Before leaving this branch of the subject there is one other rock-cut example which deserves to be quoted, not either for its size or antiquity, but from the elegance of its details. It is situated at a place called Kûmûlûlû,[373] thirty-five miles south-west from Shivelliputtun, and consequently twice that distance north from Cape Comorin. Like the examples at Mahavellipore, this one never was finished, probably because the person who commenced it did not live to complete it, and it was nobody’s business to finish what was of no use, and intended only to glorify him who made it. It is not cut out of a separate boulder, but out of a ridge, as I fancy those at Mahavellipore to have been, and if successful, any number of others of any dimensions might have followed. The other side of the hill had been occupied by the Jains, and numerous images of their Tirthankars are carved upon it, with inscriptions that could easily be read if any one cared to do so. It was evidently to mark the triumph of Siva over Mahavira that this little shrine was undertaken, probably in the 10th or 11th century, and if it had been completed it would have been one of the most perfect gems of the style. For some reason unexplained it was only blocked out, and the upper part only carved, when it was abandoned, and is now entirely forsaken. From its details, it certainly is more modern than the Kylas—how much we cannot yet say with certainty.
CHAPTER III.
DRAVIDIAN TEMPLES.
CONTENTS.
Tanjore—Tiruvalur—Seringham—Chillambaram—Ramisseram—Mádura—Tinnevelly—Combaconum—Conjeveram—Vellore and Peroor—Vijayanagar.
When we turn from these few scattered rock-cut examples to the great structural temples of the style, we find their number is so great, their extent so vast, and their variety so perplexing, that it is extremely difficult to formulate any distinct ideas regarding them, and still more so, as a matter of course, to convey to others any clear idea on the subject. To any one at all familiar with the present status of the population of the province, the greatest wonder is how such a people could ever have conceived, much less carried out, such vast undertakings as these, and that so recently that some of the greatest and boldest were only interrupted by our wars with the French little more than a century ago. The cause of this, however, is not far to seek. Ever since we took possession of the country, our countrymen have been actuated by the most beneficent intentions of protecting the poor against the oppression of the rich. By every means we have sought to secure the ryot in his holding, and that he should not be called on to pay more than his fair share of the produce of his land; while to the landowner we have offered a secure title to what belonged to him, and a fixed income in money in lieu of his portion of the produce. To a people, however, in the state of civilization to which India has reached, a secure title and a fixed income only means the power of borrowing on the occasion of a marriage, a funeral, or some great family festival, ten times more than the borrower can ever pay, and our courts as inevitably give the lender the power of foreclosing his mortgage and selling the property. During the century in which this communistic process has been going on the landed aristocracy have gradually disappeared. All the wealth of the country has passed into the hands of the money-lenders of the cities, and by them dissipated in frivolities. If the aim of the government is to reduce the whole population to the condition of peasant proprietors, occupying the land without capital, and consequently on the verge of starvation, they have certainly succeeded. It may be beneficent, and may produce the greatest happiness to the greatest number; but in such a community neither science, nor literature, nor art have any place, and religion itself becomes degraded by the status of its votaries.
