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The Hindu Temple v2.c11.s3: The 'Window' : Gavākṣa

The Hindu Temple v2.c11.s3

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The 'Window' : Gavākṣa

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The closed body of the temple is full of openings not factually but symbolically. As a rule there is only one opening, that of the entrance; in effect and in symbol it is repeated at the cardinal points, as a ‘massive door’ (ghana-dvāra) or a rectangular niche; in addition there are many niches of varying sizes in the wall, socle and the superstructure of the temple. The major niches hold images which are directly connected with the main divinity of the temple, the smaller ones, which occupy less important positions, on the socle, in any direction, housing lesser divinities. Being thus enshrined in a rectangular frame, the image is singled out, its importance being increased in that it appears manifested straight from the centre. Across the massive door its presence shines forth. The Ghana-dvāras possess this primary symbolic function by virtue of their original position as doors in the cardinal points. While the rectangular shape of the niche is retained, its place-value remains by association only, if located anywhere on the perimeter of the temple.

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The walls of the temple, as has been shown, are transmuted into carvings and images which are an exposition of the meaning of the Prāsāda. They are bodied forth; Aṣṭadikpālas, Pratihāras, Apsarās and other lesser goddesses, Mithuna groups, Śārdūlas and the like are the furthermost exponents of the Prāsāda, unframed, unshrined, and peripheral shapes of the walls. Framed however in their niches, each a small shrine, pillared and having frequently a superstructure and roof of their own the major divinities are sheltered, each niche being a paradoxical massive-door in which is beheld an aspect of the divinity of the temple.⁴⁹

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⁴⁹ The niches are sunk in the wall, in the temples of South India (Tanjore) and in Orissa; the image is housed within the thickness of the pier. In Khajuraho, however, the pillared niche with its canopy is a balcony-like projection from its buttresses. This is the rule also in Rajputana, Gujerat, etc.

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The wall is full of figures and images; it releases them to the sight one step further than it proceeds itself, as its envoy invested with its power; or it envelops them within its body as does the womb of the temple (garbhagṛha) the main image which is enshrined in it.

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The rectilinear niches—with or without their multiform crowning ‘roof’ shapes⁵⁰ are far from being the only symbolical or paradoxical openings on the body of the Prāsāda; while they are ‘‘massive doors’’, the others are ‘‘massive windows’’. These are invariably curvilinear; a circular or nearly circular arch encloses the internal space, a pointed arch outlines the Gavākṣa. The archivolt, the face between these arches, is variously carved.

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⁵⁰ They are replicas in relief of various kinds of the superstructure of the temple and conform with its regional and chronological varieties, or gables or pediments, consisting of Gavākṣa patterns (Pl. XLVI, bottom, the two lateral miniature shrines; see also note 57).

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⁵¹ The vertical, pointed or spatulate termination of the gable or keel arch is plain in rock cut temples from about the beginning of the present era. From about 500 A.D. onwards, the ends of each of the two branches forming the arch, curl up in scrolls, to the right and left of the central extension (Ajaṇṭā) which frequently carries a lotus flower (Paraśurāmeśvar Temple, Bhuvaneśvar; Bundana, Rajputana, etc.; 8th-9th century). The Kīrttimukha is the general finial of the Gavākṣa in the 10th century, in North and South India, but is established there also on earlier monuments (note 68).

