Rock-Cut Cave-Temples – Hindu and Jain
In the beginning of the second half of the millennium after Christ, the Brahmanical and Jain creeds too started adopting the rock-cut mode of temples. This caught on quickly and in the last four centuries of the millennium a vast number of such temples and been created all over the south, from the Deccan to very near the Cape. These, incidentally, are far more numerous than similar excavations in the north. The majority of these again are Brahmanical. The Jain ones are fewer. The inauguration of this mode of rock-out temples for the Brahmanical and Jain gods commenced with the coming to power of three great empires in the peninsula-the Chalukyas of Vatapi (Badami) in the Deccan region, with their collateral branch of the Chalukyas of Vengi (or the Eastern Chalukyas) on coastal Andhra, the Pallavas of Kanchi on the eastern coast, and the Pandyas of Madurai in the far south. The best and maximum output in this direction came during the three centuries between AD 550 and 850, when these three powerful kingdoms were not only keen political rivals but were also close competitors in the patronage of art, architecture and literature. While the early Chalukyas of Badami were replaced in the middle of this period by the Rashtrakutas of Manyakheta, the Pallavas and the Pandyas continued to hold sway right through. The inervening minor and subordinate dynasties, wedged among the three imperial powers as buffer states, also took part in the activity and contributed to this movement in their respective regions.
There had been a lingering tradition of a taboo on stone for sacred and secular structures, because of its long local association with funerary erections, as has been noted before. This was apparently broken almost simultaneously by the Chalukya King Mangalesa, and his contemporary the Pallva King. Mahendra I. Mangalesa excavated Vishnu Cave-temple no. III in Badami, in commemoration of and in association with the Narayana-bali ceremony (shraddha) of his departed and beloved brother Kirtivarman in Saka 500 (AD 578), as the related inscriptions say. Mahendra I, perhaps taking the cue, excavated his first cave temple at Mandagappattu (South Arcot district) for the Hindu trinity-Siva, Vishnu and Brahma. While Mangalesa chose the finely-Siva, Vishnu and Brahma. While Mangalesa chose the finely-grained and horizontally stratified soft sandstone cliffs of Badami (Bijapur district), as the new captial, Mahendra I chose the the very hard close-grained granite rock of Mandagappattu, far away from his capital. In Mangalesa’s case, though the excavation of a cave-temple for a Hindu god and the carving of Hindu sculptures on it were altogether novel credal innovations, the mode was only a perpetuation of the earlier tradition of excavating such cave-temples into deliberately chosen soft rocks like sandstone, trap or limestone that had been in continuous existence from Mauryan times in north, central and western India as also the Deccan. Thus, his craftsmen had the advantage of the long acquired know-how of such cutting into sandstone and carving them, which had been developing for nearly a millennium. The first cave-temple was, as a result, bold and ambitious in design and larger dimensions. Close on Mangalesa’s first cave-temple followed other similar cave-temples of the Chalukyas in Badami, Aihole, and other place, all excavated into the same soft rocks.
In the case of Mahendra, the excavation into hard rock and carving of the cave-temple and sculpture would almost be an innovation, since there had been no precedents, except those of Asoka and Dasaratha in the Barabar, Nagarjuni and Sithmarhi hills, near Gays, some 900 years before. Since then the practice and tradition had been totally given up or forgotten and not attempted in that long interval of time and space. In such a context, Mahendra’s gloating over his first achievement in his inscription on the Mandagappattu cave-temple became quite meaningful. The inscription states that "this brickless, timberless metalless and mortarless abode of Lakshita was caused to be made by King Vichitrachitta for Brahma, Isvara and Vishnu." The small inscription is important also in that Mahendra’s work was a departure from the contemporary usage and tradition in the matter of the creation of a stone-temple without resorting to the usual materials, such as brick, timber, metal and mortar. What was even more significant was that it was a departure from the process known till then of excavating into deliberately chosen soft rocks. This was followed by more cave-temples being excavated by him into the hard rocks of the south. They are all of a simpler design and less ambitious in size because of the hardness of the new rock material of hitherto unknown potentialities that involved greater labour, invention of new tools and skills in cutting and longer time to complete. Thus one may say that the Chalukyas and the Pallavas inaugurated two parallel traditions in the south. The succeeding, dynasties in the Chalukyan region of the Deccan, north Mysore, and coastal Andhra continued the choice and use of sogt store rocks of their cave-temples and later for their contemporary Pandyas, who also excavated into had rocks of their area, continued to choose and employ likewise hard rocks for their rock-cut and structural temples further south.
