The Hindu Temple v1.c8.s8: (C) The Form of the Vertical Axis

The Hindu Temple v1.c8.s8

Language: English

(C) The Form of the Vertical Axis

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The Prāsāda is the place and symbol, by means of architecture, of manifestation and reintegration. For this purpose it is built. All the images together with all the forms that may serve them are incorporated in its structure.

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India not only thinks in images. It builds them up in a consistent body of which the sum total is the temple. It takes them from the store house of memory; similar forms once used in sacred rites meet, fuse, are absorbed the one in the other and contribute their particular meaning to the new context. The small space of the Garbhagṛha is extracted from various confines and placed within the walls of the Prāsāda. The dolmen, from the aboriginal side, has been incorporated into the Prāsāda and raised on a socle (adhiṣṭhāna) so that it is ensconced within its mountainous shape, and similarly, from the Vedic tradition, the sacrificial shed¹¹⁸, as an enclosed ritual place, shares in its closeness as much as the images of the cave in the mountain, of the heart and the womb.

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¹¹⁸ The rectangular wooden temples of Malabar and their stone replicas (Bhatkal) are relatively nearest in type to the "shed".

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The vertical axis of the Prāsāda leads from the Highest Point, the summit of its finial, above its body, to the centre of the Garbhagṛha. It is not visible from outside, except where it emerges from the body of the superstructure, having the appearance of a horizontal section of a pillar, round, as a rule (Pls. I; LXXI.) but also polygonal (Fig. f; Part VI). This pillar is also not visible from inside the Garbhagṛha which, as a rule, has a flat ceiling. Nonetheless it inheres in the Prāsāda: however solid a monument its superstructure is, it traverses it like a hollow reed. On whatever level the Garbhagṛha is situated this hollow reed passes through its centre. The pillar inheres in the Prāsāda, which is the universe in a likeness. The Pillar of the Universe, the Axis Mundi, inheres in the World Mountain. All its strata are placed along its axis and their totality is the sheath of the Pillar. It has the shape of the Prāsāda.¹¹⁹

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¹¹⁹ Veṇukośa or 'sheath of the reed' is one of the synonyms designating the superstructure. Cf. The 'mantle' (kañcuka) of the Stūpa (cf. Coomaraswamy, 'The two reliefs from Bharhut in the Freer gallery', JISOA, vol. VI. pp. 149-62).

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The pillar within the Temple corresponds to the vertical channel marked by the Svayamātṛṇṇā stones of the Fire Altar. In it move the immanent breaths of earth, air and heaven (Ś.B. VIII. 7. 3. 13; 19; 7. 4. 1), to the heaven-light (VIII. 7. 4. 6). The Agni finally is bestrewn with chips of gold (VIII. 7. 4. 7-9); the finial too, shines golden above the multiform body and raiment of the temple.

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The World Pillar inheres in the World Mountain and transcends it where it becomes visible above the highest stratum of the superstructure. The mountain shape of the Prāsāda is the sheath of its vertical axis. The vertical axis is clothed in it, from the floor of the Garbhagṛha to the shoulder course of the superstructure; from there however it is seen to exceed the body of the superstructure (Śikhara, in Nāgara temples; the series of Bhūmis in Drāviḍa temples). Encased in the vertical shape of a pillar, which is circular, as a rule, or polygonal (Parts VI and VII), it transcends the slopes of the superstructure although for a short distance only. It is therefore called Grīvā or Neck.¹²⁰ It emerges from the body of the Prāsāda to be capped by a dome (Figs. f-h; Part VI) or clasped by an Āmalaka (Pls. I, XLIII, LXXI). These crowning shapes of the Pillar support the finial of the temple. Its Highest Point, the end or beginning of the axis of the temple, is in the centre of the hollow shaft above the Liṅga or image in the Garbhagṛha, above the Womb and Centre of the Cosmos and above the Navel of the Earth.

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¹²⁰ The proportionate height of the Neck (grīvā) is given in Part VII; it varies in the different types of the temple. The Grīvā of a South Indian Prāsāda connotes the walls of its High Temple (Vimāna; Harmya).

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The finial is beyond the body of the temple, which has its extension in Antarikṣa, the mid-space. Above its High Temple (harmya) and cupola (śikhara); (Figs. g-h, Pt. VI),¹²¹ above its being gathered by the Āmalaka¹²² (Fig. i) rises the finial, the Stūpikā, in the Empyrean and up to the Bindu, its Highest Point, the limit between the unmanifest and the manifest.

Linked texts (1)

Śatapathabrāhmaṇa — Yājñavalkya & Śāṇḍilya (Vedic teacher), Sanskrit