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The Hindu Temple v1.c8.s4: 2. The Dolmen

The Hindu Temple v1.c8.s4

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2. The Dolmen

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The ground plan of the Garbhagṛha is, as a rule, square, in conformity with the plan, the Vāstumaṇḍala and its division into squares.⁵² The Vedic altar does not account for the square chamber within the Prāsāda. Its walls are as broad as they are long and in principle also as high as they are broad (see Chart, Part VII). A cube forms the sanctuary of certain temples of the Gupta Age; they are located mainly in Central India.⁵³ Their roof is flat, it does not carry a superstructure. Other types of low roofed temples too, of about the same age though different in plan are well known from Western India;⁵⁴ besides, flat roofed temples of the early

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⁵² As an elaboration of the square, the outer face of the walls, on the plan of the Prāsāda, shows two varieties of buttress formations. In one case they jut out from the main wall at regular intervals and produce a fretted outline, and in the other, the main buttress of each wall proliferates in one or more further projections; these types resulting in a cross shaped plan. These types are also frequently found in combination.

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⁵³ The term cube is used here to designate a 4-sided prism approximating the shape of a cube. The Buddhist Temple No. 17, Sāñci; Viṣṇu Temple at Eran, near Bhilsa (Percy Brown, op. cit., Pl. XXXIV). Kaṅkālī Devī Temple at Tigawa, C. P. The temple of Pattainī Devī near Unchahara, C.P. (Cunningham, ASI, vol. IX. p. 31) with its monolithic roof belongs to the 10th or 11th century judging from the carvings of its door frame. The shrines of the Gonds, in the Lalitpur District, c. I. (P. C. Mukherji, ‘Report on the Antiquities in the District of Lalitpur’) are the corresponding ab-original types. The Gonds in central India still set up miniature dolmens. Dolmens are also set up to this day by the Khasi, Munda, Oraon, Bhil, Kurumba and Malayarayan. N. Kunjan Pillai, ‘The Travancore Census Report’, pp. 57-60. “Dolmens have actually been used as Śaivite temples”, ‘Census of India, Report’, 1931, p. 406. Old dolmens are set up as Śiva shrines for example at Kambaduru, Kalyandrug, Anantapur District, see Longhurst, ‘Annual Report of the Archæological Survey of India’, Southern Circle, 1915-16, p. 29, Pl. III.

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⁵⁴ The Lad Khan Temple and Durga Temple, at Aihole; etc. These temples have not an altogether flat roof of one stone slab only nor of beams placed horizontally on the architrave or wall. P. Brown, op. cit., p. 61, Pls. XXXVI—XXXVIII, describes their particular roof

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The rectangular Garbhagṛha is an application of the square for definite purposes, when for instance more than one image is the cult object, in temples of the 10 Avatārs of Viṣṇu, such as the now so-called Varāha temple at Kadvar (Cousens, ‘Somanātha, and other Mediaeval Temples in Kathiawad’, ASI, I.S., vol. XLV; also H.D. Sankalia, ‘Archæology of Gujerat’, p. 63), or in those of the Mothers (Kapālinī Devi Temple or Vaital Deul, Bhuvaneśwar, Orissa; Navadevi shrine, Jageśvar, Almora, ASIAR. 1928-29, pl. IV.). Other rectangular Garbhagṛhas are those of the Temples at Eran (ASI, vol. X. p. 69), Teli-ka mandir, a double square, 30 x 15; (Percy Brown, ‘Indian Architecture’, p. 152); the Gadarmal temple at Pathari, Bundelkhand, (Cunningham, ASI. vol. VII. pl. 8); also at Gyaraspur. Āyatāśra is the term for ‘rectangular’; it means ‘with long sides’, in the sense of having two parallel sides of the polygon longer than the others; this is a modification of the square plan (caturaśra) just as the Āyatavṛtta, an oval plan, is a modification of the circular or Vṛtta plan (Part VII).

