CHAIDHANYA JAYAMOHAN- END TERM ASSIGNMENT

An Appreciation of the Gommateshwara statue at Shravanabelagola, Karnataka.

   Our journey started at the heart of the Bangalore metropolis. The night travel by train from Chennai City to Bangalore felt just like another night with family and friends, with all the usual talk about philosophy, history and politics. Once we reached Bangalore, I got that all too familiar sense of isolation and anxiety again. The feeling that has become a part of me, since I left my home town to study in the city. I presume most of us felt the same way because it seemed as though we were all desperately trying to fill the moments of silence with jokes and anecdotes, trying to create an ideal world within that fast paced, callous metropolis.

       We finally left the city to look for the old worlds we had lost. The journey took us deep into the most secluded villages of Karnataka. We didn’t speak the language so when we had to ask the locals for directions, we pointed vaguely to the empty space behind us and spoke the only words we knew in Kannada. “Hale devasthana?” It simply meant “old temple”. Every time we asked someone this ambiguous question, they smiled at us radiantly, as a mother would smile at her child when it pleads for a lost or broken old toy, before giving us directions.

       We had planned on visiting the old Hoysala temples of Belur, Halabeedu, Belavadi, Hosaholalu, Govindanhalli and several others. Our journey would end with us visiting the Shravanabelagola. The Hoysala architecture was unlike anything I had witnessed before. It felt as though it was flaunting its tremendous wealth, its great fortune and all the incredible talents it possessed, while staying humble to the forces that shaped their civilization, at the same time. The sculptures were made by the most imaginative and artistic humans to have walked on this planet. The temples of Belur and Halabeedu alone could be seen and studied for weeks. We had to rush through them in two days and the impression they created was so profound that the elusive stares of the dancers and their enticing fingers and feet filled our dreams and our waking moments.

Chennakesava temple, Belur. Karnataka.

         Sometimes it was impossible to believe that what we were looking at was actually made of stone. The delicate fingers of the Krishna of Belavadi hovered over his flute barely touching it. One could almost feel the flow of air beneath his fingertips. The sculptures and the temples overwhelmed our senses. One of my friends aptly described it as a grand festival etched into stone. Music was about to gush out of the stone instruments. The temples themselves seemed as though they were brimming with a divine harmony. It was a celebration of Life, no doubt. As Nietzsche says about the Dionysian art, in his book ‘The Birth of Tragedy’, it was a celebration, “where the entire excess of nature sang out loudly in joy, suffering, and knowledge, speaking about the truth in its most intoxicated state”. There was no sense of moderation. The most indefinable, nonfigurative and abstract ideas became metaphorical images and were transformed into hand gestures, weapons, musical instrument etc. For instance there was a statue of a dancing Sarasvati, Goddess of Poetry and music. Her iconography is usually a book or script (symbolizing the literary arts), a Veena or Beena (music), Akshamani mala, which symbolizes the passing of time, among other things. But in some of the sculptures we saw in Belur and Halabeedu, she had a Vajrayudha or a lightning bolt in her hand. The Vajrayudha is usually associated with Indra, the God of thunder and rain. We had never seen Saraswati, the goddess of art, holding a bolt of lightning in her hand. It seemed to us that the artist who sculpted her was declaring to the world that art, especially poetry, should be like a bolt of lightning. It should be a flash of truth, unrelenting, powerful and magnificent!

        Our final destination was the lone sculpture of Bahubali at the Shravabelogola. I had seen pictures of the statue before and had heard a lot of talk about its significance. I was never truly impressed by any of it. It always seemed to me to be one of those artworks which everyone has to admire just because it stood the test of time. We climbed the barren hill slowly, all the while talking about the Hoysala art and architecture and how impressed we were with it. We reached the top and I could see the head of the Bahubali through the stone structure around it. As we approached the statue, everyone fell into a disconcerting silence. I moved closer and everyone else fell behind.

       The moments when I stood before the Theerthankara are one of the few times I felt like I had truly transformed. The person who climbed down that barren hill just wasn’t the same. After witnessing all the ways a human could possibly embellish himself in those “hale devasthanas” of the Hoysala period, I finally stood before the completely bare, unadorned body of the man who stares into the void, with his eyes wide open, forever.

