Sunday, December 17, 2000		Travel

Poetry in white stone
By Arun Gaur

FROM Kota, we follow the Chambal and touch its water collected in a vast reservoir and move on the periphery of Darah Wildlife Sanctuary, ascend the ghat road from where we have a panoramic view of leafless brown trees. Then we descend to the Bardoli group of temples set amid a grove and hardly visible from the road.

From the road, one can see only a diminutive one-celled shrine amid a small water tank, it is a fine preface to the structural romance a little ahead. In the later afternoon light, the superb towers of the temple of Ghateshwar Mahadev (derived probably from ghata — the undulating hills or ghara — the pot shaped phallic stone in the sanctum), and those of Ganesh, Kali and Trimurti gleam like white, shaded crystals in the golden sky. Raja Hun of the Parmar race was the lord of the Pathar — the rocky terrain, and these temples are attributed to him (9th-12th centuries).

Like many other kings, he too seems to have his retreat at Menal and thus he could very well be a link between the Menal and the Bardoli structures.

The principal Ghateswar temple has a usual five-projection ground-plan. There are a few marked features that make it distinct from other equally remarkable temple complexes at Menal, Bijolian and Jhalara-Pattan in south east Rajasthan.

It has a vestibule between the portico and the sancto-sanctum, and the stepped jointure starting a little below the tower top, elegantly balances the vertical tower and the horizontal portico, in a compact mass. Besides, it boasts of a detached Ranga Mandap (Shringar Chauri) with an elaborately carved and sculpted bell roof. Its proportions suggest that, conceptually, it was too big to be attached to the main temple body and instead of shrinking its size, it was given a separate elaborate existence.

All along the base of the bell-roof, there runs a band of whiter stone figurines in relief but slightly recessed. They have mythological and animal motifs — Vaishnav and Jain gods, dancing sylphs (a link with Khajuraho), elephant faces.

The walls of the main temple, though plain on the three sides, have a centrally-placed niche supporting a major sculpted many-armed divine being — Andhakantak, Natesh, Chamunda, each overhung with a gabled element. Its tower, in the main, is without any sculpture or stepped sub-shrines, but enjoys a regularly perforated surface that glistens and darkens.

A version of locally available whiter stone, makes it glimmer all the more, but without dazzling the eyes.

The basal ring beneath the crowning element (that is designed to look like stringed razor-sharp discs, a hoop of bangles, or a serrated circumference), is surmounted by a delicately poised soft — almost rubbery and spongy, rounded finial. Just below the crown, a full-fledged standing man with left foot raised seems to be in the process of climbing the tower, but has been perhaps thoughtfully kept there to raise the flag-staff. Apparently, the ghataghara or pot-shaped phallic stone in the sanctum has an affinity with the pot-finial.

The sanctum door, apart from the usual Ganga-Yamuna figures, has the unusually big and finely carved Natesh within, Parvati inside, boldly formed, puts on a flat cap and has an elderly, almost masculine bearing.

The sculpture, particularly, of the Trimurti temple is par excellence. It is so badly mutilated that in parts the once beautiful facial expressions have acquired a ghastly tenor. One recalls one of the similar microcosmic representations that the nymphs at the door of the oldest dated 9689 A.D.) temple in Rajasthan carry at Chandravati.

The information-board, with hardly any correct spellings, does manage to point out that the delicate free-standing pillars of the toran doorway, with the joining bar missing, in front of the Trimurti temple may be the remnants of another totally demolished temple.

Though these temples are right on the road, yet fortunately or unfortunately they are easily missed by the commuters on the Kota-Rawat Bhatta road. At last, when one day they happen to alight inside the complex, their astonishment is general. They wonder as to how they could have missed such a treasure.