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A soft pearly light dims
the stars and lifts the opaque veil of darkness from Mahabalipuram
and the pyramidal contours of a diminutive temple swim into view
silhouetted against a vast cathedral sky, like a wondrous unreality
spun out of early morning magic.
The colours deepen; the
virginal blush of dawn smears the sky. Delicate skeins of pale gold
and searing orange lie intertwined in intimate embrace across the
smudged horizon, suffusing the idle waters of the Bay of Bengal-an
unabashed foreplay of colours. A thin hot wedge of vivid red emerges
out of the sea, growing every moment into a flaming, pulsating disc
that soon disowns the theatre of its birth.
The lone temple, that
guardian of the shore, is a becalmed spectator. It has been an
apathetic witness to this impassioned spectacle every dawn for the
last twelve hundred years.
For Mahabalipuram –
Mamallapuram, the ancient name for it has now been revived – is
one of history’s intriguing enigmas. It was flourishing port
town of the Pallava rulers of south India who chiseled in stone a
fabulous “open-air museum” of sculpture under the vault of
a burning sky. That much is known. But was this sculptural
glorification a king’s fancy? A celebration of war victories?
A queen’s fantasy? A stone bench at the site is supposedly one
on which kings of the time sat while discussing projects with their
masons.
Why then after all that
royal patronage, was most of the work abandoned? Left incomplete?
What interrupted them in their tasks? No answers are available.
They say there were seven
pagodas or temples on the shores of Mahabalipuram. All but one were
pillaged by the rapacious sea, though there is little underwater
evidence to substantiate their existence.
The mystery of
Mahabalipuram lingers, unraveled, but its sculptural extravaganza is
a living testament of the virile artistic temperament of the Pallavas
who were trend-setters in south Indian art. And their monuments
tenanted by the gods evoke the transience of man and his
civilization. The Shore Temple and the five rathas (chariots)
are forerunners of the Draviddian style of architecture that evolved
later. Mahabalipuram is supposed to be the handiwork of three
monarchs. Mahendravarman I (600-630 A.D.), Narasimhavarman I (630-666
A.D.) and Narasimhavarman II ((700-728 A.D.). Hence the three
distinctly discernible styles of sculpture reflecting progressive
degrees of refinement. One school of thought attributes this
wonderland in stone entirely to the multi-faceted artistic genius of
Rajasthan, though the coastal village itself derives its name from
Narasimhavarman I hailed as Mamallan or Mahamalla (great wrestler).
A delightful freshness
permeates their outpourings here, larger due to their folk art
origins. Rocks have been scooped out to make cave temples and
rock-cut shrines. Rock surfaces have been filled with bas-reliefs
and panels crowded with a cavalcade of men, gods and animals, their
figures and movements breathtakingly realistic.
The Varaha cave, a small
rock-cut mandapam (hall) is a faceted and finished gem with
four panels of the famous Pallava door-keepers who wear an expression
of “pious rapture,” as Heinrich Zimmer, a leading expert on
Mahabalipuram put it. There is about them a mood of contemplative
reverie, a lyrical softness and a subtle grace totally at variance
with the primordial machismo their role as guard’s of the gods
imposes on them. In the presence of their divine masters, the surge
of manhood is harnessed into a religious fervour.
Feeble sunlight glimmers
on panels of enduring beauty in the Mahishamardini cave. The
Somaskanda sculpture radiates peace, power and wisdom while Lord
Vishnu in omniscient repose is a masterpiece of dhwani (the
art of suggestion) perfected by the Pallava sculptor.
It finds vivid and
animated expression in the northern wall panel that is an explosive,
action-packed scene of a hunting aesthetic perfection. Goddess
Durga’s fight with the buffalo-headed demon Mahishasura, an
episode culled form the celebrated Sanskrit poem Devi Mahatmya.
