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The Journal of Hindu Studies 2009;2:76–96 Doi: 10.

1093/jhs/hip006
Advance Access Publication 9 March 2009

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The Shrine in Early Hinduism:
The Changing Sacred Landscape
Himanshu Prabha Ray

Abstract: Archaeological data forms the primary source material for this paper
on the early Hindu temple in South Asia. The paper traces the study of the
temple from its ‘discovery’ in the nineteenth century to the present and
interrogates the traditional links often suggested between the temple as an
agent of political legitimisation and the emergence of the State in the first
millennium AD in ancient India. The paper uses the term ‘Hindu’ to articulate a
pan-Indian cultural identity of the local population of the subcontinent long
before the European discovery of the term in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries and suggests that cultural practices, rituals and imagery as evident
from a study of religious architecture formed the substratum of this self-
perception and distinctiveness.

Let him who wishes to enter the worlds that are reached by sacrificial offerings
and the performance of religious obligations (iṣṭāpūrta) build a temple to the
gods, by doing which he attains both the results of sacrifice and the performance
of religious obligations (Bṛhat Saṃhitā, LV:2).

Theistic developments in the Indian subcontinent have often been seen as later
overlays on what has been termed the portable ideational religion of the Vedas
concerned largely with sacrifices and rituals. The key concept here is the notion
of religious spots as being mobile as opposed to these being defined in terms of spe-
cific locales and geographic places. The shrine, no doubt, signifies an altered under-
standing of religious traditions. It embodies the demarcation of sacred space and
interaction with a community that provided patronage to it and maintained it. It
underscores the local and regional contexts of religious traditions, while the wider
milieu is created by linkages through pilgrimage, linkages that vary over time and
can be charted both spatially and temporally. The narratives on the walls of tem-
ples at one level, indicate the centrality of this new sacred geography in the trans-
mission of religious ideas, and at another, recitation and performance within
temple precincts are crucial indicators of the changing philosophical and religious
environment of the period. The textual tradition itself has been interrogated, with
scholars questioning the ways in which a religious text pervades religious action
and examining the importance of text for liturgical action. Thus, the shrine negoti-
ates the gulf between precept and practice.

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The Shrine in Early Hinduism 77

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How does this altered human landscape reflect transformations in religious tra-
ditions? In current historical writing, the emphasis has been on the agrarian
expansion around the fourth–fifth centuries AD, the spread of Sanskritic culture
through movements of brāhmaṇas at the behest of the emerging regional states,
and the consolidation of a feudal order. Three major historical processes have been
postulated for the early medieval period dated from sixth–seventh to twelfth–thir-
teenth century: expansion of state society; assimilation and acculturation of tribal
people; and integration of local religious cults and practices (Chattopadhyaya
1994:167, 181). Does the archaeological study of the shrine validate this existing
perspective? Can a brāhmaṇical hegemony, which subsumed other religious tradi-
tions, be detected through the study of religious architecture? Did the emergence
of the temple constitute a disjunction in the religious tradition of the subconti-
nent? The basic issue is: does the temple represent a work of art established by
brāhmaṇas to legitimise the rule of the newly emerging states or did contemporary
societies perceive it as an abode of spiritual power? To what extent did colonial
intervention alter the parameters within which the temple came to be studied?
This paper traces the study of the Hindu temple from its beginnings in the 19th and
20th century and contends that the social history of religious architecture has contin-
ued to be neglected thereby devaluing the role of the temple in creating religious
identity. Relevant for this discussion are negotiations between religious communities
as evident from an analysis of the locales of Buddhist, Jaina, and Hindu shrines.
Instead of the linear view of religious change that emerges in historical writing, this
paper argues for reinvention of sacred spaces over time and interaction between reli-
gious architecture and the community, which reinvigorates the relevance of the
shrine. The temple is thus a crucial link between the community, the religious precep-
tor, the textual tradition, and the story-teller, and through its wider linkages in the
overall sacred geography connected to other major shrines, cult spots, and centres of
pilgrimage, its reach extended beyond political frontiers. This paper makes the case
for study and research of the social history of the temple, a theme that has been over-
shadowed in historical writings that have tended to focus on origins of temples, eco-
nomic base of the shrine, and patronage provided by the political elite.

The ‘new’ disciplines: Archaeology & art history


A linear view of religious development emerged in the nineteenth century with the
beginnings of the study of stone architecture dated to the fourth–third centuries
BC and attributed largely to Greek influence. The connection between architectural
form and religious change was firmly established and the quest for chronology
securely rooted the architecture within linear time. More importantly, this linear
development of Buddhist–Jain–Hindu architecture accepted notions of origins and
decline and antagonism between the different religions of the subcontinent,
co-existence being ruled out.
78 Himanshu Prabha Ray

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The Western caves afford the most vivid illustration of the rise and progress of
all the great religions that prevailed in India in the early centuries of this era
and the one before it. They show how Buddhist religion rose and spread, and
how its form later became corrupt and idolatrous. They explain how it conse-
quently came to be superseded by the nearly cognate form of Jainism and the
antagonistic development of the revived religion of the Brahmins (Ferguson
and Burgess 1969:166).