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The round Garbhagṛha is the general form in the indigenous temples and also occurs in Śiva temples, at Malabar. Gopinatha Rao op. cit., Pt. II. I. p. 91, etc., however says that the central shrines of all Śiva temples are square in shape.

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The square of the Garbhagṛha at Tigawa measures 8', outside the length of the wall is 12½'. Re. the pillared porch, the shape of the architrave and other stylistic features of the flat roofed Gupta temple, see P. Brown, op. cit., p. 55.

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and later Cola period, in South India, though younger in date, the ninth century A.D. and even later, are equally significant.⁵⁵ All these temples are built of large, well cut stones, dressed to level beds and placed one upon another without any mortar or cementing substance. Contrary to current opinion, not only in the Gupta Age in Central India, and in Western India, but also in the South,—for roughly half a millennium,—the flat or low roofed temple preserved its dignity. To this day, moreover, small flat roofed shrines abound in Central India and in South India. The prototype of these shrines is the dolmen with its one large flat slab of stone, supported by three upright slabs set on edge so as to form a small chamber with one side open to serve as an entrance.⁵⁶ It is not by chance that the shrine of Pattainī Devī at Unchahara whose doorway with its cumbrous carvings cannot be earlier than the tenth century and whose architecture is of the ‘Gupta type’, has a flat roof which is just one slab of stone.⁵⁷

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⁵⁷ It measures 7' 8" × 7' 4" (Cunningham, ASI. Rep. IX. p. 36). The flat stone roofs of the other temples are made of rectangular stone slabs, put together, sometimes with overlapping grooves (Tigawa).

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Various phases of stone temples of the dolmen type are to be found in South India; some of roughly hewn stones and with a stone Liṅga in the interior, others of carefully dressed slabs of stone accurately fitted at the angles, with their walls resting upon a plinth, about one foot high and not planted on the ground like the

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construction. Stone slabs with grooves and corresponding ridges are joined. The joints are covered by long, narrow stones fitted into the grooves; it is a kind of stone-tile roof, slightly sloped, in one or two tiers above which is placed a straight roof covering the middle portion of the building.

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The pillared plan of these hall-temples, is square in the one, and apsidal (hastipṛṣṭha; cf. note 100) in the other case, far removed from, or not connected with, the ab-original dolmen type.

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The flat roofed brick or stone temples, described in the ‘Samarāṅgaṇasūtradhāra’ in ch. XLIX, and partly also in ch. LII appear to have been similar in type to the Lad Khan temple.

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⁵⁵ They are Śiva temples at: Tiruvalangudi, Mangudi, Madathukoil, Todanjur, etc., in Pudukottai state. JISOA vol. V. See also the large stones of the walls of the Muvarkovil Vimānas having high superstructures, at Kodumbalur, ib. Pl. VIII. ⁵⁶ Cf. note 53.

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In the Dharwar District, Bijapur, dolmens, not likely to have been used as sepulchral cells were set up on a hill at Aihole, near the temple of Meguti. At Bādāmī, a similar dolmen, consisting of three great slabs set on edge, forming three sides of a square with a much larger flat slab to form a roof, was used as a shrine for worship. “On the plateau between Bādāmi and Mahā-kūṭeśvar, are to be found hundreds of miniature dolmens, which are daily put up by the women pilgrims to the latter shrine to register their vows. These are composed of a few flat stones, and, as they fall apart, their stones are used over again to build others.” H. Cousens, ‘The Chālukyan Architecture’, ASI, NIS, vol. XLII. p. 138.

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To derive the flat roofed structural temple from preceding and contemporary rock cut types as is generally done, is hardly possible. The rock cut shrine has no specific shape. Being a work of sculpture by excavation, any shape can be cut from the mass of the rock, the vaulted type of bamboo origin and the other, the ‘dolmen type’ with straight wall and roof.

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When the flat roofed, square shrines were set up, others were also cut into the rock, and sometimes the two techniques result in one shrine as the so-called ‘False-Cave’ in Udayagiri of about or before 400 A.D. (ASI. vol. X. p. 41).