It is a glimpse of
eternal beauty, a fragment in time, a fleeting moment imprisoned
forever on stone. The young, sylph-like goddess looks playful in
battle. Humour puckers the corners of her full lips and a strange
ecstasy glows on her face. Her head is titled back in saucy pride,
her diadem undisturbed. A heavy necklace nestles in the soft
sanctuary of her bursting young bosom restrained only by the barest
hint of a raiment. Reckless courage courses through her slender
arched body and she flexes her arms regally aiming her deadly missile
t her brutish adversary who is well-versed in craft, cunning and
stratagem, endowed with a physical prowess the Devi Mahatmya
refers to with awe, “when the swaggered round with speed, the
earth crumbled into pieces under his hooves…” But the
goddess is unruffled, a remarkable serenity, a self-assurance and an
astute presence of mind in her pose. And a supreme confidence,
almost like a foretaste of victory.
And yet the battle is far
from won, though triumph does hover in the air. The demon retreats a
bit, not so much in arrogant bluster or defeat as in shrewd
appraisal. Brutal and retributive, weighing in his hands his large
iron club as much as his chances in war, biding his time to parry and
thrust.
Arjuna’s Penance,
perhaps the world’s largest bas-relief is the universe itself in
stone, throbbing with a vastness of conception. With magnificent
largesse did the Pallava mason spend himself on this colossus of art
27 metres long and 9 metres high. But the identity of the chief
protagonist of this panel has endlessly puzzled historians. Is he
Arjuna, the hero of the epic Mahabharata, or is the Bhagiratha,
Rama’s ancestor?
Legend has it that King
Bhagiratha had to bring down to earth the celestial Ganga to purify
and redeem the accursed souls of his ancestors. But the river in its
torrential plunge would inundate the earth and so he had to undergo a
penance to propitiate Shiva who finally received the flood in his
matted locks and let it trickle down! This was a sight for the
world’s creatures to see and they gathered round. The cleft in
the rock depicts the descent of Ganga, a theory supported by the
ruins of a stonewater tank on the hill. There is a forest with
tribal people and all forms of animal’s life, just as they would
appear in their habitat. Women clothed in an aura of ineffable
grace, a rich inner beauty transfiguring the plainest of them. The
whole scene has a delicate edge of humour. Juxtaposed against the
ascetic is a cat doing rigorous penance too, eyes firmly shut, even
to the delectable mice scampering around within easy reach!
The five rathas
(chariots) are architectural precursors of the temples of south
India. The smallest and the simples is the Draupadi ratha and
the largest is the multi-storeyed Dharmaraja ratha scoped from
a monolithic rock. These small unfinished shrines ravaged by war and
weather are things of undiminished beauty.
But it is the Shore
Temple a three-in-one abode of god that evokes the spell of
Mahabalipuram. A Vishnu temple sandwiched between two Shiva temples,
it is a visual delight, its precincts abounding in architectural
masterpieces.
On either side of it the
sea spreads, illimitable and infinite. The afternoon sun glances
slantingly through its weathered spires, curiously amorphous, lacking
in finiteness. And its is a disquieting thought that comes unbidden
to one’s mind. How long will it survive? This mute tireless
sentinel of the shore, pregnant with the unrevealed secrets of a
thousand two hundred years? How long more this grand defiance? How
long more this unyielding anchorage by the sea? For it is the Shore
Temple, wind-whipped and surf-beaten, that is that ultimate
expression of Mahabalipuram.
A 65-kilometres stretch
of sunscorched road connects Mahabalipuram to the fabled city of a
thousand temples, Kanchipuram.
Kanchipuram is the
ancient capital of the Pallava rulers who for some unknown reason,
ventured into Mahabalipuram first to perfect their art before they
here. Rampantly, leisurely, and superficially. But not
gratuitously.
A hot wind stirs
languorously in the stately old trees that dot the roadside. But
beyond, it is a treeless, trackless, tamed wilderness, the unexpected
patches of ripening green fields and thorny bushes melting into ochre
pools of water the recent rains have left behind.
Eyes are dulled by this
heatinduced soporific and a pleasant unconsciousness invades the
senses when one’s startled gaze focuses indistinctly at first,
on a bulky tiered stone gopuram (tower) that thrusts itself
insistently upward, dominating the landscape with a presence more
felt than seen.