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The shape of this window is derived from the curves of light bending wood, such as bamboo or branches. The outer arch results from two branches being fixed at the bottom and their heads tied together at the top; an end piece of the arch marking the place of the conjoint ends of the branches; or, the extension acts as a prop for a carved symbol, such as a lotus flower which it carries on top; or the mask, called Kīrttimukha, covers it completely, widens the area of the extension and gather in its shape the total meaning of the arch (Pls. XLVI-VIII).⁵¹ The inner arch of the Gavākṣa has a continuous, round curve and is derived from one branch being fixed in the ground at both its ends.⁵² Where this double arch is part of the roof, the inner barrel shape as well as the gable arch are kept in position by a thong or withe; the tie-rod together with the arches were copied in heavy bent timber and ultimately in stone or brick; the arch, as a rule remains open at the bottom, the ‘tie-rod’ forming the base of the image within the Gavākṣa (Pls. XLVII-VIII).⁵³

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⁵² Cf. Part IV. The arch described in the ‘Āpastamba Śrauta Sūtra’, and the arch of the chapel, the Buḍirghar, set up in the celebration of Holi (Part V, p. 159).

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⁵³ A completely circular opening however occurs, though rarely, in Gavākṣa patterns, or the inner arch may appear as gathered into a point at the bottom, in the centre (Pl. XLVIII) ; these however are variations of the Gavākṣa net only and not of its more important larger versions such as the Śukanāsā, and the various kinds of Nāsās or Nāsikās, Śurasena, Siṃhakarṇa, etc. (‘Samarāṅgaṇasūtradhāra’, LVII. 37 ; 924 ; 967 ; ‘Kāśyapaśilpa’, XXII). The curvilinear edge is responsible for the appellation ‘‘nāsā’’; cf. Śukanāsā, the parrot’s beak.

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In its largest form as exemplified on the Hindu temple, the Gavākṣa is an antefix known as Śukanāsā; it shields the structural opening of the Śikhara or superstructure (Pls. XLVII-VIII); there it has, on the temple, its original and leading place. It may however be repeated on a lesser scale in the three other main directions, in front of the central buttress. In South India it is placed at each cardinal point of the Śikhara or dome shape of the ‘High Temple’. In its particular Drāviḍian version beset with flames it blazes forth from the many chapels on each Bhūmi; varied in size and the elaboration of its details.

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Such Nāsās (Nāsikā; Kudu) are also repeated horizontally on the Kapotālis or cornices; there they had their place, originally, as attic windows, in which form they have figured since the days of Barhut. Thus the Gavākṣa is originally a dormer or gable window and it retains as its outline the shape of the arch of vegetation, the shape of Prakṛti.⁵⁴

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⁵⁴ Cf. the so-called ‘‘Caitya hall window’’ of Buddhist Caitya halls, the ‘‘Sun window’’ which is the correct name of the Caitya hall window. It admits the light of the Sun which reaches the Caitya or Stūpa at the far end of the hall.

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On Nāgara temples, the offsets of the Śikhara are each enmeshed and covered by an unending web of Gavākṣas;⁵⁵ where the Śikhara consists of offsets only it appears shrouded in Gavākṣa-lace; so are the Śṛṅgas and Tilakas; on some temples the buttresses on the perpendicular walls are similarly overspun.⁵⁶ The ‘niches’ also whether on the walls or on the socle of the temple, are similarly crowned.⁵⁷

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⁵⁵ See Part VI, p. 214 ; also Kramrisch, ‘Kaliṅga Temples’, JISOA, vol. II. pp. 43-60.

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⁵⁶ Temple in Barvasagar, Jhansi (ASI. 1915-16, Photograph No. 1945).

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⁵⁷ Pāpanātha Temple, Paṭṭadakal; also Pl. LXXI, III, note 50.

