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The Hindu Temple v1.c9.s2.t3: IIB. The Śikhara Enmeshed in Gavākṣas

The Hindu Temple v1.c9.s2.t3

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IIB. The Śikhara Enmeshed in Gavākṣas

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The curvilinear Śikhara II[B] described already in an earlier connection (Fig. d) has been seen on the temples of the Kanarese country, of the seventh century and prior to it. The same type prevails in Orissa from the eighth century and is also frequent in the Decan⁶⁶, in Rajputana (Pl. LXXI), Central India and as far north as the Western Himalayas. Its surfaces, in continuation of the theme of the perpendicular walls of the Prāsāda, are made up in every instance of the central buttress and those at the corner; between these may be added two or four intermediate buttresses. The several buttresses appear as graded planes on the body of the Śikhara; they function each as a pattern unit. The theme of the corner buttresses of the Śikhara remains one and the same throughout the centuries and in all the countries. It can always be recognised as consisting of horizontal units, called Bhūmi, each of which represents the trunk of a miniature Śikhara with its Āmalaka. Such a miniature Śikhara may consist of one or two courses only below its Āmalaka as in Aihole (Fig. d), or it may comprise six courses, as on the Liṅgarāja temple in Bhuvaneśvar. Each course represents the eaves of a roof. These miniature Śikharas are strung together to form the vertically extended corner-buttress, the edge of the total⁶⁷ Śikhara; according to the shape of the total Śikhara and the height at which a small Śikhara is placed, it will be curvilinear or it will appear straight (Pl. LXXI). The horizontal courses give solidity to the soaring movement of the superstructure.

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⁶⁶ At Anjaneri near Nasik; Cousens, op. cit. Pl. LVIII (Temple No. 7).

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⁶⁷ It is called Koṇaka-pāga in Orissa.

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The inner buttresses of each side show, according to the chronological sequence of the temples the single strata or cornices with their ‘attic windows’ either as separate motives or as increasingly connected amongst themselves by the ‘gavākṣas’ or attic windows forming a tracery which is cast like a net (jāla) over them, at first veiling two or three such strata and finally covering the entire length of the Śikhara offset. The body of the Śikhara enmeshed in it, clasped by a creeper (latā), shows by its lateral indentations only the strata themselves, the original roof-edges. Such ‘overgrown’ buttresses are therefore called Latinā, in Vāstu-śāstra. They are one with the tracery of the ‘creeper’, the Latā, that covers each of them. Its unit always remains the curvilinear Gavākṣa.⁶⁸

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⁶⁸ Coomaraswamy, ‘Early Indian Architecture: III’, in ‘Eastern Art’, vol. III, Figs. 57-78, shows various uses of the Gavākṣa motif and its repetition, sectioning and reductions in various

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This, the most widely diffused type of the curvilinear Śikhara, is an amalgam of two constituent shapes. The one, it has been shown already, was the nucleus of the type called IIA. There it formed not only the root-Śikhara but also the model of all the multiple and lateral issues of this type. The Tabernacle formed of branches curving towards the point in which they are gathered is its perennial prototype.

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The other constituent of Śikhara II[B] is the straight trunk of the superstructure in its pyramidal forms such as has been discussed in different stages and types (Figs. a-c). Both the curvilinear Śikhara as also the pyramidal superstructure were built not only in the earlier centuries at one and the same place, in Mahākūṭa and Aihole or in Satvel, Kurnool, in the Deccan, but—by the side of each other—also in the Western Himalayas, in Dvarahat, Almora.⁶⁹

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⁶⁹ ASIAR, 1924-25, Pl. III. Temples of the Maniyan group. ⁷⁰ See however, Coomaraswamy, HIIA, p.

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The close connection of type II[B] with IA.2 has been shown already. The curvilinear form of this type II[B] however is not in any way derived from the pyramidal shape.⁷⁰ It presupposes a curvilinear prototype, the Tabernacle of leaves, bamboo or branches. The Bhūmis—indicated at the corners along the edge of the Śikhara—do not belong to the Tabernacle prototype.

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The curvilinear Śikhara II[B], its edges beset with several Bhūmis, each marked by an Āmalaka crowning the horizontal strata, and itself a miniature Śikhara, is a complex shape; in it the general shape of the Tabernacle comprises parts such as contributed also to the pyramidal trunk of type IA. These are the strata whose contours were assimilated to roof shapes of current types of buildings. Together with their windows they were combined and subordinated to the Āmalaka which gathers and crowns their shapes into one unit, one miniature Śikhara; strung together they are as many as the Prāsāda has Bhūmis in its superstructure. The principle of repetition is seen here applied in the vertical; garlands of closely set miniature Śikharas rise on the arched edges of the Śikhara, type II[B].