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wall-stones of a dolmen.⁵⁸ These South Indian examples and the Central Indian Gond temples lead back to the origin of the cubical walls covered by a flat roof in which is enshrined the Garbhagṛha.⁵⁹ The flat roofed, ‘historical’ temple, aggrandised and yet comparatively small, and the ageless, megalithic varieties of village and wayside shrines are of one type. It is this cubical cell which appears transferred at some time, staged and raised on the well packed socle, itself on a terrace in larger temples, and which is finally embodied in the high pile of the Hindu temple with its towering superstructure.⁶⁰ The protracted and widely dis-

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⁵⁸ The next stage in the aggrandisement of these temples is described by N. Venkata Ramanayya, ‘An Essay on the Origin of the South Indian Temple’, Madras 1930, where the two more simple types are also discussed. As the shrine of Bira-Devaru (ibid. p. 23 ; Thurston, ‘Castes and Tribes’, vol. IV. p. 153) shows, the flat roof is supported by four square corner pillars only. Their equivalents, in the shape of pilasters, play their part on the stone-block built Cola temples. Repeated, they flank every niche and articulate the otherwise flat walls (for instance Śiva temple in Mangudi, Kolathur Taluq, Pudukottai). A Pallava rock carved version of this type are the walls (only ; not the roof) of the Draupadī Ratha at Mamallapuram. The wall with pilasters is the result of a combination of two different types of temples. The dolmen type as a rule has plain walls and no pillars. In some instances, however, the large stone slab of the roof is placed on 4 small stones in the 4 corners. S. C. Roy, ‘The Mundas’, p. 465. Another kind of flat roofed shrine of ‘megalithic’ structure is the Śiva temple at Kuttikondabilam, Guntur ; its front is composed of large vertical stone slabs.

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⁵⁹ An interpretation in the opposite direction does not seem probable. ‘Megalithic’ village and wayside shrines abound and are set up to this day. The flat roofed temples, have but a relatively large size and their numbers, as preserved from the Gupta, etc. to the Cola age, are not so impressive as to have left a permanent mark on the humble village and wayside chapel to this day. It is not a question of highly significant and evolved types sinking back into folk art, but of perennial types ever ready to have their implicit meaning stated explicitly, by art. An origin in megalithic forms, is also indicated by some of the smaller temples, also at Tigawa of 4' to 6' length, whatever be the shape of their roof ; they are apparently built with three sides only, the fourth being open to the East (ASI, vol. I. p. 42).

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⁶⁰ The Śiva temple at Kambaduru (note 53) is a dolmen converted to this purpose by a careful dressing and fitting of the stone slabs. They are not planted in the ground but are raised on a moulded plinth.

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The circular Prāsāda, as well as the circular Garbhagṛha, have their prototypes in the circular shape of some of the Vedic hearths; the Megalithic origin moreover of the circular type of the temple must also be taken into account. Stone circles or their wooden equivalents are also prototypes of the round shape of certain Hindu temples. Megalithic stone circles like the one in Asota off the Mardan-Swabi Road (D. H. Gordon, ‘Megalithic stones, Asota’, ‘Antiquity’, Dec. 1939) or one of the stone circles in Deosa, Jaipur, Rajputana (Cunningham, ASI. vol. VI, p. 105), appear to be particularly connected with Vedic numbers by the number of their stones. While these are 21 in Deosa, the Megaliths forming the circle in Asota are 32. The former number (3 × 7) (Ś.B. VII. I. I. 13) plays no part in the Hindu temple whereas the 32 surrounding stones of the Gārhapatya hearth correspond in number and function to the 32 Pada devatās of the Vāstumaṇḍala.

