Pramāṇa · Search · About · API

The Hindu Temple v2.c11.s5: Images of Śakti

The Hindu Temple v2.c11.s5

Language
English

Contents

Images of Śakti

Śardūla, Lion and Lioness

v2.c11.s5.t1.1

"Thou art a Lioness, winning the sun-gods (Ādityas), winning sacerdotal power (Brahman), winning regal power (Kṣatra). . . . Thou art a lioness, bring thou hither the gods for the sacrificer" ('Vājasaneyī Saṃhitā', V. 12).¹⁰¹ These words are recited by the sacrificing priest over the four corners of the High Altar, the Uttara Vedi ('Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa', III. 5. 2. 10-12). He takes the earth for making the High Altar from a square pit and shifts it with the words: "Thou art a Lioness overcoming the enemies, be thou meet for the gods. Through thee may we worst our enemies" (V.S. V. 10; Ś.B. III. 5. 1. 33).

v2.c11.s5.t1.2

¹⁰¹ 'Taittirīya Saṃhitā', I.2.12 ; Ś.B. III. 5.2.11 ; 13.

v2.c11.s5.t1.3

"The offering reaches her before it reaches Agni, for this High Altar is in reality Vāk, the uttered Word." (Ś.B. III. 5. 1. 23). The offering inwardly made, the desire and resolve to sacrifice, find utterance first in speech, in the rhythmic formula, by which the altar is consecrated in its four corners in the intermediate directions; invested with power, its substance, earth, carries the offering to the sacrificial Fire, Agni, as does the rhythmical utterance. Vāk, the uttered Word, is Power manifest; the rhythmical utterance is a lion; earth, the substance, thus imbued, is a lioness, one in each of her four corners where power is assembled to ward off the evil ones and to worst the enemies.¹⁰²

v2.c11.s5.t1.4

¹⁰² See Part III. p. 95.

v2.c11.s5.t1.5

Vāk, utterance, articulate voice, is the substance of the Word. The Word prior to its utterance as articulate sound, prior to its manifestation, is Universal Consciousness; by stages it becomes manifest, as articulate voice in man and as the Word which is the substance or body of the universe.

v2.c11.s5.t1.6

Vāk, the uttered Word, has come down and reached manifestation from its unmanifest stage (avyakta) where it is the undivided Universal Consciousness, not as yet discerned as the mind (manas) or the intellect (buddhi) of the Universe.

v2.c11.s5.t1.7

Vāk, the uttered Word, is a lioness. Come into manifestation from undifferentiated Wholeness, her nature is ambiguous, winning and also destructive. She seizes everything. The 'Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa' (III. 5. 1. 21-23) tells of Vāk in the battle between the gods and demons how not having been accepted as a sacrificial fee she went away from the Ādityas. It is then that she becomes a lioness and seizes everything. The gods call her and also the demons. The gods succeed by promising that the offering shall reach her before it reaches Agni, the Fire.

v2.c11.s5.t1.8

The gods—the universe in its ordered aspect—win over the Lioness : uttered Word, the Lioness, attached to the gods, is rhythmical utterance, or metre; it is unassailable as, for example, the metre Virāj, in whose form "tigers went forth" (Ś.B. VIII. 2. 4. 4) or the metre Aticchandas, in whose form "lions went forth" (Ś.B. VIII. 2. 4. 5).

v2.c11.s5.t1.9

Tejaśśabda, the Fiery Splendour of the Word, has become audible in the metres. Śārdūla-lalita and Śārdūla-vikrīḍita, the sport and play of the Śārdūla, are further names of metres.

v2.c11.s5.t1.10

Śārdūla is also the name of an animal shape ‘made by art’. (cf. kṛtrima-grāsa; ‘Samarāṅgaṇasūtradhāra’, LVII. 777). It is also known as Virāla in Orissa¹⁰³ or Vyāla (S.S. LVII. 643), particularly in South India (‘Mayamata’, XVIII. 77). Śārdūla means a tiger, leopard, panther; a demon, a kind of bird, or the animal Śarabha which is stronger than a lion, has 8 legs and of which there is no likeness on earth.

v2.c11.s5.t1.11

¹⁰³ N. K. Bose, op. cit. p. 105.

v2.c11.s5.t1.12

In Indian sculpture, tiger and lion are interchangeable shapes and denote the foremost amongst all animals.¹⁰⁴ The Śārdūla is also called Siṃha-virāla, if its head is that of a lion; Nara-virāla if the head is that of man¹⁰⁵ and Gaja-virāla if it has the head of an elephant. It is represented rampant, but also in other postures. Endowed with the shape of the Lion, is the Siṃha, the group of the animal and the man which is carved in the round, at the base of the temple¹⁰⁶ (Pl. II) and also on the ridge of the Śukanāsā,¹⁰⁷ tiger, lion, boar, ram, bird and elephant combine where it rears, fearsome and playful, in relief on the walls of the temple,¹⁰⁸ in the recesses between piers (Pl. III).

