The Hindu Temple v1.c5.s7.7

v1.c5.s7.7

The identification of this body built of Breath which is coterminous with the Vāstumaṇḍala, with that of the builder who is the Yajamāna and patron, and with the plot, is no abstract theory. It is felt in the living tissue of the body of the donor who is the builder (kāraka) of the temple (‘Samarāṅgaṇasūtradhāra’, LVI. 303). Were the organism of the ordered plot brought out of order and disturbed in its interknit functioning as plan and symbol, the builder would suffer in the corresponding parts of his body and earthly life; death will befall him should he obstruct by building on them, the main vital parts of the plan, its head, heart and so on; and minor evils will be his if he disregards the lesser junctions and lines. Builder and building are one; the building is a test of the health and probity of the builder, his ‘alter ego’, his second body; if the building be a sacred one, a temple, this second body is his sacrificial body born from a second birth, the conscious sowing of seed, into a prepared soil and the depositing of the Seed of the building to be which is the germ of the Puruṣa, the Essence that dwells in the body of the temple. This new birth and transubstantiation has for its level the surface within the limits of the maṇḍala.