Elegant temple and the exotic maidens

 The Kakatiya grandeur at Palampet, Telangana 

In the book ‘Royal Patrons and Great Temple Art’, Shehbaz H. Safrani, author of the chapter on the Ramappa Temple in Telangana compares the patron of the temple General Recherla Rudra to Pericles for his statesmanship and also for his famous temple, the Parthenon. Across India there are scores of temples that have been built, endowed by queens, generals, traders, trade guilds etc., While one can think of local comparisons, to the Somanatha Dandanayaka a general of Hoysala king Narasimha III who built Somanathapura, a global comparison is beyond me. However, the size and effort of Pericles being compared to Recherla makes one sit up and take note of the size of the temple and tank he constructed and also his role and importance in the reign of an illustrious Kakatiya king Ganapatideva.

While historians of the Marxist school or the post-modernist have not been kind to the kings and the temple builders, mostly attributing them to project of power, ego and feudalism, art critics seem to be a little kinder to them, as do most of the essayists in the above-mentioned book.

Safrani also points to an inscription “The heat of the majesty of this (Rudra), who is sun (scattering) the darkness consisting of valiant hostile kings,” to say that the use of the name Rudra is a clever one that can be “considered as an attribute of the general’s ego.” I would tend to overlook that and pick up this statement – “His devotion to his king, his contributions to the state, his veneration for Lord Siva, are such, that given all his amazing achievements, he is worthy to be regarded a statesman such as Pericles of Athens, who was himself as general.”

Hardly do we, especially under current worldview consider the aspect of devotion in a person who built a temple, made an endowment – the attribute of Bhakti in a king or a commander is overlooked. Can ego alone lead to constructions of such places of worship? It is not even a democracy where you have to make an impression to win votes. Yet, temple construction is always attributed to asserting one’s power etc, etc.

That is why the word devotion in relation to Recherla caught my attention. I wanted to share that as also the quote on the famous nayikas or madanikas, dancing girls, bracket figures whatever one may call them. I took it for granted that the world knows well the 13^th century Ramappa temple, with the UNESCO world heritage tag, and the madanikas are so well photographed and shared widely. I did not even look at the photographs I had taken and let it lie in the memory card.

The maiden figures are a mystery. They do not serve much of a structural purpose, being more of a decorative figure as scholars suggest. They are enigmatic, and I wonder if art historians have yet demystified them. While on the whole they complete the beautiful structure, stand majestic, a closer look at them while processing the photos show, they are placed crudely in some places, as if a last-minute appendage, an afterthought. It could not have been an afterthought if one goes by a detailed description of the “Alasya Kanyas” detailed in the text Silpa Prakasa (10th Century CE from Odisha, given in the appendix of Vidya Dehejia’s book ‘Early Stone Temples of Orissa’).

Safrani quotes from there – “As a house without a wife, as frolic without women, so without the figure of a woman the monument will be of inferior quality and bear no fruit” and “Women is most beautiful when adorned with all ornaments.” The idea of placing the “Alasya Kanya” or “Indolent Maiden” in the Silpa Prakasa “which speaks of the propitious presence of women on a temple, would, I believe be among one of the answers to the Ramappa riddle.”

This, like what a modern poet rewrote in his own words, a film song, “pen illadha oorile oru aan poo ketpadhillai”, the men don’t ask for flowers in a town where women don’t reside. They are auspicious, and this particular idea with reference to the maidens at Ramappa I thought opens up such happy vistas while viewing such beautiful, exquisitely carved dancers, and other maidens at Ramappa.

 Yet, they do not answer the stylistic aspect of Ramappa’s maidens. They are unlike any other. Slender is what we have seen in early Pallava or Chola sculptures too, but here the maidens seem lean given the life size figures on the brackets. Their facial features are unique, their eyes wide open, and in fact one of them rattled me, as she seemed to be directly staring at me, when I was trying to get a close-up. I was struggling against a harsh mid-day sun, with the special black rock of these maidens set against the red stone of the structure in the background. They do speak to you, but they don’t spill their secrets. They dance, they drum, they wield a weapon, they adorn a snake, and they are all part of the grand temple.

