Thiruvidanthai Contd. : Indra in a headlock

This was from another pillar in Thiruvidanthai. I thought it was a scene where the guy in the right was in a headlock and about to be slapped :-) My father pointed out that there's a mountain in the top of the image and animals under it, and so, this must depict the Govardhana giri incident. That's the one where Indra decides to punish the cowherds for worshipping the mountain and not him, sends down rain and Krishna (who had instigated them to worship the mountain), protects them by picking up the mountain and letting them shelter underneath. Indra of course, sees the error of his ways and begs forgiveness.

He maybe right, but you know, that looks awfully close to a headlock :-)

In praise of demi-gods

The Prince of Wales Museum in Mumbai has this sculpture of a yaksha and a yakshi.

I was pretty intrigued by this yaksha in particular - because in typical Hindu sculpture, yaksha men are fat pot-bellied dwarves, and this guy was anything but that!

A little digging around gave me half the answer - this is a Jain yaksha, not a Hindu one. But the pot-belly still ought to apply - so how did they become so good-looking? I looked it up some more - and found a story.

The male yaksha's name is Dharanendra, and that is his consort Padmavathi. The couple rose from their sub-terranean world, to protect Parshvanatha, the 23rd Jain Tirthankara (Tirthankara = Enlightened One) from a flood. Dharanendra spread his serpent hood over Parshvanatha, and Padmavathi a diamond umbrella.

In return, they attained godhood and became perfect divine beings (so that explains their good looks!) Dharanendra's vehicle is the popular tortoise (can you see it, just under his knee?), but Padmavathi has a curious vehicle - a rooster with the head of a snake.

Go figure.

Size matters

Eighteen feet of elephantine strength, carved from a single granite boulder. The belly area was broken during the looting of Hampi. No lamps are lit in this temple because the idol is broken, so he sits there in dark grandeur. I wonder what he looked like with the lamps lit and the incense burning, decked in flowers and silk.

Narasimha and the Art of Action Sculpture

Here's another sculpture from the same mandapam.

Narasimha has Hiranyakasipu on his lap and is ripping his entrails out. I think that the different hands (except the ones holding the conch and the discus) show different hand positions in a single movement. So, what we see here is stop-action-photography of Hiranyakashipu's intestine being ripped out. Atleast, that's my guess :-)


Coming to the story being described.. You would think that after a couple of tries, the rakshasas would figure out that the boons that Brahma gives them all have a catch in them. Maybe they aren't given to introspection :-)Hiranyakasipu, a case in point. He asked that he not be killed by metals or by wood, not by man or beast, and not indoors or outdoors. He thought he was safe. So, he was killed at a doorway, by a half-man, half-lion, and by having his intestines ripped out by claws. I daresay that decapitation by the chakra (which seems to be the fate of most who oppose Vishnu) would have been a whole lot less painful.

Swordswomen

What we have here is two women (two more on the other side of the pillar) dancing with swords in their hands. I initially thought it was some kind of dandiya-type thing, but closer examination reveals that what they are holding in their hands are small swords (or huge daggers). Sword dances and warrior women date back into the mists of history.

Thiruvudanthai Intro and the Happy Warrior

Thiruvidanthai is situated on the East Coast Road about 16 miles south of Mahabalipuram. It's a nice, small, very nicely maintained temple.

This temple dates back atleast to the Pallava times apparently (7-8th Century CE) and was mentioned by Thirumangai Alwar. There was a notice by the ASI talking about how the temple had grants by Raja Raja Chozha (10th Century) Kulothunga Chozha (1100 CE). The main deity in the temple is Adhivaraha perumal. The moolavar (main idol) is nearly 9 feet tall with Vishnu, in the form of Varaha, holding lakshmi and stepping on a naga.

No photography is allowed once you enter the temple, which sucks. I can see why flashes might be disallowed, photography forbidden in the sanctum-sanctorum etc, but the outside praharams should be free game for flash-free photography. It seems to be one of those bureaucratic things (like the no-non-hindus allowed rule, which really affects only foreigners, but that would be another discussion altogether.)

I was limited to photographing a mandapam (pillared hall) outside the temple proper, where some people and some bulls were chilling out. I am not certain when it was built.

Here's the first of the photos, which I will call the Happy Warrior.

He has a re-curved sword(which looks like the sword from the Vellore temple, a dagger which is almost exactly the same shape on his hip, what I presume to be hte scabbard for his sword on his left shoulder, and he is twirling his moustache with his left hand. In all the impression is of a guy mightily pleased with himself:-)

Hampi

When you write about Hampi, cliches threaten to swamp you. It is so very splendid! Stories come rushing at you from everywhere, pleading to be written. Photographs cry aloud to be published. What do you include, and what do you leave out? There are so many monuments, temples, buildings, bazaars, all in granite, all testimony to a past civilisation.

