THE AGAMIC TRADITION AND THE ARTS
The Unity and Gravity of
an elemental Architecture
Paµca-Mah¡bh£tas have been
given an order different from the Western system of four Elements -
Earth, Air, Fire, and Water.[i]
First, in India, Comes Water and Earth; then Fire and Air; and finally
Ether, the latter particularly important for the Indian-held sense of an
eternal reality lying behind what we make or experience (Plates 10.1,
Indian ritual begins with earth and fire. In the fire-pit or on
the stone altar, all the Elements are combined, with ritual potency and
for cosmic effect. The temple also roots itself in water, placing among
its wall's base-mouldings (vedi-bandha) a fruiting, flowering, water-pot that represents
India's water-oriented cosmogony. (kala¿a;
Plate 10.5) acts both as the source and as a ritual lustration for the
sacred mountain - which is the temple - acting both as the house for a
divinity and as a 'crossing' intended for the transformation of mankind.
The temple, by the intention of its architects, is poised between
the Elements: always placed near Water; built of and on the Earth; it is
itself the home of Fire. Its tower is the embodiment of Air; and its
apex - or rather the space above it - of Ether (Plate 10.4). "Let
the earth reside in the [moulding's] khuraka hoof" says one fragment of an architectural text
translated by M.A. Dhaky; and let the cosmos be distributed throughout
The mouldings that support and bind the temple (both p¢¶ha
and vedi-bandha) have at their
root the petals of the lotus.[iii] This, in India, is always
the supernal support for deity, seen as the plant that spans the Earth,
Water, and Air, and opens itself-that is its calix, the potent seed-pod
- toward Ether and eternity (Plates 10.1, 10.4). Among these mouldings,
elephant courses suggest the rain clouds hovering, like Indra's
elephant, between the earth and sky (Plate 10.10). Above is the
temple-mountain - áaiva's mansion - which, like the Himalayas
themselves, hovers above the monsoon's water-laden clouds (Plate 10.6)
Through the centre of the temple's tower itself (Plates 10.4,
10.6). It this tower, called the 'sheath' (ve¸uko¿a)
of the temple, meant also as a ritual tool for clasping the Ether? Does
it hold the cosmos, as if by a ritual instrument, in order to make it
The walls of the temple are themselves a 'case' (paµjara)
forming a pillared enclosure giving a body to Air (Plate 10.4). The Agni-Pur¡¸a states that "the five Elements - Water, Light,
Air, Sky, [and Earth]" - act "as the wrappings", in the
temple's wall-frieze (ja´gh¡),
for the microcosm (brahm¡¸·aka)
Embodied up the corners of the curvature of the shrine and used
as its crowning member, ribbed stones called ¡malakas
- the myrobalan fruit (Plates 10.7, 10.8) - ascend, supported by their
own pillared k£¶a cages (Plates 10.4, 10.6). They grow upwards and proliferate,
as if toward their final realization at the pinnacle. It is this seed -
placed beyond Ether, not in Air - that may one day flower at the tower's
Like the flagpole bearer who carries the temple's standard
upward, each worshipper is said to ascend the temple's invisible axis
from materiality towards the transcendent eternal.[vi]
The spaces within the temple, both the flat surface of the hall and the
womb-chamber of the sanctum, are meant to be the Earth- altar of human
The sky-ceiling is both the cage/body and the Air within, much like the
whale-bone cathedral in Melvill's Boby
At the temple's top, flags are used to signal the wind; and the
seed-¡mala again signals
space in its endless, unrealized, potential. It is, indeed, the temple
as Cosmos - as Dhaky's early article had put it - the temple as Cosmos
Four personified figures of the Mah¡bh£as
were placed on the corners of the upper vedi-platform
of the famous Shore temple at Mahabalipuram, near Madras, in the seventh
century; but the full range of 'Elementals'
- the particulate fragments or atoms of reality - are infinite in number
and at times associated with áiva's host of spirits (pramathas).[x]
The architects of the áiva temple at Amrol in Central India,
built early in the eighth century, have placed such bh£ta-globlins,
in part representing Elements, in corner niches on the wall (Plates
10.12, 10.14). These take the place of a familiar set of deities that
act as "guardians of the Quarters", the Dikp¡las.[xi] One of these goblins,
placed on the southeast (Plate 10.14), is radiant with Pramoda's fire
and by its very location has been compared directly to the Vedic
fire-deity, Agni on the adjacent kapil¢-wall.[xii]
The architect of this temple has placed images of Agni and Ì¿¡na
on the south and north kapil¢ entry-walls, clasping the worshipper's approach (m¡rga).
He has done so, perhaps to represent the purifying ritual of Fire along
with the goal of transcendent Ether. Yama is shown among the goblins on
the southwest corner (Plate 10.14).
The temple has, in its overall ornament, a cosmic geography. It
places on its doorway both the personifications of the two most sacred
rivers of India, the Ga´g¡ and Yamun¡, and representations of
Himalayan sages (Plate 10.11). The walls of the Gupta period áiva
temple at Nachna in the fifth century were rusticated to look like the
foothills of the cosmic mountain.[xiii]
Its doorway's ornament suggests the world's cage of illusion: its
sanctum, the fertile womb of the cosmos (Plate 10.9). At the
doorjamb-bases, Ga´ga and Yamun¡ are meant to mark an Ëryan
earthscape, and at the door's top are placed earth-spirits (yakÀ¢s)
sheltered under flowering trees (Plates 10.9, 10.11).
