History of India, c. 150 A.D. to 350 A.D.: Naga–Vakataka Imperial Period c14.s5.39

c14.s5.39

§ 46A. The Bhūmarā Temple, discovered by the late Mr. R. D. Banerji, near Uch-harā (the Uchchakalpa of the inscriptions of the Gupta-Vākāṭaka period), Nagod State, Western Baghelkhand, has been assigned by him to the fifth century A.D.² This temple is surely a Bhāraśiva building. It is a Śaiva shrine. A large lingam, like the Chaturmukha at Nachnā, was established in the temple which is in the style followed in Samudra Gupta's time at Eran. What connects this temple with the Nāga traditions is the peculiar palm designs. Palm was the Nāga emblem, which has been also found at Padmāvatī, one of the Nāga capitals. At Bhumarā we have whole pillars (pilasters) carved in imitation of palm trees (Pl. IV), a feature nowhere else found. I shall designate it a Nāga (Bhāraśiva) motif. Scrolls of palm-leaf (fan) are used as decoration. Its human figures stand out classically. They express a fullness of life where nothing of the primitive or the decadent is traceable. They are entirely of a different technique, conception and execution, to what we are accustomed at Mathurā. Here we have the real, old Hindu Art, practically come down direct from the art of Bhārahut which is within a few miles of Bhūmarā. To Bhūmarā, Bhārahut is primitive, although in itself Bhārahut marks a decadent close of a preceding line of Hindu Art. Bhūmarā supplies a missing link connecting the Guptan Udaygiri-Deogarh with the past of the national orthodox art. The national orthodox art seems to have survived only in Baghelkhand and Bundelkhand where the Kushan rule could not be sufficiently destructive. As there is very little difference between the Bhāraśiva and the Vākāṭaka culture—the latter being a continuation of the former, we may, with some confidence, assume that the national plastic art did revive under the Bhāraśivas, which is attested by the Jānkhaṭ fragments for its early and independent existence. The śikhara before the Bhāraśivas was a four-cornered spire, as evidenced from the ‘Bodh-Gaya’ plaque found at Pāṭaliputra with a Kharosthi inscription of the first or the second century A.D., and the two sculptured replicas of śikhara temples found at Mathurā of about 150 A.D., to which Dr. Coomaraswamy has drawn attention.¹ The Bhāraśiva and Vākāṭaka śikhara, on the other hand, is a four-cornered spire over a four-cornered the remains, some of which have now been removed to the Indian Museum, Calcutta. [See App. A. at the end here on the date.]