Finally, I've chosen two photos to start with: both from the Vithala temple.
The first photo is of an ornate Kalyana Mantapa, with pillars carved out of single stones. But this itself, although impressive, didn't amaze me as a much smaller panel at the base of the Mantapa.

It's a simple panel, showing a man leading two horses.

The dress and the beard suggest that the man is not a local. This, you see, is a Persian dealer of horses - bringing the finest Arabian horseflesh to Hampi's markets!

Vijayanagara had a thriving trade with Persia. Hampi was famous for its bazaar where the Persians brought horses to be traded. Abdur Razak, a Persian trader who visited Hampi in 1443 says "The city of Bijanagar is such that eye has not seen not ear heard of any place resembling it upon the whole earth. The bazaars are very broad and long...sweet-scented flowers are always available fresh in that city...The jewellers sell their rubies and pearls and diamonds openly in the bazaar."

- Deepa

P.S. The guide told me that if an Arab horse died in transit while being brought to Hampi, the trader would cut off the tail and bring it to the king as proof, and the king would make full payment for the horse.

Turtlerama

Banganga in Mumbai is dotted with little temples, so it kept my camera busy. Of all the photos I clicked, though, this is the one that made me most curious.

A Shiva temple, with a turtle?

The turtle, of course, is the second incarnation of Vishnu. So what's Vishnu doing in a Shiva temple, I asked myself.

And then I realised - Vishnu is praying to Shiva! This is the legend from the Shiva Purana, when the gods and the demons churned the ocean for nectar. When the sea spewed the deadly poison halahala, the gods despaired and even Vishnu the turtle could not bear the fumes.

Here is the turtle's prayer to Shiva:

"O Creator with Fire in your mouth, the Earth your feet, Time your motion, the Sky your navel, the Wind your breath, the Sun your eyes! Only you can save us from the halahala!".

A persuasive prayer indeed!

And as many of us know, Shiva quaffed the poison, which turned his neck blue, earning him the name Neelakantha. But did you know? A few drops of the poison dribbled from his lips, says the Shiva Purana, to be shared by serpents and scorpions to be their venom. If you'd like to read the original story, try Ramesh Menon's 'Siva - the Siva Purana retold'. It's fascinating.

In the district of Kanchi, near Chennai, there's a village called Tirukkachur. Literally, Turtle Village. The village temple is 1200 years old, and in the temple, there's a sculpture of Vishnu as turtle, praying to Shiva.

Can you see the four-armed Vishnu, with the rounded turtle lower half?

Amazing, this country of mine, where legends endure in stone...

- Deepa

Two wrestlers

This is another picture that caught my eye at the 1000 pillared mandapam.
What's happening here is a single-leg takedown.

The guy on the left is just about to take his opponent down. From this point, he would put his shoulder in and just go forward. A snapshot of wrestling action circa 16th century Madurai :)

Four Monkeys

This is from the 1000-pillar mandapam in Madurai. The mandapam has been converted into a musuem. More on that later.

Notes on Vellore

Here is a link to the history of Vellore and the fort.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vellore

Apparently, Vellore was the site of the a sepoy mutiny in India(in 1806). This was news to me.

The details of the mutiny are pretty similar to the later one in 1857, though much smaller in scale. The same pattern repeats :English officers unaware or insensitive to their soldiers concerns, Religious differences, local rulers stepping in to provide nominal leadership, brutal violence and reprisals.

And I thought that 1857 was the first (and only) sepoy rebellion. There was an earlier (and somewhat smaller) rebellion in Vizag in 1780.

The temple is built in the Vijayanagara Style, and the fort has been controlled by the Nayaks, the Sultan of Bijapur, the Marathas, the Arcot Nawabs and the British. The temple is quite nicely maintained. I walked around the fort walls, and unfortunately, they are not as clean as they could be. There were some cleaning efforts going on, hopefully they have been completed.

There is also a small musuem in the fort complex. The musuem has some interesting displays. It has some Veerakkals dating from the chola periods. Veerakkals are stone steles that commomerate the death of a hero. I forgot to take photographs of these, unfortunately.

There are also some bronze swords, dating to about 3000 years ago and some more modern swords (tulwars, a couple of patas, and tulwar-sized khukri. There are some paintings and sculptures dating from the pallava era to the chola era. There was an interesting display showing the differences between the different sculptural styles.