The result was that these two parallel traditions continued in the south in the respective regions till the advent of the Vijayanagar empire in the second half of the fourteenth century, which soon embraced in its ambit both these regions and in fact soon extended practically over the whole of south India. The soft stone tradition of the northern region almost came to an end and the use of hard stone for temple construction became almost universal, though the regional styles and distinguishig characters that had developed up to that time in either region were generally maintained.
The three centuries covering the rock-cut phase in the Brahmanical and Jain temple architecture coincided also with the great revivalist movements of the Hindus and the continuing hold of the Jain sects on some sections of the people. With the commencement of the seventh century, and in the wake of the revivalist movements of the Hindus, great changes were wrought and the bhakti cult developed. In the Tamil land the Saiva and Vaishnava hymnist saints, the Nayanmars and the Alvars, became wedded to the Vedic traditions and traversed the whole area visiting shrines, singing hundreds of devotional hymns in Tamil and rousing the people. This also resulted in the reformation of the extremist Saiva creeds of the Kalamukhas, Pasupatas, Mahesvaras, Saktas and the like; it curbed the strong hold that Jainism had on the people and almost led to the decline of Buddhism.
Jainism had all along been having a great hold on the Telugu and Kannada regions as a result of the patronage it received from the kings and the rich mercantile groups. The Kannada area continued to be the centre of south Indian Jainism from where the various guchchhas branched out into the Tamil and Telgu areas. It was again in the first half of the ninth century that the great Hindu reformer-philosopher, Sankaracharya, appeared on the scene, refined the existing creeds and their practices, established the six mahas (the Shanmata, viz. Ganapatya Kaumara, Saura, Saiva, Vaishnava, and Sakta) on a sound basis, and propounded the great and universal philosophy of Advaita. It is a curious fact that these rock-cut or stone-built temples of the period, though created by great kings or with their patronage, were almost totally ignored by the contemporary Tamil hymists. This was perhaps because they were innovations that avoided the use of traditional materials of architecture and sculpture and as such militated against the sampradaya. Evidently, it took them time to become acceptable. The output in terms of rock-cut temples of the Pallavas and after them the contemporary Pandyas and minor dynasties like the Muttaraiyars of the Thanjavur region in between, and of the rulers in the Kerala are is far greater in hard rock, than it is in softer rocks of the Chalukyas, the Rashtrakutas, the Eastern Chalukyas and the Telgu Cholas of the Deccan and coastal Andhra areas. The pallava cave-temples form a more coherent series and as such can be considered first.
There had been a lingering tradition of a taboo on stone for sacred and secular structures, because of its long local association with funerary erections, as has been noted before. This was apparently broken almost simultaneously by the Chalukya King Mangalesa, and his contemporary the Pallva King. Mahendra I. Mangalesa excavated Vishnu Cave-temple no. III in Badami, in commemoration of and in association with the Narayana-bali ceremony (shraddha) of his departed and beloved brother Kirtivarman in Saka 500 (AD 578), as the related inscriptions say. Mahendra I, perhaps taking the cue, excavated his first cave temple at Mandagappattu (South Arcot district) for the Hindu trinity-Siva, Vishnu and Brahma. While Mangalesa chose the finely-Siva, Vishnu and Brahma. While Mangalesa chose the finely-grained and horizontally stratified soft sandstone cliffs of Badami (Bijapur district), as the new captial, Mahendra I chose the the very hard close-grained granite rock of Mandagappattu, far away from his capital. In Mangalesa’s case, though the excavation of a cave-temple for a Hindu god and the carving of Hindu sculptures on it were altogether novel credal innovations, the mode was only a perpetuation of the earlier tradition of excavating such cave-temples into deliberately chosen soft rocks like sandstone, trap or limestone that had been in continuous existence from Mauryan times in north, central and western India as also the Deccan. Thus, his craftsmen had the advantage of the long acquired know-how of such cutting into sandstone and carving them, which had been developing for nearly a millennium. The first cave-temple was, as a result, bold and ambitious in design and larger dimensions. Close on Mangalesa’s first cave-temple followed other similar cave-temples of the Chalukyas in Badami, Aihole, and other place, all excavated into the same soft rocks.