But then this is just one
of the gopurams in the famous city of the Pallavas. For Rajasthan or
Atyantakama (he of boundless desires) as he is referred to in
inscriptions reveled in creating an “unlimited variety” of
art. There are 650 stone inscriptions in Kanchipuram belonging to
different dynasties and different periods; but though the city
reached its zenith during Pallava rule, their lithic records number a
mere 12.
The temples here reflect
the maturity and efflorescence of Pallava art and the ornate and
often imposing embellishments were produced later by the Chola,
Vijayanagara and Chalukyan kings. Transient royal whims that turned
into monumental endurance.
There is a solemn
grandeur, a grandiosity of vision and ornamental excess in the
temples here. A disembodied other-worldly stillness impregnates
their vast inner dodmains where time is a captive fugitive. The
Ekambaranathar temple, the outcome of the artistic impulses of three
different dynasties, has five prakarams (enclosures) and a
thousand-pillared mandapam. A soaring piety takes its
clustered 11-storeyed pinnacles upward to the very threshold of god’s
own heaven.
The Kailasanatha temple,
Sri Varadaraja temple, Sri Vaikuntaperumal temple… the names
stretch endlessly. The city itself is dedicated to the presiding
deity, Sri Kamakshi (one with “eyes of love”) at the
Kamakshi temple. In Sanskrit, the word kanchi denotes girdle
and poets have allegorically characterized the city as a girdle to
the earth.
And so it was. A seat of
learning that attracted scholars from far flung corners of the globe.
Dharmapala, the Buddhist scholar and Vatsyayana, the author of
Natyabhashya belonged to Kanchipuram while Hieun Tsang the
indefatigable Chinese pilgrim visited the city and chronicled what he
saw. Kanchi was the cradle of a great religious renaissance too.
Tamil Saivite saints. Appar and Siruthonder lived and worked here.
It enjoys a unique status among India’s ancient cities, for all
indigenous religions – Jainism, Buddhism, Vaishnavism and
Saivism – flourished here. Even today, it is one of the most
sacred places of pilgrimage in India and one of the seats of the
Hindu math of Sri Sankaracharya.
But what has now girdled
the earth is the gold-embroidered Kanchipuram silk sari that has been
for centuries a prized possession of the south India woman.
Kanchipuram, though, is not a centre of silk production. It is
ironic that the yarn comes from Surat. However, it ahs traditionally
been the home of this handloom industry. Now its industrious weavers
have come out with Kanchi cotton-cheap, sturdy and colourful and
aesthetically designed to suit contemporary taste and the export
market. Shops dealing with silk and cotton saris and material line
the main streets of the town and for a demonstration of handloom
weaving, visit the Weaver’s Service Centre, 20, Railway Station
Rod. Kanchipuram is the only city in south India to have played such
a dominant, decisive and continuous role in the history of the
peninsula. At one time, it was the hub of the empire; of pomp and
panoply. Today, it is a small place that time has forgotten.
Royalty shifted its allegiance to other more dramatic arenas. And in
the quiet interregnum to the centuries when life thundered by
elsewhere, the ancient city, wrapped in nostlgia, to proud to change
with times, withdrew form the mainstream. To become what it is
today. An Arcadian fastness of beauty. A dreamy detachment and a
quaint medievalism, the lasting impressions of which one consigns to
memory.
VISITING MAHABALIPURAM
GETTING THERE
By Air
The nearest airport,
Madras is 64 kilometres away
By Rail
The nearest railway
station, Chingelpet is 29 kilometres away.
By Road
Mamallapuram is connected
by road to Madras. Thirukkalikundram, also known as Pakshithirtham,
Kanchipuram and Pondicherry via Chingelpet. It is 16 kilometres from
Pakshithirtham and 65 kilometres from Kanchipuram via Chingelpet.
LOCAL TRANSPORT
Tourist taxis can be
hired form Madras. Unmetered private taxis available. Cycle
rickshaws available.
