“As the discovery of India

proceeds, as we make
efforts to inherit our
past culture, we begin to
realise that the gaps in our
knowledge of the various
historical periods are almost
as vast as the centuries
through which our ancient
culture was built up.”
– Mulk Raj Anand, “On Inheriting the Past”,
Marg, Vol. 8, no. 2, March 1955, pp. 2–5.

Shapoorji Pallonji And Company Private Limited, Corporate Office: SP Centre, 41/44 Minoo Desai Marg, Colaba, Mumbai 400005, India.
Tel: +91 67490000 Website: www.shapoorji.in
Over 75 years Marg has built a remarkable
archive of studies on visual and cultural history.
This portfolio of the journal’s covers presents a
view of those issues that focused on the temple.

inside front cover

Clockwise from top
MARG, Vol. 1, no. 1, October 1946.
MARG, Vol. 2, no. 3, July 1948.
MARG, Vol. 4, no. 4, April 1951.

(Top) MARG, Vol. 4, no. 2, July 1950.

MARG, Vol. 3, no. 4, September 1949
 MARG, Vol. 12, no. 1, December 1958.
MARG, Vol. 5, no. 2, October 1951.

“Unfortunately, the pride of our

political leaders, to whom the
splendours and glories of our
heritage are mostly slogans flung
at the world to cover the paucities
of our present day achievement,
prevents the cultivation of a
mood of true humility about our
ignorances. But the charge made
against India of disregarding the
knowledge of history, through
our preference for the vertical
truths of religion and metaphysics,
will have to be acknowledged;
and the necessary effort made to
compile source books from which
an adequate tradition of historical
writing may spring up and intensive
research in the social and political
periods fostered.”
– Mulk Raj Anand, “On Inheriting the Past”,
Marg, Vol. 8, no. 2, March 1955, pp. 2–5.

Shapoorji Pallonji And Company Private Limited, Corporate Office: SP Centre, 41/44 Minoo Desai Marg, Colaba, Mumbai 400005, India.
Tel: +91 67490000 Website: www.shapoorji.in
Clockwise from top
MARG, Vol. 7, no. 1, December 1953.
MARG, Vol. 7, no. 2, March 1954.
MARG, Vol. 10, no. 3, June 1957.
MARG, Vol. 20, no. 2, March 1967.
Clockwise from top
MARG, Vol. 23, no. 4, September
1970.
MARG, Vol. 23, no. 3, June 1970.
MARG, Vol. 13, no. 4, September
1960.
MARG, Vol. 22, no. 2, March 1969.
 Clockwise from top
MARG, Vol. 12, no. 2, March
1959.
MARG, Vol. 33, no. 2, March
1980.
MARG, Vol. 26, no. 3, June 1973.

“Ever since its inception MARG

has sought to make a new kind of
critical approach towards Indian
art works. We do not think that we
have succeeded in changing the
trend of Indian art criticism among
all our contributors. But we did put
forward, overtly, and by implication,
certain hypotheses, which are
beginning to be shared among a
number of students, especially of
the younger generation, so that
there has been visible a clear shift of
emphasis from the ‘old criticism’ to
the ‘new criticism’. ”
– Mulk Raj Anand, “Old Criticism and New Criticism”,
Marg, Vol. 18, no. 2, March 1965, pp. 2–3
“I think that we have reached a stage
of human development when the cult
of national chauvinism, with its implied
doctrines of the superiority of one race or
nation over another, will have to recede
before considerations of mutual aid. This
positive attitude is compelled, curiously
by the threat of universal destruction
held out by the existence of the thermo-
nuclear weapons. Is it likely that the
advance guard intellectuals of the world
will take heed now and relax from
prejudice? For evidence is not lacking
of how quite a few world civilisations
have destroyed themselves, even when
they seemed within sight of genuine
progress, through the lack of foresight
of the intelligentsia and their incapacity
to act or speak according to the light of
their consciences against authority or the
prevailing order.”
– Mulk Raj Anand, “In Praise of Buddhist Art of
Cambodia, Champa, Laos, Siam and Borobudur”,
Marg, Vol. 9, no. 4, September 1956, pp. 2–10.
opposite page
Clockwise from top
MARG, Vol. 35, no. 1, December 1981.
MARG, Vol. 42, no. 3, March 1991.
MARG, Vol. 39, no. 2, March 1986.
MARG, Vol. 10, no. 4, September 1957.

Clockwise from top

MARG, Vol. 27, no. 1, December 1973.
MARG, Vol. 43, no. 2, March 1991.
MARG, Vol. 31, no. 1, December 1977.
MARG, Vol. 53, no. 1, September 2001.
Clockwise from top
MARG, Vol. 56, no. 2, December 2004.
MARG, Vol. 60, no. 2, December 2008.
MARG, Vol. 35, no. 3, June 1982.
MARG, Vol. 34, no. 4, September 1981.
MARG, Vol. 54, no. 3, March 2003.
MARG, Vol. 55, no. 4, June 2004.
MARG, Vol. 37, no. 1, December 1983.

opposite page
Clockwise from top
MARG, Vol. 33, no. 4, September 1980.
MARG, Vol. 57, no. 2, December 2005.
MARG, Vol. 51, no. 1, September 1999.
MARG, Vol. 44, no. 3, March 1993.
MARG, Vol. 52, no. 4, June 2001.
MARG GRATEFully AcknowlEdGEs ThE
GEnERous suppoRT REcEIvEd FRoM:

Tvs MoToR coMpAny lIMITEd

hARIsh & BInA shAh FoundATIon
ARuMuGAM suppIAh
JAMshyd & phERozA GodREJ
And An AnonyMous donoR
Volume 73 • Numbers 2 and 3
December 2021–March 2022

founder editor
Mulk Raj Anand

general editor general manager

Naman P. Ahuja Jyotsna Nambiar

editorial accounts
Nandini Bhaskaran Usha V. Shenoy
Aastha Singh Radhika N. Tivale

editorial consultant administration and operations

Savita Chandiramani Neeta Suvarna
Sadanand I. Salian
Ravindra K. Shewale
Rukmaya Suvarna
production and design
Gautam V. Jadhav
Chetan S. More

sales, marketing and social media editorial advisory board

Mary Abraham Nancy Adajania
Almitra Billimoria Muzaffar Alam
Anjana Premchand Phyllis Granoff
Rahul Mehrotra
Cameron Petrie
this issue has been designed by
David Shulman
Yamini Gandhi

Marg’s quarterly publications receive support froM the tata trusts.