v2.c11.s5.t1.13

¹⁰⁴ The physiognomy of the Lion is coined with an admixture of surviving classical and Achaemenian features, in early Indian sculpture and later (cf. also G. Combaz, L’Inde et L’ Orient Classique, vol. II. pp. 16-17.—Lions are also preserved from Gandhāra with a strong admixture of Scythian traits; in mediæval Indian sculpture the Scythian component is the most conspicuous. Worked in gold, figures of lions are inlaid in a bracelet with precious and semi-precious stones, in circles, crescents and triangles (in the Peshawar Museum, ASIAR, 1919-20, Pl. XXIV. C); they encompass the axis of movement at the places of shoulder and hip joints with flames of their jewel colours. In the mediæval stone sculptures, a fleece of curls (Pl. II ; however damaged) or a scroll (Pl. LXXVII) mark the joints of these animals full of Power (śakti) and rhythmic movement. The Śārdūla, complete with rider, and the fighting knight are carved in ivory, in Begram.

v2.c11.s5.t1.14

¹⁰⁵ Kramrisch, ‘Indian Sculpture’, Fig. 92.

v2.c11.s5.t1.15

¹⁰⁶ Cf. also Gadarmal temple: Badoh, Gwalior, ASIAR, 1919-20, Pl. XLIII. b., figure of a large lion on the plinth of the temple.

v2.c11.s5.t1.16

¹⁰⁷ See note 122. On Orissan temples a Siṃha ‘flies’ or leaps from the apex of the large Gavākṣa. Also in Bengal; temple in Ghutgaria. ASIAR. 1925-26. Pl. IX.c; and, at the corresponding height from a corbel of the Śikhara, on temples of the Kumaon hills, etc. The Lion seated, is frequently placed below the Āmalaka, in Orissa. See note 83, and infra.

v2.c11.s5.t1.17

¹⁰⁸ The Lion and the Śārdūla appear at different periods, in the various schools, in different parts of the sacred architecture: the lion figures as lowermost section of the pillar of Pallava temples, as bracket in the Cālukyan buildings, lion or Śārdūla are brackets of capitals in the Maṇḍapas of Candela temples in Central India, etc; on the wall, in procession in friezes on the base of Hoysala temples, etc. etc. Śārdūla and Makara are hypostases of parts of the Kīrttimukha, i.e., the Lion and the Dragon, but they each have a body being fully ‘animal’. Kīrttimukha and Makara, Śārdūla and Makara, are frequently carved near each other and are also combined (Pl. L); on the side slab of the door steps of the Nārāyaṇa Temple, Aihole (Cousens, ‘The Cālukyan Architecture’, op. cit. p. 50, Fig. 16), etc. These carvings are related in their themes to those on the threshold of the Garbhagṛha; the ‘Lion face’, a long scroll issuing from its mouth is for example on the side of the door steps of the Śambhuliṅga temple in Kundgol (Cousens, l.c., Pl. XCII).

v2.c11.s5.t1.18

This protean animal made by art, has always the body of a lion, and in its more important versions, also its face. It is a symbolic shape and corresponds, within manifestation, to the Face of Glory, the Mask of the Asura.¹⁰⁹

v2.c11.s5.t1.19

¹⁰⁹ The designation ‘leogryph’ is not suitable as the bird component is comparatively rare and restricted to the head only.

v2.c11.s5.t1.20

The original position of the Lion shape is in the corners of the Uttara Vedi, the High Altar. Similarly too, the Lions have their places in the corners of the Throne of the Supreme Spirit (Paramātman) or of Sūrya,¹¹⁰ the Sun-god, and of the Buddha. The Siṃhāsana, the lion throne, is the figured equivalent of the Uttara Vedi. Thus, on the temple, the lions are not only at the bottom, on the Vedi, but also on top, on the Vedi of the Śikhara, where they support the stainless Āmalaka; they are also carved below the section of the Śikhara called Vedi, where the Lion (called Udā-siṃha, the ‘flying’ lion, in Orissa) springs on a corbel from its body.

v2.c11.s5.t1.21

¹¹⁰ ‘Īśanāśivagurudevapaddhati’, III. XIII. 6. The names of the Lions are “Stainless, Essence, Worshipful” and “Supreme Bliss”. cf. JISOA, vol. X, Kramrisch, ‘Temple, Door, Throne, etc.’ p. 216.