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The oldest structural temple in Northern India hitherto excavated is the circular temple at Bairat (Virāṭ) in Jaipur state (ASIAR, 1935-36, pl. XXXIV, ; p. 84f. ; Cunningham, ASI., vol. I. p. 244 ; vol. VI. p. 91 ; Stuart Piggott ; l.c. Part IV). This temple, in its original form had an inner circle of 26 octagonal wooden pillars ; a circumambulatory enclosed by a brick wall surrounds it. It dates from about the 3-2nd century B.C. It is also a predecessor of the circular Malabar temples, for example at Vaikom, Trikotithanam, and many other places in Travancore, ancient Kerala, etc., built of laterite and wood. (cf. Viṣṇu temple persed occurrence of the flat roofed temple testifies to simplicities which are perennial in Indian art, which have remained practically unchanged.

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The flat roofed temple has the dolmen for its prototype. Like the menhir it marks (cf. the Liṅga, which means distinctive sign) a sacred site. Neither dolmen nor menhir are necessarily memorials to the dead, they commemorate the importance of the site which is marked by them. "Kynmaw" which means "to mark with a stone" is the word used by the Khasis in Assam, in connection with monoliths, table stones and cromlechs.⁶¹ There, in the dolmen, a suprasensible presence is confined and enshrined.⁶² The marking of a site (kṣetra) shows that it is dedicated to a higher presence. This is a general practice in India, where every orthodox Hindu, every day marks his body (kṣetra) with the symbol of the deity on his forehead. The stone dolmen and menhir, and the stone shrine and Liṅga, are cognate.

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⁶¹ P. R. T. Gurdon, 'The Khasis', p. 145; stones set up to mark the site of purificatory tanks, oath-stones, stones as 'seats' and great flat 'sacrificial' stones, on which Pūjā or worship is performed with the offering of rice, etc., are discussed and their specific names given, op. cit., pp. 145-153; cf. also note 56.

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⁶² Holding or restraining the presence of the invoked divinity is one of the rites of Hindu worship. It is accompanied by the Sannirodhinī mudrā ('Īśānaśivagurudevapaddhati', III. ch. XXVII. 104). This purpose, in addition to the marking of the sacred site, is common to the Hindu temple and to the dolmen.

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It is seen from the 'Viṣṇudharmottara' and other texts that the science of selecting and testing the stone is most developed where the stone has to be chosen for a Liṅga. Stone indeed is the aboriginal substance of the Liṅga. Gold and brick are the sacrificial substances of the Vedic altar. Gold, the purest of all substances is not considered in this respect, loses its value and is only given second consideration when a Liṅga is to be made. The 'Liṅgapurāṇa' (ch. XLVII. 5) speaks of a Liṅga made of gold and jewels, or of silver or copper, as alternatives

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at Perumpalutar, 9th century; 'Archæol. Dept. Administration Report', 1111 M.E. p. 2). The circular stone walls which the Todas, in the Nilgiris, South India, set up around their Boath and also the Pey temples, Tinnevelly Dist., S. India (G. Oppert, 'The Original Inhabitants of India', p. 573), must not be overlooked.

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The circular Prāsāda and Garbhagṛha as well as those which are square have their roots in the past of India, in Vedic rites and in aboriginal use in the country.

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The 'Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa', XIII. 8. 1. 5 distinguishes between the four cornered (daiva) and the round (āsurya) sepulchral mound, the square being made by those who know the three Vedas and the circular by the easterners and northerners. These mounds were lined with stone. The rites for the dead have their own place apart from those of sacrifice (yajña) and of worship (pūjā). The Śmaśānacit, the mound for the dead has its definite characteristics ('Āpastamba Śr. Sūtra', XXXI. 5. 72).

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Form and function of the Prāsāda do not owe anything to the rites for the dead or else in a transferred sense and to that extent only in which the sowing of the seeds, or the rites of initiation signify and are based on the knowledge of death, of dying to a former, lesser state and the undergoing a new or second birth to a regenerate life, on a higher level. Temples of Śiva or Durgā are set up on cremation grounds ('Kathāsaritsāgara') because in these terrific aspects death is shown as overcome and merged in the deathless.

