The Hindu Temple v1.c4.s3.1

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.