       Bahubali is said to be the son of Rishabanatha and Sunanda who ruled Ayodhya during the Ikshvaku dynasty. Bahubali’s elder brother Bharata was in line for the throne, when Rishabanatha left the kingdom to become the first thirthankara of Jainism. However, the seers prophesize that Bahubali would take over the kingdom as he was the one endowed with great strength and intellect. This creates a rift between the brothers and they end up fighting for the kingdom. The final battle is a wrestling combat between the two brothers. Bahubali is able to overpower Bharata quiet easily but as he is about to strike him down with a final fatal blow, the royal Prince suddenly stops. A deep sense of shame fills his heart and he lets his brother go, gives up his claim to the throne, rips apart his royal garments and walks out of the kingdom, never to return. It is the story we have heard several times with many different characters. It is the story of humankind’s denial of the everyday reality and his search for something definite and immovable. Schopenhauer talks about ‘the monstrous horror’ that seizes a man when he suddenly doubts his way of comprehending the illusion, when something that had held his world together till then, breaks. This monstrous horror is what takes hold of the young Prince as he is about to brutally murder his own brother for a piece of land. The ridiculousness of his own skewed perception strikes him. He stands up to the world and opens his eyes wide to see beyond the limits of his faculties. The ubiquitous Artist froze that moment in time and offered it to world.

Gommateshwara, Shravanabelagola, Hassan Dist. Karnataka.

         The statue of Bahubali, situated in Shravanabelagola in the Hassan district of Karnataka, was built around 981 A.D. and is one of the largest monolithic statues in the world. It is otherwise known as Kammateswara or Gommateshwara. It was built during Ganga Dynasty and is about 57-foot (17 m) tall. It was sculpted using a single piece of rock (monolith). The other statues of Bahubali or Gommateshwara can be found in Karkala, Dharmasthala, Venur, Gommatagiri, Kumbhoj and Aretipur. However, Shravanabelagola remains the main centre of pilgrimage of the Jains and it is bathed in offerings once every twelve years. The event is celebrated as Mahamastakabhisheka. The statue of Bahubali in Karkala is the second most magnificent sculpture of Gommateshwara. The face of the theerthankara appears younger and carries a woeful expression that haunts the perceiver.  It is 42 feet (13 m) tall. It is also a monolithic statue since, according to the shilpa shashtra, a human body, however large, has to be made using a single stone. It is believed to have been built around 1432 and is the second-tallest statue in the State. The statue is built on an elevated platform on top of a rocky hill. The statue of Bahubali in Dharmasthala is a 39-foot (12 m) high statue with a 13-foot (4.0 m) pedestal. In 1973 the statue was installed at Dharmasthala on a low hill near the Manjunatha temple. Venur is a small town in Dakshina Kannada district, Karnataka state, situated on the bank of the Gurupura River. The statue of Bahubali in Venur is 38-foot (12 m) tall and built around 1604 AD. The statue at Venur is the shortest of the four Gommateshwaras.

The Statue of Bahubali, Dharmasthala, Karnataka

        The statues of Gommateshwara in Shravanabelagola and elsewhere are always found standing erect with his hands hanging on both sides and his eyes wide open and facing north. His hands do not offer wealth or protection to his worshippers but his eyes are not closed to the gritty reality of this world either. He faces away from the direction of the ancestors, which is south. This is symbolic of him rebelling against the traditions handed down to him by his ancestors. Legends say that he slowly dies as he meditates in a standing posture. This is symbolic of his resolve towards finding true Gnana (wisdom). Serpents rising from the anthills can be seen encircling his feet. Their hoods reach up to his knees. The snakes symbolize Kama, Krodha, Moga or lust, rage and desires. He towers over them all. He has managed to defeat his inner demons and his carnal desires quite easily. The vines that can be seen climbing and twisting around his arms, reach up to his shoulders. They symbolize Samsara or the affairs of the world, our everyday reality, the goodness and virtue imbued upon us from our birth and the desire to live a simple and contented life. The vines reach up to his shoulder as if to say that he has risen above them but barely. This idea of the power of Samsara is common in almost all philosophies of India including Buddhism. This idea forms the major theme of the novel ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’ written by Nikos Kazantsakis, who was greatly influenced by Buddhism and its philosophy. In the novel, the final and greatest temptation that Christ has to fight against is ‘leading a normal family life’ or Samsara. He manages to defeat it in the end.

          In our trip we journeyed from the incredibly ornate temples, built during the peak of the Hoysala dynasty in the lower Karnataka, to the mighty Bahubali, bare and exposed to the forces of nature and quiet literally standing the test of time. The contrast between them was stark. They stood at the two extremes of human nature. One is an intense and ecstatic celebration of our existence in this world. The other was a complete denial of Man’s Will (Schopenhauerean). It was a complete denial of the Will to power, the Will to act and to live. One could not exist without the other. Witnessing the painfully contradictory nature of the Human mind in such a short space of time left me and the rest of us completely baffled. During our return journey we remained almost entirely silent. It was an easy and unapologetic silence. Time and space passed us by, as in a dream. The metropolis was different now.

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