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To this day small shrines are set up by the herdsmen in the Kumaon hills, Western Himālaya (near Binsar, for instance) as Śiva temples and also by the Malayarayans in Travancore. They are put together like a dolmen and house an upright stone, the Liṅga. ("Castes and Tribes of South India", vol. IV. p. 388-389). From the Himālayas to Cape Comorin the Liṅga within the dolmen shrine constitutes the aboriginal temple to this day. Cf. note 53.

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only for the Liṅga made of stone, and which is the embodiment of Brahmā, Viṣṇu and Śiva. Stone, as menhir is specially connected with the Liṅga, and also with the Ādhāraśilā. It marks the Omphalos in the one instance as much as in the other. It distinguishes as the Centre the place where it stands; around it, the site is sacred.⁶³ Thus it is enclosed by square walls and covered with a roof, for the ‘Agni Purāṇa’ says ‘‘in the square (catvara) Śiva is present’’.

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⁶³ The coalescence of such places with others, fully recognised by tradition, is spoken of in passages such as ‘Brahmavaivarta Purāṇa’, I. 6. 47-48, ‘‘a place where the Śivaliṅga is worshipped, though it is a place not fit for pilgrimage, shall be turned into a place of pilgrimage’’.

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The memory of the building stones of the temple is retentive. The stones of the walled-in quandrangles which the Gupta shrines are in principle, and also the Cola temples with their added halls, are disproportionately large to the size of the temples.⁶⁴ They form a near substitute of the monolithic walls of the dolmen.

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⁶⁴ Three courses of stones are equal in height to the shafts of the wall-pillars, in the Cola temples (note 55).—The Maṇḍapam preserved at Mukandwara, Kotah, in Malwa, about the fifth century A.D. is set up of most carefully dressed sand stone blocks of cyclopean size.

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Raised from the earth where it has stood in accordance with the megalithic practice, the flat roofed stone temple on its plinth and terrace, is an established type. The ‘Samarāṅgaṇasūtradhāra’ has much to say about temples without Śikharas⁶⁵ which were one-storeyed, flat roofed structures. As a rule, however, Vāstuśāstra is preoccupied with the varieties and proportionate measures of Prāsādas having superstructures, and whose height is twice or thrice the width of their walls (Part VII).

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⁶⁵ In ch. XLIX, the ‘Samarāṅgaṇasūtradhāra’ exclusively treats of stone or brick built Prāsādas without Śikharas. They are covered by a Chādya or a double and triple roof. Chād, even to-day in Bengal denotes the flat roof of a brick structure. These Prāsādas were not dolmen temples; their interiors were rich in pillars (see Part VII).

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The temple with its high superstructure is the ultimate and generally accepted form. Śikhara, of which the meaning is ‘mountain peak’ designates particularly the superstructure of the North Indian Prāsāda.⁶⁶ The flat roofed temples are contemporary for centuries with temples having Śikharas.⁶⁷ They are at the same

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⁶⁶ N. V. Mallayya, op. cit., JAU., vol. X. p. 181, stresses the meaning ‘head’ which Śikhara has, derived from Śikhā, the tuft of hair worn by an orthodox Hindu on the crown of the head. Synonyms are Śiras and Śirṣa, both denoting head. This microcosmic reference to the head is no less valid than the macrocosmic one to the Mountain, to Meru, the pole of the world. The full meaning of the Hindu temple is given form by the Prāsāda with its high superstructure; in this sense Śikhara is to be understood and not as a roof which also may be flat (as assumed by Mallayya, JISOA, vol. IX. p. 83, in an article on ‘Nāgara, Drāviḍa and Vesara’) ; see Part VII where the different connotation of Śikhara in the Northern and Southern tradition (śāstra) is explained.

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⁶⁷ The flat roofed temples are (1) of the dolmen type, and (2) of the pillared hall type; about the latter the ‘Samarāṅgaṇasūtradhāra’, in chs. XLIX and LII, gives ample information (see note 65 and Part VII).