James Ferguson (1808–86) came to India to work for the family firm of Fairlie,
Ferguson & Co. in Calcutta. Soon his interest shifted from merchandising to archi-
tecture and for about 6 years from 1836 to 1841, he travelled to various parts of
India, studying and documenting Indian architecture. After returning to London
in 1845, his sketches were lithographed and published in a book entitled, Illustra-
tions of the Rock Cut Temples of India, which consisted of eighteen plates.1
In Ferguson’s frame of reference, Indian architecture provided an important
missing link in the development of architecture in the world, especially the
twelfth–thirteenth century flowering of architecture in Europe. Besides, even
though India could never reach ‘the intellectual supremacy of Greece, or the moral
greatness of Rome’, architecture in India was still a living art, which could inform
in a variety of ways about the developments in Europe (Ferguson 1910:4–5). This
was significant, since there was a lack of historical texts in India and post-fifth cen-
tury Indian history could only be studied through monuments and inscriptions.
Ferguson’s classification was essentially within a racial–religious framework and
the limits of Dravidian architecture were defined by the spread of people speaking
Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Kanarese (Ferguson 1910:39–40, 302). A characteris-
tic feature of Dravidian temples was the emphasis on ornamentation and almost
every nook and corner was elaborately sculpted to the detriment of architectural
planning. Another failing of the region was that Dravidian temples were a fortui-
tous aggregation of parts, arranged without plan unlike the European architecture,
which adopted a uniform plan, changing only with the progress of time.
Thus, James Ferguson established a link between architectural form, ethnicity,
and religious affiliation. Within this framework, an apsidal shrine, such as that
of the Durga temple at Aihole in north Karnataka could only be associated with
Buddhism and since the eighth century Durga temple was dedicated to Sūrya,
the explanation suggested by Ferguson underscored its conversion to Hinduism
later. By the 1860s, the Durga temple featured ‘as an inglorious, structural version
of a Buddhist caitya hall, appropriated by Brāhmaṇical Hindus and buried under
rubble at a site of the ancient Chalukya dynasty’ (Tartakov 1997:6). As a result of
subsequent investigation by Gary Tartakov not only on the plan of the temple,
but also on its rich imagery, it is now evident that the Durga temple is one of
the nearly one hundred and fifty temples built across 450 km of the Deccan in
the seventh–eighth centuries AD, albeit the Durga temple is the largest and most
lavishly constructed monument dating to around 725–30 AD.
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In a perceptive reanalysis of Ferguson’s inputs and the development of the history
of architecture through the works of stalwarts, such as Ram Raz, D.R. Bhandarkar,
E.B. Havell, Stella Kramrisch, Anand Coomaraswamy, S.K. Saraswati, M.A. Dhaky,
and Krishna Deva, Pramod Chandra concluded:

One of the more promising ways to study Indian temple architecture from the
Indian point of view would be to have recourse to the śilpa texts and the practi-
cing śilpis for the light that these throw on the art. And this is precisely what
Ferguson and his followers had been unable to do (1975:25).

The debate continues and it is not the intention of this paper to retrace its tra-
jectory. More recent studies, however, have moved beyond the dichotomy of text
versus architecture. Devangana Desai, for example, adopts a holistic approach and
focuses on the placement of images within the overall architectural configuration
of the temple with reference to the underlying philosophy of the construction
(Desai 1996). Michell (1988) explains the cultural, religious, and architectural signif-
icance of the temple, while Adam Hardy’s work compares and contrasts the two
streams of Indian temple architecture, i.e. Nagara and Dravida to illustrate conti-
nuities and distinctions between them. Temple architecture is defined essentially
as the architecture of imagery bound up with political patronage (Hardy 2007).
In contrast, R.N. Misra devotes his study to the role of artisans and the practice
of the craft (Misra 2009).
How does one assess Ferguson’s work vis-à-vis that of some of his contempor-
aries such as Alexander Cunningham (1814–93), though the latter worked largely
in the north of the Vindhyas and had seen very little further south except ‘the cele-
brated Buddhist caves of Elephanta and Kanheri’ (Cunningham 1963:viii)? One way
would be to compare Ferguson’s treatment of early temples with an emphasis on
architectural development with Cunningham’s approach to the study of Gupta tem-
ples. One major point of discord between the two was on the dating of architectural
remains. For Cunningham, inscriptions were important indicators of chronology,
while Ferguson was a firm believer of styles and techniques as indicators of date.
Cunningham’s methodology in terms of cataloguing and documentation of
archaeological data was extensive, though never comprehensive. Unlike Ferguson’s
reliance on photography, Cunningham moved from site to site, often visiting as
many as 30 sites in one season. Based on a detailed study of the characteristics
of the temples, he formulated the Gupta style of temples, thereby providing a link
between political dynasties and religious architecture, a link that remains unques-
tioned into the present.2
Based on stylistic analysis Ferguson dated the caves at Kanheri to the fourth–
fifth centuries AD, but Cunningham argued for a much earlier date based on the
reference to 30 of Śakādityakāla or AD 108 in one of the inscriptions. Similarly, Fer-
guson dated Karle caves to first–second centuries BC, whereas for Cunningham
they belonged to the beginning of the second century (Cunningham 1871:xxii).
80 Himanshu Prabha Ray

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Thus, the reliance on the inscriptions was firmly established, though their context
was seldom discussed. This legacy continues with the placement of inscriptions on
religious architecture being an issue that is yet to receive attention – an exception
being the work of Orr (2008).
At this point, Rajendralal Mitra’s contributions need to be brought into the dis-
cussion and compared and contrasted with those of the other two. Mitra distin-
guished himself on account of his knowledge of Indian languages such as
Sanskrit, Persian, Urdu, and Hindi, and edited several Sanskrit texts like The
Sanskrit Buddhist Literature of Nepal published in 1882. He was closely associated with
the Asiatic Society of Bengal and wrote about its centenary history that was
subsequently published in 1885. Besides editing, translating, and cataloguing
manuscripts, his two pioneering works were, The Antiquities of Orissa (1875, 1880)
and Buddha Gaya, the Hermitage of Sakya Muni (1878).
Much has been written about Mitra’s project to write history based on India’s
ancient architecture and sculpture following the work of Ram Raz, his claim that
the Hindu temple qualified as an elevated art form and his subsequent differences
with Ferguson on the Greek legacy in Indian stone sculpture, which led the latter to
write a book in 1884 titled Archaeology in India, with special reference to the Works of
Babu Rajendralal Mitra. This has been seen as colonial insecurity against a Western-
educated native scholar in the context of the politics of the Ilbert Bill of 1883,
which threatened to subject the British in India to the jurisdiction of native judges
(Chakrabarti 1997:111–6; Guha-Thakurta 2004:108–11).
The question that needs to be addressed relates to Mitra’s methodology in the
study of religious architecture and the extent to which it differed from that of Cun-
ningham and Ferguson? As he states in the Preface to his Antiquities of Orissa, ‘I had
two objectives in mind: one to record accurately the plans, etc. of historical
remains and the second to use this for a social history of the ages, such as that writ-
ten by Sir Gardner Wilkinson titled Ancient Egyptians’ (1875:i). Mitra stresses that
‘every literature, however fabulous or mythical may be its character, has a histor-
ical value and that of India cannot be an exception. In the same way, almost every
monument or carved stone … bears on its face an index to the intellectual condi-
tion of some individual or community and may be made, with proper care to yield
an acceptable contribution to the cause of history’ (1875:v). Thus, of all the three,
Mitra’s canvas as it related to a study of the visual data for a social history of India
was perhaps the widest – a methodology largely neglected in subsequent writings.
The early 20th century saw the appointment of Sir John Marshall as Director-Gen-
eral of the Archaeological Survey of India from 1902 to 1928. On 20 September 1924
Marshall announced to the world in the Illustrated London News of the discovery of a
new civilisation that was older than any known civilisation of the subcontinent.
Marshall (1931) published his 3-volume study of the Indus Civilisation. Given the
extensive area covered by the civilisation Marshall suggested that the inhabitants
spoke more than one language, which perhaps belonged to the Dravidian group.
As regard to Indus religion, Marshall argued for the ritual importance of water,
The Shrine in Early Hinduism 81

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and continuity of several traditions into later periods such as worship of a male god
identified with Śiva, the presence of fertility cults, and worship of the female prin-
ciple (Marshall 1931:41–2). Inadvertently, he initiated a trend to trace the begin-
nings of several later religious developments to the Harappan civilisation.

