Trip to Kanchipuram - Vaikunta Perumal Temple

As mentioned in my previous entry about the trip to the Kailasanathar Temple, Kanchipuram warrants multiple trips given the number of Pallava and Chola era temples that should be in anyone's itinerary. In this trip, I visited the Vaikunta Perumal temple and the Ekambareswarar temple along with a couple of smaller temples. In this post, I will cover the Vaikunta Perumal temple. One thing to note about the Kanchi Pallava temples is that they are made of sandstone unlike Mamallapuram where the Pallavas used granite. Sandstone being a much softer stone, the sculptures and temple structures from the Pallava period really show their age.

The Vaikunta Perumal temple is from the 8th century built during the reign of the Pallava king Nandivarman II. Nandivarman is from a parallel line of the ruling Pallavas, a descendant of Bhimavarman, who was the brother of Pallava king Simhavishnu. After Paramesvaravarman II's death in 729, there was a succession conflict since Paramesvaran did not have a heir who could ascend the throne. As per inscriptions in the Vaikunta Perumal temple, the Pallava nobles traveled to a distant land crossing mountains and water bodies to appeal to Hiranyavarman. Hiranyavarman declined to take on the Pallava throne and instead asked his sons. Interestingly enough, the elder sons also declined and the youngest son Paramesvara agreed to become king and ascended the throne at Kanchi at the age of 12 and ruled under the name Nandivarman (II) for more than 60 years.

A noteworthy feature of the temple is the three-tiered sanctum with Vishnu in a seated pose in the ground level, reclined on Adiseshan in the middle level and in a standing posture on the top tier. The middle level is accessible through a staircase, but there is no access left to the top tier. At the ground level, the shrine is surrounded by cloisters on the inner side of which is a colonnade adorned with seated lions, a typical Pallava feature. The cloister walls have a sequence of relief sculptures depicting the history of the Pallava dynasty as per the interpretation of Dr. C. Minakshi who has written a book on the temple; the following iconography is as per Dr. Chithra Madhavan's lecture where she cites this book as her primary source. In the space below the panels, inscriptions can be found below some of them describing the scene, while many others do not have inscriptions or the inscriptions have faded and we need to rely on scholar's educated guesses.

The first set of panels show the supposedly divine lineage of the Pallavas starting from Brahma, followed by Angiras, Brihaspathi, Bharadvaja, Drona and Ashvatthama. The panel showing Drona has a pot near his feet which is a clue to the identity as Drona is said to have been gestated in a pot. Asvatthama is shown in penance (see photo above) and there is a rather crude sculpture of what appears to be an over-sized baby to his right, who is supposedly the first Pallava king. These panels are followed by panels depicting the actual Pallava kings themselves. A typical panel shows the king on the left frame of the panel. In some cases, the coronation of the king is shown as can be seen by priests pouring sacred water on his head. The right side of the panel shows battle scenes or other events during that monarch's reign. The panel that shows Simhavishnu curiously shows another coronation on the top right side (see picture below). C. Minakshi's interpretation is that this must be Simhavishnu's brother Bhimavarman who was crowned elsewhere to head a parallel dynasty. Bhimavarman is the ancestor of Nandivarman II, as was mentioned above.

There is one mysterious spot, right after the panel showing Vishnugopa's coronation, where the space is left empty. This purportedly - again highly speculative - shows the invasion and defeat of the Pallava kingdom by Samudragupta from the North. Samudragupta's inscriptions in the Allahabad pillar do mention his victory over Vishnugopa of Kanchi. The panels of Mahendravarman and Narasimhavarman show the battles with Pulakesin II of the Vatapi Chalukyas. Finally, we have the panels that show the search and the finding of a successor after Paramesvaravarman II's early death described earlier.
The panels in the ground tier are thus of interest from a historic perspective and less from an artistic perspective. The patchwork done by Architecture Survey of India (ASI) is at times rather crude. For artistic merit, perhaps the sculpture on the outer wall of the shrine in the middle tier are better examples. They mostly depict the avatars of Vishnu, notably Narasimha, Krishna and Vamana. These include a damaged but very rarely depicted scene of Vishnu as Mohini distributing nectar to the devas. The sculpture might be in ruins, but you still can't help but notice the beautifully delicate stance of Mohini.

- Balaji

The Amaravathi Gallery at the Chennai Museum

I had been to the Bronze Gallery at the Chennai museum two years ago and written about the remarkable Chola bronzes and their iconography as explained by the erudite Chithra Madhavan. Last week, I was in the company of my friend of comparable scholarship on the Amaravathi Gallery at the same museum. He has given a nearly 2 hour lecture on the history and artistic merit of the limestone sculptures at this gallery.

The Amaravathi we are talking about is an ancient town dating from the 2nd century BC, located 35km from Guntur. You might know that the Andhra government is now building a new capital city of the same name near this town. One of the great Buddhist stupas (called Mahachaityas) was built in Amaravathi over a 400 year period spanning 2nd century BCE to 2nd century CE. In 1797, the ruins of the stupa was discovered by the East India Company's Colin Mackenzie who later returned to excavate and also arranged for the limestone slabs bearing the Buddhist sculptures to be moved to the Madras Museum.

So that is what you see in the Amaravathi Gallery, a big air-conditioned hall containing a sizable collection of relief - rectangular slabs and circular panels called medallions - and other sculptures. Many of the sculptures depict stories and scenes from the Jataka Tales and others portray events in the life of Buddha. The sculptural composition might seem chaotic to an untrained eye, but starts making magical sense, when an expert describes the story behind and delineates the various sections of the panel that are sequenced chronologically, often from bottom to top. To take a simpler example, the medallion to the right shows one of the miracles performed by Buddha where he tames Nalagiri, an elephant that was sent to kill him. The left part of the panel is the first frame where you see the elephant charging, frightening people running helter skelter with maidens looking on from their windows on top. On the right, you see the subdued elephant in front of Buddha who you see in the far right.

The Jataka Tales are stories of previous births of Buddha as Bodhisatvas, in some of which he is born as an animal. The fascinating story of Chaddanta, the 6 tusked elephant is shown in one of the more complex panels. Chaddanta had two wives, Culasubhadda and Mahasubhadda. Culasubbha felt Chaddanta had a preference for Mahasubhadda and leaves him ( the bottom of the panel shows her moving away and the other two elephants show Chaddanta and his other wife) and is reborn as queen Subhadda . Chaddanta is still alive and she sends a hunter to kill him and get his tusks. Chaddanta charges the hunter, but seeing his saffron robes stops and learns his intent. The noble beyond belief Chaddanta then offers to have his tusks cut. But since the hunter could not do it, Chaddanta cuts the tusks using its own trunk, gives them to him and dies. When Subhadda looks at the tusks the hunter brings back, she realizes her folly and dies repenting her deeds.

Perhaps the most stunning panel at the gallery is the one depicting the ascension of Buddha's begging bowl to heaven. A man who has renounced everything has few possessions and you can imagine the reverence that Buddhists have for the begging bowl he used. You see a total of 43 human figures surrounding and lifting up the bowl. The composition is unique, where you see the back of some of the figures which is quite unconventional. Everyone's body and face seem to be turned towards the central figure - the bowl - which is placed off center as it is higher up closer to heaven.

The sculptures of Amaravati are unique in the use of limestone and they are reminiscent of European sculptures made of similarly colored white marble (although limestone is not quite marble). We see granite and sandstone in most Indian temples. My friend tells me that these are probably the oldest surviving stone sculptures from the historic period in South India. After visiting many Hindu monuments in the last few years, it was nice to see these great examples of Buddhist art and to hear the stories they tell.

- Balaji