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 December 2021 – march 2022 | Volume 73 Numbers 2 aND 3
ReadingS on the temple fRom 75 yeaRS of maRg
CURATEd BY naman p. ahuja
contents
Section i 12 Riverside Shrines at Talakad and Indic Epics in Khmer Art: Narrative
Somnathpur Reliefs of Baphuon
temple studies: changing
A select portfolio by Kelleson Collyer Rachel Loizeau
perspectives
Ganga Monarch and a Monumental
Naman P. Ahuja Section Vii 224
Sun Temple—Thirteenth Century
Orissa 14th–18th century ShiFtS
Section ii 16 Thomas E. Donaldson
Towers of Devotion at Orchha and
the house of god Architecture and Royal Authority Beyond
Reflections on the House and Body under the Early Sangamas A select portfolio by Edward Leland Rothfarb
of God Phillip B. Wagoner
The Temples of Eastern Bengal
Stella Kramrisch Temples of Kanara A select portfolio by S. Mookerjee
Visualizing the Gods A select portfolio by John Henry Rice
Temple Terracotta Decoration:
Gilles Tarabout Stone Temples: Ancient Kashmir Monumental and Vernacular
Chidambara Rahasya: The Secret of A select portfolio by Robert E. Fisher Traditions in Bengal
Chidambaram Kalachuri Monarch and his A select portfolio by George Michell
B. Natarajan Circular Shrine of the Yoginis Orissan Art in the Evolution of
Bhadramandalas: Invoking Vidya Dehejia Post-Classical Indian Culture
Divinities in Smarta Ritual A select portfolio by Klaus Fischer
Gudrun Bühnemann Section V 140
Temple Styles in Banaras
pious and urbane: the temple and George Michell
Section iii 38 its denizens
Amber and Jaipur: Temples in a
On Such FOundatiOnS: 4th–7th Temple Towns of Tamil Nadu: Changing State
centuries Introduction Catherine B. Asher
Roots, Relations and Relevance: The George Michell
The Nyatapola Temple of Bhaktapur:
Chalukyan Backdrop Water in South Indian Temples: A Mark of Nepalese Temple Design
S. Settar Tirthas, Tanks and Vasanta- A select portfolio by Raimund O.A. Becker-
What’s in a Name? Rethinking ‘Caves’ Mandapas Ritterspach
Phyllis Granoff Anila Verghese
The Evolution of the Goan Hindu
Bhitargaon: The Technique of Chariot Panels from Tamil Nadu Temple
Architecture A select portfolio by George Michell José Pereira
R. Nath The Living Traditions: The Maharis
and the Gotipuas Section Viii 264
The Gupta Art of Uttar Pradesh and
Madhya Pradesh Sunil Kothari modern temples
R.N. Misra Bharata Natya Sastra: The 108 The Marathas, the British and the
Elephanta Karanas Brihadishvara in Thanjavur
A select portfolio by Muriel Neff A select portfolio by P. Srinivasulu Naidu George Michell
Ellora Cave 16 and the Cult of the Chidambaram and the Dance of Mandala by Design
Twelve Jyotirlingas Shiva in South Indian Myth and A select portfolio by Vibhuti Sachdev
Benjamin J. Fleming Poetry
Indira Viswanathan Peterson Temple Renovation and Chettiar
Patronage in Colonial Madras
Section iV 94 Shades of Eroticism in Temple Art Presidency
Devangana Desai
Variety and PatrOnage: 7th tO 14th A select portfolio by Crispin Branfoot
century Celebrating Shiva at Pashupati Panchakroshi Temple in Banaras
A select portfolio by Tim Ward A select portfolio by Niels Gutschow
Patron, Artist and Temple: An
Introduction Icons and Identities: The Work
Vidya Dehejia Section Vi 194
and Lives of Bronzecasters in
Temples in Kutch: Symphony in Stone asian connections Swamimalai
A select portfolio by M.A. Dhaky Sowparnika Balaswaminathan
Cambodia, Champa and Laos
Scholar-Emperor and a Funerary Preliminary by Tara Ali Baig The Hinglaj Shrine in Baluchistan
Temple—Eleventh Century Bhojpur Notes on Sculptures by Jean Boisselier & Victor A select portfolio by Ibrahim Shah
A select portfolio by Kirit Mankodi Golobeuw
Sacredness Outside Tradition?
Living Beyond Death: Chola Beyond the Politics of Conquest: Dilemmas in Designing Temples
Sepulchres Brahmanical Iconography in A. Srivathsan
A select portfolio by Pradeep Chakravarthy Polonnaruva
Svayambhu in the Park: Temples in
R. Mahalakshmi
Two Chalukya Queens and their Jayanagar, Bangalore
Commemorative Temples—Eighth A Javanese Interpretation of the Annapurna Garimella
Century Pattadakal Story of Rama on the Prambanan
A select portfolio by Carol Radcliffe Bolon Temple
Alessandra Iyer
The Hoysala Star-shaped Plan
A select portfolio by Carmel Berkson
 Temples were not just made for and used by
“Hindus”. They are not limited to India. This
issue of Marg moves beyond the all too well
known Khajuraho, Thanjavur and Konarak to
look at temples in Kutch, Kashmir, Bangladesh,
Nepal, Sri Lanka, Kerala and Southeast Asia—
each with a unique style. We examine rock-
cut temples, extraordinary wood, bamboo or
brick ones, circular yogini temples and modern
multi-storey concrete and steel temples.
Bewildering though they may be in their
architectural range, this volume shifts our
focus away from their variety to look instead
at who built temples and why? What were
they used for? Given that many Hindus do not
believe in image worship, what makes temples
valid spaces for worship and what legitimizes
their public role? We examine the nature of the
activities and communities they fostered and
how, in turn, temples also became the focus of
urban centres. The approach is art historical,
ethnographic and comparative. Temples, as
I
this volume shows, have adapted and changed
over the centuries and served a variety of
ritual functions. They have also been major
centres of the arts: painting and sculpture,
dance and drama. To celebrate 75 years of
Marg, this bumper issue brings together the
writings of pioneering art historians who have
deepened our appreciation of this hallmark of
Indian architecture.
Understanding their role in history has to
temple studies: be built on a familiarity with specialized
vocabulary. Their typology and the
changing classification of the iconography of their
images is one of the discipline’s building blocks.
perspectives We use the decades of scholarship in the field
to explore other questions to address different
cultural histories associated with temples. How
did a style or type of temple or image become
a marker of a patron’s identity? What made a
particular image popular at a certain time and
place? Who built temples and what motivated
– naman P. ahuja them to do so? This, in turn, forces a rethink
on some basic postulates: How does a temple’s
design reflect its function?
Looking through the archives of Marg reveals
shifts in the understanding of the temple and
how Indian art history has radically changed
over the past 75 years. Trained in what we
now regard old-fashioned colonial vocabulary,
there was little hesitation amongst our earlier
writers to use terminology that we no longer
find acceptable. The “Aryan” versus “Dravidian”
nomenclature, for instance, remains deeply
embedded in the public imagination even
today and warrants clarification.
The earliest writings on the history, culture
and language of South Asia divided their
subjects into “Aryan” and “Dravidian”.
These two terms were associated with
racially governed aesthetic and behavioural
characteristics rather than being limited to
12
linguistic categories as we know them to be.
As global speakers of English, with not all
of us hailing from the UK, we know that the
language of one community can be naturalized
to become the native tongue of someone from
another part of the world to express their
culture rather than remain a communicator
of Britishness. In the case of Indo-Aryan
and Dravidian, we know these communities
were already exchanging vocabularies in the
second millennium BC. That’s well over 2,000
years prior to the construction of the earliest
temples. How then can this nomenclature
be appropriate for describing discrete racial
groups with their own aesthetic or cultural
categories? All the more difficult is it then to
accept the writings of those with a colonial
education, with allusions to “Aryan” impulses
or “Aryan” styles in art when referring to Indian
temples and iconography.
Even when trying to find a more progressive
understanding of Indian culture, Mulk Raj
Anand, Marg’s founding editor, was himself
compelled to use this vocabulary. This was
commonplace in all the old issues of Marg
right till the end of the 1960s when finally a
more considered approach began to emerge. A
single remark should suffice as an example: In
December 1963, he wrote, for instance, “The
culmination of all the strains of civilisation
of more than a thousand years of the Aryan-
Dravidian fusion forms the basis of the Gupta
classical renaissance.” (Vol. 17, no. 1, December
1963, p. 16.)
The problematic nature of the remark is
not just limited to the use of “Aryan” and
“Dravidian”, but the very binary understanding
of Indian culture—as if it had only two
constitutive elements. The history of its
sheer variety or plural origins thus gets over
simplified. The remark also reveals another
bias held dear by art and cultural historians:
describing the Gupta period as the great
“classical” idiom of Indian art, a period which
was previously thought to have revealed the
oldest Hindu temples.
Scholarship discusses the subject of the origin
of the temple form with far greater nuance
nowadays. By accepting that the towering
shikhara was only one type of temple, we are
able to look for the architectural history of
many other types of shrines which were also
temples. To trace the origins of each of the
separate elements of later Hindu temples,
we must look mostly to Buddhist structures
where we get evidence of many features that
are also found in Hindu construction—making
it relevant to see the two traditions in parallel.
For instance, the stupa may be accompanied
by a dhvaja or pillar with an animal capital just
as many temples are. They may both be sited
at locations where there is a water tank, at a
location where there was a legendary event
Marg Vol. 73, nos. 2 and 3
or on a hilltop. Similarly, one of the forms
of early Buddhist shrines is a chaitya cave,
which often has an apsidal ground plan,
i.e. one which has a long corridor with a
rounded or oval ending and with a vaulted
roof. This began to be used later as one of
the standard types of temple as well. Thus,
the long history of gajaprishtha or apsidal
temples is traced to Buddhist chaityas,
or for the square cell in what is called a
kuta, widely represented as a hermitage in
ancient Buddhist sculptures.
Finding Indian terminology was thus
imperative for Indian art—for how could,
and even why should, Indian art have to
be explained in the latinized vocabulary of
Western art history? The rediscovery of
Indian vocabularies was an integral part
of the Indian national movement when
generations of Indians had been alienated
from their cultural foundations on account
of colonialism. Scores of ancient texts
were mined to find precise terms for
iconography and architecture. In the
1940s and ’50s the savants V.S. Agrawala
and Moti Chandra began publishing
lexicons of Indian art terms. The scope for
understanding Indian art on its own terms
was seen as not just being feasible, but
also necessary and this became an active
pursuit in the decades of study of Indian
temple art between the 1960s to the end