Before we interfered, the condition of things was totally different. The practical proprietorship of the land was then in the hands of a few princes or feudal lords, who derived from it immense revenues they had no means of spending, except in works of ostentation, which in certain stages of civilization are as necessary for the employment of the masses as for their own glorification. In such a country as India the employment of one-half of the population in agriculture is sufficient to produce food for the whole, while the other half are free for any employment that may be available. We in this country employ our non-agricultural half in manufactures and commerce. The southern Indians had neither, and found no better occupation for the surplus population than in temple-building. Whether this was more profitable or beneficial than hammering iron or spinning cotton is not a question it is necessary to enter on here. It is enough to know the fact, and to mark its consequences. The population of southern India in the 17th and 18th century was probably hardly less than it is now—some thirty millions—and if one-third or one-fourth of such a population were to seek employment in building, the results, if persevered in through centuries, would be something astonishing. A similar state of affairs prevailed apparently in Egypt in the time of the Pharaohs, but with very different results. The Egyptians had great and lofty ideas, and a hankering after immortality, that impressed itself on all their works. The southern Indians had no such aspirations. Their intellectual status is, and always was, mediocre; they had no literature of their own—no history to which they could look back with pride, and their religion was, and is, an impure and degrading fetishism. It is impossible that anything very grand or imposing should come out of such a state of things. What they had to offer to their gods was a tribute of labour, and that was bestowed without stint. To cut a chain of fifty links out of a block of granite and suspend it between two pillars, was with them a triumph of art. To hollow deep cornices out of the hardest basalt, and to leave all the framings, as if of the most delicate woodwork, standing free, was with them a worthy object of ambition, and their sculptures are still inexplicable mysteries, from our ignorance of how it was possible to execute them. All that millions of hands working through centuries could do, has been done, but with hardly any higher motive than to employ labour and to conquer difficulties, so as to astonish by the amount of the first and the cleverness with which the second was overcome—and astonished we are; but without some higher motive true architecture cannot exist. The Dravidians had not even the constructive difficulties to overcome which enabled the mediæval architects to produce such noble fabrics as our cathedrals. The aim of architects in the Middle Ages was to design halls which should at the same time be vast, but stable, and suited for the accommodation of great multitudes to witness a lofty ritual. In their struggle to accomplish this they developed intellectual powers which impress us still through their works. No such lofty aims exercised the intellectual faculties of the Hindu. His altar and the statue of his god were placed in a dark cubical cell wholly without ornament, and the porch that preceded that was not necessarily either lofty or spacious. What the Hindu architect craved for, was a place to display his powers of ornamentation, and he thought he had accomplished all his art demanded when he covered every part of his building with the most elaborate and most difficult designs he could invent. Much of this ornamentation, it is true, is very elegant, and evidences of power and labour do impress the human imagination, often even in defiance of our better judgment, and nowhere is this more apparent than in these Dravidian temples. It is in vain, however, we look among them for any manifestation of those lofty aims and noble results which constitute the merit and the greatness of true architectural art, and which generally characterise the best works in the true styles of the western world.
Turning from these generalities to the temples themselves, the first great difficulty experienced in attempting either to classify or describe them is that no plans of them exist. I know myself upwards of thirty great Dravidian temples, or groups of temples, any one of which must have cost as much to build as an English cathedral, some a great deal more; but of all these there are only three, or it may be four, of which even a moderately trustworthy plan is available. Two-thirds of these have been sufficiently photographed by Dr. Hunter, Capt. Lyon,[374] and others; the remaining third I know either from personal inspection or from drawings and descriptions. This is, of course, irrespective of village temples, and, it may be, of some extensive groups which have been overlooked. If these temples had been built like those of the Greeks, or even as the Christian churches in the Middle Ages, on one uniform plan, changing only with the progress of time, one or two plans might have sufficed; but the fact is that, in nine cases out of ten, Dravidian temples are a fortuitous aggregation of parts, arranged without plan, as accident dictated at the time of their erection; and, without plans, no adequate idea can be conveyed to those who have not seen them. The one great exception to this rule is to be found at Tanjore. The great Pagoda there was commenced on a well-defined and stately plan, which was persevered in till its completion. As will be seen from the annexed diagram ([Woodcut No. 190]) it consists of two courts,[375] one a square of about 250 ft., originally devoted to minor shrines and residences; but when the temple was fortified by the French in 1777[376] it was converted into an arsenal, and has not been re-appropriated to sacred purposes. The temple itself stands in a courtyard extremely well proportioned to receive it, being about 500 ft. long by half that in width, the distance between the gateway and the temple being broken by the shrine of the Bull Nundi,[377] which is sufficiently important for its purpose, but not so much so as to interfere with the effect of the great vimana, which stands near the inner end of the court. The perpendicular part of its base measures 82 ft. square, and is two storeys in height, of simple outline, but sufficiently relieved by niches and pilasters. Above this the pyramid rises in thirteen storeys to the summit, which is crowned by a dome said to consist of a single stone, and reaching a height of 190 ft. The porch in front is kept low, and as will be seen from the woodcut (No. [191]) the tower dominates over the gopuras and surrounding objects in a manner that imparts great dignity to the whole composition.
190. Diagram Plan of Tanjore Pagoda. (From a Sketch by the Author.) Scale 200 ft. to 1 in.