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| Halebid - 2014 |
The "temple tour" is a trip to Sravanabelagola, Halebid and Belur, three towns near Mysore which are the sites of important temples. The whole trip takes all day if you start very early in the morning.
The first stop is the town of Sravanabelagola where there is an ancient Jain pilgrimage site atop a hill. The site has a temple with a beautiful, ancient (c. 990 A.D.) monolithic statue of a Jain saint, Gomateshvara. It's necessary to go there first to arrive before the sun warms the stone steps up the hill. The whole hill of mostly bare rock is a holy site and to get to the shrine on top, you must walk up barefoot. The 600 steps get very hot in the afternoon, and that's why you need to start in the morning. It takes about an hour to go up, an hour to come down, and you want to spend time in between. This is the place, incidentally, where Kim Esteran and I saw a wild cobra. As we were walking around the temple, on the back side is a bas relief plaque of a snake, and right below that carving was its live counterpart. I walked up to it to see what it was, and it was a King Cobra about four feet long. Although its hood was open, it did not seem alarmed. It went into a drain hole and disappeared. My photograph of it is at the Kentucky Street studio on the wall in the small studio.
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| Gomateshvara |
The Jain temple is austere, and there are just a few small sculptures other than the monolithic statue of Gomateshvara. (See above.) This is the oldest monolithic sculpture in India, and the story behind it is that Gomateshvara, upon becoming enlightened, stood still for such a long time that vines grew around his legs. More information about this fascinating site can be found here on Wikipedia.
I first took the temple tour in 1999 during my first trip to Mysore. I went again in 2002 and 2003.
By contrast to the austerity of Sravanabelagola, both Halebid and Belur temples are riots of sculptures. The first time I went to the temples I took quite a few photographs. The second time I took a few photos. By the the third trip I was so jaded I mostly took photos of the people who went with me. My brother is a sculptor and I have a degree in Fine Art, so I love and appreciate these temples, but I was not at all eager to go back to them a fourth time. By the time one arrives at Belur late in the day, fatigue has set in and it becomes difficult to focus on the sculptures.
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| Laura, Karen and Dana at Halebid, 2003. |
We were all, including our driver, extremely tired by that time. During that trip I reflected on an NPR broadcast I had heard on Memorial Day the year before. I've tried to research this broadcast but have been unable to find it, but I think it was by Harold G. Moore, author of We Were Soldiers Once..., speaking about the horrors of combat and the true meaning of the term, "fey". Fey meant "fairy-like", but originates from an older time when the concept of "fairyland" was dark and terrifying. To become "fey" meant one has become so exhausted one loses the will to live. That was the last thing you wanted to see on the face of the person trapped in the fox hole with you. At one point during our trip I had just seen a marker by the road that indicated we were still over 100 km from Mysore. I looked at the faces of Karen and Dana and saw that fey look, and I knew I had it, too. I thought we might never make it back to Mysore, but somehow or another we did, although very late.
With all of this in mind, at the last possible moment I decided to go with Joe. He assured me that he had a good car and reliable driver. It turned out to be a wonderful trip, and I saw the temples in a way I had never seen them before. I took almost no photos and spent very little time looking at the sculptures. Mostly I watched people. The temples were very crowded on this trip because it was a Indian holiday. There were many families there. Children wanted to have their photo taken with me. Normally that would have irritated me, but on this particular day it didn't bother me. I was having fun posing with the children. They were so polite and delightful. Seeing the fun we were having, mom and dad and then grandma and grandpa would jump in the picture, too. It was very sweet.