Ghulam Yazdani, the earliest perhaps to write on the Palampet temples had noted that “the statues are of almost life-size, worked in highly polished black basalt, and although they are cut with great precision and accuracy, the general effect is not very pleasing to the eye. The fingers with long nails are exceptionally good, the poses of the body are also in some cases graceful; but the contour and the expression of the faces are less successful and, in my judgement, represent very poor art.”

 

They look different, they are not the conventional beauties chiselled elsewhere, before them or maybe even after them. Perhaps the reason Yazdani came to the conclusion that they “represent very poor art.”  Safrani calls them the “most dazzling achievement at the Ramappa temple”, and that “they are stylized, of course, but they are also unique. Sensuous, yet unlike many female Indian sculptures, these are hardly voluptuous. If there were a set of sculptures to be categorized in the genius class, the Ramappa’s twelve bracket figures belong there.”

 

I differ a little from Safrani’s view, about the joyousness of the sculptures. In general, they are indeed joyous, but looking at the faces of the 12 maidens, I felt they looked forlorn, sad and very few of them showed any happiness on their faces. That was the feeling I got. Now, while processing the photos too, I keep thinking if are they in deep thinking, or in general they aren’t given to displaying their emotions?

 

Another important connection this temple sculptures holds, are to a dance text, as well as a Kakatiya period dance. Contemporary author Jeya’s ‘Nrttaratnavali’ is linked to Kakatiya sculptures, as being illustrative of what the treatise on dance demonstrated. While the connection can definitely made, Dr V. Raghavan in his introduction to the text says, “it has been mentioned or at least assumed by some Telugu writers on the history of dance and music in Andhra that the Kakatiya dance sculptures illustrate Jeya’s work, but this cannot be demonstrated; the specimens we have are too meagre and disclose no effort, comparable to the one at Chidambaram or Tanjore, at any systematic illustration; and though approximations can be seen, exact identifications of the poses in these carvings in terms of the classic Karanas cannot be definitely made.” What we have as a record though are epigraphic record of gifts from that period towards “houses of musicians, drummers and dancers attached to the temples.” Interestingly the author Jeya Senapati was also a commander of elephant squadron.

The temple and the sculptures also brought to life the Kakatiya/Telangana dance form Perini Sivatandavam in the 20th Century by scholar Nataraja Ramakrishna. The pillars in the mantapa facing the Garbha griha also has many dancers, noticeable are the ladies with the dandiya sticks, playing kolatta. The desi and marga traditions both are reflected in the sculptures at the Ramappa temple.

 

Finally, another aspect that I find fascinating, a subject on which I have written a couple of blogs even earlier – water bodies. Along with the Ramappa temple General Rudra also excavated the Ramappa lake nearby, a large waterbody that is credited to have withstood severest of droughts Telangana had seen even in the 20th century. Like the Junagadh Sudarshana lake inscription, the Ramappa inscription too stands testimony to the aesthetics that went with the utilitarian creations.

To quote from Safrani: “The inscription indicates that “…banks, covered with rows of waves and underlined with shells of quivering lustre.” Obviously enchanted by nature, General Recherla visualized this lake as a place “which is loved by troops of birds delighted at the swinging play of the lines of gently the pure water-drops dashed up by the fishes’ tails as they fall far away, imagining them to be rain.”

Ramappa temple is a beauty conceived with devotion, embellished by fine art, long hidden in the jungles of Telangana, remote even today, yet not unreachable. It should stay isolated, just surrounded by the trees and the lakes, just as General Rudra wanted it to be.

Reference:

1.     Royal Temple and Great Temple Art, Ed., Vidya Dehejia, Marg Publications 1988

2.      The Temples at Palampet, Ghulam Yazdani, Superintendent of Government Printing 1922

3.      Nrttaratnavali of Jeya Senapati, Ed., V. Raghavan, Government Oriental Manuscripts Library Madras, 1960

4.      Early Stone Temples of Orissa, Vidya Dehejia, Durham 1979