Pramāṇa · Search · About · API

The Hindu Temple v1.c4.s3: The Stability of the Site

The Hindu Temple v1.c4.s3

Language
English

The Stability of the Site

v1.c4.s3.1

The temple must be built according to definite rules, and it must be firm (dṛḍha; ‘Īśānaśivagurudevapaddhati’, III. ch. XXVII. 82; ‘Vaikhānasāgama’, ch. VII). The latter injunction seems too obvious to have been made. But it does not primarily refer to a substitution of flimsy materials, such as mud, sand, wattle walls and bamboo posts by those of greater permanence; nor to the avoidance of careless construction in brick or stone nor to the desirability of such additional wall strength which would withstand earthquakes. With particular emphasis the earth itself is evoked as firm (dṛḍha) in the Rgveda (X. 121. 5; X. 173.4) and firmly established (pratiṣṭhā; ‘Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa’, VI. 1.1.15), and Earth, the goddess, is invoked to stand firm for our well-being (‘Vājasaneya-Saṃhitā’ XI. 69; ‘Taittirīya Saṃhitā’, IV. 1.9.2; Ś.B. VI. 6.2.6.). When a house is about to be built, an oblation is poured into the pit to the “steady one”, Vāstospati (‘Āśvalāyana Gṛhya Sūtra’ II. 8.15; ‘Pāraskara Gṛhya Sūtra’ III. 4.3). A fear is allayed by these epithets, oblations and invocations. It is the fear of uncertainty, of the changeable and transitory. By being ‘firm’ the earth becomes secure and a reliable support. For ‘before she was fixed, mother earth’ is spoken of as ‘the ever wandering’ (AV. V. 2.6). The rule of order under which buildings can be set up and in which men and gods are at home, is not from the beginning. There was unrest and instability. Yama, the god of Death, the first of mortals who preceded men on the path to heaven (RV. X. 14.1) assigns a station to everything that is movable. Yama, the Order of things in the cosmos and Righteousness in men, who is the Dharmarāja, ‘King Law’, establishes in this manifested world the immutability of the Supreme Principle. “Yama indeed rules over the earth” (Ś.B. VII. 1.1.3.). As it was in the beginning, so is it repeated with each building; Yama gives the residence when man builds the small world of his own, his house, or a temple in the likeness of the world, which is God’s residence.

v1.c4.s3.2

With regard to the builder, such a settlement too takes place in the intellect itself at the moment when its work is being given concrete form. The substance is its support and form is the nature of its activity. The form of the concrete work is the final seal of the process which leads to it; it bears the impress of Yama.²⁴

v1.c4.s3.3

²⁴ ‘Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa’, XI. 2. 3. 5. These indeed are the two great manifestations (yakṣye) of the Brahman (the Supreme Principle) . . . One of these two is the greater, namely, Form (rūpa) for whatever is Name (nāma), is indeed Form.

v1.c4.s3.4

King Bhoja, in the ‘Samarāṅgaṇasūtradhāra’ (VI. 5-27; VII. 7-34) recounts the afflictions of men when the wishing-trees (kalpadruma) which in the Kṛta Yuga had been their home and sustenance, and when the gods too withdrew to heaven.²⁵ It was, then, that King Pṛthu, the first of men who was installed as a king, attacked Pṛthivī, the earth, with his bow in order to level her (‘Samarāṅgaṇasūtradhāra’, I. 6-24) for she was full of mountains, obstacles to communications and order which he had set himself to establish. But she ran away in fear, changing her shape into that of a cow and took refuge with Brahmā, the creator, whom also King Pṛthu then approached. Brahmā mediates between them, makes King Pṛthu the protector of Pṛthivī, the earth, and makes her yield to him the crops and the sites for building towns of men and gods.