Alternative interpretations have been suggested …. [H]owever, it is only Mar-


shall’s explanation [of the Proto-Shiva seal] which makes sense in the light of
Hinduism (Chakrabarti 2001:42).

A more nuanced utilisation of the Vedas and the Mahābhārata and the correlation
with the archaeological data to comprehend religious developments in Mathura
from the second century BC to the third century AD is evident in Doris Meth
Srinivasan’s study of the multiplicity convention in early iconography, viz. the
appearance of multi-headed and multi-armed images. She highlights the unique-
ness of the multiplicity convention in the Indic world, even though the arts of
other cultures in antiquity, such as examples from ancient Greece and Rome, do
show the presence of minor deities with multiple body parts. ‘It must also be regis-
tered that the multiplicity convention is deeply in tune with the ways of concep-
tualising Hinduism’ (Srinivasan 1997:9). It is in this capacity to acknowledge
multiple forms of one deity and the cyclic nature of time that the Indic culture
is unique and it is here that the early Sanskrit textual tradition provides insights
for possible de-codification of symbols. Significantly for this paper, Srinivasan’s
research also provides ways of comprehending the religious tradition with
reference to the material culture and presents a contrasting perspective to that
of several historians of ancient India.

The temple in the writing of ancient Indian history


The framework propounded by Ferguson has survived with extraordinary tenacity
in the post-independence period and has resulted in a general disregard for multi-
religious sites, shared architectural vocabulary, and plurality of religious forms in
the academic discourse. Romila Thapar makes a distinction between Brāhmanism
and Śramanism and stresses antagonism between the two (Thapar 2000:967). The
latter term, according to her, included a variety of Buddhist, Jaina, Ājīvika, and
other sects, which denied the fundamentals of Brāhmanism such as Vedic Śruti
and Smṛti. She then traces the essentials of Śāktism to Harappan times and states
that the worship of the goddess was later accepted in some brāhmaṇical sects. Hin-
duism for Thapar is a ‘mosaic of distinct cults, deities, sects, and ideas and the
adjusting, juxtaposing, or distancing of these to existing ones, the placement draw-
ing not only on belief and ideas but also on the socio-economic reality’ (Thapar
2000:972). Implicit in this understanding is an emphasis on antagonism between
religions and the perception that religious development can only be understood
through the ‘socio-economic reality’.
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In contrast, Kapila Vatsyayan suggests that at the conceptual level, structural
edifices translated the imagery of speculative thought of the Upaniṣads and the
methodology (vidhi) of the ritual concretised in the Brāhmaṇas in terms of measures
and designs to a language of artistic form. Myth and legend constituted the content
and are as it were superimposed on the abstraction; in turn formalised into the lan-
guage of iconography (Vatsyayan 1983:104). Thus at one level, religious edifices
show continuity in terms of adherence to underlying principles, while at another
level they indicate interrelationship amongst different art forms in a region.
This is however not accepted by historians writing within the socio-economic
framework of Indian History who define the post-fourth century period as marking
a transitional phase between the sacrificial Vedic religion and the emergence of
Purāṇic worship marked by devotion to a deity. This transformation, it is sug-
gested, was brought about by the migration of brāhmaṇas from the towns and
the development of tīrthas or sacred pilgrimage spots (Nandi 1986). Brāhmaṇas
are credited with being agents of acculturation among the tribal populations from
the fifth century AD onwards. It is suggested that at numerous feudal centres, tem-
ples were constructed using permanent material such as stone for the first time in
the fifth century AD ‘inspired by the growing importance of bhakti and by the newly
established Smārta-Paurāṇic religion, which was associated with the new social
setup’ (Desai 1989–90:31; Nath 2001). Regional states emerged from the seventh
to the tenth centuries marked by complex changes in religious dimensions of
the society and it is ‘believed that Bhakti and the worship through Bhakti of
God as a Lord located in a temple, was the key ideological strand of the period’
(Chattopadhyaya 1994:29).
In the next section, it would be useful to examine the extent to which this fra-
mework can be substantiated by archaeological data.

