Historic visits - Kakatiya sites

We travelled to Warangal (140km from Hyderabad) and environs over the weekend to visit sites from the Kakatiya dynasty (13-14th century AD). Kakatiyas controlled northern Andhra Pradesh around that time and were feudatories of the Hoysalas of southern Karnataka. Their art definitely seems to have been influenced by their suzerains. Hoysalas of course built the famous temples of Belur and Halebid, arguably among the most beautiful sculptural temples of South India. I have visited Belur/Halebid as a kid but still remember some of the sculptural marvels.

Of the three places we visited

(I) the Kakatiya Fort complex in Warangal,

(II) the Ramappa temple in Palampet and
(III) the temple complex (mostly in ruins) at Ghanpur,

I liked the Warangal site the most, probably because it was the most well maintained. There must have been a stunning temple here once. What you see now are various pieces of that temple that have been arranged into some kind of order by the Archeological Society of India (ASI). One of the prominent features were the perfectly circular inserts in the pillars that look as if they were lathed. Except they didn't have lathes in the 13th century.

The scultptures show signs of systematic mutilation (right) suggesting that the temple was destroyed by an invading enemy. It is tempting to think of the Muslim invaders as the culprits - Malik Kafur, Ala-ud-din Khilji's general conquered these parts around that time. However my friend RG who accompanied me pointed out that vandalizing temples and monuments of a conquered kingdom was fairly common practice by kings of all religions throughout history. Wendy Doniger, noted Indologist whose "Hindus - An Alternative History" I am reading now, echoes similar sentiments.

It was fun to have my friend who is an "amateur enthusiast" of sculptural art in South India play unofficial guide; we looked for various clues to identify the deities and other mythological characters portrayed there. For instance, two sculptures standing on either side of a small shrine turned out not to be Dwarapalakas as their position might suggest, but Lord Shiva himself, considering that he had 4 hands, wore an Angavastram that didn't go below the knee and the serpent earrings; clearly the re-arrangement of ASI still needs some work.

The Ramappa temple was very curious in that it had a super-structure that was very much intact, while the base looked like it had been disturbed violently by an earthquake (picture to the right); or more likely because the temple settled into the ground that couldn't bear the weight of all that granite and basalt. The Ramappa temple had inscriptions that looked fairly close to modern-day Telugu script (I have picked up a little bit of the Telugu script in the last year, though I don't understand what I read).

The temple complex at Ghanpur was in the worst shape. The highlights there were the leaning temples and the temples with fractal patterns in their vimanas (vimanas unlike gopurams are the towers over the main shrine; gopurams are at the gateway of the temple).

For more pictures from the trip, see this Picasa album.