|
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.
|