v2.c11.s5.t1.22

Vāk, uttered Word, the Lioness, is as dangerous as she is beneficent, such is her nature as an element of the sacrifice and also as the Word which is the substance of the universe. The Lioness is Power, is Śakti;¹¹¹ Vāk, one with her in power and effect, is Māyā or Prakṛti, Nature. She is the power and effect of Parameśvara, the Supreme Lord, the Lion. This makes the Kīrttimukha, the Face of Glory, and the Śārdūla, who is Vāk and Prakṛti, so closely connected in the carvings of the temple (Pl. LXXVII). The Śārdūla shares the features of lion and dragon, and has the body of the lion;¹¹² the Śārdūla is more body than head; with powerful curved chest and sinuous thighs it rears; this mounting wave is its natural shape and gait “for just as man walks two footed and erect, so did the animals walk two footed and erect (Ś.B. III. 7. 3. 1) when they, as images discharged by creative thought (Paśyantī Vāk), embodied the Word in its fiery Splendour (tejaśśabda).

v2.c11.s5.t1.23

¹¹¹ And thus the Vāhana of Durgā, the Great Goddess.

v2.c11.s5.t1.24

¹¹² While in many of the images the Animal can neither be classified as male nor as female, Siṃhāsanas generally are supported by male ‘lions’ (Pl. LVI).

v2.c11.s5.t1.25

The Śārdūlas, carved on the temples are images of the words which had lain dormant in the unmanifest; they lift their heads and toss their manes, in close

v2.c11.s5.t1.26

Śārdūlas, half animal body, half scroll, the latter issuing from its mouth; and a Kīrttimukha, the centre of a scroll torus similarly originated, are part of the mouldings of a pillar (Pl. LXXIII from Kekind, Rajputana). Both these symbols are amongst the most frequently employed motives of architectural carvings.

v2.c11.s5.t1.27

A plethora of Śārdūlas and Siṃhas for example is on the rock-cut Pañca-Pāṇḍava Maṇḍapam in Mamallapuram (seventh century A.D.) where the seated Lion shape is also the lower part of the shaft of the pillar; rearing, it is shown on the brackets of their capitals; above the cornice a frieze of Śārdūlas is at the base of the upper storey. Similar friezes are peculiar to South Indian temples from then to the 13th century (Viṣṇu temple, Narttamalai, Pudukottai) and later. The animal proceeds in its various possibilities, tiger-lion following upon a horned dragon-lion with bird-beaked elephant trunk, etc. in permutations familiar to sculptures of ‘super-natural’ animals from the days of the Indus civilisation.

v2.c11.s5.t1.28

sequence forming themselves the creeper-pattern, the wave of Prakṛti (Pl. X);¹¹³ they rear and turn, lashed by their riders, whom they carry on their backs, and who are part of the wave, being themselves the Śārdūla’s counter players. They are armed, ready to attack but stayed by the Beast and protected. Perfervidly ingenuous, the Beast and the figure of man form a recurrent pattern, rising and falling in rhythmic incandescence. Never is the rider thrown off; when he means to attack he is carried along and when he submits he is protected by the Power of Nature, and of Rhythm.

v2.c11.s5.t1.29

¹¹³ This is a frequently recurring device, collateral with the door to the Garbhagṛha; (Temple in Tumain, Gwalior, ASIAR, 1918-19. Pl. XIIa).

v2.c11.s5.t1.30

Vāk, who is Māyā, is the Chimaera,—never slain by Bellerophon. The Greek myth tells of him that he, though mortal, after having slain the Chimaera, tried to fly to heaven. This temerity was punished by Zeus who caused his fall. The animal, full of genius, the Chimaera, such as she is widely represented in Indian temples, is never killed. Her end comes differently. She vanishes, being Māyā, illusion, at the moment of Knowledge when she is resorbed in the Universal Consciousness. The story of King Dilīpa (‘Raghuvamśa’, II. 57-62) tells of this moment.

v2.c11.s5.t1.31

During twenty-one days King Dilīpa accompanied the cow given to him by Ṛṣi Vasiṣṭha.¹¹⁴ On the twenty-second day the cow is attacked by a lion. The king draws an arrow but his arm is magically numbed. The lion says he is a servant of Śiva,¹¹⁵ eating his appointed food. Dilīpa offers his own body to save the cow and asks the Lion to spare the ‘body of his fame’ (yaśasśarīram), his body of Splendour (yaśas), rather than his mortal body. The Lion consents; when the king presents himself to be devoured, the illusion (māyā) vanishes.