The early temple from the archaeological record


The archaeological record indicates the presence of shrines dedicated to several
deities from the second to first century BC onwards. The Besnagar Brahmi pillar ded-
ication from Vidisha in central India, dated to late second century BC on a Garuḍa
pillar of Vāsudeva, the god of gods, states that it was commissioned by Heliodoros,
son of Dion from Taxila, a worshipper of Viṣṇu. The Śiva liṅga at Gudimallam in Chit-
toor district of Andhra dates to the second–first century BC and was enshrined in a
brick shrine dated to the first century AD. Intense archaeological exploration at the
confluence of the Krishna and Tungabhadra rivers has brought to light a remarkable
series of brick temples. Mostly square on plan, these contained pebble liṅgas and
have been dated between the second and sixth centuries AD (Sarma 1982:18).
Perhaps one of the earliest inscriptions indicating a dedication to a Śaiva shrine
was found engraved in characters dated to first century AD on a flat rectangular
red sandstone slab at a place called Chaurāsi at Mathura. The epigraph records
the donation of a tank, garden, sabhā, stone tablets, and shrines (devakulāni) by a
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villager named Magakujitakheda for the grace of bhagavān Śiva. A śrīvatsa and
svāstika are engraved on the two ends of the inscription (Srinivasan 1981:9–10).
It is significant that in addition to shrines to Viṣṇu and Śiva, there is evidence
for temples to the Nāga and to Lajjā-Gaurī. An apsidal structure dedicated to the
Nāga cult was excavated at the site of Sonkh in Mathura district. The site was first
settled in 800 BC, but the earliest evidence for an apsidal shrine (no. 1) of baked
brick in the habitation area dates to the first century AD (Härtel 1993:86). It was
rebuilt and extended several times and was most likely located in the centre of
the settlement. A 19-cm high stone relief of a seated Mātṛkā with two devotees
on both sides was found on the floor of the shrine. Also, a number of terracotta
plaques showing the goddess battling the buffalo demon were recovered either
from the temple or its close proximity. It would seem that Mahiśāsuramardinī
was a popular deity in Mathura in the early centuries AD, as 34 images of the god-
dess were found in the area. The fight with the demon was an important part of her
cult, though there are no satisfactory references for it either in the Vedas or in the
Mahābhārata. The multiple facets of the goddess are elaborately described in a later
text, the Devīmāhātmya, but there is incongruence between the textual description
and the imagery (Srinivasan 1997:16).
A second apsidal temple (no. 2) was found 400 m north of the main excavated
area and this dates to a somewhat earlier period in the first century BC. The early
phase of the structure is oriented east–west, with the entrance on the east side. The
remains of roof tiles found near the wall indicate a larger, roofed entrance area.
The religious affiliation of the first century BC shrine is, however, unclear, but most
likely was dedicated to the Nāga cult as evident from the finds (Härtel 2007:330–1).
It is interesting that an image of Nāgarāja of the Kusana period is housed in a mod-
ern temple on the top of the mound and worshipped as Cāmaradevī by the women
of the village. In addition to Mathura another early centre known for the worship
of the Nāga cult is Rajgir. Excavations at the site unearthed a brick shrine dated to
the second–first century BC and several terracotta figurines of Nāgas (Archaeological
Survey of India Annual Report 1935–36:53). Further information for worship of
Nāginīs or Snake Goddesses comes from the analyses of four lifesized images dating
to the first century AD, probably made in Mathura and taken for worship to
Nandan, about 100–10 km from Mathura in the present state of Uttar Pradesh.
These figures sculpted of red sandstone in the round are now dispersed in different
museums of the world, but a detailed stylistic analysis has traced them to Nandan
and has also suggested precedents for them at Sanchi. Nor was the Nāginī cult
limited to the early centuries AD. The Rauravāgama, a Śaiva ritual text from south
India dated to the seventh century AD, presents detailed descriptions in two
chapters (38 and 57) of the proper rituals to install Nāga images and the benefits
of such worship (Srinivasan 2007:351–84).
Another local cult that gained ground in the post-Mauryan period was the wor-
ship of Lajjā-Gaurī. This was, in all probability, a fertility cult, which originated
from the worship of a supine image, especially during childbirth. It is significant
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that shrines dedicated to Lajjā-Gaurī are now known from excavated sites. One of
these is the site of Padri in the Talaja tahsil of Bhavnagar district of Gujarat hardly
2 km from the Gulf of Cambay.3 The site has Harappan beginnings, but was again
occupied around the first century BC.
Early Indian coins further substantiate the data from archaeological excavations
and are a valuable source of information. A depiction of a temple may be seen on
a square copper coin of the Audumbaras dated to second–first century BC. It shows
a pillared shrine with a curvilinear spire flanked by pillars. The temple occurs on
other issues of the Audumbaras such as those of king Dharaghoṣa, Śivadāsa, and
Rudradāsa. Representations of multi-storeyed structures on a square plan are also
known on coins of the Trigartas and Yaudheyas from north India. The diversity in
the shrine-types illustrated indicates regional variations (Handa 2007:41–55). It is
evident from this brief overview that there is archaeological confirmation for the
emergence of the shrine in the second to first century BC in several regions of
the subcontinent. Rather than marking a disjunction between the Vedic and Puranic
tradition, the temple indicates a reconfiguration of religious thought and practice.
Inscriptions from the second century onwards indicate that the political elite con-
tinued to perform Vedic sacrifices. Michael Willis has shown that pūjā became an
overarching ritual category and Vedic rituals were transformed to meet the changed
ritual needs. Vedic texts, such as the Āpastamba Gṛhya Sūtra prescribe ritual
sequences and styles of worship for veneration of images, which later with the emer-
gence of the temple became standard elements of fifth century AD Gupta rituals. Bali,
caru, and sattra, which occur in accounts of pañcamahāyajña or daily domestic rituals
in Vedic texts are frequently mentioned in epigraphs of the fifth–sixth centuries as a
part of the ritual of pūjā. The fifth century Podagarh inscription recounts how a king
set up a shrine for Viṣṇu’s footprints and then set up a sattra to feed brāhmaṇas,
ascetics, and the destitute (Epigraphia Indica 21, 1931–32:153–7). This indicates that
the temples had become the loci of endowed charitable activity termed sattra and
that this was conceived as an aspect of pūjā (Willis 2009:chap. 5).
Another category of archaeological finds, viz. the fire altars for the performance
of human sacrifice or puruṣamedha as described in the Vedic corpus, and unearthed
at historical sites such as Kausambi dated to 200 BC (Sharma 1969:118) have often
been disregarded by historians. Bakker has recently reviewed the evidence, espe-
cially with reference to the site of Mansar excavated by J.P. Joshi and A.K. Sharma
from 1998 to 2000 (Joshi and Sharma 2005) and concluded that the male terracotta
figure found in fifth century context marks the remains of a construction sacrifice
(Bakker 2007). Unlike Kausambi, no human remains were found at Mansar. Instead
a more than a lifesized figure of Puruṣa made of lime with the head smashed was
unearthed half-way up the hill in an area covered with brick construction. Bakker
concludes that the Vedic concept of the Cosmic Man and the agnicayana ritual was
transformed on association with the temple and reemerged as the construction
sacrifice, which is repeated in Sanskrit texts such as the Āgamas and the Śilpaśāstras
(Bakker 2007:192–3).
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A second significant conclusion evident from the archaeological record is
the diverse religious landscape that emerged with shrines dedicated not only to
Śiva and Viṣṇu, but also to Nāgas, Mātṛkās, Lajjā-Gaurī, and so on. We have not dis-
cussed Buddhist and Jaina shrines in this section, but they were also prominent on
the sacred landscape and continued to share space with the Hindu temple. A recent
study of historic places in Hinduism discusses the relation of the sacred to ordinary
existence as it is mediated through arts, sciences, rituals, and philosophical ideas,
thereby highlighting the mosaic of religious sites as evident in the archaeological
record (Glucklich 2008). In addition, inscriptions refer to a variety of places of wor-
ship such as a devikula (shrine) of a Jaina saint, a sabhā (assembly hall) for āyāga
(worship), a prāsāda (temple or palace), a prapā (cistern), a railing, an architrave
for a gate of a śailadevagṛha, so a stone temple and one resembling a mountain
(parvato-prāsāde) (Raven 2008). Thus, while the shrine met the requirements of a
diverse range of religious groups, it was by no means the sole indicator of religious
architecture. How then does one address the issue of brāhmaṇical hegemony that is
said to have subsumed an indigenous tradition? What is the evidence for the pre-
sence of a native religious tradition?

