is but a brief account of their treatises (ib. śl. 31). It is the earliest datable source on Vāstu-Śāstra. The ‘Viṣṇudharmottara’ is of the seventh century approximately. The ‘Tantrasamuccaya’ of Nārāyaṇan Nambūdiri of Kerala, Malabar, belongs to the fifteenth century.

v1.c4.s1.22

The Frontispiece gives a general view of Amara-kaṇṭaka in Rewa State, central India; this is the Oṃkāra Kṣetra. The great sage who practises austerities there becomes a ‘jīvan-mukta’. The ‘Matsyapurāṇa’, CLXXXVI and CLXXXVIII, praises this Tīrtha. Its present temples date from the eleventh century to recent times.

v1.c4.s1.23

consecration of temple or image. Thus it is described how during the rite of ‘adhivāsana’ by which the divinity is made to assume its abode in an image about to be installed, the image of Viṣṇu is laid to rest on the world serpent Śeṣa (Ananta), on a ford raised for this purpose in a river, lake or tank. Offerings are made to the Lord (Yogeśa), to the Śabda-Brahman,—the principle of articulate sound, or the Word,—to the oceans, mountains, Sages (ṛṣi), Fathers (pitṛ) and Spirits (bhūta). Varuṇa, the presiding divinity (of the waters) and Siva, the Lord of the sacred Tīrtha are worshipped; should neither river, lake nor tank be near, three jars of water are placed in the Brahmasthāna, the centre of the sacred site.⁸

v1.c4.s1.24

⁸ ‘Vaikhānasāgama’, ch. XXXI; summary of the respective passage. ⁹ The South Indian temples are distributed over an area which in extent is one-fifth only of India. ¹⁰ The ‘Bṛhat Saṃhitā’, ch. LV. 10, prescribes the Vāstumaṇḍala of 64 squares for temples. Ch. LII. 42-54, gives the Vāstumaṇḍala of 81 squares, also for other buildings, and for towns, villages, etc. The ‘Agnipurāṇa’, ch. XCIII. 42, lays down 5 cubits (hasta ; 7½ feet) square as standard size of the Vāstu, if not otherwise specified; its ‘best’ measure however is equal to that of the building which contains the sanctuary (gṛha-prāsāda), the temple proper. The latter definition is also given in the ‘Samarāṅgaṇasūtradhāra’, ch. LIX. 3, where however the plan to the end of the two diagonals of the Prāsāda or Vimāna, the temple proper, is stated to have 81 squares. This is in agreement with ‘Īśānaśivagurudevapaddhati’, Part III. ch. XXVII, 59; (translated by St. Kramrisch in the ‘Journal of the Indian Society of Oriental Art’, Vol. IX, p. 167). In ch. X, 4; 69; 78-80, of the ‘Samarāṅgaṇasūtradhāra’, the Vāstu of 64 squares, however, comprises the entire building site of a [fortified] town (pura) or of a city (nagara) and this seems to apply also to villages (grāma) and hamlets (kheṭa). The whole building site, the entire planning of town and temple and of the building of the main sanctuary, the Prāsāda, or Vimāna, conform with the Vāstupuruṣamaṇḍala, so that the gods dwell there in peace.

v1.c4.s1.25

Temples are built where Tīrthas are; their towering shapes to the last point of their height teem with forms which have the urge and fullness of Indian nature; step by step, level by level they lead the eye and mind of the devotee from this world to the worlds above. The temples rise from a broad base : differently built according to specific types, they have their variations in time and place and their shapes were elaborated in many schools. As they are to-day in southern India their high superstructures ascend in pyramidal form, while in northern India they fling their curvilinear faces towards a meeting point above the sanctuary.⁹

v1.c4.s1.26

Sometimes the temples form cities of God with many buildings of great extent and complex design, or the temple is but a small chapel only. Wherever a Hindu temple stands, whatever age witnessed its growth, and to whatever size, as house, body and substance for God (the Essence) to dwell in, it is built in principle on the same plan, the Vāstupuruṣamaṇḍala.

v1.c4.s1.27

Although this ritual diagram is neither the ground-plan of the temple nor necessarily the plan of the site, it regulates them. It may be coterminous with the site of the sacred precinct, or with the extent of the main temple building (prāsāda) only; or it may be drawn on an altar, and of standardised size.¹⁰ It is drawn on the ground prior to the building of the temple and on it the temple stands either in fact or symbolically. In principle it is always square and is the record of an architectural rite. The knowledge of its correct execution forms the first part of the science of architecture ('Samarāṅgaṇasūtradhāra', ch. XLV. 2). The square is divided into compartments and the diagonals are drawn. The name of the square is Vāstupuruṣamaṇḍala. Puruṣa is the universal Essence, the Principle of all things, the Prime Person whence all originates.¹¹ Vāstu is the site; in it Vāstu, bodily existence, abides and from it Vāstu derives its name. In bodily existence, Puruṣa, the Essence, becomes the Form. The temple building is the substantial, and the 'plan' (maṇḍala) is the ritual, diagrammatic form of the Puruṣa. Puruṣa himself has no substance. He gives it his impress. The substance is of wood, brick or stone in the temple.

v1.c4.s1.28

¹¹ 'Harivaṃśa', ch. I; R. Guénon, 'Quelques Remarques sur le Nom d'Adam', 'Études Traditionelles', 1931, pp. 726-31. ¹² "Once heaven and earth were united. Separating, they said: Let what is suitable to the sacrifice be common to both." 'Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa', I. 1. 3. 2-3; 'Tāṇḍya Brāhmaṇa', X. 6. 1-3; etc. Heaven and earth, once joined, subsequently separated. The beings, the 5 classes of them, gods, men, and so on, did not keep peace. The gods brought about a reconciliation of these worlds. Both contracted a marriage according to the rites observed by the gods. ¹³ 'Īśānaśivagurudevapaddhati', Pt. III, ch. XII. 16; JISOA, Vol. X, p. 225.

v1.c4.s1.29

The form of the temple, all that it is and signifies, stands upon the diagram of the Vāstupuruṣa. It is a 'forecast' of the temple and is drawn on the levelled ground : it is the fundament from which the building arises. Whatever its actual surroundings, forest glade, seashore, hill or town, the place where the temple is built is occupied by the Vāstupuruṣa in his diagram, the Vāstupuruṣa-maṇḍala. That it is surrounded by the streets of a town, walls of a fort, ravines or fields, becomes of secondary importance, for its particular topography is but the hinge by which a changeable panorama is linked with the structure of the universe. The site is ritually levelled each time a temple is built; the ground from which the temple is to rise is regarded as being throughout on an equal intellectual plane. It is at the same time terrestrial and extra-territorial. It is the place for the meeting and marriage of heaven and earth,¹² where the whole world is present in terms of measure, and is accessible to man.

Cites (19)