M1-TEMPLE YATRA -SOUTH INDIA

 

BY    PRAGYANSHARMA POLAVARAPU  (VRS.SOMANCHI)

WHAT ART AND WHAT SUBLIMITY!  WERE THE HEAVENS BROUGHT DOWN TO EARTH?

INTRODUCTION

Recently we felt  blessed  visiting ten outstanding south Indian temples.They did not look like  earthly structures but like parts of  the heaven. They created through the many beautiful gopurams, sculptures, mantapams, corridors etc a world which we identify with  heaven of the beautiful gods.The temple complexes with high towers , the divine sculptures of gods, the corridors with a few hundred bulky pillars of heights of 20 or 25 feet  with great sculptural work on them ,the many smaller temples within the temple complexes all of them  most wonderfully decorated with imagery  of gods  —all these were not like work of human beings but work  of some divine sculptors of heaven .

These ancient temples ( of Chola, Pandya,Chera,Hampi    and Nayaka etc eras) are really wonders of human creation and should be declared as “Wonders of the World”. They are no less awe inspiring than the old  “Seven Wonders of the World” of which  we read in our old history books . The  architectural styles of south Indian and north Indian temples are  different  . The temples of  both north and south are awe-inspiring. However the south’s temples have their own  special divine grandeur.

I saw similar marvelous temples at Beluru and Halebidu in Karnataka 60 years ago. They too are  marvelous and heavenly .Luckily the TV channels nowadays  frequently show most wonderful  temples which Hindus greatly revere . I start thinking – are the sculptors earthly beings or beings come  from heaven?

After the damage and destruction to temples by foreign invaders  in old centuries ,many  temples were reconstructed. A whole science of temple building ,a very strict discipline,was created for a uniform scientific way of temple building conforming to  strictest engineering standards. The ancient sculptors and ancient engineers  dealt with gigantic stone slabs with ease . The “ancient engineers” were as great masters as  modern engineers who build skyscrapers, irrigation dams etc.

For  example we read in internet  encyclopedias that for lifting and fixing a huge stone block full of sculpture and weighing eighty tones   to top of the awe inspiring Brihadeeswara temple at Tanjavur Tamil Nadu , a seven  mile long earthen inclined plane was built and later dismantled .Thus the  ancient science of temple building  was most advanced. It appears that many old temples were rebuilt in a far grander, far  sturdier  way than the originals .The  kings and emperors were ready to sacrifice a large part of their  wealth to build temples because they  felt that the religion followed by millions of  people is  more precious  than earthly life.

The kings,princes,architects and philosophers all appear to have felt after the shock of  forein invasions that all temples, especially the main temples, should be built of  granite rock magnificently in an awe inspiring way with sky high gopurams(towers) and long corridors  of hundreds of stout pillars  with great sculptures. Here we may also  keep in mind the following.

(a) Since 2000 years the beautiful poetic Ramayana-Mahabharata mythologies catering to both Vishnu and Shiva philosophies dominated the Indian mind and created very high moral standards and sublime spiritual philosophy  in entire India and influenced all literature and art. This spiritual philosophic other-worldly thinking  is the greatest and most fortunate  thing that happened to India.  The religion  tried only to inculcate  other-worldly, philosophic and highly moral attitude among  people.The great Buddhist philosophy with its pro-poor ,radical scientific thinking brought a great renaissance in Hindu religion. Lord Buddha was accepted as an incarnation of  Lord Vishnu the god almighty in Hindu philosophy. This thinking had a profound effect on temple art also.

 (b) As far as south India is concerned the  emperors and kings of all the south  Indian dynasties must have closely cooperated and prepared a common plan for reviving a sublime moral culture in society. They decided  to build/rebuild all the temples with exactly similar magnificent awe-inspiring architecture in similar gigantic  sizes.  With such  similar views and with very great determination they  implemented the new  temple construction plans throughout south india. The discussion among the kings,princes, architects and sculptors and philosophers might have continued for decades . The gigantic temple construction programme might have taken  two or three centuries. The ruling kings and after them their successors  might have continued this work with great enthusiasm and energy.

 They built many temples of  divine awe inspiring beauty . Every temple was fortified like a castle with 20 feet high stone walls. The walls were built of huge stone slabs with  dimensions in meters. Many  temples had not one but many  “prakaras”( high fortifications with sturdy stone walls) using meters- long stone slabs. The temples had huge courtyards and mantapams (halls) built by using  20 or 25 feet high pillars and huge stone slabs of minimum two or three  meters size to cover them. The pillars and walls were decorated with great sculptures .The temples were as strong as rock forts .

 Besides the main temple , smaller temples for gods of   both Shiva and Vishnu  traditions were built. Very long pillared corridors  were created in a large number of  temples.

I have wriiten  below  about our tour covering some   great temples of south India  in Tamilnad and Kerala  from  31-7-24 to 6-8-24.Before these visits routinely seeing the photographs of these same  temples along with daily heavy reading on other subjects did not create such wonder. I was simply stunned and carried away into another world of art and beauty after seeing the superlative sublime sculptures of gods and the gigantic sizes of god’s holy palaces .   We could not spend more than  two or three   hours in each of the temple complexes. I reiterate  that these temples are  wonders of world, wonders of man’s creation, wonders of poetic imagination for which whole world can be proud.

On 31-8-24 morning  at 5-30 AM  we startedfrom Pune City(Maharashtra) to Srirangam(Tamil Nadu ) .At Bengaluru air port we had to change to a direct flight to Srirangam. We  reached Thiruchirapalli international airport  at about 11am. Srirangam town is very near to Tiruchrapalli city about 10 kilometers  away.From Srirangam all our journeys for six days upto  Thiruvananthapuram ( Kerala) were by road. We hired a big A/C  car for use from Srirangam upto Varkala sea-side resort near Thiruvananthapuram. We travelled  for nearly 800-900 kilometers  by road touching Srirangam, Tanjavur,Srivilliputhur,  Madurai ,Rameswaram, Tiruchendur, Kanyakumari, Varkala and Thiruvananthapuram  amidst pleasant greenery of  “millions” of coconut trees .From Rameswaram onwards we travelled  along the sea coast with the blue sea always in view, right upto thiruvanathapuram .

 

At Thiruvananthapuram we handed over the car to the car company. The wheel was in the hands of a  globe-trotting senior- manager of a big  engineering company  who  feels  at  home at the steering wheel and enjoys drivibg very long distances  when  not flying between cities. He is none other than our  son-in-law . At the end of the most thrilling holy sojourn in wonderful south  we  flew  back —from Thiruvananthapuram direct to Mumbai and then returned by road to Pune City .