The autochthonous goddess and open-air shrines


D.D. Kosambi (1907–66), the mathematician, historian, and eclectic thinker adopted
the historical materialist approach for the study of India’s ancient past. He argued
for continuity of Indian culture and its survival in the present peasant commu-
nities. He proposed that the long survival of observances that have no sanction
in the official brāhmanic works can only have originated in the most primitive
stages of human society and this has been the prevailing orthodoxy in Indian his-
tory writing (Kosambi 1956:20). It is often argued that the cult of the mother god-
dess was Dravidian in origin and that religious customs of the tribes and low-caste
groups can provide insights into archaic practices that were later incorporated into
brāhmaṇical religion. Thus, it is suggested that terracotta figurines found at
archaeological sites formed a part of the folk tradition, which was later integrated
into the brāhmaṇical fold.
This section considers the role of terracotta figurines found at archaeological
sites dated from 300 BC to AD 300 within the larger domain of diverse ritual prac-
tices prevalent during this period, rather as an attempt to trace the origins of the
‘goddess cult’. Though terracotta figurines have been found in a variety of contexts
dating from the Harappan civilisation onwards, the largest number occur between
600 BC and AD 600 and are found extensively across north India, but are more lim-
ited in number in the far south. Stephen Huyler refers to terracotta figurines as
votive offerings at shrines (1986:58–63), while Krishan and Jayaswal’s study focuses
on terracotta figurines associated with thāna worship, the thāna being an auspicious
cult spot worshipped by devotees of all castes and strata (1986:143–6).
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Terracotta plaques and shards with auspicious symbols were integral to Gaṅgā
valley religious traditions and the repertoire included a range of deities.
Atranjikhera, for example, has yielded a gaja-lakṣmī plaque in terracotta dated to
200–100 BC, and another first–second centuries AD specimen depicting mahiśāsura-
mardinī comes from Mathura. Excavations at Kapilavastu have revealed habitational
evidence from 800 BC to third century AD of terracotta Buddha figures, Śaiva heads,
and nude Jina figures (Srivastava 1996). At Tamluk, representations of Buddha,
Bodhisattva, and other deities are known in terracotta, while only one Buddha
figure has so far been reported from Chandraketugarh (Mandal 1987:25–7). Other
representations include corpulent yakṣa images and plaques with female Nāga
figurines, and several specimens found at Chandraketugarh are now in the Kanoria
collection (Roy Chowdhury 1995–96:69).
It is striking that already by the second–first centuries BC these terracotta images
were housed in a variety of structures and worshipped. Two of the open-air shrines
have been identified on terracotta objects from Chandraketugarh dated to the first–
second centuries AD and they show enclosures marked by railings. Terracotta pla-
ques depicting a female figurine enshrined in a pillared maṇḍapa accompanied by
attendants with fans and umbrellas, and devotees with bowls or even with a halo
around the head have been found in lower Bengal (Bautze 1995). Another represen-
tation shows the female figurine standing on a pot or ghata containing coins and she
is shown showering money on a worshipper (Bautze 1995:plates 12, 13).
Interesting data regarding terracotta figurines come from the site of Sringaver-
apura, 36 km west northwest of Allahabad where a brick tank dated from the sec-
ond half of the first century BC to the end of the first century AD was unearthed
during archaeological excavations from 1977 to 1986. Fragments of human terra-
cotta figurines were recovered from the tank complex and their size indicates that
these were large, often lifesize. The iconography helps identify a range of deities
such as Śiva, Pārvati, Kubera, Nāga/Nāgi, Hariti, and Pañcika (Lal 1993:108).
The three sites in the Deccan that stand out for the large collections of terra-
cotta figurines are those of Ter in the District Osmanabad, Kondapur, 70 km north-
west of Hyderabad and Nagarjunakonda in the lower Krishna valley. The finds from
Ter come largely through surface collections and are now in the private collection
of Shri Ramalingappa Lamture. Henry Cousens visited Ter, about 45 km east of
Barsi, a great cotton centre, in 1901 and remarked on the extensive mounds around
the town littered with brickbats and potshards. The remains of several brick-built
Hindu, Jaina and Buddhist shrines and scattered sculptures were extant at the site.
Clearly, Ter was a multi-religious site with a diverse religious architecture, which
continued from the early centuries of the Christian era into the present. Epigraphs
from the temples range between AD 1000 and the sixteenth century and a copper-
plate grant in Persian dated AD 1659 states that the Qazi of Ter ratified certain pri-
vileges to the head of the Teli community (Cousens 1904:195–204). Subsequent
archaeological excavations at the site unearthed the base of a large brick Buddhist
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stupa and an apsidal brick temple with a stupa in the apse and a wooden maṇḍapa
in the front (Indian Archaeology – A Review, 1967–68:35).
The cultural deposit at Kondapur extends over a 1-km area and in 1941–42
Ghulam Yazdani excavated the site on behalf of the Archaeological Department
of Hyderabad. The excavated material showed that Kondapur was a thriving town
from around the second century BC to the third century AD. Hundreds of terracotta
figurines made from double moulds, clay bullae made in imitation of Roman coins,
the finds of Sātavāhana coins, and a large collection of personal ornaments indicate
the prosperity of the site. These represent deities such as bodhisattvas, yakṣas,
yakṣiṇīs, and other religious or semi-religious beings. The modelling of these terra-
cottas is exquisite and present expressive faces and elaborate coiffures. As was also
usual in the early historical period, Kondapur was home to a large Buddhist mon-
astic community represented in the archaeological excavations by stupas and
vihāras (Yazdani 1960:775).
The secluded Nagarjunakonda valley shut in on three sides by offshoots of the
Nallamalai Hill Range has yielded archaeological evidence for settlement from
the earliest Neolithic period in the third millennium BC to the sixteenth century.
More than thirty Buddhist establishments, nineteen Hindu temples, and a few med-
ieval Jaina shrines were unearthed in several seasons of archaeological excavations
conducted at the site after its discovery in 1920 until its submergence in 1960. The
earliest evidence of working in stone is indicated by Iron Age burials dated to the
latter half of the first millennium BC. Stone circles surrounded the burials or mega-
liths, which included both pit-burials and cists made of dressed stone covered with
heaps of stone. In addition to the burials, the excavations unearthed Hindu tem-
ples, Buddhist monastic complexes discussed above, and 22 memorial pillars often
associated with religious architecture. Another form of architecture comprised flat-
roofed open pillared halls found all around the valley at Nagarjunakonda. Thus, the
complex patterning of secular and religious space is evident.
In conclusion to this section, it is evident that rather than representing a Dra-
vidian/autochthonous tradition, terracotta female figurines by no means form a
homogenous category. Instead, they include a range of forms and were distributed
both locally and across a larger region such as the Gaṅgā valley or the Deccan. A
multiplicity of functions and religious affiliations are evident, as in the represen-
tation of Hindu and Buddhist deities in terracotta. It is then evident that rather
than representing folk or archaic practices later incorporated into the Hindu fold
by brāhmaṇas, terracotta images often worshipped in open-air shrines formed a
part of the diverse sacred landscape and continued well into the present. Can
we place them in hierarchical order with the temple patronised by royalty at
one end of the scale? I would suggest that the issue of patronage of temples
requires revisiting.
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Patronage, inscriptions, and the temple
There is a need to critically evaluate the question of patronage since temples are
usually associated with royalty in secondary writings. Though Kulke disagrees with
Burton Stein on the extent of autonomy enjoyed by nuclear areas of sub-regional
powers from sixth to twelfth century AD, in the context of Orissa he does concede
that these core regions of Hindu civilisation emerged as a result of a ‘sustained dis-
placement of tribally organised, pastoral, and hunting society of forests and upland
areas by caste-organised village-based societies’ (Stein 1969:185). In this colonisa-
tion of nuclear areas, the temple was indispensable to Indian kingship (Kulke
1993:3). In this section, we analyse the location of temples vis-à-vis political centres
and the extent to which the inscriptional record supports the case of royal
donations. In the context of Karnataka, for example, only seven out of hundred
and forty temples record a dedication of the royal family of the Chalukyas. Further-
more, these ‘royal’ shrines are scattered within the larger domain associated with
the Chalukyas, rather than being clustered in proximity to political space. This is
an issue that has been analysed in several writings on temples from south India.
A majority of the thirteenth century inscriptions from Andhra, for example,
were either engraved on temple walls or on pillars and slabs within the temple pre-
cincts. Not all temples have provided evidence for inscriptions. Based on an analy-
sis of the eight hundred and ninety five inscriptions from Andhra dated from 1175
to 1325 AD, as also the dimensions of the temples where they are found, Talbot has
concluded that their geographic distribution in the region was uneven, with a clus-
tering of temples in the coastal areas (Talbot 1991). It is evident that several large
temple complexes in the coastal regions were also centres of pilgrimage and were
able to attract large endowments. The three most popular temple complexes were
located at Tripurantakam in Prakasam district, Daksharama in East Godavari dis-
trict, and Vijayawada in Krishna district. It is suggested that there were two differ-
ing patterns of donations: one, a tightly focused network in the highly patronised
temples in the coastal regions; and another a more diffuse network comprising
scattered and smaller temples in the interior. It is at this time from 1163 to
1323 that political power was consolidated under the Kakatiyas, who ruled from
their capital in the interior at Warangal. In contrast, the major coastal temples
drew their patronage from non-landed boyas identified as pastoralists, settis or mer-
chants, and women, while donations for the minor temples in the interior came
from nāyakas or military officials, and mahārājas or the political elite. The sanctity
of the larger temples was mainly due to the orthodoxy of their rituals and the San-
skritic affiliations of their myths (Talbot 1991). These conclusions are significant
and are also valid for other regions of the subcontinent.
An analysis of stone inscriptions from the eighth to thirteenth century in the
Tamil country indicates that the number of royal inscriptions recording gifts to
temples is nowhere greater than 1%. Chola rulers were overshadowed as patrons
to temples not only by their queens, but more significantly also by their predeces-
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sors, the Pandya kings. ‘The notion that the Chola monarchs were paradigmatic
temple patrons is questionable not only because of the small number of their gifts,
but also because of their lack of chronological priority’ (Orr 2007:94). Instead the
pattern for royalty seems to be to donate generously to specific sacred sites, both
Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava in newly conquered territories to project themselves as
legitimate inheritors of the tradition. For example, the Pandyas, donated liberally
to four major temples in the Chola heartland, viz. Chidambaram, Kattumannargudi,
Srirangam, and Tiruvanaikka. When Vijayanagara rulers seized power in the four-
teenth century, they ‘sought to represent themselves as legitimate successors of
the Pandyas’ as evident from the fourteenth century poem Madhurāvijaya
(Orr 2007:95). It is then evident that temples need to be studied in regional rather
than dynastic terms.

