History of Orissa from the Earliest Times to the British Period v2.c47.90

v2.c47.90

Jagamohana is flanked by a pair of thick pillars each of which is surrounded by the scaly coils of the body of a snake from the bottom upward. The upper part of the pillar or pilaster of the right hand side ends in the bust of a male and that on the left with that of a female.² Such Nāga pillars are conspicuous by their absence in the temple of Paraśurāmeśvara. They re-appear once more in the Mukteśvara as thin columns used as pilasters in the exterior.³ The best Nāga pillars in the compound of the Liṅgarāja are those to be found on the Jagamohana of the temple of Pārvati, which nobody seems to have photographed up to this time. The Nāga pillars of the Mukteśvara and the Liṅgarāja groups are thin pilasters and not bold round mouldings like those of the twin temples at Gandharāḍi or those of the Rāja-Rāṇi. The Nāga pillars in these two temples stand in magnificent relief against the openings. Exactly similar are the splendid fragments of Nāga pillars discovered by Chanda at Khiching, none of which have been reproduced as yet except a small Nāgi and two Nāgas.¹ The Nāga pilasters of the Mukteśvara show the bodies of the snakes as descending instead of ascending. The front door of the Jagamohana shows the Nāgas ascending as at Gandharāḍi. There is a gap between the Rājā-Rāṇi and the temple of Lakshmī in the compound of the Jagannātha at Puri where we find for the first time twin Nāgas on the same pillar (Nāga-yugma) as well as a combination of three Nāgas (Nāga-trayī). Like the exquisite temple of Pārvatī in the Liṅgarāja enclosure, the temple of Lakshmī in the compound of the Jagannātha temple has attracted very little attention. The Vimāna has been rebuilt in later times, but the Jagamohana and the Naṭamandira are still well preserved and in these two structures, the twin Nāgas and the three Nāgas can be seen to their best advantage. Such Nāga pilasters were also profusely used at Konārak, and here we see the general decline in the idea, in the loss of the sense of proportion and the expression of idealistic beauty on the faces.² Before proceeding to discuss the art of the final renaissance in Orissa we must turn for a while to the two exotics in the mediaeval temple architecture of Orissa, viz., the Vaitāl Deul and the Rājā-Rāṇi. The decorative motifs of the Vaitāl Deul stamp it as belonging to the same period as the Paraśurāmeśvara and the shape of its Jagamohana corroborates the evidence. The principal decorative motif is the unchanged chaitya-window of the Viśvakarmā cave type which is found in the Paraśurāmeśvara temple only. The perpendicular projection in front of the Vimāna also shows this type of the chaitya-windows.¹ The Jagamohana is exactly of the same shape in plan and elevation as those of the Paraśurāmeśvara and the Gandharāḍi temples. The chastity of the carving and the sparse decorative motifs prove it to be slightly earlier than the Mukteśvara. Its date has been discussed in the previous chapters, but the special distinctive feature of the decorative art of this temple is, like its architecture, the southern development of the Gāndhāra type of the chaitya-window.