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Amongst the earliest preserved temples having a superstructure are the stone temple in Deogarh, with an apparently curvilinear Śikhara; one of the four curved sides of a Śikhara, carved in one piece of red stone of Mathurā and belonging to the Gupta age, is in the Curzon Museum, Muttra. The curvilinear surface is divided into three vertical zones; the broad field in the middle is covered with a Gavākṣa pattern; the lateral portions are complete with Bhūmis, each consisting of 2 courses and terminated by a large Āmalaka. The temple in Deogarh and time embodied within the Prāsāda and below its Śikhara; in some of the temples of South India, the flat roofed temple with its cubical chamber is repeated vertically within its superstructure.⁸⁸

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⁸⁸ The Vaikuṇṭha Perumal temple for example, at Kāñcīpuram (Conjeeveram, near Madras), of the second decade of the eighth century, cf. sectional drawing, Pl. LIV, P. Brown, op. cit.; Fergusson, HIEA, vol. I. Fig. 210.

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the brick temple of Bhitargaon are of the sixth century; the stone temple of Gop, Kathiawar (5th–6th century) has a pyramidal superstructure and, in certain respects similar to it, is the four storeyed pyramidal superstructure of the temple at Visavada, though somewhat later (H. Cousens, ‘Somanātha and Other Temples, etc.’ ASI. vol. XLV, Pls. XLIII-XLIV, pp. 44-45). A carving on a lintel of the Gupta Age, at Sārnāth shows relief representations of related superstructure; (Coomaraswamy, ‘Early Indian Architecture’, ‘Eastern Art’, III. Fig. 59). The superstructure here is of the rectilinear type, consisting of superposed roof cornice mouldings. It is crowned by a very broad Āmalaka on which rested the finial (Fig. c, in Part VI). The stone built temple of Mahākūṭeśvar, near Bādami, erected in the third part of the 6th century is discussed in Part VI.

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Fifth century inscriptions speak of high Śikharas; (‘Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum’, vol. III. No. XVII, verse 21; No. XVIII, 12, 30).

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What precisely Śikhara and Śṛṅga of the Prāsāda or the Vimāna meant in the Epics except the top of a high building cannot be reconstructed from the respective passages, which compare them to clouds and mountain peaks (‘Rām.’ II. 17. 17; II. 33. 3, etc., see Acharya, ‘Dictionary’, op. cit., s.v.) The Śuṅga relief representations show vaulted and dome shaped roofs of bamboo construction.

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Two relief representations from Mathurā of the Kuṣāṇa age show superstructures whose constituent parts and outline differ from later types and prescriptions. (Coomaraswamy, ‘History of Indian and Indonesian Art’, Figs. 69, 69A).

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The earliest preserved temples which are not one storeyed and flat roofed, are variously given additional height. Two main types can be distinguished; the one has a second smaller flat roofed temple above the Garbhagṛha of the ground floor (Pārvatī temple at Nachna Kuthara, C.I. and the Lad Khan temple at Aihole), and the other, described at the beginning of this note, has a more or less pyramidal, etc. superstructure, articulate with horizontal bands, mouldings or storeys. Some were rectilinear such as the temples of Bodh-gayā, Bihar (at the time of Hiuen Tsiang), and the temple at Gop, Kathiawar, others like the Daśāvatāra temple at Deogarh and the brick temple at Bhitargaon with their recessed courses appear to have yielded a curvilinear rather than a straight outline. To these may be added the Mahādeva temple at Nachna Kuthara (Progress Report, ASI, Western Circle, 1919) and the temple at Pathari (ASI. vol. X. p. 75); see also S. K. Saraswati, ‘Temple Architecture in the Gupta Age’, JISOA, vol. VIII. p. 146). Re. Vaulted temples, see note 41. The temples are either ‘sandhāra’ or ‘nirandhāra’ with or without a covered circumambulatory.

Cites (29)