Temples In India-1.pdf - Vivekananda Kendra Prakashan

VIVEKANANDA KENDRA PATRIKAzoomorphic form in the Chalukyan sculpturewhereas in the Pallava art he was shownin an anthropomorphic form as is evidentfrom the famous panel at Mahabalipuram.Perhaps the most important and the mostartistic of the sculptures in Kailas is thepanel on the south which depicts Ravanashaking the Kailasa mountain. This colossalsculpture is carved in the Rashtrakootatradition because it is full of vitality and ismarked by tremendous movement andenergy. But the figures of Ravana, Siva,Parvati and others are not in-ordinatelyheavy as those in the Rashtrakoota panelsin the Dasavatara cave and a few ones inthe Kailasa itself. In fact, there is everypossibility of the temple being namedKailasa after this panel as first suggestedby D. R. Bhandarkar. This is one of thefinest sculptures in the whole range ofIndian art and we can do no better thanquote Sherman E.Lee, a renownedauthority on oriental art. He states: “Thecomposition is treated not only in terms oflight and shade in depth, but alsosculpturally and representationally in depth.The result is a massive, large scalecompositionunique in Indian art and worthyof any tradition at its peak”. The panelobviously is a later addition.The rock-bridge joining the Kailasa andParalanka is a very clear proof of the latterbeing in the original plan of the edifice andeven contemporary with it. The idea ofexcavating storeyed cave temples was notnew to the Rashtrakoota artists. Do Thal(No.12), Tin Thal (No.13) and theDasavatara are a clear enough proof ofthat tradition. But the Paralanka has nodecorative ornament which would enableus to date it stylistically. Only theTEMPLE INDIAyajnasala, which is on the same level offirst floor of the Paralanka has someexquisite sculpture. Among them are agroup of Sapta-matrikas (actually they areeight) with Ganesha, Durga, Kala and Kaliand on the east are a queen flanked bychamara-dharinis and a dwarf (gana). Allthese figures have shed the heavinesswhich marks the sculpture in theDasavatara and have consequently gainedelegance, but at the same time they havenothing of the attenuated forms of theChalukyan sculpture in the Virupakshatemple. They are, however, related to therepresentations of Ganga and Yamuna onthe doorway of the garbha-griha in Kailasaitself. Although many of the statues in theyajnasala are badly mutilated theydemonstrate the refinement in the femaleform achieved by the Rashtrakoota artist.“They are amongst the most glorious worksof Indian sculpture of an overwhelmingmight, vivacity and beauty”, observesGoetz who further rightly points out thathere “vitality and refinement meet in apoised exuberance.” There is no evidenceto show that the chapel of the mothergoddesses was in the original plan and ittherefore appears to be an after-thought.But much time could not have elapsedbetween the two; there may be a hiatusof a generation or two and the chapel canbe dated to the last quarter of the 8thcentury, that is, to the period of Govinda-II (793-814).LankeshwarThe Lankeshwar cave, carved in thenorthern escarpment of Kailasa, is a uniqueedifice in many respects. Stylistically it177