of the 20th century. This led to a more
qualified vocabulary for formalism. Every
type of temple moulding and decorative
ornament, wall, tier, roof and structure
had a name in an Indian language. This
received substantial encouragement from
the 1970s from the American Institute
of Indian Studies, which published
the 14-volume Encyclopaedia of Indian
Architecture, compiled by a team of
scholars, led by Madhusudan Dhaky.
While recovering a vocabulary of one’s
own was much needed, the exercise at
times became excessive, even intimidating.
The study of the shastras, describing
these terms, was irrelevant, according to
some scholars because the terminology
was arcane, and, at the best of times,
would only have been known to pundits
who were far removed from the ground
realities of builders, craftspeople and
the common public. They believed that
studying ancient texts was not essential
for a scholarly knowledge of Indian
temples since perfectly adequate terms
were available in modern vocabulary.
Vidya Dehejia, a former editor of Marg
and eminent professor of Indian art,
once reviewed one of the volumes of the
Encyclopaedia of Indian Temple Architecture
in Marg. She wrote,
december 2021–march 2022
“There is no doubt at all that
terminology overwhelms, and not only
initially, since scarcely a paragraph
is written in straightforward English.
Consider the following extract which is
fairly typical of the series:
‘The hara above the ground storey
leaves an alinda-space between it and
the high griva-wall (which is an upward
continuation of the sanctum). On the
longer side, between the karnakutas,
are five salas with paired netrakoshtas in
the six harantara recesses. The shorter
side has three salas and single panjaras
in the recesses. The griva is topped
by maddalas and mrnalikas below the
brim of the sala-sikhara. The sala roof
shows five broadly projected nasikas
from each longer face; these constitute
typical examples of the different orders
of nasikas codified in later texts. The
large central nasika and the medium-
sized extreme ones have a prastara
component over nakula-pudas (i.e. the
short-paired pilasters which project from
the griva-face). This prastara supports
an arcuate jhasa (or toranamukhapatti)
which projects from the curved flank of
the sikhara.’
“Despite the extensive glossaries at the
end of the volumes, few non-linguists
would be able to wade their way
through such writing... It has been one of
my complaints that the study of Indian
art has been isolated from world art,
largely because of an overemphasis on a
religious, metaphysical and philosophic
approach to that art. Newcomers to the
field have been given the impression
that without complete familiarity with
India’s religious lore, they cannot begin
to appreciate her art, and several
have turned to other more welcoming
areas. The Encyclopaedia of Indian
Temple Architecture takes this process
of isolation one step further by its use
of language that would deter all but
the most determined and dedicated of
readers.”1
Next, came another problem: Should we
use vocabulary drawn from Sanskrit or
use regional texts? Did medieval Gujarati
pilgrims visiting Kanchipuram use Tamil
descriptive terms? Besides, only some of
the most learned architects and artists
may have actually read the Sanskrit texts,
the majority of artists and builders not
having been familiar with the language. At
the same time, as many an anthropologist
and linguist has noted, practitioners
groomed in a gharana or guild, inherit their
knowledge by living in a milieu where
adherence to tradition becomes all but
instinctive.
These debates are important, but they can
be carried too far. It is hoped that as the
reader will proceed through this volume of
Marg the references to words from ancient
texts will provide a useful context to
understand that architectural theory and
art history are not only modern subjects,
but have had a long history. Although it
seems as if they are laying down rules of
proportion and iconography, very often
they are only general guidelines, which
artists and pedagogues could use, if not
for training, then to make patrons well-
versed in the tools of appreciation. This
also means that although the language
of the text seems to be a set of rules for
how future artists and architects should
practise, the texts may, in fact, be actually
documenting what artists had been doing.
They should not be regarded as a diktat
that limited creativity or the development
of new styles or images.
Debate on the primacy of texts versus an
understanding of practice has only been
one of the major dilemmas that undergird
the scholarly questions of the past few
decades. Several editors of Marg greatly
expanded the understanding of our field to
parameters anew. Two volumes by Vidya
Dehejia deserve special mention. Royal
Patrons and Great Temple Art, Vol. 39, no.
2, March 1988 was a landmark in opening
up a major aspect of understanding the
reasons why royals built temples and
what public role they sought to serve.
Temples were often built at pilgrimage
sites, to celebrate a victory and also in
memory of someone. (This latter feature
certainly helps us understand the new
temples dedicated in India to celebrities
and politicians.) Dehejia triangulated the
institution of the temple with its patron
and, crucially, the artist and craftspeople
who conceptualized the entire edifice and
provided the labour for its construction.
What was their motivation? Fortune and
fame, of course, but keeping faith alive
as a driving force required a massive
investment in maintaining the societal
infrastructure that valued religion. Some of
the articles in this bumper issue come from
Dehejia’s original volume.
A second major volume by Dehejia called
The Legend of Rama: Artistic Visions, Vol. 45,
no. 3, March 1994 traces the history of the
depiction of Rama in sculpture and art. It
provides sound research on how the idea
of the Rama legend was reinterpreted in
the art and sculpture of different regions
and times—from Gupta period terracotta
and stone depictions to Chalukyan,
Javanese and Mughal interpretations—to
suit each age’s requirements. In 1994, the
research was certainly topical since the
13
 early Mughal mosque at Ayodhya had only
recently been torn down to make way for a
temple to Rama.
Temples and their iconography were
integrated with larger thematics by
Pratapaditya Pal, scholar-curator of Indian
art and a former General Editor of Marg,
over several volumes. Region was one
of them, evident in Art and Architecture
of Ancient Kashmir, Vol. 40, no. 2, March
1989; Orissa Revisited, Vol. 52, no. 3, March
2001; Bengal: Sites and Sights, with Enamul
Haque, Vol. 54, no. 3, March 2003; India
and Portugal: Cultural Interactions, with
José Pereira, Vol. 53, no. 2, December
2001; Nepal: Old Images, New Insights, Vol.
56, no. 2, December 2004 and Sindh: Past
Glory, Present Nostalgia, Vol. 60, no. 1,
September 2008. Each volume looked at
the region’s plurality and transformation,
and consequently, the simultaneity of its
temples within a much larger cultural fabric.
His volumes that focused on iconographic
forms such as Ganesh the Benevolent, Vol. 47,
no. 2, December 1995 and Goddess Durga:
The Power and The Glory, Vol. 61, no. 2,
December 2009 again brought to light the
historical transformations in the imagination
of these popular gods. What does an image
that is commonly believed to be Hindu
mean in Jain or Buddhist contexts? Again,
by bringing to light the long histories and
varied claims on the “authenticity” of the
worship of these figures in diverse parts of
Asia, his books forced a revised reckoning
of what is otherwise simplistically called a
Hindu deity.
These advances were in keeping with the
defining parameters of Marg. Mulk Raj
Anand wrote a short piece evaluating what
Marg had achieved in its first two decades:
“Ever since its inception MARG has
sought to make a new kind of critical
approach towards Indian art works. We
do not think that we have succeeded in
changing the trend of Indian art criticism
among all our contributors. But we did
put forward, overtly, and by implication,
certain hypotheses, which are beginning
to be shared among a number of
students, especially of the younger
generation, so that there has been visible
a clear shift of emphasis from the ‘old
criticism’ to the ‘new criticism’.
What do we mean by the ‘old criticism’?
In our opinion, the pioneer work of
discovery of the monuments of India
was done by giant archaeologists, like
Cunningham, Burgess, Carlleyle, Foucher,
Vogel, Marshall, Stein, Sahni, Shastri,
Mortimer Wheeler and various other
persevering men whose contributions
are enshrined in the Memoirs and
14
Reports of the Archaeological Survey.
But, inevitably, these hard-working
adventurers approached art from the
point of view of scientific fact-finding,
and could not evaluate, except rarely,
their aesthetic reactions to one art object
as distinct from another. So their writings
remain part of the 19th century attitude
of acquisition of knowledge which
remains one-sided, so far as the total
experience of works of art is concerned
and may thus be called the ‘old criticism’.”
Mulk Raj Anand, “Old Criticism and New
Criticism”, Marg, Vol. 18, no. 2, March
1965, pp. 2−3.
Certainly contextualization of sites,
sculptures and artworks is obligatory if
we are to empower our interpretations
of history with relevance. There can be
no simplistic position that explains the
process of study as first completing a
comprehensive documentation, followed by
interpretation. The two move in tandem, for
neither documentation nor interpretation
are ever complete. Often photographers
and art historians go to sites in order to
document something that is in line with
their interpretation rather than the other
way around. This volume thus presents the
simultaneity of these two approaches.
Marg’s editors and writers have worked
extensively on the field, documenting these
sites. The work of Raymond Burnier at
Khajuraho, 2 for instance, was pioneering.
He travelled in a trailer, carrying along
long ladders, reflectors and a camera, with
his partner Alain Daniélou, to what in the
1940s was a small, remote and forgotten
village, located in the middle of a jungle, in
Khajuraho. A scaffolding was erected at the
site and the prints that resulted were blown
up to 33 inches each. They were the first
truly exceptional photographs of the sites
which were covered in centuries of neglect.
Burnier’s excellent photography, which was
shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
in New York, led many others to follow suit
and look at these temples more closely.
His portfolios on Konarak were published
by the Archaeological Society of India, and
Marg, where they were first featured in its
early volumes in 1948. Temple scholars and
art historians apart, they even formed the
basis for dance practitioners to emulate the
poses and revive India’s “classical” dance
styles.
Preliminary findings did not always elicit
the Marg founding editor’s unqualified
support. George Michell told me a
wonderful story of how dismissive Mulk Raj