If the Elements of Water, Earth, and Space can be seen as the
fertile forge for the growth of actual lotus and ¡mala
plants in Nature, to temple architects, the flame of temple ritual
generated growth toward transformation of the worshipper that could be
represented, both ornamentally and iconicaily, by vines and other
foliage encircling the temple in their many furling coils (Plates
10.3-6, 10.9, 10.11).[xiv]
Figures of the eight Guardians of the Directions of Space (Dikp¡las)
are placed on the corners of most temples (Plate 10.13). They both
measure space, as its guardians, and provide one further manifestation
of Mah¡bh£tas as they 'wrap'
the wall of the temple - in
description - around the microcosm within.[xv] Varu¸a appears on the
West on a crocodile, associated with Water, as is the Mah¡bh£ta
Pramukha. Agni is placed on the South, like Pramoda, encircled by an
aureole of Fire (Plate 110.14). V¡yu, the wind-god, on the North like
Durmukha, carries a fluttering flag or is wrapped by a billowing scarf
filled by Air (Plate 10.13). The war-god Indra, on the East (like Amoda),
can be taken as an embodiment of Matter; and áiva as Ì¿¡na some
texts associate with Ether.
We should not
be too literal, however, in our attempt to 'read' monuments made within
a worldview that sees in each particular, the whole and in each
proliferation of a thing, everything. The basal square form of the
Universe, for example, is implicit in each of the temple's increasing
and encircling offsets (Plate 10.6).[xvi]
It is God's unfolding that creates the Bh£tas;
and they are always a part, if only one part, of God's ritual
They are indeed his physical wrappings and the substances from which
each of his multiple particles is made. But whether in medicine or
cuisine, philosophy or architecture, these material parts are only a
clothing for the microcosm. They cannot define its essence, nor more
than transmute us back to its ceaseless centre.
[i] In presenting this paper at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Artss Paµca-Mah¡bh£tas Seminar, I preferred to call it "A Meditation on the Temple and the Elements". I later presented it also at the School of Architecture, University of California, San Diego, for a workshop on "Creating Environments: Nature, Space, and Form". There I began first by referring "to India's many village-squares, in which people often have planted a central tree and placed an earth platform below for the village's residents to gather, sheltered under its spreading branches. In such villages - with their shifting lanes and public spaces - and in the cool courtyards of her village houses is India's real public spaces - and in the cool courtyards of her village houses in India's real universe and the source for many of her ideas about cosmic order and form".
[ii] M.A. Dhaky, "Pr¡s¡da as Cosmos", In The Adyur Library Bulletin 35 (1971), pp.211-26.
[iii] Michael W. Meister, "Ma¸·ala and Practice in N¡gara Architecture in North India", In Journal of the American Oriental Society 99 (1979), pp.204-19.
[iv] Michael W. Meister, "On the Development of a Morphology for a Symbolic Architecture: India", In Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics 12 (1986), pp.33-50.
[v] Dhaky, "Pr¡s¡da as Comos", p.200.
[vi] See Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, "Svayam¡t¤¸¸¡: Janua Coeli", Zalmoxis 2 (1939), pp. 3-51.
[vii] Michael W.Meister, "Symbology and Architecturl Practice in India", In Emily Lyle, (ed.), Sacred Architecture in the Tradition of India, China, Judaism and Islam, Edingurgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1992,pp.5-24; idem., "Ma¸·ala and Practice".
[viii] Herman Melville, Moby Dick; or; the Whale, New York: Harper, 1851, Chapter 102, "A Bower in the Arsacides".
[ix] Dhaky, "Pr¡s¡d as Cosmos." See also Stella Kramrisch, "The Temple as PuruÀa", In Studies in Indian Temple Architecture, ed. By Pramod Chandra, New Delhi: American Institute of Indian Studies, 1975,pp.40-46.
[x] M.A. Dhaky, "Bh£tas and Bh£tan¡yakas: Elementals and Their Captains", In Discourses on áiva, Proceedings of a Sym[psium omn the Nature of Religious Imagery, ed. By Michael W. Meister, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984 pp.240-56. Some scholars, however, have questioned such an interrelationship between Vedic and Pur¡¸ic figures.
[xi] Michael W.eister, "Ëma, Amrol, and Jainism in Gwalior Fort", In Journal of the Oriental Institute, Baroda, 22(1972), pp.354-58; Enchclopaedia of Indian Temple Architecture, Vol. I, Part 2, North India: Period of Early Maturity, ed. By Michael W.Meister and M.A. Dhaky, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1991,pp.12-15. Of the Normal set of Dikp¡las, only Yama appears on the west corner of the south wall with Agni and Ì¿¡na placed on the Kapil¢ walls flanking the doorway.
[xii] Encyclopaedia of Indian Temple Architecture, II.2, Plate 11.
[xiii] Joanna G.Williams, The Art of Gupta India: Empire and Province, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983; Encyclopaedia of Indian Temple Architecture, Vol.II, Part 1, Foundations of North Indian Style, ed. By Michael W.Meister, M.A. Dhaky, and Krishna Deva, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988, pp.39-40 & Plates 52-59.
[xiv] For garden-pa¸·¡ls grown over with foliage as ornament see Michael W. Meister,"Construction and Conception: Ma¸·apik¡ Shrines of Central India", In East and West, New series 26(1976), pp.409-18.
[xv] Dhaky, "Pr¡s¡da as Cosmos".
[xvi] Michael W.Meister, "Reading Monuments and Seeing Text", In á¡stric Traditions in Indian Arts, ed. By Anna Libera Dallapiccola, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1989, 2 Vols., I. pp.167-73, II.pp.94-108 and plates.
[xvii] See also Michael W.Meister, "Fragments From a Divine Cosmology: Unfolding Forms on India"s Temple Walls", In Vishakkha N.Desai and Darielle Mason, (eds.), Gods, Guardians, and Lovers, Temple Sculptures from North India A.D. 700-1200, Ahmedabad: Mapin Publishing, 1993, pp.94-115.
©1995 Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, New Delhi