v1.c4.s3.5

²⁵ The Kṛta Yuga or Satya Yuga, which is the Perfect or Golden age, is followed by the Tretā, Dvāpara and Kali Yugas successively. Their duration is, respectively, 4,000, 3,000, 2,000 and 1,000 years of the gods. One day of the gods is equal to one year of men (‘Manu Smṛti’, I. 67). 400, 300, 200 and 100 twilight years of the gods precede and follow each Yuga. The four Yugas with their Sandhyās are one Yuga (mahāyuga), of the gods.

v1.c4.s3.6

King Pṛthu does his work at a definite stage in the ‘history’ of the world : his prototype is Yama, the Dharmarāja, ‘King Law and Order’. King Pṛthu who has made the earth yield, and she, the wide, the ‘broad one’, Pṛthivī (Ś. B. VII. 4.2.6), are thence connected in fact and name. Her fugitive, errant state has found rest.²⁶ The earth will no more run away. She exists protected by law and order. This contract is sealed when her plains are ploughed and her ground is levelled for buildings. It is then that the earth is a place of abode (āyatana) for all gods (Ś.B. XIV. 3.2.4.) and the building ground (bhūmi)²⁷ the share of the gods (‘Śāṅkhāyana Gṛhya Sūtra’, III. 3.2).

v1.c4.s3.7

²⁶ This story is told in other versions in the ‘Viṣṇu Purāṇa’, I. Ch. XIII. and in other Purāṇas.

v1.c4.s3.8

²⁷ Ś. B. VII. 4. 2. 6-7. Earth, the wide, the broad one, is Pṛthivī; Earth, as substance, is Bhū; Earth, as ground, is Bhūmi.

v1.c4.s3.9

Full of life is the earth : it lurks in her and hovers above her. The ‘genii loci’ are many.²⁸ It is necessary that they should depart when a particular spot on the surface of the earth is chosen at the proper time for being commuted into the level and plan of the temple. The site is taken possession of for that divinity whose presence will be invoked and beheld in the temple. Those entities that were active in the site hitherto would be redundant;²⁹ they are asked to leave, with the rhythmic formula (mantra) : “Let spirits (bhūta), gods (deva) and demons (rākṣasa) depart and seek other habitations. From now this place belongs to the divinity whose temples will be built here” (‘Bṛhat Saṃhitā’, LVIII. 11; ‘Īśānaśivagurudevapaddhati’ Pt. III., ch. XXVI, 73-74; ‘Mayamata’, IV. 1, f; ‘Viṣṇusamhitā’, XII. 36 f; ‘Agnipurāṇa’, XXXIX. 16-18; ‘Mānasāra’, V. 4-9; etc.). With offerings, gods, spirits and demons are bid to leave. This gracious gesture releases their forces and sets the site free from all particular associations. In this way, too, it is steadied and expurgated. Emptied of its former contents, it retains its receptiveness and the power to assimilate new ones; finally it will have to be levelled and the plan and forecast of the temple will be laid out on the ground.

v1.c4.s3.10

²⁸ In the last verse of the Vanaparva, LXXXI, of the ‘Mahābhārata’, the sacred site of Kurukṣetra is known as the Uttara Vedi of Brahmā (p. 4). Its four corners bear the names of the resident Yakṣas, Ratna, and so on. The Yakṣas are held to be the resident divinities, also by the Buddhists; see S. Lévi, ‘Catalogue Géographique du Yakṣa dāns la Mahāmāyūrī’ (3-4th century A.D.), ‘Journal Asiatique’, 1915, I. p. 19 ff., ‘Sumaṅgalavilāsinī’, S. B. B. III, Pt. 2, p. 92; cf. P. Mus, ‘Barabuḍur’, op. cit., p. 660. “The geomancers recognise the divinities down to a depth of 30 cubits. Here dwells a Nāga, here a Yakṣa”.

v1.c4.s3.11

²⁹ Ś.B. VII. I. I. 5. “With a Palāśa branch (he sweeps). The Palāśa tree is the Brahman. He thus sweeps away those already settled.”

Linked texts (18)