v2.c11.s5.t1.32

¹¹⁴ Twenty-one or three times seven is the extent of these worlds; 22 indicates the ‘Beyond’-manifestation (cf. the 21 enclosing stones of the Gārhapatya hearth, Ś.B. VII. I.I.13; VII. I.I.32-35; the 21 knobs of the golden plate, the sun, which are the sun’s rays, shining downwards (cf. Ś.B. VII. 4.I.10).

v2.c11.s5.t1.33

¹¹⁵ Lion or tiger not only support and surround the throne of Divinity as His place of manifestation; Śiva (Parameśvara) himself is the Lion, Śiva takes the shape of the tiger (vyāghra), lion (simha), deer (mṛga), boar, etc. and of birds (‘Mahābhārata’, XIII. 45.127-8); see also note 108.

v2.c11.s5.t1.34

Confronted with the realisation by the king of his body of Splendour, the terrific Lion is nowhere to be seen for his body itself is made of the Splendour (tejas) and is but one Glory of King Dilīpa. The Fame and Glory of the Kings has at all times its emblem in the Lion or Tiger.¹¹⁶

v2.c11.s5.t1.35

¹¹⁶ ‘Aitareya Brāhmaṇa’, VII. 4.I.10. “The Tiger is the Lordly Power (rājanya) of the wild animals. The Rājanya is the Lordly Power”.

v2.c11.s5.t1.36

In the group of the ‘Lion and the Man’ (Pl. II), the beast with open mouth and raised paw is about to devour, but its over-powering presence protects man, defiant, supplicating, small and part of the group in the closeness of the contact of its two figures and the continuity and response of their themes. Elsewhere the rearing Śārdūla safely carries its rider, while another warrior, with the sword of knowledge drawn, crouches below and seizes the tail of the beast,¹¹⁷ or he proffers the shield passion (vairāgya), the protective weapon by which ‘Nature’ is held in check.

v2.c11.s5.t1.37

¹¹⁷ Lakṣmaṇa Temple, Khajuraho, bracket of Maṇḍapa pillar; the bracket next to it is illustrated on Pl. XVIII.

v2.c11.s5.t1.38

The whole group is placed on the head of an elephant, that “storehouse of darkness”, the Lion, frolicsome after having overcome the darkness, eats the brilliant pearls¹¹⁹ that trickled down from the forehead of the elephant.¹²⁰ The Lion scatters the pearls, but being no ordinary lion but a Śārdūla, and rhythm itself, the pearls are collected in strings and festoons, in many patterns (Pl. LXXVII). Taken from the ‘storehouse of darkness’, they now belong to the Lion; he gathers their strings in his mouth and as much as he is the self part of the Face of Glory, he holds them and sends them forth as his breath or he wears them as a necklace (Pl. II) and has his limbs edged with similar pearl chains of curling fur.

v2.c11.s5.t1.39

¹¹⁹ In South Indian temples the rearing Śārdūla (Vyāla), is the general theme of Maṇḍapa pillars, such as those of the Kalyāṇa Maṇḍapa, Mārgasahēśvar Temple, Viriñcapuram, ASIAR, 1911-12, Pl. VIIa. The Śārdūla above the elephant is equal to the Śārdūla above the Makara; the Śārdūla moreover frequently has the trunk of an elephant.

v2.c11.s5.t1.40

¹²⁰ “Like a lion who having overcome that storehouse of darkness, the elephant, jumps about scattering brilliant pearls”; Sirpur stone inscription, 8th-9th century; ‘Ep. Ind.’, XI. p. 193. “Lion intent upon vanquishing the heavenly elephants”; “large pearls hanging from the mouths of the lions acquired by breaking open the temples of the elephants” (‘Ādipurāṇa’, 38, 47; I. A. vol. XIV, p. 105) ; cf. strings of beads issuing from the mouth of the Śārdūla, on the back slab of Buddhist images, for example, from Nālandā, ASIAR, 1928-29, Pl. LVII.

v2.c11.s5.t1.41

The group of the Lion and man is carved in the round and placed in front of the body of the temple. It shows man as he approaches the Centre, under the protection of the Lion; man draws the sword of Knowledge and protects himself from death with the shield of dispassion. On the walls of the temple and the pillars of the halls, man rides the monster, Śārdūla, whose prancing gallop has the rhythm of nature and inspiration.¹²¹ Hers is the fiery splendour of creative thought;¹²² the shape is rhythm itself. This noble beast embodies at the same time the lordly power of the wild animals; and represents the Lordly power (rājanya) in general; and he who rides it, copes with it, is particularly the Kṣatriya, the warrior, the royal spirit;¹²³ it is his body of Fame (yaśaśśarīram), his royal Splendour.¹²⁴

v2.c11.s5.t1.42

¹²¹ This is a more facile way of acquisition than having to extract the pearl from the jaws of that other embodiment of darkness, the Dragon.

