Immortality, eternity and timelessness
By Arun Gaur

THE information given in the Karnataka tourism brochure was quite correct and quite misleading. Mileage-wise, it was quite correct in mentioning Aihole’s distance from Badami — just a few kilometres. But it doesn’t disclose, very prudently of course, that one may have to cool one’s heels there for three hours or even till eternity to catch the evening bus back to Badami.

Otherwise, if we can circumvent this nastiness through our own means, the visit to Aihole may very well be an instructive experience, unravelling a few of the earliest evolutionary strands of the temple-building activity in the Deccan.

Within an enclosure, there is a set of temples considered to be the most significant. Beyond it one may traverse a little distance to the Mallika-Arjuna temple. This road curves to the Ravullaphadi caves and then moves onwards to the Huchhimalliguddi temple. Before the road starts curving, on the right we may climb a little hillock to reach the non-Brahmanical caves.

If one feels like exploring, of course, one may have to roam about since there are a great many temples scattered all around. It is not only in the Deccan or the South that these temple-towns are found.

Even in the North at places like Nilkantha near Alwar one finds that such towns have been in existence.

Our lessons start right within the enclosure at hand. There is the apsidal Durga shrine, the most ancient Ladkhi temple and some others surrounded with moats that must have been filled with water at one time. It becomes, at such places, imperative not to look for pre-conceived majesty and to feel dismay that one has not found any masterpiece comparable to some perfect specimen of a later period. Though one does find majestic strokes here and there, the most crucial thing is to feel a subterranean pent-up fervidity seeking its expression; to feel the grand probings — emotional as well as intellectual — almost nervous, agitated, whimsical, unsettled.

If one has happened to come here one must feel the pulse of the time and the place. Sprouting or a decisive modification. An idea being incarnated or at least germinating. It happened at Deogarh in the sixth century during the Gupta Age at the site of the Dashavatara temple and one finds a similar kind of thing happening here fifth century onwards. One must also keep in mind that these were the surges of the grand experimentation done precisely at such places that the later so-called well-balanced cultural masterpieces could come into being.

The Ladkhi temple dated around 450 A.D. does not carry any shikhara as such. In its place there is a little curious cubical chapel clamped on the roof like a watch-post or a periscope popping out of the submerged submarine. Perhaps it started changing into a crude tower when it came to be fixated on the rooftop of the later Durga temple.

Apparently, there are many other oddities. Its name sounds Islamic (which is said to be after the name of one of its occupants). Moreover, it was dedicated to Vishnu but carries Nandi inside.

Its roof is made of large flat slabs held in place by the long narrow stones over the edges, giving it a thatch-like effect of the country houses made in wood. Further, the analysts have conjectured that this must have been a kind of a mix of the sacred and the secular. Prior to being a temple, it was probably a village assembly hall, where the elders deliberated on the day-to-day matters of the more serious import. There have been found such places elsewhere too with the epigraphical evidence bearing out the use of such a place as an assembly hall. The deliberations, the conclusions and the oaths taken must have been of utmost significance to the community life. The overlooking divine image, whether it had been installed from the very beginning or came somewhat later, probably endowed the entire proceedings with a binding sanctifying force.

Later on, when the structure probably outgrew that secular utility, the free space available between the peripheral columns, it seems, was filled up. This turned columns into pilasters. Thus, we see how the thing was gradually turning itself into a more pronounced religious structure. Such a blocking of the free space did overturn the original plan. It blocked the air passages and light, necessitating further modifications. Consequently, the perforated screen was fixed in the enclosure wall for the sake of ventilation as well as light. This screen, along with the column capital and sloping seats, became a standard feature in many of the later Chalukyan temples like the Virupaksha temple of Pattadakal.

The Durga temple is generally placed within the 6th century. There are some historians who opine that the shrine fronts of the niches carved out for the deities use an array of well-developed features of the North Indian as well as the South Indian temples and so the temple should belong to a later date. The inscription of Vikramaditya II, too, places the temple in the early 8th century.

In spite of certain advanced features and the dated inscription, the work remains multilayered. A layer here and there does suggest an older origin. Something of the apparently haphazard experimentation can be witnessed here too, albeit compared to the Ladkhi temple some of the carvings here are masterful strokes.

The Chalukyas and the Pallavas were not very kind to the Buddhist art and architecture. But we see how prominently, nay even spectacularly, the chaitya configuration has been stationed on the shikhara of the Virupaksha temple of Pattadakal.

One can even spot it from a distance. Thus Buddhist canons implicitly remained one of the powerful influences of the non-Buddhist structures. An explicit acceptance of that was perhaps not possible.

Was this temple very crucial in the development of the Virupaksha temple of Pattadakal? I personally feel that it was, though I may be very much in the wrong. There is a theoretical possibility that as at the present place the shikhara was not precisely developed. The chaitya was given such a prominence in the ground plan. But since the Chalukyas were quite averse to such a Buddhistic prominence, this feature subtly shifted its station to the well-developed shikhara of the Virupaksha temple in a much finer form (unlike the stark massive one in the ground plan of the present temple).

Once this task was accomplished the Bahamanical temple could be reverted to the original ground plans, or would simply progress to, if no reversion was possible, to a new evolving ground plan. That there was a continuous progression in plans in the Aihole temples is also borne out by the more developed shikhara of the Huchhimalliguddi temple as well as by its suggestion of the development of antarala — an intermediate chamber in front of the garbhagriha.

In the Durga shrine the life-sized figures of Mahishamardini and other avataras are there but these are the bhutagana, the miniatures on the two of the bulky pillars, and the Nagaraja on the ceiling of the mukhamandapa that draw immediate attention.

The Ravullaphadi cave (mid 7th century) may be unfavourably compared to the cave temples of Badami. Neither is it excavated out of the giant rock like that of Badami, nor are there present any gigantic awe-inspiring figures like that of Trivikrama. Moreover, one of its three sub-shrines seems to have been left incomplete.

Yet unlike cave-I of Badami, here Shiva dances with a tremendous effect. He has regained all his vibrancy. Holding the cobra over his head, as a dancer stretches and sways a piece of coloured ribbon over his head, he bursts into a gaiety. The life-sized figures of the graceful saptamatrikas, dance with him with a slow restrained rhythm. Ganesha also dances with them. These saptamatrikas don the cylindrical head-covers quite resembling the ones that I found on the heads of ladies in the Shaiva temple of the fort of Kalinjar.

In a corner Shiva as Gangadhara carries the three female figures — Ganga, Yamuna and Sarasvati. Nearby like Bhringi of Veenadhara of the cave-I of Badami, there is the emaciated Bhagiratha, doing a deep penance by keeping one leg lifted. Near the monolith linga, Varaha lifts Bhu out of the ocean and she sits near the god’s elbow, dangling her legs leisurely. Finally, she gets relief which was not made available to her in her standing posture on a god’s palm in the cave-III of Badami.