The Antiquities of Orissa v2.c17.s1.201

Language: English

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**The Sun Pillar. Aruna Stambha.** In front of the eastern gateway there is an artistic ornament of marked elegance and great beauty. (Plates LI [F] and LII). It is a monolithic pillar of chlorite, set on an exquisite pedestal of the same material (Plate LII). Its pedestal is 7 ft. 9 inches square and 6ft. high, the base-tile being 1 foot and the plinth over it 5 ft. The former is plain ; the latter is formed of two tiles with an ornament somewhat resembling a torus, but its edge is flattened instead of being rounded, and over it there is another series of tiles. The carvings on these are of the most sumptuous description, the like of which are to be seen nowhere else in India ; as a piece of art-work they are fit to be compared with the best specimens of the kind in any part of the country. The pillar at first sight appears like a fluted column, but it has not a round shaft with flutes cut on it. The design was the square ; but the angles were repeatedly cut, so as to produce a sixteen-sided polygonal column. It measures from the top of the plinth to the bottom of the capital twenty-five feet two inches. It has a diameter of 2 feet and a circumference of 6 feet 3½ inches. The capital is formed of two rings surmounted by a series of lotus petals and covered over by a square tile having two receding tiles over it. The height of this capital is 2 feet 6 inches and the whole is capped by the figure of a monkey squatting.

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The measurements give a total height, from the ground to the top of the capital, of 33 feet 8 inches³⁹. The height of the monkey was not measured by me. This monumental pillar was originally set up before the Sun Temple at Koṇārak, and thence brought by the Marhattas in the early part of last century. In its present situation the pillar is scarcely a hundred and fifty years old ; but its [114] execution dates from the early part of the 13th century. Counterparts of this pillar occur at several places in Orissa ; one at Yājapur, made of the same material and in the same style, is probably older, showing that the style was not unknown to the Indian artists. The base of the Yājapur column, as now seen, is, however, rough and uncarved, and its neck has a festoon of garlands. The roughness of the base is attributed to Moslem fanaticism, which attempted to overturn the pillar, but the garlands are unquestionable evidence of age. On its crown there was a figure of the monster bird Garuḍa, the vehicle of Viṣṇu. The festoon ornament was doubtless copied from that member of the Aśoka *lāṭs* of 3rd century B. C., but it was dispensed with, not without considerable improvement, by the architect of the Koṇārak pagoda. The pillar is named Aruṇa Stambha, or the Sun Pillar, from the circumstance of its having been brought from the temple of the sun.

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No mention of this pillar occurs in the *History of Indian and Eastern Architecture*, but, adverting to the Yājapur specimen, its author says, ‘it deserves to be illustrated as one of the most pleasing examples of its class in India. Its proportions are beautiful, and its details in excellent taste ; but the mouldings of the base, which are those on which the Hindus are accustomed to lavish the utmost care, have unfortunately been destroyed’⁴⁰. He takes its date to be ‘the 12th or the 13th century’. The Sun Pillar was first figured by Mr. Stirling⁴¹. Dr. Hunter subsequently produced a well-executed and very faithful engraving of it in his excellent wok on Orissa⁴², and a photograph occurs in plate LII. Of the Yājapur pillar, Sir John Phear has published a faithful lithograph taken from a photograph,⁴³ and a woodcut occurs in Mr. Fergusson's *History of Indian and Eastern Architecture*,⁴⁴ and a glance at these figures will show that as a work of art the Sun Pillar is greatly superior to that at Yājapur. The one has still the Aśoka *lāṭ* for its model, while the other rises far above it in excellence of design and freedom of execution; and this would imply the latter to be later than the former. History, too, as far as its glimmering light can be accepted as a guide, is in favour of this conclusion. Yājapur rose to eminence and declined long before Koṇārak; and the pillar must therefore be accepted to have long preceded the years 1237 to 1282 A.

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D., during which the Sun Temple was erected. It is unquestionable, however, that the pillar at Yājapur formed an ornament of the temple of Varāha at Caṇḍeśvara, built by Pratāparudra Deva between 1504 to 1532 A. D., and its appurtenance consequently must at first sight appear to be of the same age. But even as in the case of the Sun Pillar, the date of the building before which it now stands has no relation to it, so might be the case with the Yājapur monument. The Indian name of these columns is *jayastambha* or 'pillar of victory,' and their character is everywhere memorial or monumental, and as such, they abound everywhere in India. The Jains utilised them as lamp-posts by putting lamps on the top on ceremonial occasions, whence the Jain name Dīpadāna; but ordinarily they are purely monumental. Of the peculiar type of column now under notice, there are several in Orissa, notably one at Kendrāpārā,⁴⁵ and it would be by no means too much to assume that the Yājapur pillar had existed from before, and only utilised by Pratāparudra, though for such an assumption there are no other data besides its garlanded collar which is the counterpart of Aśoka columns.