Anand had been initially of his proposal to
work at Hampi. Michell had just completed
his essays on the Chalukyan temples at
Badami, Aihole and Pattadakal for Marg
which had greatly pleased Mulk—the sites
had antiquity, classicism and quality. Hampi,
he insisted, was late; it was not quite Chola.
Michell carried on with his idea regardless,
and by January 1980, an impressive team
of young collaborators were at work at
Hampi, documenting its many temples,
pavilions and other structures. Some were
drawing plans, others were excavating
while epigraphs were being transcribed and
translated. Mulk and Dolly Sahiar, Marg’s
Assistant Editor (Design and Layout), who
were travelling from Bombay to Badami,
broke their journey at Hampi to put in
a polite appearance! Taken by surprise,
Mulk realized that there were still many
other periods of Indian art that had not
been documented and which Marg could
showcase.
The rest, as they say, is history. Apart
from his pioneering work in the Deccan,
Michell’s many publications for Marg have,
over the years,3 drawn particular attention
to temple towns after the 14th century, a
period which is usually neglected in most
standard textbooks on Indian temples. The
reader will find an entire section in this
volume dedicated to this subject.
•
Temples have once again been prominently
in the news. The growth of Hindu
nationalism, pegged amongst other factors,
to the creation of a temple after the
destruction of a historic mosque in 1992
and its validation through archaeological
and historical parameters to prove the
existence of an older site, has brought
temple studies into focus: Why does this
form of building matter so much? Has it
always been a way of mobilizing public
opinion? Various temples were destroyed
after the 12th century; this is certainly true.
But let us remember also that the invading
Muslims were neither the first, nor the only,
demolishers of temples.
Several essays toward the end of this
(largely chronologically arranged) volume
show that temples have been built,
renovated, shifted and rebuilt at sites for
many different reasons. For the past 20
years, there has been endless news and
all manner of heated dialogue about the
building of the temple at Ayodhya which
has questioned its historical validity and
the optics of its political patronage in the
public sphere. The archaeology of the site
is a matter that we are interested in as
readers of cultural history, but we have
to attend to other questions as well. Was
there something particularly sacred about
building a temple at that very spot without
Marg Vol. 73, nos. 2 and 3
evidence that it was where the most
sacred of all Rama temples stood? How do
we understand tradition while examining
the oeuvre of the temple’s chief sthapati,
Chandrakant Sompura, patriarch of the
Sompura building family and inheritor of
centuries-old building knowledge, who
now constructs with laser cut Italian
marble from Carrara as much as he does
with what has been quarried at Makrana?
And finally, the question is: Will these
criticisms be offset by the enormous
tourism and urban development to the
old Saket/Ayodhya Faizabad region which
will be enabled by the construction of a
new temple? The context may be new, but
none of these issues with regard to the
history of temples are. At the same time,
one must not stay limited to imagining that
this set of questions is all that studies on
temples can address.4
This anthology has seven sections, each
prefaced by an introductory note, and the
articles selected for republication here
deal with a variety of questions and open
new ways of looking at the history and
functions of temples. They are presented
in two forms: Some essays appear as
originally published and others as select
portfolios to allow the photographic
documentation to convey its art historical
significance. Marg has always presented
its narratives in visually striking ways,
the photographic portfolio having been
an integral part of its mandate. The
storyboards of articles and pictures are
arranged to assist in the understanding of
a theme and we have remained faithful to
their original conventions of transliteration,
spelling and place names, many of which
have now changed. As curator, I have
provided a brief summary and a prefatory
note on the relevance of each essay.
Temple spaces were not just
architecturally important, but also bustling
socio-economic centres. Often they
were not limited to just one iconographic
programme relevant to one community,
but were used coevally by several. They
reinvented themselves to suit new
exigencies, and this brings new religious
imperatives to bear on a temple. They
existed in a specific agricultural and
hydrological environment. The networks
that these sites established take us to
trans-regional histories connected with
pilgrims as well as those connected via
trade to far-flung places that connected
the Himalayas to Southeast Asia. Finally,
we must situate them with the shifts in
aesthetics: at the intersections of material
culture and performance, religion and art
december 2021–march 2022
history, ritual and its sensorium. Some
stimulating essays here help interpret
these subjects.
We open though with articles that take
us back to rethinking some fundamentals:
When did temple worship start and what
validates worshipping an idol or murti
in a temple in a larger religious context
where the divine is known as niraakaar—
or formless—and nirgun—without any
discernible attribute? Is the imagery
and ground plan of the temple about its
spiritual symbolism and mathematically
aligned understanding of cosmology or is
it to be studied from the perspective of
personal symbolic ritual? This is a matter of
discussion in our following section which
starts with an essay by Stella Kramrisch.
Kramrisch wrote a famous book called The
Hindu Temple in 1946, the title of which
we invoke to present the many other ways
scholarship has expanded and responded
to her foundational work. She linked the
metaphysical view of Hindu cosmogony to
the architecture and sculpture of temples,
examining form with reference to an
iconology rooted not in a socio-economic
basis, but in religious philosophy. It was
critiqued for stereotyping Indian culture
to be steeped in transcendentalism, yet its
insights remain germane.
In the following pages, the reader will find
links to the variety of approaches that can
be explored more fully in the archives of
Marg online, via https://www.marg-art.
org. Our archive is not comprehensive,
but we offer here a small selection
from the scores of studies available for
further consultation. I wish to record my
admiration for the richness of the studies
available in the Marg archive. Constraints
of space and the requirement to showcase
the variety of social and cultural aspects
that can be gained from the study of
temples meant that some pioneering work
could not be included in this anthology.
Over the last 75 years our writers and
photographers have provided incisive
observations of sites that have defined
the field. While some have focused on
historical texts and inscriptions that they
have read and interpreted, others have
located form, style and iconography within
a visual as well as political or cultural
history. This volume should serve as an
introduction to many of those changes
in perspective. At the end, temples
remain powerful institutions that permit
an opportunity to study the shifts in the
aesthetics of faith.
notes
1 Vidya Dehejia’s review of Encyclopaedia of
Indian Temple Architecture. South India. Lower
Dravidadesa. 200 BC−AD 1324, Marg, Vol. 42, no. 1,
September 1990, p. 64.
2 The account of the circumstances under which
Burnier and Daniélou took the photographs
makes for an amusing read. See Alain Daniélou:
The Way to the Labyrinth: Memories of East and
West, transl. by Marie-Claire Cournand, New
Directions Paperback, USA: 1987, pp. 155, 173–78.
3 George Michell’s earliest contributions to
Marg include several articles in In Praise of
Aihole, Badami, Mahakuta, Pattadakal, Vol. 32,
no. 1, December 1978.
Subsequently, his edited volumes include:
Splendours of the Vijayanagara Empire: Hampi,
with Vasundhara Filliozat, Vol. 33, no. 4,
September 1980; The Impulse to Adorn: Studies in
Traditional Indian Architecture, with Jan Pieper,
Vol. 34, no. 4, September 1982; Ahmadabad, with
Snehal Shah, Vol. 39, no. 3, June 1988; Living
Wood: Sculptural Traditions of Southern India,
Vol. 43, nos. 2 and 3, December 1991; Temple
Towns of Tamil Nadu, Vol. 44, no. 3, March 1993;
Eternal Kaveri: Historical Sites along South India’s
Greatest River, Vol. 51, no. 1, September 1999; New
Light on Hampi: Recent Research at Vijayanagara,
with John M. Fritz, Vol. 53, no. 1, September 2001;
Chidambaram: Home of Nataraja, with Vivek
Nanda, Vol. 55, no. 4, June 2004; Banaras: The
City Revealed, with Rana G.B. Singh, Vol. 57, no.
2, December 2005; and Kanara, A Land Apart:
The Artistic Heritage of Coastal Karnataka, Vol.
64, no. 1, September 2012.
His co-authored  volumes include: with  Indira
Viswanathan Peterson, The Great Temple at
Thanjavur: One Thousand Years,  1010−2010,
Vol. 62, no. 1, September 2010; and with Anna
L.  Dallapiccola and Anila Verghese, The Royal
Realm: Architecture and Art of Southern Andhra
Pradesh, Vol. 66, no. 1, September 2014.
4 Courses on temple art and architecture are a
staple at most leading universities that teach art
history or South Asian studies. Curricula usually
stop at the 14th century. The history of the post-
14th century tends to not be dealt with because
of the absence of reliable texts on the nature
and extent of temple destruction. I have written
elsewhere on how the matter can be addressed
in the public sphere, at least by museums which
house vandalized images. (See the bibliographies
and notes appended to: “Discourse on a Label:
Exposing Narratives of Violence” in Historians
of Asia on Political Violence, Paris: Collège de
France, 2021, eds. Anne Cheng and Sanchit
Kumar and “Conflict: Tell me why?” in “Art and
Conflict”, ed. Glenn Lowry, Marg, Vol. 71, no. 4,
June 2021.
The balancing act of attending to the diversity
of approaches to studying temples emerged at a
recent conference titled “Temple Cultures”, held
at Yale University, in November 2021 (Organized
by Subhashini Kaligotla, History of Art, Yale,
and Hannah Baader Kunsthistorisches Institut in
Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut available online
at: https://vimeo.com/showcase/9122441).
15
 What is a temple called in different Indian
languages? And what do those words mean?
A word like devalaya means a home for god,
while kshetram refers to the deity’s territory.
Devakula indicates that a divine family resides
there while mandir, the most common word, may
be a derivate of mandara, the cosmic mountain
where celestials live but also perhaps mana +
dir, implying a dwelling place in the mind. Kovil,
deol, devasthanam, prasada and the many other
words for a temple that are preferred in different
regions refer to the same set of meanings.
Together, these words tell us a lot about the
function the “temple” is meant to perform.