The Musuem at Vellore Fort

This is a chart I found at the musuem that points out the salient differences between the sculptures of the Chozhas, the Pallavas and the Vijayanagara kings. The writing is in Tamil, though :-)




These bronze swords were apparently evacuated from the locality. They are from about 1000 BCE apparently.




This was a collection at the musuem.
Just to give an idea of size, the walking-stick sword is about 2.5 ft tall.
The fifth sword from the right (third from left) is a pata sword. This is a characteristically Indian gauntlet sword(The grip is perpendicular to the blade). Pretty funky looking, I wonder how they were used..
Also visible are some standard tulwars and some tulwars with firangi blades (straight european swords fitted with tulwar hilts).
There was no information on the provenance of these swords.

A summary of the sculptures at the Jalakanteswara Temple

Weapons
The weapons in these sculptures have been most interesting.
We have
- The katar - carried by the footsoldier under the second horseman
- The Straight Sword with a tulwar grip (a Khanda?) - Carried by the second horseman
- A dagger - Carried by multiple people.
These are standard south-indian weapons and might be expected in sculptures of this era and region.

We also have some really curious weapons here.
- The sword carried by the first horseman looks curiously like a yataghan, a Turkish sword.
- The recurved swords carried by the footsoldiers in the second picture couldn't be identified.
- The guy riding the lion in the second picture seems to be carrying a khukri.

This is interesting. Are these representations of Indian warriors who carried these weapons or is it their equivalent of fantasy swords (Let's stick these sculptures with those weird swords that that trader dude is always talking about:)).

Clothing/Armor

The horsemen are wearing a kulavi (a traditional headdress of the Vijayanagara Period). A curious thing about the horsemen is that while they seem to be carrying weapons, they are wearing no armor. In fact, one can even see the folds of the dhoti on the horsemen's legs. I don't think that anyone would be dumb enough to wear no armor, if they were going into combat. So, either it must be a sculptural convention or some kind of parade is being depicted.
The foot soldiers on the second pictures seem to be wearing some kind of lamellar armor.

One more horseman

This horseman is pretty much a mirror image of the previous horseman. The only difference is that his swords are the standard khandas : straight swords with tulwar hilts.
The warrior under the horse in front is armed with a katar in his left hand and whatever remains of a sword in his right hand.

Three guys with funky swords

These three men are interesting because they hold weapons not normally associated with South India. The little guy on the lion holds a khukri, and the two men are holding recurved swords. The two men are wearing what seems to be lamellar (scale) armour reaching down to their knees.
The characteristic indian 'tulwar hilt' (tight-fitting hilt with a disk pommel) can be seen on all these weapons. For whatever reason, this seems to be the most favored hilt-type in India, if the sculptures and pieces in musuems are any indication.

Three men and the tiger

This is a close-up of the tiger(or maybe a leopard)-killing scene under the sculpture of the horseman. Three men are attacking the tiger. The man closest to the camera has just stuck one sword through the tiger and we can actually see the tip coming out of the tiger's flank. The other hand holds what seems to be a katar which is also in the tiger. The man in the center has a short spear and the third man (hidden from view) is also attacking the tiger.

I wonder if this is a simple depiction of a tiger hunt or if it commomerates the story of the founder of the Hoysalas. The Hoysalas ruled much of South India prior to the Vijayanagara Empire and the founders of the Vijayanagara Empire (Harihara and Bukka) were commanders under the last Hoysala king. . Hoy Sa'la meaning "strike Sa'la!", were the words spoken to Sa'la ( legendary head of this dynasty) to kill the tiger. Then again, if that were the case, it would probably show just one guy killing the tiger, to further enhance his heroism. So, in all probability it is just a simple tiger hunt.

The Horseman at the Jalakanteswara Temple, Vellore

This sculpture is in the mandapam of the Jalakanteswara Temple inside the Vellore Fort.
The fort and the temple were built by the Nayak ruler of the area in the early 16th century.

This horseman has a dagger, a short bow in a bow-quiver, and a long sword along the side of the horse. This kind of armament (bow for long-range skirmishing and sword for close-range) has been the standard equipment for light cavalry across the world. The sword is, interestingly enough a recurved sword(like the gurkha khukri or the turkish yataghan) and not the khanda style straight sword shown most commonly in Indian sculpture. The soldier under the horse's foot is armed with an identical sword and a targe of some sort.

The headgear is similar to the headgear of the Vijayanagara kingdom (the kulavi). That is not too surprising since the nayak kings were chieftains who ruled on behalf of the Vijayanagara kings.

That is all I have from this particular sculpture. Any further details are welcome :-)

I took another picture of the three men attacking the tiger, and that will be discussed in the next post.