The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c9.23

Language: English

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**[43] Walls and pilasters:** The surfaces of the piers are, as already stated, broken into a number of pilasters, or engaged pillars having intermediate panels, or niches, filled with bas-reliefs or statues. The pilasters are of various sizes and proportions,—generally most elaborately carved and decorated, and the panels and niches have the most sumptuous bands and mouldings carved around them. In small temples these pilasters are generally, but not invariably, carried up in whole height of the body; but in large structures they are arranged as to give to the wall the appearance of two or three stories, each having its separate rows of pilasters, niches, panels, and blind doors. The artistic effect of this arrangement is remarkable. It helps greatly to diversify the appearance of the walls, and prevent all unnatural elongation of niches, panels and pilasters, and the aesthetic defect of placing niches over niches within one intercolumnistion, or having too much bare space over them. These members are merely architectural or ornamental; they do not, to any material extent, enter into the constructive economy of the temples, nor contribute much to their stability; it is not remarkable therefore that their size, make, and strength bear no relation to the size of the building to which they are attached.

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The builders were no doubt guided by some principles or rules in the distribution of these ornaments, but in the midst of unlimited profusion and variety, it is now difficult, if not impossible, to make them out. The pillars and pilasters range from the most heavy and bulky to the most slender and delicate possible; the intercolumnar spaces vary from one to many diameters of the pillars, and the niches are of various sizes and patterns, though always, rectangular. To describe them all in detail would be tedious and ineffectual. I must refer the reader, therefore, to the accompanying plates for an idea of the different styles in which pilasters and pillars are decorated, and the manner in which the walls are generally diversified. Illustration, No. 2, gives an elevation of the west face of the Kapileśvari Temple, and Illustration, No. 3, of the southern facade of the Jagamohan of Mukteśvara, two of the most beautiful of the minor temples of Bhuvaneśvara. Illustration, No. 4 A, represents an attached pillar, or antis, on the exterior of the Mukteśvara Jagamohan. It has a round lobed pitcher-shaped base, and capital, with a slender shaft, divided into three segments, of which the lower two are four-sided, bearing on the front of the lowermost section a danseuse and on the next, two lions mounted on elephants: the third is rounded, and has a female figure in front, whose nether half is formed of a serpent which coils round the shaft above the head of the figure.

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The head is protected by the spread hood of a five-headed cobra. A modification of this style of pilaster occurs in Illustration, No. 7A. from the temple of Bhagavatī. In it the most prominent figure is a lion standing erect over a mounted elephant, and the capital has two nude females for ornament. The semi-ophide figure on the first pillar is called Nāgakanyā, or *ophidian nymph*. Sometimes two such figures are twined round each other on each shaft, and representation of the kind are very common in different parts of India. They are no doubt the congeners of the semi-piscine Triton of Greece, or the mermaids of Europe, Assyria and Persia, and intended to represent emblematically the descendants of the Nāga race; but it is remarkable that their counterparts are not unknown in other parts of the world. In a Chinese book entitled *The Great Cloud Wheel Rain asking Sutra*, and noticed by Mr. Fergusson, there are four representations of a serpent god,⁹ each of which has "a human head and body, ending in a serpentine form from the waist downwards, but with the much more characteristic accompaniment of a degenerate serpent hood. In the first figure in this Chinese work, the Nāga has three serpents rising behind its head; in the second, five; in the third, seven; and in the last, nine serpents. The lower extremities of the first and second are spotted like serpents, and the fourth" (the one copied in Mr.

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Fergusson's work)—"has scales more like those of a fish".¹⁰ Commenting upon these Mr. Fergusson observes: "In India between the third century B.C. and the thirteenth A.D. we find serpent hoods ranging from three to seven heads, but never the human body terminating in a serpent downward, till after the last quoted date”.¹¹ This conclusion, however, appears open to objection, as there are some pillars in the Great Tower of Bhuvaneśvara, which dates from the middle of the 7th century, on which the characteristic semi-ophide female figures are most elaborately sculptured. It is impossible to make out from flat drawings whether the serpents shown in the Chinese drawings are intended to represent separate animals, or numerous heads for the tail from which the human figure comes out. In India polycephalous cobras are always intended, as not so many separate animals as there are heads. The taste displayed in this monstrous representation cannot but be severely condemned, but the tact and talent with which it is executed in Orissa are worthy of praise. It may be added also that bad as the conception is, it is not worse than that of the Pans, and the Tritons, and the Centaurs of the Greek artists, ,or that of the Apollo and Daphne of Bernini of the 17th century, in which floating tresses and the ends of the fingers and toes of a lovely maiden are “all sprouting forth in elaborately executed laurel branches and leaves”.¹²