II
How is it used? The temple exists to provide a
home for a god (devalaya). Whereas a mandapa
can hold congregations; in the final analysis it
is essentially a space for individual interaction
with the divine which takes place in front of
the temple sanctum, the garbha-griha. Sancta
are small, and usually a space that can only
accommodate a priest or two who bless each
devotee, wishing to communicate their prayers
and personally receive a blessed vision (darshan)
The house of God of the main deity. The most basic worship at a
temple also involves doing a pradakshina (i.e. a
circumambulation), making an offering (dana) and
receiving prasada or a symbolic benefaction.

Some aspects of collective participation in

events, such as ceremonies, are also organized
in the mandapas. A ritual offering or recitation
of kirtans and sacred poetry can take place
in these halls. Later temples have several
elaborate mandapas, such as ardha-mandapa,
mahamandapa, natya- or ranga-mandapa, sabha-
mandapa, etc. that are designed as spaces for
different types of worshipful activities, rituals,
dance, music and discourses being among them.
Given how large they become, one can only
imagine how many people would have used
these places simultaneously.

A temple is a site—like a tirtha, where people go

at specific times of year for a pilgrimage; they
perform a pradakshina, darshan and aarti. Various
types of performances or utsavas are held
here. A temple must be able to accommodate
its pilgrims, feed its retinue and administer its
lands: The space has to grow in capacity to
achieve all this. Thus inasmuch as the temple
remains an important space that needs to be
studied for its architectural form, the form is
there to serve a function. And the core function
at the heart of it is to celebrate the god, whose
house it is, and to whom the public goes to be
blessed. The divine image in a temple is regarded
as being symbolically alive, and dance or music

16 Marg Vol. 73, nos. 2 and 3

performances are held there regularly to please
the god. Priests have special duties to awaken
the deity, clothe, feed and bathe it; the deity is
perceived as being a monarch who not only is
the ruler of his/her house, but of all those who
worship him/her. Thus, at specific times in the
day, the curtain or door enclosing the deity is
opened (at the time of aarti) when the deity gives
audience (through darshan) to the assembled
devotees.
This apart, different communities may seek out
other liturgical and ritual functions in honour
of different gods. Most commonly for instance,
these can be observed when there is a temple
festival. On some of these occasions, large
processions of decorated temple chariots with
portable bronze utsava murtis (festival images)
are paraded in towns. The architecture of the
temple has to anticipate the performance of all
these functions and have spaces where chariots
and processional images are kept, like subsidiary
shrines, in its precincts. Studying temple
Hinduism, then, requires us to look at a wide
variety of socio-economic groups, and what each
of them brings to, or draws from, a shrine.
Selecting a location for a temple site is often
governed by its proximity to a water body (man-
made temple tanks or they may be naturally
occurring springs, rivers or ponds) that drew
people. Some temples are associated with an
older, sacred tree shrine, snake pit or anthill.
They can be on mountain-tops which are usually
perceived as the abode of gods, or in caves,
which are also ancient dwellings to which monks
and ascetics may at times repair. They may also
be linked to mythological or historical events:
Sites such as Kurukshetra, Mathura, Vrindavan
or Dwarka are associated with Krishna; the many
shakti-pithasthals are associated with the myth of
the dismemberment of the goddess, etc. Some
temples are built at sites which are important to
its patron, such as those where a king may have
had a victory in war or one bearing the history
of a lineage. Trading towns built temples too,
but then by this stage, this was already a well-
established norm that could be replicated.
The main information in texts about
temples, their iconographic programmes
and the connected rituals is contained in the
vastushastras and agamas while the puranas deal
with mythologies and histories that can shed
light on the iconography of the sculptures and
paintings at the temple. These texts lay down
rules for how each part of a temple should look
and what the most auspicious proportions—of
images and of the temples themselves—are.
deceMber 2021–March 2022
Some scholars have suggested that as time
progressed, many symbolic devices began to
be employed in the very ground-plan so that
the temple became a metaphor for the entire
cosmos, at the heart of which sat the presiding
deity in the garbha-griha, and the devotee, upon
entering the temple compound, unwittingly
became a part of the whole. Many of these
auspicious ground-plans are called mandalas or
yantras, and although there are varied opinions,
it is said that a vastupurusha mandala is a
fundamental plan for temple construction.
The paradox that scholars find is that the
meaning and symbolism—of the architectural
form, the cosmology behind the ground-plan and
of the sequencing of sculptures on the walls—
is so rich with metaphor and meaning that it
becomes easy to forget that Hinduism, for many,
is not all about the myths of deities, but a very
different experiential expression which may
seldom be associated with temples. It is thus
difficult, but necessary, to keep remembering
that the temple is but a part of Hinduism. Fire
and fragrance, the living mountain and tree
shrine, river and earth itself—remain as much
a focus of reverence, a means to communicate
with formless divine energy. If temples are
about the formless divine and if what they are
meant to impart is an experience of it, then
the study of the form must be able to say how
that requirement has been met. The trick, or
challenge, for the architect then, was to find a
means for the built form to be able to draw on
and bring these elements into the construction
of the temple and the god that it houses.
The articles selected for this section provide
different approaches to how sacred space for the
divine is created—in the domestic or quotidian
realm as much as in the expansive environs of a
stone temple. They reveal that divinity remains
as much about formless energy as it does about
manifested living murtis. The temple, then, is a
space that allows these diverse interpretations
and histories.
17
 In trying to locate the antiquity of the elements
in Hindu temples, scholars come up against
various problems: The Vedas, the most ancient
of Hindu “texts”, make no provision for temple-
or icon-worship. Most Hindus worship Vishnu,
Shiva, Ganesha, Lakshmi and Durga, and not all
of them find mention in the most ancient of texts.
Besides, there are many other prominent deities
that are local to a region or time period which find
prominence in temples. For many the divine image
is a kuladevata (i.e. a deity of the family) and for
others it is their personal ishtadevata (or one of
their own choosing). Some worshipped ancestors,
others supernatural beings and still others began

III
to deify their gurus. The earliest Buddhist and
Jain shrines (like stupas and viharas) are also not,
strictly speaking, spaces where image-worship
was conducted, even though their heroes or
monks did begin to be celebrated in ways akin to
worship.

From the 2nd century AD however, the practices

of most major Indian religious cults were almost
fully developed and the images of their major and
on such foundaTions: minor gods had been fixed. Between the 4th to
7th centuries, which is the period addressed in
4th–7th centuries this section, these deities had even been codified
in many texts, and both the ancient texts and
archaeological discoveries reveal that they were
being worshipped in temples. However, it is worth
remembering that not all gods are worshipped in
the same way nor were they all worshipped at the
same time.

