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Advance Access Publication 9 March 2009
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.
© The Author 2009. Oxford University Press and The Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. All rights reserved.
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The Shrine in Early Hinduism 77
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.
The Shrine in Early Hinduism 79
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
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.
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-
90 Himanshu Prabha Ray
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.
References
Bakker, H.T., 2007. ‘Human sacrifice (Purusamedha)’. In: Bremer, J.N. (Ed.), The Strange World
of Human Sacrifice, pp. 179–94. Groningen: Peeters Publishers.
Bautze, J.K., 1995. Early Indian Terracottas. Leiden: E.J. Brill.
Chakrabarti, D.K., 1997. Colonial Indology: Sociopolitcs of the Ancient Indian Past. New Delhi:
Munshiram Manoharlal.
94 Himanshu Prabha Ray
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
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.