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This theme had also become incorporated in the Śikhara type IIA; there, however the web of Gavākṣas is subdued in its effect and altogether ‘overshadowed’ by the powerful proliferations of the Uromañjaris on the sides of the major Śikharas where they form slabs and slices of masonry, compact petal shapes with minor volumes of miniature Śikharas, etc., filling the corners.

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Proliferation in the four or eight directions of space and on various levels is the generative principle of the Śikhara IIA. Superimposition of repeated units,

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Gavākṣa patterns; cf. Part VIII. Pl. XLVI, etc.—Gavākṣa defined as Gonetra or “Bull's eye”, designates also the unit of the pattern of the Jālaka or perforated screen, etc., on South Indian temples. Six varieties are described in the ‘Śilparatna’, XXIV. 9-10; ‘Kaśyapaśilpa’, XI.

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The Orissan variety of the Rekhā temple of the “Nāgara” class (see Part VII) would thus most perfectly be a Latinā temple. This particular variety is not confined to Orissa only, but is also represented in Mayurbhañj, Bengal and Assam in local versions. The ‘Bṛhacchilpa-śāstra’ (Part III, ch. XI. 503), more concise than the ‘Samarāṅgaṇasūtradhāra’ in this case, defines Latinā as ‘Nāgara with one Śṛṅga’ and in Part III. ch. V. 71, assigns Latinā to Gauḍa and Kāmarūpa, i.e. to Bengal, and Assam, where this variety of the Rekhā temple had found general acceptance.

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⁸³ No amount of the compression of miniature straight shapes can produce a curve of the total shape.

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however, as especially seen in II[B] is not particular to the curvilinear Śikhara only. Stūpa shapes, for example, were similarly super-imposed in towering structures.⁷¹ The vertical series of miniature Śikharas, indicative of Bhūmis or levels, is subsumed in type II[B] in the total Śikhara or Tabernacle. The series of small Śikharas is not only completely integrated in its curvilinear edge; they are proportionately part of its height, which they build up in an arithmetical progression, most frequently (S.S. LXIII).

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⁷¹ Coomaraswamy, ib., Pl. XIX. Fig. 69A. The convex curve of the Śikhara known from the sixth century onwards may be contrasted with the concave outline of South Indian gate towers or Gopuras of about 1700 A.D. The latter outline may be seen against those of the roofs of South Indian houses, especially on the Malabar Coast. Their bamboo frame is bent concavely.

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The edge of the Tabernacle in extant stone temple II[B] is not however always beset with the symbolic-architectural detail of miniature Śikharas forming the Bhūmis. In some of the subsidiary shrines around the Liṅgarāja Temple in Bhuvaneśvar, Orissa, the Śikhara with its offsets is otherwise without any complexities; in some of the later West Himālayan temples the one central buttress is flanked by lateral walls as plain as it is itself but for some widely spaced courses of narrow Āmalaka shapes which demarcate the Bhūmis. Such retrogressions in varying degrees towards the original shape of the Tabernacle, prove the leading importance of its total curvilinear shape and the accessory role filled by the various smaller devices all of which are either its replicas on a smaller scale or of parts of it.

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The temples in which the ascent is continued in one theme from the walls of the Prāsāda to the shoulder course of the Śikhara are called Latinā in Vāstu Śāstra. The Latās or single offsets of the Śikhara each with its web of ‘sunray windows’ or Gavākṣas carry the vertical movement steadily upwards. Its urge and also its assurance rest on the curved walls of the Śikhara. Between the several offsets are recessed chases (jalāntara); their shadows outline the verticality of this Śikhara while they also add tone and enliven the many horizontal mouldings which are carried in tiers across the facets and the recessed chases. Between these horizontal mouldings run narrow but deep, horizontal bands of shadows. With their dark lines they clasp the entire volume of the Śikhara. Over it is cast the trellis of point like openings of the Gavākṣas; light and shade thus become part of the texture of this Śikhara.