Further, it seems that although the name of a

divinity may be very old, we may not perceive
him/her in the manner prevalent a thousand years
ago. Most popular versions of myths are found
in the epics (Mahabharata and Ramayana) or are
mentioned in other texts, such as the puranas.
Some may even be named in older texts like the
Vedas and, interestingly, while their names may
be the same, they may actually reveal slightly
different characteristics. At the same time, the
majority of gods worshipped in India’s villages and
more sparsely populated forest areas have never
been written about in any ancient text. They have
their own myths, and like the other major gods,
they also have their own festivals, rituals and are
worshipped in shrines. For instance, while the
early Vedic gods, Varuna and Indra, declined in
importance, Vishnu, Shiva and the Devi became
more popular for temple worshippers. A most
interesting example is the growing popularity
in India of Hanuman ever since the medieval
period. Not all deities held sway uniformly across
the country; for instance, Varaha was popular
in Madhya Pradesh while Narasimha more so in
Andhra Pradesh.

38 MARG Vol. 73, nos. 2 and 3

Studying the changing and developing form of
sculptures on a temple, then, becomes a way to
examine the changing nature of Hinduism itself.
In fact, it demonstrates how many different
gods have always been in worship, and how
different cults have responded to religious, social
and cultural challenges. Buddhism too was not
a static religion. Mahayana cults had already
made a strong impact after the 2nd century
AD in what was previously an environment
where different Theravada sects had prospered.
Where once the sayings and teachings of the
Buddha were hallowed, images of the Buddha
and Bodhisattva were now deified as acutely
sharp reminders of the spiritual heights mortals
could rise to. Not only were the modes of
worship and deities shared, there was even a
fair amount of iconographic repartée between
the different cults. It is not possible to study
the “Hindu” temple anymore without studying
contemporaneous developments in Buddhism,
Jainism and in Islamic art.
Historically, many types of religious and secular
architecture have arisen in India. Each has
influenced the other and no one type can be
studied without a knowledge of the other. In the
ancient period Buddhists, Jains and Hindus made
the most prominent religious buildings. However,
religious shrines were designed also for many
local cults in villages and in the tribal areas. After
the 13th century, with the increasing assimilation
of Islamic design and architecture, many Jain
and Hindu buildings began to incorporate its
elements just as their motifs and pillars became
a part of Islamic religious buildings as well as the
palaces of the Sultans and later, the Mughals.
These will be matters that we will return to in a
subsequent section. But what is more relevant
here is to look at what, intrinsically, makes a site
so sacred as to warrant a temple on it.
There are many other types of sacred spaces
which may not have followed the norms of
grand classical temples, but remain vital: a
sacred mountain such as Kailash, water-bodies,
such as the Mansarovar lake, a river (Ganga),
forests or individual trees. Sacred spaces can
also encompass small, private shrines in people’s
homes, or, as we read in the previous section,
ritual diagrams.
We must also remember that there were many
older forms of architecture in vogue before tall
temple towers became common. These were not
forgotten in later times and were incorporated
into, or used alongside, the “classic” temples.
Ways had to be found to create spaces that
drew on multiple elements, symbolically and
deceMber 2021–March 2022
practically, to transmit a powerful sense of a sacred
realm for devotees experiencing the built area.
These mountainous towers often have layers of
celestials on them, shown emerging from caves and
pillars, both of which had much older histories as
the focus of worship.
Thus, to trace the histories of each of the parts
that make up Hindu temples, we must look mostly
to earlier Buddhist structures. For instance, the
stupa may be accompanied by a pillar emblazoned
with an animal symbol atop it, just as many temple
compounds contain a dhvaja or pillar-like flag with
that deity’s cognizant. Similarly, one of the forms
of early Buddhist shrines is a chaitya cave, which
often has an apsidal ground plan, i.e. one which has
a long corridor with a rounded or oval ending and
a vaulted roof. This began to be used later as one
of the standard types of temple as well. Further,
many of the early chaityas are rock-cut, i.e. they
are huge man-made caves that are hollowed out
from inside solid hills of rock. This laborious and
exacting form of architecture was used for some of
the earliest and most prominent Hindu shrines from
the 5th century onward as well, such as at Udaigiri
in Vidisha district of Madhya Pradesh, Ellora in
Aurangabad district of Maharashtra, Badami in
Karnataka and in Mahabalipuram in Tamil Nadu.
The form of the rock-cut caves shows that the
builders were already used to making structures
out of timber and bamboo. Sometimes the roofs
of these caves look as if they are supported by
wooden rafters or that they have bamboo lattice
windows. This means that although rock-cut caves
and temples may be the oldest surviving shrines,
there were, obviously, similar looking buildings
made even before then of wood and bamboo which
have perished, but must have served as models for
those that came later.
Perhaps the earliest evidence for buildings with a
shikhara is from coins of the 2nd to 1st centuries
BC of the Audambaras of North India which show
structures with towering roofs. But we do not have
any surviving temples of this type before the 5th
century AD, i.e. the Gupta period. Different forms of
temples were being worshipped in the 5th century:
Both rock-cut and structural temples (i.e. those
that have been constructed out of dressed stone
masonry or out of bricks) can be ascribed to the
Gupta period. Studying the art of the Gupta period
is important because it forms a foundation on which
the art and styles of all subsequent traditions of
India and Southeast Asia rest. Various sites in Central
and Northern India like Mathura, Sarnath, Sanchi,
Udaigiri, Nachna, Bhumara, Bhitargaon, Ahichhatra
and Deogarh, preserve important remains of Gupta
style in stone and terracotta.
39
 Together with the sculptures that adorn them,
the variety and scale of the temples made
between the 7th and 14th centuries remain
amongst the finest achievements in world art.
The scale can be triumphant in some examples,
jewel-like and poised, and with exceptional
reserve at another instance. The quantity and
variety are bewildering and even descriptive
inventories of the temples built in this period
occupy many dozens of volumes. However,
by the end of the 1970s and in the ’80s,
questions arose on what we should make of this
proliferation of art-historical documentation.
How does it impact what we know about

IV
religion, culture, social relations—how, in other
words, should we make this art history relevant
to the rest of the social sciences? The articles
selected for this and the next few sections reveal
some of these shifts in concerns. Before that,
however, let us summarize how we can recognize
some of the salient developments in the temples
of this period.

We find temples began to grow loftier and

Variety and Patronage: their plans more complex with every passing
century from the 7th to 8th centuries—under the
7th–14th Century Rashtrakutas at Ellora, the Maitrakas at Vallabhi
(and possibly Shamlaji), Parmaras of Kannauj,
the Chalukyas at Badami and Pattadakal and the
Pallavas at Mahabalipuram. Temples reached
their most elaborate forms during the 10th to
13th centuries when the names of dynasties
such as the Cholas (of Thanjavur but spreading
across modern Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka too),
Chandellas and Kalachuris (of Jejekadesha and
Dahaladesha, both now in modern Madhya
Pradesh), Maitrakas, Saindhavas and Solankis
(of Saurashtra and Gurjardesha, i.e. mostly
now Gujarat), Chahamanas or Chauhans of
Marudesha (Jodhpur area), Guhilas of Medapata
(around Udaipur), the Palas of Bihar and Bengal
and Somavamshis and Gangas of Kalinga and
Utkala (Odisha) are only some of the prominent
ones to come to the fore. Each region and period
in history has had its own developments and
preferences for certain styles of temples and
the names of these dynasties or regions now
form one of the systems of nomenclature for the
typology of temples.

Where once textbooks used simply to inform

us about the two styles of temples—Northern
(Nagara) and Southern (Dravida)—art history
developed to a point where many sub-divisions
of Dravida and Nagara temples could be made
depending on the shape of the temple tower,
types of mandapas, and even the designs of
the mouldings of the plinths on which temples
stand. There are different names for the parts

94 MARG Vol. 73, nos. 2 and 3

of the temple in each case and this takes us to a
fundamental requirement: to acquaint ourselves
with what each shape is called, and a vast body
of ancient literature survives for this.
The increasing height and number of walls
of temples made greater area available for
sculpture, which was complemented by detailed
visual expositions of deities: not just the famous
episodes of the major gods, but also gods of the
directions, personifications of the planets, semi-
divine guardians, doorkeepers, river goddesses
and an explosion of ornament. Sculptures held
the potency of being magical but they were
also carriers of narratives, rich with symbolic
meaning. Iconography is a vibrant subject that
develops its own visual syntax—keeping pace
with the poetry that was being generated at
the courts or sung by the bhakti saints. New
subject matter continued to be added to the
repertoire of temples, including syncretic deities
that amalgamated traits of different individual
ones. Iconometry and the study of the correct
iconographic programme of a temple site
becomes an important subject in the art history
of this period. We also see evidence for sectarian
rivalry in a study of iconography and sometimes,
portraits too—of mortal royal patrons of the
temple as well as the famous saints.
courtly city and the temple itself as the focus
of urban planning. While some were financed
by agricultural revenue, others were reliant on
merchants and trade, but most of the major
temples had access to wealth and resources from
both. Finally, careful scrutiny of inscriptions and
sculptures by art historians has revealed the
presence of signatures/stamps/logos of artists or
the guild they worked in.
What role did artists play in the temples and how
does that compare with the patron’s? Both, after
all, made the house of god possible for the rest
of us. This was the subject of the introduction to
a landmark volume of Marg called Royal Patrons
and Great Temple Art, edited by Vidya Dehejia.
We bookend the articles in this section with
two of her writings: the first introduces the
subject and the second, at the end of the
section, takes us to an unusual and remarkable
type of temple of a circular open air form made
to house powerful—and occult—yoginis. After
going through the many other types of temples
made in this period, we will conclude with an
attempt at answering: Who was the patron of
these yoginis? What did they hope to gain from
worshipping them?

