|
Religion and architecture,
sculpture, drama and an eldtrich vision combined in a compelling
assertion of reality in the great Bhojeshwar temple.
We have heard legends about Raja
Bhoja in many places across the country. Raja Bhoja, was an engineer,
a warrior, a great administrator and a man of formidable vision. We
had not, however, encountered any of his works. And then, in Bhopal,
we learnt that the remains of his ancient capital lay a few
kilometres away.
After we had driven for a while
on the Bhopal-Hoshangabad highway, we turned off onto a branch road.
From here onwards, the land seemed to be greener, appreciably more
lush and yielding to the plough. And then, a little less than 30
kilometres out of Bhopal, the road began to wind up an arid,
boulder-strewn hill rising above the softening mist. Here a great
monument crowned the top defiantly challenging time and invaders.
Once upon a time, 900 years ago,
this was Bhojapura, a city centred around a Shiva temple founded by
the Paramara king of Dhar. And thereby hangs one of the many
fascinating tales of our land compounded of history, legend and the
rich bardic embroidery that is so typical of the sagas of our past.
No one really knows who the Paramaras were. They could have been
warrior nomads from the Steppes who had ridden into the reputedly
rich lands of India.
The Paramara dynasty lasted for
110 years and produced a lineage of warrior-scholars who were as
adroit at waging wars as they were at penning poems. But of all the
heroic Paramaras who dominated Malwa, Raja Bhoja was undoubtedly the
greatest. He not only fought against the Huns and Chalukyas of
Kalyani, he also wrote books on astronomy, medicine, grammar,
lexicono-graphy, religion and architecture. And then, according to
the legend, he contracted a terrible skin disease.
We have often come across this
phenomena of dermatological disorders of kings very often. The ruler
of Suraj Kund in Haryana, for instance, was a victim; so was the
great king who created the Sun temple at Konark. And, invariably,
legends insist that they were scholar-warriors. Did these
much-talented men suffer from deep, sub-conscious conflicts? Were
they in fact victims of constitutional eczema set up by a stress
response between their scholarly natures and their need to be
belligerent warriors? Interestingly all such legendary patients have
been advised by sages to dig lakes which would benefit the community
and to bathe in such socially enriching reservoirs. Bhoja’s
conflict must have been extremely deep because an ascetic advised him
to construct a lake larger than any other in India, fed by 365
springs and bathe in it at an auspicious hour.
About 40 kilometres from Bhopal,
near the headwaters of the Betwa, Bhoja’s engineers found just
such a concourse of natural springs. With great ingenuity, they
constructed a lake which, spread over 64,750 hectares, changed the
climate of Malwa. The great social benefits of this stupendous work
must have soothed the troubled mind of Bhoja because after he bathed
in the lake his ailment was cured. It was probably then that, in
thanksgiving, he began the construction of the great Bhojeshwar
temple.
Today, this ruined and incomplete
structure still humbles the mind. Constructed in the latter part of
the 11th century, its great stone blocks encompass a door frame which
towers ten metres high and five metres wide. Four titanic pillars,
richly carved, rise to support an incomplete dome. The high noon sun
lances through the dome, illuminates a massive pedestal made of three
stepped blocks of sandstone, seven metres square. An iron ladder
ascends this huge pedestal to reach the uppermost platform, directly
beneath the high roof, open to the sky.
Dominating this platform and the
great brooding temple is a magnificent lingam more than two metres
high and over five metres in circumference.
We stood at the base of the
temple, near its facing Nandi shrine and looked up at this emblem of
primeval power for a long time. The great lake, now drained but still
lush and green-bedded with fields, showed Bhoja’s imperial
might. The temple still shows the Renaissance reach of his mind. Here
religion and architecture, sculpture, drama and weird vision combine
in a compelling assertion of reality. There is a brooding imminence
about this great black temple that demands attention and reverence;
and streams of school girls, as bright as moving garlands of flowers,
moved up and down the ladder seeking the blessings of the great
monolith, bowing to mumbled prayers from an ochre-robed,
white-bearded priest who stood near like a vision of a benevolent and
slightly portly Father Time.
If the incomplete temple can
evoke such awe, how much reverential fear would have been evoked by
the final work of Raja Bhoja? But the savant king was fated never to
complete his imposing shrine. For, at the glorious end of the
Paramara era in 1060, the Chalukyas of Kalyani and Gujarat combined
with Lakshmi-Karna of the Kalachuri dynasty attacked Raja Bhoja’s
capital. In that fierce battle, Raja Bhoja died defending his
kingdom. And so today, only the temple stands, and beyond it, a
damaged Jain colossus rides in a whitewashed building. Stones still
lie around partially carved as they had been when the sculptors fled
nine centuries ago when Bhoja fell. Eagles still wheel in the wide
sky as they did over that ancient bloody battlefield. And a train
chuffs and mourns across the plain like a sad spirit of a warrior,
slowly departing.
But though the king is dead, his
forty-two year reign is celebrated in myth and legend. And also in
this time-defying monument. For, as long as the temple stands, and
the doorway towers and the sculptures enchant and the great lingam
broods with implacable power in the 900 year old Bhojeshwar, so long
will the memory of King Bhoja shine like a diadem.
| 