In the case of Mahendra, the excavation into hard rock and carving of the cave-temple and sculpture would almost be an innovation, since there had been no precedents, except those of Asoka and Dasaratha in the Barabar, Nagarjuni and Sithmarhi hills, near Gays, some 900 years before. Since then the practice and tradition had been totally given up or forgotten and not attempted in that long interval of time and space. In such a context, Mahendra’s gloating over his first achievement in his inscription on the Mandagappattu cave-temple became quite meaningful. The inscription states that "this brickless, timberless metalless and mortarless abode of Lakshita was caused to be made by King Vichitrachitta for Brahma, Isvara and Vishnu." The small inscription is important also in that Mahendra’s work was a departure from the contemporary usage and tradition in the matter of the creation of a stone-temple without resorting to the usual materials, such as brick, timber, metal and mortar. What was even more significant was that it was a departure from the process known till then of excavating into deliberately chosen soft rocks. This was followed by more cave-temples being excavated by him into the hard rocks of the south. They are all of a simpler design and less ambitious in size because of the hardness of the new rock material of hitherto unknown potentialities that involved greater labour, invention of new tools and skills in cutting and longer time to complete. Thus one may say that the Chalukyas and the Pallavas inaugurated two parallel traditions in the south. The succeeding, dynasties in the Chalukyan region of the Deccan, north Mysore, and coastal Andhra continued the choice and use of sogt store rocks of their cave-temples and later for their contemporary Pandyas, who also excavated into had rocks of their area, continued to choose and employ likewise hard rocks for their rock-cut and structural temples further south.
The result was that these two parallel traditions continued in the south in the respective regions till the advent of the Vijayanagar empire in the second half of the fourteenth century, which soon embraced in its ambit both these regions and in fact soon extended practically over the whole of south India. The soft stone tradition of the northern region almost came to an end and the use of hard stone for temple construction became almost universal, though the regional styles and distinguishig characters that had developed up to that time in either region were generally maintained.
The three centuries covering the rock-cut phase in the Brahmanical and Jain temple architecture coincided also with the great revivalist movements of the Hindus and the continuing hold of the Jain sects on some sections of the people. With the commencement of the seventh century, and in the wake of the revivalist movements of the Hindus, great changes were wrought and the bhakti cult developed. In the Tamil land the Saiva and Vaishnava hymnist saints, the Nayanmars and the Alvars, became wedded to the Vedic traditions and traversed the whole area visiting shrines, singing hundreds of devotional hymns in Tamil and rousing the people. This also resulted in the reformation of the extremist Saiva creeds of the Kalamukhas, Pasupatas, Mahesvaras, Saktas and the like; it curbed the strong hold that Jainism had on the people and almost led to the decline of Buddhism.
Jainism had all along been having a great hold on the Telugu and Kannada regions as a result of the patronage it received from the kings and the rich mercantile groups. The Kannada area continued to be the centre of south Indian Jainism from where the various guchchhas branched out into the Tamil and Telgu areas. It was again in the first half of the ninth century that the great Hindu reformer-philosopher, Sankaracharya, appeared on the scene, refined the existing creeds and their practices, established the six mahas (the Shanmata, viz. Ganapatya Kaumara, Saura, Saiva, Vaishnava, and Sakta) on a sound basis, and propounded the great and universal philosophy of Advaita. It is a curious fact that these rock-cut or stone-built temples of the period, though created by great kings or with their patronage, were almost totally ignored by the contemporary Tamil hymists. This was perhaps because they were innovations that avoided the use of traditional materials of architecture and sculpture and as such militated against the sampradaya. Evidently, it took them time to become acceptable. The output in terms of rock-cut temples of the Pallavas and after them the contemporary Pandyas and minor dynasties like the Muttaraiyars of the Thanjavur region in between, and of the rulers in the Kerala are is far greater in hard rock, than it is in softer rocks of the Chalukyas, the Rashtrakutas, the Eastern Chalukyas and the Telgu Cholas of the Deccan and coastal Andhra areas. The pallava cave-temples form a more coherent series and as such can be considered first.