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This form of the curvilinear Śikhara has been particularly perfected in Orissa;⁷² the coherence of its monumental shape is enriched by carvings; nowhere else in India are the walls of the temple as intimately connected with their sculptures. As the offsets project one from the other so also do their outermost planes show their carved patterns in more than one surface of interlaced scrolls; these fill the panels that form the background of the images of the gods. The temple here is a work of monumental sculpture of which the single carvings form the intricate surface. They are contiguous and unbroken by large openings such as those of windows, etc. These, where present in Maṇḍapas, are screened with sculptured compositions.,

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⁷² The various shapes which contributed to the Orissan temples have their models carved on the walls of the Liṅgarāja and Brahmeśvara temples specially and also on the Citragupteśvara and other of the later temples in Orissa. The stringing of Śṛṅgas on some of the ‘lesser’ Latās or ‘Pāgas’, as they are called there (anuratha pāga), of the temple is a sign of an assimilation by this school of sequences of form which belong to the architecture of central and western India.

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The closed volume of an Orissan temple consists of the Prāsāda and its Maṇḍapa; the former is the Rekhā or Baṛa Deul and the latter is the Piṛhā Deul; its superstructure is pyramidal, it represents type IA. In its fully evolved shape it is crowned by an Āmalaka above a Ghaṇṭā (bell-shape). The two shapes of the superstructure, the curvilinear Śikhara II[B] and the pyramidal Śikhara IA here conjointly, each by the side of the other, form the perfect shape of the Orissan temple, the lower Piṛhā Deul being subordinated to the higher Baṛa Deul in proportionate measurement of which the width of the Prāsāda is the module.⁷³ The balance of these two contrasted superstructures, a closely knit unity of Prāsāda or Baṛa Deul and Maṇḍapa or Piṛhā Deul, is peculiar to Orissa. In the other provinces the superstructures of the Maṇḍapas prepare and defer the climax of the Śikhara of the Prāsāda (Pl. I).

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⁷³ Baṛa Deul and Piṛhā Deul retain the completeness of their shapes, the former is without the connecting projection of the Śukanāsā; it is outlined against the sky in the integrity of its ascending curve, and is separated from the sloping outline of the Piṛhā Deul by a deep incision. In it the shapes of lions (siṃha) jump forth, the one from the ‘Rekhā’, the other from the Piṛhā Deul, they form the sculptural link between Baṛa Deul and Piṛhā Deul.

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Multiform and lending itself to the widest variations however is the clustered Śikhara (IIA). Its Uromañjarīs widen the base of the total superstructure. It is thus specially suitable for Sāndhāra Prāsādas—having an inner ambulatory and projecting Bhadras or buttresses in the middle of the sides (Figs. in Part VII). Bhadra, Śālā, and in addition also Catuṣkikā, an open pillared balcony, can thus be added one upon the other, leading to a further progression and extension of the cruciform plan; while in the vertical direction their digression is gathered up by the Uromañjarīs as they lean against the central body of the Mūlamañjarī. The perpendicular walls are frequently broken by balconied openings in the cardinal directions and deep shadows cut into the body of the temple, while flat surfaces, instead of the mellow graded shades of the Orissan scroll work are a frequent accompaniment and background to the images on these temples.⁷⁴ Altogether these temples are greater in the tension of their units, different in size and power and competing in the same direction; some acquire their full stature, however small, at a low level, while the high road along the central face of the innermost Śikhara is punctuated by the simultaneous rising of several forms of varied surge, to different heights.

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⁷⁴ The architectural contrast of dark expanses of shadow and flat wall surfaces in the light has its equivalent in paintings whose quality lies in the juxtaposition of coloured surfaces (cf. ‘A Painted Ceiling’, JISOA, vol. VII, Pl. XVIII, at Madanpur, in Central India; and the Western school of Indian painting).

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In Rajputana, Osian, etc. the Śikhara is closely related to the Orissa type. The logic of form of the entire temple however is absent. There, open pillared halls are an airy prelude but detract from the grandeur of the closed mass of an Orissan temple, however small its actual dimensions may be.

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In plan, the Orissan temples are more closely related to the scheme ‘Prāsāda Kṣitibhūṣaṇa’ (Part VII) than to the more richly differentiated shapes.

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Here too, the Maṇḍapa or Maṇḍapas, each with a superstructure of its own, are fused with the Prāsāda in one plan; their separate superstructures indicating their number and original separateness (Fig. i, p. 212). They are graded in their slow ascent towards the Mūlamañjarī of the Prāsāda. The superstructures of the Maṇḍapas, though they also as in Orissa belong to the pyramidal type (IA) are assimilated (Fig. i) to the curves of the Śikhara of the Prāsāda.⁷⁵

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⁷⁵ To the Gujarat variety of this type of temple are added a Gūḍha and Sabhā Maṇḍapa, the former closed, as the name implies and one in plan with the Prāsāda proper; in front of the Sabhā Maṇḍapa is an open pillared hall which, as in the Sūrya temple at Modhera, is a separate structure.

Cites (7)