Temples became spaces in which devotion could

be expressed, and also proclaimed through
their size. They are thus also statements of
wealth. Studies on the temple form and style
can take us to a study of an aesthetic statement
about power. Kings built temples to proclaim
their victory against their rivals. They are even
known to have taken the idols from their rivals
and enshrined them in their own temples. And
if usurping sculptures and wealth were not
statement enough, they would copy the regional
style of the type of temple their rival made in
their capital city as a mark of having taken their
identity. The Chalukyas provide perhaps the best
example of this. However, the important point
to note here is that a capacity to read the form
of temples allows us to read more than just a
movement of a style from one region to another.
Just as iconography can become a source for
studying conflict so too can temple patronage.

Studies on the charters and inscriptions at

temples made it clear that many of them owned
vast tracts of agricultural land which they
irrigated, that villages were taxed by the temple
administration, that temples provided community
services and thus required an administrative
apparatus that matched that of the court. This
was accompanied by an examination of the

december 2021–march 2022 95

 Looking at how many temples were the focal
point of a city centre, it began to be rumoured
that these cities may have followed an urban
plan, which was based on a mandala, at the heart
of which was the cosmically aligned temple
itself. Tempting though it may be, and even if it
seems like it visually, this could not be proved for
several reasons—perhaps because scholars were
looking for precise correspondences. It is more
productive, instead, to see how a mandala does
provide a symbolic vocabulary with which we
can read towns.

Some ancient shastras clearly indicate which

V
activities are best performed in a specific part
of a city. But cities are organic: They expand,
are abandoned; their geology and topography
may present compulsions that need practical
solutions. Besides, cities can have a temple built
by an important king in a certain century while a
successor may wish to raise another to record his
own triumphs—all disturbing any clear mandala-
centred design.

Pious and urbane: Temples were not only centres of worship but
over the course of time took on several other
the temPle and functions. Certainly by the 10th century the role
of the temple in land administration had become
its denizens considerable and this was reflected in the growth
of temple-centred towns. This was specially
true of southern India, where some temples
received huge endowments of land from rulers.
The many projects spearheaded by George
Michell for Marg developed the understanding
of these cities. His primary study is on the city of
Hampi and his research on Vijayanagara and the
Nayakas in the Deccan revealed what the nature
of a temple city was.

The temples’ administrators extracted

revenue and produce, provided irrigation and
employment, making their institution a significant
economic force. The administration of some of
the large temple complexes was no small task.
Their retinue of priests (and their families), stock-
keepers and accountants, elephants and cows,
cooks and stable hands, dancers and musicians
had all to be provided for and the temple
buildings had to expand to accommodate them.
It was not just that temples were vested with
regal status for their gods with royal patronage
and security; temples, in turn, sanctioned the
power of royalty. They soon evolved to become
judicial and economic institutions that had an
impact on the society whose religious needs they
took care of. Civic amenities apart, the temple
was a space for festivals. Its many pavilions and
halls could be used for performances of poetic
verses that were danced to for which troupes of

140 MARG Vol. 73, nos. 2 and 3

musicians and actors were employed. For being
allowed to partake of all this—the bathing tanks
and wells, the food and justice, the festivals and
performances—the public gives thanks to the
deity.
In Indic studies, the milieu of the rise of
encyclopaedic Puranas that even enlist as many
as 64 lalit kalas—the “fine” arts which include
hairdressing too—in a religious text, should
allow us to see how little could have functioned
in that society without a religiously founded
administration. Who defined these agendas?
Where could these overarching great texts of
Hinduism, the Puranas, have been taught? Where
were the Tantras and agamas written? What was
the pedagogy and apparatus that fostered these
systems?
Alongside the Shaiva Siddhantas, Shri-vaishnava
as well as other Smarta ritual traditions that we
have read about elsewhere in this issue, we must
also consider the deep entrenchment of the
Bhakti tradition all over South Asia after the 7th
century, which spread, as far as we can tell, from
south to north. At its core, the proponents of this
movement sang verses of their love and devotion
to the divine. Everyone and anyone had the right
to feel such fervour, and the control over religion
was not the prerogative of a Brahmanical class
alone.
The canonization of the bhakti sants was a
means for diverse sections of the population
to be counted, and to be included, in the
establishment. At first, this inclusion became
a powerful voice of social change. However,
looked at another way, it can also be argued
that by being included within the Brahmanical
fold, they were also robbed of their power and
became subjected to the hierarchies and social
constructs of Brahmanism. Historians have
already noted the significance of the rise of the
Bhakti movement to explain the major role it
played in articulating a desire for social mobility.
However, in the history of South Asia’s arts, the
role of bhakti, which became the main expression
in the performance traditions and visual culture
at temples, has to be read alongside.
Temples are normally studied as sites of
sculpture. However, they are also major venues
for dance and music performances, and wall-
painting. What connects both these elements
is the narrative capacity, the many diverse
mythological stories that temples are meant
to communicate. Sometimes these narratives
become part of the larger iconographic
programme of the site. We have already read
about some of the iconographic programmes
december 2021–march 2022
that explicated the many myths of certain deities
like Shiva and Vishnu. But how do we explain the
prolific presence of erotic imagery at temples?
This can be seen as the union of the human
and divine, which would tie up with ideas of
bhakti and even advaita. It has been read, also,
as a vision of a heavenly realm, which has led
contemporary scholars to note that while this
paradise has so many seductive women pleasing
men, few men are seen to be making any effort
at seducing or even performing a role of being
a pleasing vision for women. Thus while many
may marvel at the fact that India’s ancient
temples have vivid depictions of eroticism, a
question needs also to be asked whether this
vision is patriarchal? Urbane and devotional,
Tantric and poetic—a temple’s narratives can be
analysed through multiple historical sources as
well as contemporary critical tools, such as the
perspectives of gender and sexuality, psychology
and visuality.
Temples are the god’s home and different types
of entertainment pavilions were created in their
precincts. Depictions of gods and other celestials
shown dancing become more common after the
7th century. A strong effort was made in the last
century to study the nature of the performance
traditions that were linked to temples and this
was reliant on a close documentation of their
sculptures and paintings. The consistency in their
depiction across a region, and their connection
with the living traditions of dancers led to the
creation of a modern canon of “classical” Indian
dance forms. This takes the understanding
of the temple beyond ethnoarchaeology and
Hindu rituals to the aesthetics of many other
performing arts, on which Marg published some
of the most decisive studies.
141
 How should we approach the subject of the
presence of temples, and particularly Hindu
temples, outside India? Many older books

VI
explain the phenomenon as “Indianization” or
“Sanskritization”. Many speak of it with pride and
the source of that pride is located in incredulity
and nationalism. This is a short-sighted view
only because one cannot sustain a hypocritical
position: accusing colonial powers of cultural
hegemony and of appropriating India’s natural
resources and labour only to have ourselves, as
Indians, be accused of having done the same in
Southeast Asia.
AsiAn ConneCtions
Scholars of Southeast Asian art have thus
assiduously walked a tightrope, in both extolling
the obvious connections with the architecture of
Odisha, Tamil Nadu and Bengal in the region of
Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos,
Indonesia and Malaya, while at the same time
presenting how the region’s cultural imperatives
are visible in their temples. No direct copy of
an Indian temple exists in Southeast Asia, but
everywhere one sees ideas revised and adapted,
and some, in the process, even rejected. The same
is true with Nepal, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan
where the direct connections make it easier to see
them much more visibly as regional expressions of
a shared and interlinked history. Our brief survey
in this volume of the variety of temples within
South Asia alone makes clear that there was no
one normative model for how a temple ought
to look; Even the specificities of the social and
cultural framework it employed differed across
region and time.

Along with postcolonialism, multiculturalism,

migration, globalization and diaspora studies have
each become major subjects in the curricula of
the world’s leading universities. In turn, research
in these fields has impacted all the social sciences,
which have begun to see culture as not being
limited to a geography but as something that can
thrive even in a condition of mobility; it can at
times get arrested in nostalgia or transform and
yet retain a mooring or semblance of its lineage.
These are concerns that we will address further in

194 MARG Vol. 73, nos. 2 and 3

the last section of this volume through many more
case studies of temples built in our own times.