Instead of looking for royal figures or dynasties as the agents of change, as those
responsible for inspiring or instituting new religious and artistic forms, we
would do well to attend to the ways in which variations and transformations
were related to a complex and shifting backdrop of regional and local on-the-
ground realities .... Our ideas of empire, of government, of temple life, and of
Indian kingship have been coloured by the history of more recent times, and
we must exercise caution in using these ideas to interpret the past (Orr 2007:97).

How then does one identify the role of the temple in the society? In this final
section, I suggest that rather than interpreting religious structures as static indica-
tors of royal generosity, the involvement of the community needs to be factored in,
as well as the fact that maintenance and survival of religious shrines depended on
reinvention and support by groups who had interest and stake in it.
Based on ethnographic analysis, Meister concludes that temples are ritual
instruments and their function is ‘to web individuals and communities into a com-
plicated and inconsistent social fabric through time’ (Meister 2000:24). It is the
strands of this social fabric that need to be understood and appreciated. One of
the basic questions that emerges is, who has proprietary rights (svāmitva) over a
temple? This question is not easy to answer since proprietary rights at a temple
or other sacred site in India can be multiple and overlapping. At the most basic
level these claims are based on the continuity of the priest’s service or sevā to
the temple. In some cases, these are exclusivist claims since the pujārīs or priests
are also in total control over the temple, while in other cases they are partial
claims as the pujārīs have hereditary rights, which cannot be alienated.
It is significant that while the origin myths of most of these temples associate
their founding with a royal patron, yet there is little historical evidence for this
during most of their existence. Another basis for proprietary claim is genealogical
and the fact that a particular community has a special relationship with the deity.
For example, Dadhimati is said to be the kuladevī or caste goddess of the Dahima
brāhmaṇas and it is on this basis that Dahimas have staked claims to the sole pro-
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prietorship of the temple (Meister 2000:40). Rights to worship a deity may also be
based on an alternative identity of the image. For example, the main image in the
Kesariyaji temple south of Udaipur is worshipped by the Jains as the Jina Adinatha,
while the local Bhil tribals worship it as Kalaji or Karia Baba. The incorporation of
ethnographic data underscores the role of the temple within the community and
the need to discuss it within issues of identity formation and pilgrimage.