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Gavākṣa is usually rendered as “round window” or gable window.⁵⁸ But Gāvaḥ (plural of ‘Gauḥ’) are the rays of the sun (Sāyaṇa, on RV. VI. 64. 3).⁵⁹ The ray as well as the sun is called ‘gauḥ’. ⁶⁰ The first part of the term Gavākṣa means Sun or ray and ‘akṣa’, its second part, means axle, pivot, wheel, curve and eye. Ray-wheel or Sun-arch would be appropriate translations expressive of the symbolic function of the Gavākṣa on the Hindu temple.⁶¹ It is not to admit the rays of the Sun into the temple, for the ‘windows’ are closed and as solid a part of the wall as are the massive and impenetrable doors. They are not meant to conduct the light of the sun to the image within the dark Garbhagṛha; on the contrary, their original function as windows of the houses of man is negatived on the Hindu temple, the house and seat of God. He is the Light as He is the Door. The presence of the Devatā, the Shining one, sends forth his splendour in the darkness of the Garbhagṛha and upwards across the innumerable ‘ray-wheels’, ‘ray-eyes’, or ‘sun-arches’, the Gavākṣas, by which the body of the superstructure of the temple is covered. The retrovert sense of the Gavākṣa has the same paradoxical logic as the impenetrable door. The house of God is other than that of man; its parts though similar in form and name function in the opposite direction.⁶² The door is blocked and so is the window; they are parts of the massive body of the temple.

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⁵⁸ Modern interpretation by Indians calls it “cow’s eye” following a popular etymology forgetful of the original connotation, though the word for cow is go (gav) and ‘akṣa’ denotes the eye. These two meanings are however not the only ones of the two parts of which the word Gavākṣa consists. The ‘Vācaspatya’ definites Gavākṣa, s.v., as that by which the rays of the Sun—or the waters—penetrate and pervade.

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⁵⁹ RV. I. 84-15. The ray is also called “gauḥ”; ‘Sāma Veda’, I. 2. 33.4; ‘Nirukta’ IV. 25.

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⁶⁰ RV. VI. 56. 3; ‘Nirukta’, II. 14.

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⁶¹ Ray-wheel, moreover, would correspond to the construction of some of the earlier Gavākṣas with their radiating internal frame in the imitation of the wicker work by which the inner circle was filled.

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⁶² These dispositions of the visible, of light or darkness, have their equivalent in ‘emancipated’ or reverse thinking (Coomaraswamy, ‘Angel and Titan’, JAOS, vol. 55, p. 403); cf. Maniprabhā on ‘Yoga Sūtra’, I. 29. “Thought is said to be reversed (pratyañc) when it turns against the current”.

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The deity looks out from the innumerable windows of the temple. In these symbolic wheels and arches, shapes are frequently carved which further illustrate their meaning. In the relatively most ancient Gavākṣas of temples, the face of a celestial looks out (Gandharvamukha)⁶³ or a lion is framed by its arch as on the Śikhara of the Paraśurāmeśvar Temple, Bhuvaneśvar, forming part of an almost pictographic language, for the Lion is the solar animal.⁶⁴ Celestials or Lions look out from the temple towards the devotee on whom the light is shed from its dark source within, across its massive walls and closed windows.⁶⁵

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⁶³ Jouveau Dubreuil, ‘Dravidian Architecture’, p. 12.

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⁶⁴ ‘Viṣṇudharmottara’, III. ch. LXVII. 8.

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⁶⁵ The small round apertures in the Jāla or web of Gavākṣas, in Latās, etc., are frequently carved in successively narrowing rings, forming all-round steps which lead to the deep central axle-point.

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The Gavākṣas in their retrovert function allow the luminous nature of Divinity to penetrate the solid masonry of the Prāsāda; it leaves its superluminous darkness within the deep eyeholes of the Gavākṣa.⁶⁶ On Śikhara, Bhūmis and Kapotas, the rows and webs of Gavākṣas hold in their rounded contours a central darkness, dispersed in infinitesimal points in the texture of the Prāsāda.

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⁶⁶ The Gavākṣas—especially of the Śikharas of Nāgara Temples which they cover with their web—have come to denote an indefinite number of the shrines of the gods which they indicate ‘pars pro toto’, and which have been coalesced in one total mansion. On the Bhūmis however of the South Indian Jāti Prāsādas the various chapels of the gods preserve their several shapes intact and bear the variously large Gavākṣas, the Nāsās and Kudus, as frequently repeated, though always detached, shapes (Fig. on p. 187).

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