A transcultural model for exchange, on the

other hand, is a more productive one, and is
being explored in writings since the past few
decades. Here it becomes feasible to see the
patronage of those particularities that moved
from Southeast Asia to South Asia rather than
just a one-way transference. It also allows a more
nuanced view of what is meant by “Indian”—not
just some singular imagined monolithic culture,
but adequate contextualization allows scholars
to tease out which specific cultures were in
dialogue. Alongside comes an equally important
requirement to acknowledge that the nature of
this cultural exchange was not limited to a moment
in time, but went on for nearly two millennia,
which compels a deeper understanding both of
regional complexities and exchange. Any culture
that has owned Buddhism or Hinduism for such a
long period cannot continue to be referred to only
in relation to an original parent culture in India,
but must be seen as places in which those religions
were native. In general, scholarship has been far
more open to such a form of presentation with
reference to Nepal, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka
than it has when admitting the contributions of
Southeast Asia to developments in India. One
of the most important aspects that need to
be studied more carefully is the nature of the
simultaneity of continued patronage of Buddhist
and Hindu shrines in Southeast Asia.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we are

thereby reminded that history has all too often
depended on grand monuments, inscribed stones
and literature, all of which are expressions of fixity
and an elite control. It leaves those historians who
rely on them alone incapable of addressing the ties
of kinship and legend, peoples’ food and gesture,
their migratory patterns and personal relations,
which, after all, are also what make cultural
identity.

december 2021–march 2022 195

 Over a dozen issues of Marg have focussed on
temples in the post-14th century period, building
up an important history and redressing the
misperception that the construction of temples
stopped in what used to be called the “Muslim
Period”. The colonial division of Indian history
into categories such as Hindu, Buddhist and
Muslim periods allowed the media, publishers
and museums to arrest public perception thus.
Neither did the patronage of temples cease, nor

VII
did Hinduism stop changing.

The depredations Jain and Hindu shrines

suffered were for many reasons, including
wear and tear and natural calamities. Temple
builders remained capable of admiring the art
and architectural technologies of the newly
introduced Afghan, Iranian and Turkish building
styles. From the 14th century on, new additions
began to be incorporated, such as borrowings
from the traditions of mansions and fortifications.
14th to 18th Minarets, turrets, true arches (first pointed and
century ShiftS later cusped) and domes in Jain temples from the
12th century onward, and in Hindu ones, from
at least the 14th, make for interesting study.
Ornamental patterns associated with Hindu and
Jain temples can be found at many a Sultanate
site from the late 11th century onward; and vice
versa, so can the vocabulary of Islamic design be
found in temples from the 12th century on. An
incorporation of domes (for mandapas) and arches
emerged alongside pitched roofs as a feature in
temples. We see this widely in Gujarat, Rajasthan,
in the foothills stretching from Himachal Pradesh
into Indian and Pakistani Punjab and in the
detailed study by George Michell at Banaras. This
was the spirit of the age, and predictably, pious
patrons would renovate, keeping ancient shrines
alive with an awareness of new building trends.

The Vijayanagara kingdom and their successors,

the Nayakas, became the major builders in
South India. The pages that follow also cover the
eclecticism in the temples of Bengal and Goa, both
of which began to incorporate colonial influences
toward the end of this period. These talents, with
mastery of a composite style of architecture and
painted interiors, would be put to the service of
the gurdwaras that emerged noticeably in this
period. They were reflected also in the many arts
allied to temple cultures.

North Indian haveli temples, as some of them

are called, also came with elaborately painted
interiors, where the subject matter of the

224 MARG Vol. 73, nos. 2 and 3

paintings shifted to include a greater number Miniature stone
temple in Dinapur’s
of narratives from the Bhakti tradition directed
Rajban Garden,
to Krishna and Ram, from Puranic stories Dinapur District.
(particularly the Bhagvata) and the Shiv Purana. See pp. 230–31.
They also narrated the stories of the itinerant
Nath yogis. Temples in each region of India drew
on new building technologies and fashions—some
changed how their temples looked completely,
but for others, the new designs allowed for new
expressions of Hinduism too.

Importantly, older temples underwent constant

renovation, with the technology or materials used
not necessarily being guided by a spirit of heritage
conservation. Renovation and maintenance
need our attention today. Climate change and
the wasteful extraction of more and more of the
earth’s resources through mining are forcing
architects to try and reuse older buildings, salvage
existing ones and adapt them to contemporary
needs. There are historical precedents for such
a rationale. Contrary to the current trend of
replacing an old building, many inscriptions
on old artefacts and buildings celebrate their
conservation or renovation instead. The Sanskrit
word for this is jirnoddhara: revivifying or re-
instilling life in what has already been made. Many
a monument in the period we are examining in this
section carries an inscription that mentions who
sponsored the jirnoddhara of a temple.

Studying renovation helps dispel the notion that

only the oldest date found at a temple matters.
Instead, it only indicates the identity of one of
its many builders. Temple sites have to be seen
as locations that warrant constant maintenance
and repair. That they were rebuilt when they fell
down because of earthquakes or dilapidation
or that older portions of temples were used in
the foundations or walls of rebuilt ones, lends
architectural history to sites. It also allows us
to study urban growth. A number of scholars
have recognized that the changes in imagery
and rebuilding can be read against the backdrop
of societal conflicts and wars, the depredations
faced by different communities and the effects of
migration. Finally, it allows us to celebrate each
age’s design preferences and technologies without
falling into the trap of imagining that the temples
made at one historical moment were more correct
or authentic than others.

december 2021–march 2022 225

 Nationalism in modern times has been accompanied
by populist cultural revivalism. The perception of
upholding cultural pasts has powerful public appeal.
Temples are a part of this phenomenon in modern
South Asia. Yet, by ignoring the depth of available
research on the history of temples—their different
types, the varied rituals and their changing cultural
role—their common presentation causes an erasure
of nuance. The over-simplification of the subject robs
us of diversity and richness; it denies many traditions
their identities within the national cultural fabric.

What validates the modern functions of a temple?

Each temple, built in modern times, shows

VIII
continuities from the past and many innovations
too. This will become clear in the essays that follow.
How does the temple harness the force of modern
technology to have a social and political role akin
to the power it held in the past? At the end of this
volume, we come back full circle to look again at
the very ideas that we have explored right from the
beginning: Do we still make temples for the same
reasons, and what form do they take now?

Modern TeMples Several aspects of temple culture have changed in

modern times. The most important of these is that
everyone, irrespective of their caste, can now legally
enter a temple. This had to be achieved through
a protracted series of protests between 1860 to
1940 in Travancore, and became famous as the
Vaikom Temple Entry Movement, named after the
location where a temple’s brahmanical supporters
had attempted to hold on to age-old customs of
preventing the lower-castes or outcastes from having
access to the temple.

264 MARG Vol. 73, nos. 2 and 3

 In the past, the temple has been a locus of
administration, controlling vast swathes of the
agricultural hinterland from urban centres, a role
it has now been largely divested of except in the
instance of certain major temple endowments,
like the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams
Trust, which owns and runs vast numbers of
institutions, such as hospitals and colleges. In a
parallel development, however, old temples in the
interior are being abandoned. Urban migration
has resulted in the emptying of villages, often
where a historic temple stands, its purpose
completely altered, with it now being the state’s
responsibility to preserve for antiquarian reasons.
Is museumization then the new public good?
Tourism and the traditional arts and crafts market
now take the place of patron of the many cultural
activities that were once linked to temples:
sculpture, painting, dance and theatre. And since
all markets rely on advertising—we must ask
what, then, is the new rhetoric that keeps alive
those “arts and industries” that were previously
nurtured for temples?

We conclude this issue of Marg with studies on

the different ways in which the past has been
preserved and revived. Pilgrimage to tirthas has
been aided by ease of transportation, and yet,
a new kind of temple was created in modern
Banaras, called the Panchakroshi, where darshan
is given of many sacred sites so that the devotee
need not travel far and wide. In the case of
Baluchistan’s famous Hinglaj Mata, we find that
the impulse to undertake a pilgrimage persists,
despite it being impeded by a border between
India and Pakistan. Temples still use vastu-vidya,
learnt at times in a traditional manner, inherited
from their forebears and also learnt from modern
books. In the final essay we will see that divine
revelations (and the politics that surround them)
continue well into our times: Gods still manifest
spontaneously from nature, svayambhu, and need
a house or temple.

december 2021–march 2022 265

Lord Shiva statue, Ganesh Tekri,
Nathdwara, Rajasthan.
Photograph: Anshul Sukhwal.