By the time we got to Belur I was still feeling energetic. It was later in the afternoon, and the crowds had thinned out. I was able to look around the temple more and focus on the sculptures. That's when I realized for the first time that Belur and Halebid are very different from one another. Up until then, they had always been a mish-mash in my mind - just a blurry mass of sculptures. The Belur temple was once described to me by one of the guides as the "fashion" temple because the sculptures depict women who were temple dancers, and the temple carvings show hairstyles, ways of wrapping a sari and hair ornaments. It's like a pictorial catalogue of fashion at that time. The Belur temple was financed by the Hoysala king, and the sculptures are frontal, formal, and elegant. It's the "Vogue" of temples. Vishnu in the form of Keshava, the One with Beautiful Hair, is the deity enshrined at Belur. This temple is still active, used for worship.In researching the history of the two temples, I find they were built at the same time, in apparent competition with each other. The Belur temple financed by the king, and the Halebid temple financed by wealthy devotees of Lord Shiva.
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| The bottom of the first photograph showing Joe with his camera. |
Shiva is the god who lives beyond the boundaries of civilized society. Rules and rituals have little meaning for him. He inhabits the cremation grounds, the mountains and the forests. As stated by Wendy Doninger O'Flaherty,
"Among ascetics he is a libertine and among libertines an ascetic; conflicts which they cannot resolve, or can attempt to resolve only by compromise, he simply absorbs into himself and expresses in terms of other conflicts. Where there is excess he opposes and controls it; where there is no action he himself becomes excessively active. He emphasizes that aspect of himself which is unexpected, inappropriate, shattering any attempt to to achieve a superficial reconciliation of the conflict through mere logical compromise."The temples themselves engender the fey reaction. To spend time with these temples is to immerse oneself in that dark, terrifying "fairyland", or in this case, to find oneself on the smashan, the cremation ground surrounded by the ghosts, ghouls, and goblins who comprise the ganas, the gang of Lord Shiva.
The temples are in a poor state of preservation. Joe and I remarked on it - how unfortunate it was that there was not a complete photographic record of the sculptures. Maybe there is a photographic archive of the temples, but I don't know of it. As I reflected on it later looking at my photographs, the thought occurred to me that one could not photograph the whole temple, particularly Halebid, without going mad. The sculptures are not from our cultural context. Contemporary representations of Shiva in calendar and internet art depict him as a handsome blue-skinned, pink-cheeked man. The sculptures on the temples are different.
This sculpture from the Elephanta caves is 5th to 8th century and depicts Shiva spearing Andhaka. The sculpture has been very badly damaged, but you can still make out two of Shiva's hands above holding the flayed skin of the Elephant demon behind him like a cape. One hand holds a sword, one hand holds a bowl with which he is catching Andhaka's blood. Andhaka is the one who is blind with anger, and he was created by Shiva Himself. Shiva holds him aloft on his trident for 1000 years until his anger is bled out and he repents.
The Halebid temple is not an active temple, but in recent years the inner sanctum has been opened to show the lingam, the austere form of Shiva as the formless, transcendent column of light. However, the lingam is set back so far into the shadowy darkness, that one can scarcely make it out. Like God Himself, one cannot quite focus on Him.
It was only later, when I returned to Mysore and was posting the photos to Facebook, that I realized what I had inadvertently photographed. Above Joe's head is of a sculpture of Lord Shiva dancing the Tandava, the dance of the cycle of creation and dissolution. He dances on the demon Apasmara, the demon of Forgetfulness. Although being danced to death, Apasmara looks upon Lord Shiva's dance with wonder and appreciation. The Lord of Yoga holds various objects in his twelve hands. From his proper right: the first hand rests on some unknown object, a rudraksha mala, elephant's tusk (?), sword, cobra, trident, arrow, door archway, banana (?), skull atop a staff (called a khaga), damaru drum and a mirror. Most are objects associated with the myths of Lord Shiva. However, what strikes me most about this sculpture is the expression on his face of deep samadhi, total absorption in His own pure bliss.
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| Shiva's face in bliss. |
O, giver of boons,
a great bull, a wooden club, an axe,
a tiger skin, ashes, serpents,
a human skull and other such things...
these are your sole possessions,
although simply by casting your glance
You gave the gods great treasures, which they enjoy.
Truly the mirage of sense objects cannot delude one
whose delight is in the Self.
-The Shiva Mahimnah Stotram
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