The ancient city of Mádura, though with a population of 60,000, is even more humble in appearance than Tanjore. At first sight it looks like a mere collection of mud cabins—though of course there are English bungalows on the outskirts, and a court-house and a church and an American mission-room and school, and the rest. The weavers are a strong caste here; they weave silk (and cotton) saris, though with failing trade as against the incoming machine-products of capitalism—and you see their crimson-dyed pieces stretched on frames in the streets.
The choultrie leading up to one of the temple gates is a colonnade 110 yards long, a central walk and two aisles, with carven monolithic columns—a warrior sitting on a rearing horse trampling shields of soldiers and slaying men or tigers, or a huge seated king or god, in daring crudeness—and great capitals supporting a stone roof. Choultries were used as public feeding-halls and resting-places for Brahmans, as well as for various ceremonies, and in old days when the Brahmans were all-powerful such places were everywhere at their service, and they had a high old time. This choultrie has however been turned into a silk and cotton market, and was gay, when I saw it, with crowds of people, and goods pinned up to the columns. Emerging from it, the eastern gate of the temple stands on the opposite side of the road—a huge gópura, pagoda form, fifteen stories or so high, each tier crowded with figures—Siva hideous with six arms and protruding eyes and teeth, Siva dancing, Siva contemplative, Siva and Sakti on the bull, demon doorkeepers, etc.—the whole picked out in the usual crude reds, yellows, greens, blues, and branching out at top into grotesque dragon-forms—a strange piece of work, yet having an impressive total effect, as it rises 200 feet into the resplendent sky over the little mud and thatch cottages—its crude details harmonised in the intense blaze, and its myriad nooks of shadow haunted by swallows, doves and other birds.
There are nine such gópuras or gate-towers in all in this temple, all on much the same plan, ranging from 40 to 200 feet in height, and apparently used to some extent as dwelling-places by priests, yogis, and others. These, together with the various halls, shrines, tanks, arcades, etc., form a huge enclosure 280 yards long by nearly 250 wide.
On entering the huge doorway of the eastern gópura one finds oneself immediately in a wilderness of columns—the hall of a thousand columns—besides arcades, courts, and open and covered spaces,—a labyrinth full of people (for this temple is much frequented)—many of whom are selling wares, but here more for temple use, flowers for offerings, cakes of cowdung ashes for rubbing on the forehead, embroidered bags to put these in, money-changers, elephants here and there, with bundles of green stuff among the columns, elephant-keepers, the populace arriving with offerings, and plentiful Brahmans going to and fro. The effect of the numerous columns—and there are fully a thousand of them, fifteen feet high or so—is very fine—the light and shade, glimpses of sky or trees through avenues of carved monsters, or cavernous labyrinths of the same ending in entire darkness: grotesque work and in detail often repulsive, but lending itself in the mass to the general effect—Siva dancing again, or Ganésa with huge belly and elephant head, or Parvati with monstrous breasts—“all out of one stone, all out of one stone,” the guide keeps repeating: feats of marvelous patience (e.g. a chain of separate links all cut from the same block), though ugly enough very often in themselves.
And now skirting round the inner sanctuary to the left, we come into a sort of cloister opening on a tank some fifty yards square, from whence we get a more general view of the place, and realise its expanse. The five or six gópuras visible from our standpoint serve to indicate this—all painted in strong color but subdued by distance, roofs of various portions of the temple, clumps of palm and other trees, two gold-plated turrets shining brilliantly in the sun, the tank itself with handsome stone tiers and greenish waters where the worshipers wash their feet, the cloisters frescoed with elaborate legendary designs, and over all in the blue sky flocks of birds—swallows, doves, and bright green parrots chattering. Once more we plunge into dark galleries full of hungry-eyed Brahmans, and passing the shrine of Minakshi, into which we cannot gain admittance, come into the very sombre and striking corridor which runs round the entire inner shrine. The huge monoliths here are carven with more soberness and grace, and the great capitals bear cross-beams which in their turn support projecting architraves. Hardly a soul do we meet as we make the circuit of the three sides. The last turn brings us to the entrance of the inner sanctuary itself; and here is the gold-plated kambam which I have already described (chap. VII.), and close behind it the bull Nandi and the gloom of the interior lit only by a distant lamp or two. To these inner parts come only those who wish to meditate in quiet; and in some secluded corner may one occasionally be seen, seated on the floor with closed eyes and crossed legs, losing or endeavoring to lose himself in samádhi.
Outside the temple in the streets of Mádura we saw three separate Juggernath cars, used on occasions in processions. These cars are common enough even in small Hindu towns. They are unwieldy massive things, often built in several tiers, and with solid wooden wheels on lumbering wooden axles, which look as if they were put on (and probably are) in such a way as to cause the maximum of resistance to motion. At Streevelliputhur there is a car thirty feet high, with wheels eight feet in diameter. The people harness themselves to these things literally in thousands; the harder the car is to move, the greater naturally is the dignity of the god who rides upon it, and the excitement becomes intense when he is at last fairly got under weigh. But I have not witnessed one of these processions.
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The temple of Chidámbaram is in some respects more interesting than those of Tanjore and Mádura. It is in fact more highly thought of as a goal of pilgrimage and a place of festival than any other South Indian temple, and may be said to be the Benares of South India. The word Chidámbaram means region of pure consciousness, and Siva is worshiped here under his most excellent name of Nátarája, lord of the dance. “O thou who dancest thy illimitable dance in the heaven of pure consciousness.”
There is a little railway station of Chidámbaram, but it is two or three miles from the temple and the town; and though the town itself numbers some 20,000 to 30,000 inhabitants, there is not a single Englishman resident in the place or within some miles of it, the only white-faced inhabitant being a Eurasian druggist who keeps a shop there. When I was there the whole temple was in course of repair, and the Brahmans were such a nuisance that I really did not get so good an idea of the place as I could have wished. These gentry swarm here, and descend upon one like birds of prey, in quest of tips; indeed the physiognomy of a great many of them suggests the kite family—sharp eyes, rather close together, and a thin aquiline nose; this with their large foreheads looking all the larger on account of the shaven head does not give a very favorable impression.
The ascendancy of the Brahman caste is certainly a very remarkable historical fact. It is possible that at one time they really resembled the guardians of Plato’s ideal republic—teachers and rulers who themselves possessed nothing and were supported by the contributions of the people; but before so many centuries had gone by they must have made the first part of their functions subsidiary to the second, and now—though a good many of them ply trades and avocations of one kind or another—the majority are mere onhangers of the temples, where they become sharers of the funds devoted to the temple services, and bleed the pockets of pious devotees. When a Hindu of any worldly substance approaches one of these places, he is immediately set upon by five or six loafers of this kind—each of whom claims that his is the Brahman family which has always done the priestly services for the visitor’s family (and indeed they do keep careful note of these matters), and that he therefore should conduct the visitor to the proper quarter of the temple, take his offerings to the god, and receive his reward accordingly.