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About a hundred kilometers from Ahmedabad, the capital
city of Gujarat state, is what is one of the most beautiful
little temples ever built by an India that counts beautiful
temples in the thousands. This is the Surya temple at
Modhera, the Temple of the Sun, beloved God of the Solanki
rulers who caused it to be constructed in the eleventh
century. It is a solid little structure that just cries out for
the word 'spectacular' to be applied to it. It also has the
added charm of being off the tourist trail, even though every
book on Indian architecture makes a mandatory reference
to it. You can spend hours there with nobody to share the
solitude with, lest of all with the pests of 'guides'. Even in
its own time it was recognized as something special, as
tradition immediately began saying the temple was overlaid
in gold leaf, so brightly did the soft orange sandstone, it is
constructed of, blaze in the light of the eye of the World.
The temple is a pretty rare bird in being dated precisely on an
inscription on the back wall of the sanctum sanctorum, 1026 to
be exact. But even more splendid than the temple in the opinion
of many people, is the amazing tank in front of it. Between the
tank and the temple proper there is a Ranga-mandapa, a dance
hall. Far from cluttering up the vision, they all form a single
harmonious unit, though the dance hall was built a whole century
later. One of the more interesting experiences in Modhera is to go
to the bottom step of the tank and then ascend. With each flight
some more of the temple is visible, and the unusually high dominant
perspective it conveys is something that plays extraordinary tricks
with your visual orientation.
 The tank itself is a marvel of proportion and visual patterning, reminding
me again and again of the diagrams of Escher. As the rays of the sun
fall on different sections of it during the day, bright light causes some
segments to come into extraordinarily illuminated prominence and
others to sink into the recesses of shadows. It is a visual checkerboard,
and some people actually spend more time starting at the shifting light
within the now empty tank than at the temple proper. The tank is
profusely covered with sculpture in relief in wide bands that run all
alongside the length and breadth. They are distinguished as being
representative of lower life forms, which come up to the terrestrial human
level and then rise into the atmospheric level where are found the Gods.
Once you soar even above them you see the God in space, Surya, the
sun. Most well designed sun temples have a tank, for it reflects a belief
as old as the Rig Veda that the divine sun emerged from the Cosmic Waters.
The structure and carvings of the tank represent a Cosmos in miniature.
A complete circuit around it, easily done at any level because of broad
walkways of stone, is the equivalent of a tour of the universe, and the
subsequent earning of merit. And then you get the bonus prize, the
vision of the Sun.
It is too expensive to keep the tank filled up with water now, but in the
monsoons it happens naturally and then every visual effect is magnified
immeasurably. The temple and dance hall are reflected in the water.
The sculptures of the tank itself are also reflected back at you. As the
light shifts in the steady progression of the sun, the water adds its reflectant
quality to the already powerful pattern in place. With a little bit of breeze and
ripples on the water, you get an unparalleled light show. People suffering from
epilepsy are well advised to keep away from these transfiguring light images.
It is simply incredible, like an effect Turner would have labored to produce.
The temple itself is so constructed that the rays of the rising sun fall on the
image of the God and the temple, the effect magnified by being reflected
simultaneously in the water. The Gods carved into the tank walls with their
independent shrines are another ingenious stroke of workmanship. Up close
they appear rather amorphous and unfinished, but move a significant distance
away from them - which is how all the sculptures except what you are in front
of, will be in relation to you - and they suddenly take on clarity of feature and
outline. The problems of visual perspectives at a distance were clearly
anticipated and worked out.
The whole complex is set in a rather well maintained garden, which is
almost a park. The temple is too small to have been much in public use.
It is a private royal shrine, a comfortable horse ride away from the palace.
Twenty people in the dance hall would give it a pleasantly lived in feeling
and forty would be a distinct crowd. The temple itself is so small that
unlike other Indian temples you can take in all of it at one glance. Manifestly
therefore, the elite equivalent of a grotto shrine, but dressed up in gorgeous
decoration, as India has always preferred it. The temple however is elegant
more than gorgeous. It stands on a platform of brick, faced with stone, which
doubles up as a courtyard. In front of the dance hall there is an arched frame
that is one of the most beautiful structures to be found in the world. The dance
hall has four entrances at the four cardinal points, and it is a little gem of its
type in the integrity of fractal geometric principles that determine its fluted
design. There are some remarkable bracketed pillars sharing the burden of
keeping the roof up, and the interior is profusely illustrated with carvings of
scenes from the epics. The detail of each square inch is staggering to behold
and was obviously possible only for a people who had a very high regard for
polished workmanship and none at all for schedules.
The temple itself is a rather sad place, as all abandoned shrines of a once living
faith tend to be. The central spire and roof, called the Shikara is missing, perhaps
because of the ravages of time, but more likely demolished to get at the precious
stones that are always inserted into Shikaras to act as crystal focal points of the
ambient earth energies. The Image of Surya used to stand on a depressed pedestal,
set really deep and low into the ground. This was for technical reasons, as the
elevation of the temple complex made any other arrangement for one of the
paramount rules of Surya temples impossible to comply with. The rays of the
rising sun had to bathe the face of the Image, and this was the only way they
could do it. The temple is genuine architecture, not sculpture masquerading
as architecture as is common in many temples, but so beautifully are the
decorative elements blended in to cover the joints, that they are almost invisible.
There are a few images of the God set into niches in the wall, a very peculiar
departure from the usual norms. They are not of a very high quality, but they
do illustrate the standard peculiarity of Surya images, the God in knee length
boots! There are also some images carved to avert the evil eye that are really
unique, grotesqueries that Hiernoymous Bosch would have been proud of.
Like all really ancient Indian temples this seems to have been built on the site
of a previous Yaksha cult sacred ground. There is still a sacred circle of trees
and stones in place at the southwest corner of the complex that is a dead
giveaway of such a history. There is also an office of the Archeological Survey
of India, which in its own way is no less of a marvel. The on site museum, is in
two wings on either side of a little reception area. They always seem to be closed
and the person on duty blandly informs you that the three pieces of rubble and
indistinct torso on display near the reception desk constitute the whole collection.
There is a dazzling disregard for fact as well as an obvious reluctance to using a
broom daily, as opposed to once a month, in rooms that after all do not house
anything more important than a country's cultural inheritance. It is simply not
worth the effort to do anything more than state the rooms do not exist.
There is also literature available in profusion but not about Modhera. So if you
have a deep curiosity about the marvelous place you have just visited, the
organization ensures you can find out all you want about Agra, Bijapur,
Delhi, and Hampi - all of which are about a thousand kilometers from the
place you are in and do not share a stylistic or political heritage with it.
Why be narrow-minded about your quest for knowledge, seems to be the
expansive view taken. You even have a visitor's book, which the person on
duty became suddenly eloquent about and insisted that we sign. Peering
into it one found out that this state of affairs has been going on for over five
years. It might have been earlier, but the book's entries began then. To add
our litany of complaint seemed very much like gilding the lily, an obvious
perfection in incompetence had been reached. The insistence on signing is
actually job insurance, if a set number of signatures do not fill up the wretched
book, their job may be deemed superfluous and eliminated. That office taught
me much more than the temple, as to why such are not built any more.
Nevertheless, it is best to ignore these inevitabilities and allow the temple to
debauch your mind with pleasure. It may not be a living temple any more,
but it was once a place where something magnificent was achieved by men
for their God, a triumph of will and consciousness.
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