Access and Axes of Indian Temples

Figure 1. Eh/iih. 1111,1, .\l.,li,in Shaivite cave, sanctum with lingam, ca. 540 A.D.

Figure 3. Elephanta. image of Shiva Mahadeva Michael W. Meister Access and Axes of Indian Temples

At the beginning, before the creation of the world, sex, and intended to shelter an icon of a deity (Fig. 4). It consists death, the Creator Prajapati formed Rudra-Brahma as a of a small masonry cube with an inner sanctum and four- pillar to separate sky and water and to start time. This pillared portico, suitable for the approach of only one pillar, called Skambha ("the frame of creation"), instead person at a time. Such a temple was a point of power, retreated to the bottom of the cosmic ocean, and waited for seen as a "crossing" (tirtha), a mechanism for seducing procreation to begin by other means. "By how much did the divine into the created world, and a tool for the Skambha enter the existent? How much of him lies along transformation of the worshiper. that which will exist?" asks the sacred Hindu text Atharva Veda (AV X.7.9).' First built more than a millennium This manifestation of the divine was gradually marked after the Atharva Veda was compiled, an early Indian on temple walls by axes in the ground plan that project stone temple echoes Skambha's condensed crouching form. sacred interior spaces onto offsets of the exterior walls, providing facets where sculptures of varying aspects of the The cubical block of the sanctum in the famed sixth- divinity and creation could be placed and viewed century A.D. Shaiva cave on Elephanta island near (Figs. 5 & 6). In some temples in the seventh century, Mumbai lies compressed between the floor and ceiling however, these cardinal projections show shuttered doors

of a mountain excavation (Fig. 1). Its four cardinal rather than images, emphasizing the secure nature of doorways are protected by giant guardian figures. This the shrine and limiting visual access of the deity to those cella can be approached from two directions: on axis whose function was to administer to it in the from an eastern court along the central aisle of a pillared sanctum (Figs. 7 & 8). hall, or indirectly, from the north, along an axis facing an immense bust of the "Great Lord" Mahadeva Shiva, Image-worship increasingly replaced rites of sacrifice

incarnate with cardinal faces (Fig. 3). This Shiva image by the seventh and eighth centuries, and temple rituals

rests within the mountain, as if looking into the cave's began to focus more on the role of an audience of devotees

excavation from beyond a southern entry-portico- (Fig. 2). and the experience of worship. The cosmological plan of the temple expanded, but access to the shrine and

Access to early temples was at first limited to the deity sanctum remained limited and controlled. These temples and its cult functionaries. Temple 17, built at Sanchi (an were "monuments of manifestation"^ in Stella Kramrisch's early first-century Buddhist site) ca. 425 A.D., has often words—cosmic mountains, but also markers of creation, been called the earliest surviving stone Hindu temple. palaces of the gods, and machines for social order

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Figure 4. Sanchi, Madhya Figure 5. Projection of sacred space onto walls of the temple: Bhubaneshwar, Orissa, Pradesh, temple 17, ca. 425 Parasurameshvara temple, ca. 600 (left); Mahua. MP, Shiva temple no. 1. ca. 650-75

Figure 6. Bhubaneshwar. Figure 9. Masrur, Himachal Pradesh. Shaivite temple, Figure 8. Sirpur. Lakshmana temple, Parasurameshvara temple, ca. 725-75. section view from southwest south view

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Figure 10. Masrur. ground plan Figure 11. Expansion of temple plans: North temple, wall with blind shutters, ca. 600-25 and South India

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Figure 12. Vishnupiir. Bengal. Eastern India in the 17th century Figure 13. Osian, Rajasthan, Sachiyamata hiil. temple complex, 8th— 20th century

(Figs. 9 & 10). Temple Hinduism gradually took on The remarkable thing is that the once-closed machine political and social roles that transformed the temple, of the temple has, over time, taken on the flexibility to expanding its plan along a path of human approach, adapt to radically changing social circumstances, giving

an "axis of access." As architecture and changing usage access to a variety and multitude of communities (Fig. 13). evolved over many centuries, open halls were added to Even as the Creator Prajapati's Skambha cowered in the walled halls, additional pavilions were built, enclosing primordial waters long ago, the potential for creation of fences became compounds, and compounds grew to cities. the sexually charged, multivalent, multicultural universes In South India, seasonal festivals and rites evolved that served by Hindu temples had become its ordering force. brought the deity out into the city and countryside, giving access to populations not allowed entry to the sanctum Early Hinduism focused on rites of sacrifice. Temples (Fig. 11). to shelter images of deities were built in early medieval India as instruments of priestly cults. To patronize cult

As I have noted elsewhere, "The Hindu temple must also communities became a means to extend kingship. Yet act as access and approach for aspirants and worshipers. through such community patronage, temples gradually This role changes the temple from a centralized, became public institutions.' Today communities have bilaterally symmetrical structure (reflecting the nature of taken the place of kings, and temples function in fresh the cosmogonic process) to one with a defined longitudinal ways, with a renewal of multiple pivots of access. axis. On that axis the worshipers approach their personal divinity within the sanctum; but also on that axis the aspirants increasingly can place themselves, in halls built

for that purpose, as if under the umbrella of the sacrificer, Notes positioning themselves for ascent."'

1. Atharva-veda Samhita, trans. William Dwight Whitney, rev. and ed. Charles Two alignments, however, coexist. One is centralized, Rockwell Lanman, Harvard Oriental Series, vol 7-8 (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1905). symmetrical, and expresses a cosmic order in which the 2. Stella Kramrisch, The Presenee of S'iva (Princeton: Princeton University Press, deity dwells. The other is linear, signifying the approach 1981). 443-68. of humans in this world. In seventeenth-century Bengal, a 3. Stella Kramrisch, The Hindu Temple (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1946), new type of temple was created, built in brick, for rituals passim, 4. Michael W. Meister. "Temple: Hindu Temples." in The Encyclopedia of Religion, "hidden" from Islamic hegemony. These temples retain ed, Mircea Eliade (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company) vol. 14, 372: "The

an east-west axis for priests to enter the sanctum and whole intention of the Vedic Tradition and of the sacrifice is to define the Way by attend to the god. But they also have a north-south axis which the aspirant ... can ascend [the three] worlds,' wrote Ananda Coomaraswamy, 'Earth, Air, and Sky ,.. compose the vertical Axis of the Universe.... [These are] the to provide visual access to an assembly of devotees who Way by which the Devas first strode up and down these worlds ... and the Way for

sing and dance in the temple's court, "emphasizing the the .Sacrificer now to do likewise,'"

participation of the community" (Fig. 12).'' These temples .5, Pika Ghosh. Temple to Love, Architecture and Devotion in Seventeenth-Century Bengal (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2005). 138. take on the form of a village compound. Such dual axes 6, Michael W, Meister. "Sweetmeats or Corpses'? Community, Conversion, and for esoteric and popular rituals had already been augured Sacred Places," in Open Boundaries, Jain Communities and Cultures in Indian at Elephanta (Fig. 3), yet here communities of worshipers History, ed, John E, Cort (Albany: State University of New York, 1998), 111-38, commanded access that in previous centuries had often 7, Arjun Appadurai, "Kings. Sects and Temples in South India. 1350-1700 A,D.," in South Indian Temples, ed. Burton Stein (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1978). been limited or denied. 47-73,

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