Hindu Temple Building & Temple of the Sun

The Temple of the Sun at Konarak in India's Orissa state is considered the high point of the tradition of Hindu temple building that began in the late eighth century. Shortly after the Konarak temple was built in the mid-thirteenth century the Mughal invasions put a premature end to this architectural tradition. The Konarak temple was a monumental representation of the chariot of the Sun God. It featured twelve pairs of wheels on its side walls and the figure of the god standing at the front of the building driving his horses. Almost every square inch of the temple's outer walls is covered with carvings that range widely from abstract designs to animals, human beings, and gods and vary in size from a few inches to many feet." One of the most striking aspects of the sculptural program of this particular temple is the enormous number of erotic sculptural groups it contains. While such works are found on many temples, Konarak has the greatest number and variety of anywhere and "nothing like it exists anywhere else in the world." The erotic sculptures are of three types: the simple representation of the couple (mithuna), the detailed depiction of copulation (maithuna), and groups that involve more than two people. The iconography of the erotic sculpture at Konarak (and other temples) has puzzled scholars for many years and they have produced many different explanations of the statues' meanings. The identification of the erotic element as being related to Tantric prac

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es and does not appear consistently in any single style. According to Mitra the placement of the sculptures among those of other human beings and gods meant they were not to be singled out for special attention and while the sculptures are "obtrusive and shocking to the modern eye, the ancients must have accorded sanction to such overt . . . eroticism for some reason or other" and took them "in a natural way." Though it is hard to say that the figures would not be arresting no matter who saw them, it is correct to say that they must have played accepted and significant roles in the practices of the devotees. What those meanings are is a subject on which scholars may never finally agree. General, rather vague, explanations predominated before scholars began intensive research on the question. Zimmer, for example, locates the rationale for erotic art in the dynamic Indian philosophy which holds that the universal life-force "manifest[s] itself no less in the gross matter of daily experience than in the divine beings of religious vision." Thus the escape from human imperfection, the search for transcendence, can be conducted not just by means of ascetic denial (yoga) "but equally through a perfect realization of love and it

Category: Arts - H