The temple as a marker of cultural identity


Two views persist with reference to the term Hindu and its use as a marker of cul-
tural identity in the pre-colonial period.4 One regards it as a single, great tradition
of many interrelated parts stemming from the revelation (śruti) of the Vedas. The
other sees Hinduism as a nineteenth-century construction with no social or
religious identity (Flood 1995). I would like to suggest that pan-Indian cultural
practices, rituals, and imagery formed the substratum of a self-perception and
identity of the local population of the subcontinent long before the European dis-
covery of the term ‘Hindu’ and a judicious use of archaeological data provides evi-
dence to unearth this identity. Significantly archaeology presents a very different
perspective on the study of religious transformation and patronage in early south
Asia when compared to conventional historical writings on the subject. The crucial
element in the Asian landscape was the religious shrine and it is important to
locate it in a social context and to unravel the multiple levels at which sacred sites
interacted with a diverse range of communities and negotiated between these (Ray
2007a).
Scholars (Flood 1995; Hardy 1990) have contested the prevailing notion that Hin-
duism was purely the construction of Western orientalists to make sense of the
plurality of religious phenomena within the vast geographical area of South Asia
(Halbfass 1991:1–22; von Stietencron 1991:1–22). The basic issue concerns the defi-
nition of the term ‘religion’ as belief or faith, which has developed out of a largely
Protestant understanding. To what extent has the perception of Hinduism been
mediated by Western understanding of the nature of religion, and the projection
of Hinduism as an ‘other’ to the West’s Christianity (Inden 1990)? It is evident that
the present definition of religion is inadequate and would need to be modified to
include a variety of cultural practices, which formed an integral part of religion in
the ancient period. ‘Religion needs to be located squarely within human society and
culture; there is no privileged discourse of religion outside particular cultures and
societies’ (Flood 1995).
The sacredness exists entirely within culture and manifests itself in a variety of
contexts: temples, locations, images, and people. The sacredness of time, objects, or
persons depends upon context, and the boundaries between the sacred and the
everyday routine are fluid. A temple image or icon prior to consecration is merely
stone, metal, or wood; once consecrated, however, it is empowered and becomes
the focus of mediation (Flood 1995). Within this redefinition of ‘religion’ what a
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Hindu does is more important than what he or she believes. Hinduism is not cree-
dal and adherence to dharma is therefore not an acceptance of certain beliefs but
the performance of certain duties, which are defined in accordance with dharmic
social stratification. This position is further supported by Frits Staal who states that
a Hindu ‘may be a theist, pantheist, atheist, communist and believe whatever he
likes, but what makes him a Hindu are the ritual practices he performs and the
rules to which he adheres, in short, what he does’ (Staal 1989:389). These rituals
and social rules are derived from the Hindu primary revelation, the Veda, and from
the secondary revelation, the inspired texts of human authorship. One may add
that these rules find expression in various forms, such as a range of Vedic
sacrifices, which continued to be performed well into the historical period, domes-
tic rituals, and pūjā or worship as manifested within the physical form of the
temple.
This is especially important in the context of the temple complexes of Aihole,
Badami, and Pattadakal, which redefined sacred space in the Malaprabha valley
in north Karnataka in the sixth–seventh centuries AD. The setting up of the reli-
gious sites not only altered the physical and cultural landscape, but also these
structures continued to be altered and reinvented. At both ends of the 25 km long
fertile valley of the Malaprabha river (a tributary of the Krishna) in Bagalkot dis-
trict, the hills close in and Badami lies some distance outside the southern entrance
to the enclosed terrain. Here, between the cliffs there is a huge tank and temples
are scattered around this water-body. Aihole (Aryapura/Ahivolal) is located at the
opposite entrance to the valley almost 50 km from Badami and in the middle of the
valley lies Pattadakal (ancient Kisuvolal), where a complex of temples were built on
the banks of Malaprabha, which at this point runs auspiciously from south to north.
Mahakuta lies 5 km east of Badami as the crow flies in a cleft in the hills and con-
tinues to be a place of pilgrimage, with most of the shrines built around a sacred
tank within a walled enclosure. Other significant places include the site of
Nāganātha temple, in the forested area; rock shelters at B.N. Jalihalla and
Siddhanakolla in the hills near Aihole; Sandur in Bellary district; Banavasi, the
ancient Kadamba capital; Kudaveli Sangam; Satyavolu; and Alampur, 150 km or
so to the east (Ray 2007b).
Seven out of hundred and forty temples bear an inscription recording a dedica-
tion of the royal family of the Chalukyas and three of these are at Pattadakal, two
at Badami, one at Mahakuta and one at Alampur. What then was the role of the
kings, considering that very few temples provide evidence of being patronised
by the ruling elite? A response to this question necessarily involves an examination
of the unique spatial context of these sites and the diverse nature of these shrines,
which were not only dedicated to a host of Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain deities, but
also owed affiliation to fertility cults such as that of Lajjā-Gaurī.
Local tradition as recorded in the Mahākūṭa Māhātmya narrates that this was the
scene of destruction of the demon brothers Vatapi and Ilvala by the saint Agastya.
Śakambari Māhātmya, a section of Skanda Purāṇa mentions the sacred place –
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Mahakuta as the original abode of Devī Śakambari. Near the steps on the west side
of the tank stands a liṅga-shrine in the water with a pañcamukhaliṅga, while in the
courtyard are a number of small liṅga temples and a cell with an image of Lajjā-
Gaurī. The only two temples of any size in the courtyard are those of Mallikārjuna
and Mahākūṭeśvara, and it is the latter that has three inscriptions. The first is in
the porch of the temple and belongs to the time of the Chalukya king Vijayāditya.
It records that one of his concubines prāṇa-vallabhā Vināpoti bestowed the entire
gift of a hiraṇyagarbha and having made a pedestal for the god with rubies and
having set up its silver umbrella, gave a field called Mangalulle (of the measure
of) eight hundred.
Several phases of temple construction have been identified at Aihole starting
from the late sixth century, which continued until the twelfth century with several
renovations and additions. In the Durga temple, for example, a stepwell and a
shrine were added in the later Kalyani Chalukya period (AD 973–1198), while
Konti-guddi group received additional structures in the Rashtrakuta period (AD
757–973). No stone temples were, however, created at Aihole after the twelfth cen-
tury. There seems to have been a lateral shift at some centres. Thus, the Galagnatha
at Pattadakal replicates the Visva Brahmā at Alampur – the former was the first at
Pattadakal and the latter was the last at Alampur. From the eighth to the tenth
century, the temples were distributed widely across the Deccan. In addition to
the continuation of earlier shrines, new constructions came up and especially sig-
nificant are the two relatively large Jaina shrines at Melagudi at Hallur and the
Jaina temple at Pattadakal, a few hundred metres from the complex dated to the
early Chalukya period. At Kukkanur, in Dharwar district, temples of different per-
iods were found in the middle of the town and fifteen inscriptions were identified
dating from AD 1005 to 1186, as well as a few of the Vijayanagara period (Cousens
1926:72).
In the thirteenth–fifteenth century, with the expansion of the Vijayanagar king-
dom, the sacred geography of peninsular India was redefined and many of the tem-
ples bear imprints of this. The city of Hampi expanded from a small temple centre
with at the most a few thousand inhabitants in the thirteenth and early fourteenth
centuries, to one of the largest and most prosperous cities in Asia (indeed the
world) by the mid-fifteenth century. This expansion coincided with the presence
of inscriptions dated to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries over an extensive
area. Thus, the nine temples at Alampur were reclaimed as Nava Brahmā in a cop-
per-plate inscription dated 1526 AD (Khan 1973:23). The Kālāmukhas became a
dominant sect in the region from the ninth century onwards and their maṭhas at
Alampur and Papanasi wielded enormous influence, as a result Alampur was known
as Brahmeśvara sthāna (Sarma 1972:42–5). This ties in with the origin narrative as
mentioned in the region’s sthala purāṇa, which states that Brahmā established the
nine temples at Alampur (Ramesan 1962:34). Thus, it is evident that the temples in
the Malaprabha valley were affiliated to a range of deities: two were Śaiva (cave 1
at Badami and the Ravalaphadi, Aihole), two Vaiṣṇava (caves 2 and 3 at Badami)
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and two Jaina (cave 4, Badami and the Jaina cave temple at Aihole). The Meguti in
Aihole was also a Jaina temple, while there was a two-storeyed Buddhist vihāra at
Aihole, built against the hillside beneath the Meguti. Most temples of the later
phase, however, were dedicated to Śiva and the three garbhagṛhas of Jambuliṅgeśvara,
Badami housed the trinity of Brahmā, Viṣṇu, and Śiva. In addition, there were tem-
ples dedicated to Sūrya, the most prominent of these being the Durga temple at
Aihole. The final point is evident – without the support of the community the tem-
ples at Aihole and Pattadakal lost their relevance and survived only as relics of the
past. In contrast, those at Badami and Mahakuta underwent several changes, rein-
vented themselves and continued almost uninterruptedly.