Excursions
Thirukkalikundram. 16
kilometres. A pilgrim centre known for its temples. An important
feature here is the feeding of a pair of kites by the temple priest
at noon daily. Entry fee: Rs. .50/-, Camera fee: Rs. 2/-, Car
parking: Rs. 2/-, Coach parking: Rs. 5/- Covelong. 20 kilometre. A
fishing village and a beach. A 16 kilometre road branches off at
Kelambakkam for Covelong.
Festivals
Palanquin festival at the
Sthalasayana Perumal Temple in October-November.
VISITING KANCHIPURAM
GETTING THRE
By Air
The nearest airport is
Madras 71 kilometres away.
By Rail
Kanchipuram is connected
by rail with Madras via Chingelpet.
By Road
It is connected by road
with all the important places in south India. It is 263 kilometres
from Bangalore, 35 kilometres from Chingelpet, 65 kilometres from
Mamallapuram via Chingelpet, 143 kilometres from Pondicherry via
Tindivanam and Chingelpet, 109 kilometres form Tirupati and 61
kilometres from Vedanthangal via Chingelpet. Kanchipuram is
connected by regular bus service to Madras, Bangalore, Chinglepet,
Tirupati, Tiruttani and Vellore.
LOCAL TRANSPORT
Private taxis,
auto-rickshaws and a city bus service available.
SHOPPING
Kancipuram is famous for
its handwoven silk and cotton which can be bought from the main
street shops but a selection is also available in Madras. Those
interested in weaving may visit the Weavers’ Service Centre, 20
Railway Station Road.
Also on the main street
are state government co-operative shops.
Excursions
Vedanthanagar Bird
Sancturary. 61 kilometres Season for migratory birds form November to
February. Viewing from an observatory tower. Best time: 3 p.m. to 6
p.m. Accommodation available at the Vedanthangar Rest House.
Tariff: Single Rs. 15/- per head. Electricity, bath and running
water. Cook in attendance. Indian food prepared at short notice.
Reservation: Wildlife
Warden, 49 Fourth Main Road, Adyar, Madras.
Advance payment for
accommodation and food to be sent by money order to the Forester
Incharge of the Vedanthangal Rest House. Accommodation served on a
priority basis.
Sri Perumudoor: 33
kilometres. This pilgrim centre, popular with the Vaisnavites, is
the birthplace of Saint Ramnujam. He was the father of the
Visishtadaita philosophy of Vaishnavism. The town has an important
temple for Adi Kessava Perumal which has a shrine of Saint Ramanujam
in it. Sri Perumbudoor is 38 kilometres form Madras.
Tiruttani: 42 kilometres.
Tirutani is remarkable for the temple dedicated to Lord subramanya
(Muruga). Considered one of the six abodes of Muruga, the temple is
located on top of a small hillock. According to legend, Lord Muruga
is said to have married his consort Valli in this place. This place
is also the birthplace of Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, a philosopher,
statesman and former President of India.
Tiruvalangadu: 30
kilometres. Close to Arkonan, the temple at Tiruvalangadu has been
sanctified by the legend that Lord Shiva is said to have danced here
for the woman saint Karaikkal, ammayar. Hence it is considered one
of the five important shrines associated with Lord Nataraja.
Uttiramerur: 30
kilometres. Located on the Kanchipuram-Vedanthangal route this place
is widely known for the numerous inscriptions found on the walls of
the ancient Shiva temple. These inscriptions throw light on the
remarkable political and administrative machinery of the Cholas in
the 10th century. This temple, built according to the
shilpa shastra, is about 75 kilometres form Madras.
Festivals
The temples at
Kanchipuram celebrate festivals almost throughout the year in
accordance with the almanac. The most famous festivals are:
Brahmotsavam in the Varadaraja Temple in May.
Garuda Sevai in the
Varadaraja Temple in June.
Float festival in the
Varadaraja Temple in February and November.
Kamaskshi Amman Temple
festival in February.
Mahashivarathri in the
Kailasanatha Temple in February.
Panguni Uthiram in the
Ekambareswara Temple in March-April.
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