KVPT’s Patan Darbar Earthquake Response Campaign - Work to Date - September 2016

Cārnārāyaṇa Temple
by Niels Gutschow
The inscription at the eastern portal is dated to 1565, and
mentions Purandarasiṃha as the donor. As a member of
the Patan nobility (mahāpātra), his father Viṣṇusiṃha
had already usurped power in 1546. His three sons took
over and reigned until 1597 when Śivasiṃha wrested Patan
back from the local dynasty and restored it to Malla
rule.
The mahāpatras built the first three of the extant temples
on the city's Darbār Square, all of them dedicated
to Viṣṇu, "following on the Viṣṇudharmottara Purāṇa's
commendation of a great temple to Viṣṇu as the completion
of a King of Kings' accession to universal sovereign
ty." The act itself had, as Bronwen Bledsoe (2004) says,
"an operative quality, and the agent emerges as a yet
more perfect version of the royal self. In one case, it is
sovereignty (sāmrājya) which is said to arrive at the moment
the gift is made; in another the extended ceremony
of consecration is likened to rājasūya, the Vedic 'birth
of a king'; in the last, the king becomes the deity itself."
Purandarasiṃha built a copy of the Cārnārāyaṇa temple
in Kathmandu (which is known as Jagannātha temple):
one fifth smaller but ostensibly in the tradition of those
monumental royal temples for which the Paśupatināth
set the standards. Twenty-four years later he introduced
a new architectural style to the square with the
śikhara tower of the Narasimha temple, while his brother
Udhavasiṃha established an Ādinārāyaṇa temple in
1569 of which only the deity survives in a narrow provisional
cell under a dome, erected after the 1934 earthquake.
The temple's threshold of three blocks of stone, measuring
altogether 581 centimetres and with separate corner
stones featuring winged lions, documents the last effort
to install a monumental base. The principal access from
the east is guarded by a pair of lions on the lower level
and a pair of guardians, possibly Yama and Kuber, on
the upper level. With tripartite portals, flanked by aedicules
dedicated to the eight guardians (dikpālas) of the
regions, and with tympana surmounding the central
opening, the four sides are identical except for the eastern
threshold, which is moulded with a stepped outer
frame. On the remaining sides the threshold stone is
flush with the wall surface and is thus made to support
the colonnettes. Devotees enter the temple for daily worship
from the east, present offerings to the officiating
Brahmin priest from the east, receive prasād, circumambulate
the sanctum and leave the temple through the
northern door. The sanctum holds a block of stone with
the four manifestations (caturvyūha) of Viṣṇu in upright
position: in the east Vāsudeva, in the south Saṅkarṣaṇa,
in the west Pradyumna and in the north Āniruddha, that
is, his elder brother, his son and his grandson. The central
scene of the tympana reflects these manifestations:
in the east Kṛṣṇa (Kāliyadamana), in the south Viṣṇu,
in the west Mahālakṣmi, flanked by Maheśvarī and
Vaiṣṇvī, and in the north Narasiṃha.
Sixteen struts and four corner struts support the wide
eaves of the lower roof. These were no longer carved
from a single block of timber because four, six or eight
arms have been added. Should the struts be contemporary
with the portals and have not been replaced a hundred
years later, they demonstrate a departure from earlier
traditions. Inscriptions at the upper end of the struts
allow an exact identification, although most of them are
modelled to the inspiration of the builders to testify to
the variety of forms Kṛṣṇa assumes.
Following earlier prototypes, the struts are divided into
three registers: small figures or scenes amidst rockery
at the bottom, foliage on top, in the centre manifestations
of Viṣṇu as slender figures, almost dancing with
their legs crossed, complete with crown (mukuṭa), earrings
(kuṇḍala) and necklaces (hāra). Twelve of these
are dedicated to Viṣṇu's manifestation as the cowherd
(gopāla) Kṛṣṇa. Beside these, Ādinārāyaṇa, the primeval
Nārāyaṇa, guards the south eastern corner, and the
copper-coloured boar (Tāmravarāha) and the flaming
man-lion (Jvālānarasiṃha) the principal access.
Opposite
Cārnārāyaṇa Temple
Photo by Stanislaw Klimek,
August 2008
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