v2.c11.s5.t1.43

¹²² Pearls that trickled down from the foreheads of the elephants of his (the king’s) enemies which were slain by him as by a lion”; Gurjara Grant, about Śaka 417. ‘Indian Antiquary’, XII, p. 84.

v2.c11.s5.t1.44

¹²³ The Śārdūla, different from the Kīrttimukha, is not shown as out-breathing. She is either inhaling or retaining the breath, commuting it into power (see infra).

v2.c11.s5.t1.45

¹²⁴ The head of the Śārdūla proper is also without the component “Death head” which belongs to the Kīrttimukha proper; being Vāk, she is Life.

v2.c11.s5.t1.46

¹²⁵ The Śārdūla is at the same time the form of Paśyantī Vāk and Tejaśśabda as well as of the Śabda, the Word which is the ‘rhythmical body’ of the universe.

v2.c11.s5.t1.47

¹²⁶ The group of the Śārdūla (and the knight) has been taken to refer in Orissan temples to the Kesari dynasty (M. M. Ganguly, op. cit. p. 203); there the Lion is shown rearing with the triumphant rider; in front, below the lion is the small figure of an elephant—and in the ‘Hoysala’ temples of the Deccan to a ruler of that dynasty (Cousens, ‘The Chālukyan Architecture’, op. cit. p. 105). It is represented on carved panels (Mukteśvar temple, Bhuvanēśvar, 10th century; Tripurāntaka temple, Balagamve, Dharwar, p. 107) and as statuary placed in the round the group of the Lion and man are placed on the ridge of the widely projected Sukanāsā (Dakṣiṇa Kedareśvara temple, Balagamve, c. 1075 A.D. ; also temple at

v2.c11.s5.t1.48

The most exalted temple-type, the Meru, must be built by a Kṣatriya only as its patron, the architect being a Brāhmaṇa or a Vaiśya.¹²⁴ The royal patron is most closely identified with his temple by the symbol of the Śārdūla. On the walls of the temples of the Candella dynasty, in Central India, images of the Śārdūla alternate with images of the Apsarās and other goddesses (Pl. III).

v2.c11.s5.t1.49

¹²⁴ See part V. note 42, p. 143.

v2.c11.s5.t1.50

The Śārdūla, an animal of perfervid ingenuity, composed of rhythm, is an embodiment per artem of the Lion, the Lordly Power of the wild beasts, who is Prakṛti, Śakti, Māyā. This image, composed of Rhythm, is Vāk. Vāk is Life ('Aitareya Brāhmaṇa,' X. 6. 38). The pilgrim who circumambulates the temple and whose eyes dwell on its images "wanders in the trek of the Apsarās and the Gandharvas and the wild beasts" (RV. X. 136. 6). He is cognizant of all that is knowable in this universe, says the commentator; he is qualified to confront and to ride the Śārdūla.

v2.c11.s5.t1.51

Rattehalli, Dharwar ; Pl. CXII) exactly as, for example, on the Viśvanātha temple, Khajuraho, and at the place where in Orissan temple (Liṅgarāja) the Lion above the elephant springs forth. This scene has been interpreted as representing a patronymic legend related in an inscription from Gadag ('Ind. Ant.' II. p. 301) explaining the origin of the Hoy-sala dynasty which implies the slaying of the tiger and its subsequent adoption as emblem of the Hoy-sala ("slay or Sala") dynasty. The tiger in the image of the Śārdūla, however, is never represented as slain. This local adaptation of an universal Indian symbol is of secondary interest only.

v2.c11.s5.t1.52

¹²³ Cf. lion crests and lion flags ; the latter are described in the 'Ādipurāṇa', l.c. ; "On the lion flags, lions about to spring, appeared intent upon vanquishing the heavenly elephants. The large pearls hanging from the faces of the lions looked like fame acquired by breaking open the temples of great elephants". The lion is "dharma". It figures on the flags of sun and moon, 'Viṣṇudharmottara', III. LXVII. 8 ; LXVIII. 3.

v2.c11.s5.t1.53

Royal patronage, Lion and Śārdūla, the many images of Śakti, and the Mithuna groups, seem to belong to the world of the Kṣatriya. The architect, it is enjoined, should be a Tāntrik ; p. 10.

Linked texts (24)