Conclusion
In the final analysis it is evident that a spatial analysis of religious architecture
emphasises continued sanctity of several locations from the prehistoric period
onwards, as a result of which sites such as Badami or Aihole retain their religious
position for a very long period. Others such as Mahakuta owe their religious signif-
icance to myths associated with them and repeated in the Purāṇas and the Māhāt-
myas. Secondly, the diverse nature of religious architecture and the coexistence of
Buddhist, Jain, and Hindu shrines along with those of local cults is obvious. Of par-
ticular relevance is the reinvention of rock shelters within the changed landscape
of Hindu shrines and networks of pilgrimage and the location of Lajjā-Gaurī shrines
in close proximity to temples as at the rock shelter at Siddhanakolla near Aihole.
The site continues to be in worship as an annual fair is held at the time of saṅkrānti
when devotees come in large numbers and a modern temple has been built at the
site. A final realisation evident from the archaeological record is the close associa-
tion between religious architecture and the community. This interaction is best
exemplified by shared agrarian spaces as indicated by the presence of water sys-
tems, for example, the tanks at Badami and Mahakuta and the large number of
stepped wells at Aihole.
Historians have tended to discuss the temple in terms of acculturation and Sanskri-
tisation suggesting the integration of local cults and deities. The above survey indi-
cates that this may perhaps be a simplification of a complex process that involved
sharing and negotiation rather than hegemony and assimilation. This sharing and
negotiation was a bilateral process founded on the basic relevance of religious sites
and structures to the community that maintained and supported them.

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Notes
1 James Ferguson’s History of Architecture first appeared in 1855 as part of his well-
known Handbook. A new edition very liberally enlarged appeared in 1862 also as part
of a similar general History of Architecture in all Countries, while the third edition was
published as History of Indian and Eastern Architecture, London: John Murray in 1876.
2 The chief characteristic features of Gupta temples are

1. flat roofs, without spires of any kind, as in the cave temples;


2. prolongation of the head of the doorway beyond the jambs as in Egyptian
temples;
3. statues of the rivers Ganges and Jumna guarding the entrance door;
4. pillars, with massive square capitals, ornamented with two lions back to
back, with a tree between them;
5. bosses on the capitals and friezes of a very peculiar form like Buddhist stu-
pas, or beehives, with projecting horns;
6. continuation of the architrave of the portico as a moulding all around the
building;
7. deviation in plan from the cardinal points (Cunningham 1879:42–3).

3 The 7.14 hectare site with a 3.2 m thick habitational deposit has provided data for
three cultural periods. Period I is Early Harappan (3000–2600 BC), Period II is Mature
Harappan (2500–1900 BC), and the third period is Early Historic (first century BC to
first century AD). The third period has yielded a range of ceramics such as Red ware,
Red slipped ware and Grey ware together with bangles, beads, and terracotta objects
(Paul 2000:53–66).
4 Contrary to the general perception that in Arabic texts, ‘Al-Hind’ defines people of
modern day India (Thapar 1993:77) and indicates the earliest use of the term, ‘Hindu’
or Hindush first occurs on the Apadana at Persepolis to indicate tribute-bearers to
the Persian court of Darius in the fifth–fourth centuries BC and is distinguished from
the residents of Gandhara. The ‘ism’ was added to ‘Hindu’ around 1830 to denote the
culture and religion of the Brahmans, which was then appropriated by Indians
themselves as they tried to establish a national identity separate to colonialism.

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