M1-TEMPLE YATRA -SOUTH INDIA

 

By PragyanSharma Polavarapu

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 .