Talking edifices

In the first quarter of the eleventh century, a team of skilled artisans established a campsite at Balligamve village in Karnataka in southern India. An unnamed patron had entrusted these artisans with the task of re-creating Kedarnath (Kedāra) at Balligamve. For several reasons, the assignment was a challenging one. First, it was impossible to replicate the defining features of Kedāra's famed geophysical landscape. Kedāra was a seasonally inhabited sedge meadow at an altitude of about 3,566 meters near a glacial source of the Mandakini-Ganga River in the Central Himalayas. From the meadow's northern edge rose a perennially snowclad mountain. The mountain was twice as high as the sedge meadow and bore the same name. Devout travelers revered a rock outcrop at the center of the sedge meadow' as a sign of Śiva's perpetual presence at the site. In the eleventh century, this rock outcrop was probably exposed to the elements and unsheltered by the canopy of the temple that currently stands at the site.

In contrast, Balligamve was a bustling settlement on land as flat as a pancake. Coconut palms were the tallest elements in its landscape. A stream that flowed into a nearby pond bisected the village. In all likelihood the artisans who had set up a campsite at Balligamve had never traveled to the Himalayan Kedāra, a 2,600-kilometer journey each way through a mosaic of amicable and hostile kingdoms, dense jungles, deep rivers, clammy swamps, and mountain ranges. Most likely the artisans had never seen drawings of the distant tīrtha. In the eleventh century at Balligamve—as elsewhere on the subcontinent—illustrated manuscripts were a rarity. Furthermore, the drawings in them did not represent the world as seen; they were only a few centimeters in size and governed by iconographic and iconometric rules. Had the artisans read or even heard segments of Śaiva scriptures, they would have learned of Kedāra's stature as a glorious tīrtha but would have acquired no knowledge of either its appearance or the activities transpiring there in their own day.

Gauging from the remains preserved at Balligamve, it appears that the artisans were undaunted by the challenge. They deftly represented the mountain that loomed over the sedge meadow as a well-proportioned Śiva temple. This temple consisted of three vimānas. One, an east-facing edifice, was perceptibly larger than the other two. It was built on an axis with a series of mukhacatuṣkīs and maṇḍapas. A Śiva liṅga was installed in its garbhagṛha. The two other vimānas—which shared maṇḍapas and mukhacatuskis with the east-facing vimāna—faced each other. Sculptures of Brahma and Viṣṇu respectively were accommodated in them. The Śiva temple at Balligamve was built in the Vesara mode, which had recently emerged from the coalescence of the Nāgara and Drāviḍa modes. As such, it was an appropriate mode for a monument that housed Śiva in his guise as Dakṣiṇa-Kedāreśvara, Lord of the Southern Kedāra.

In re-creating Kedāra at Balligamve, the artisans were not alone. Twenty-two Sanskrit inscriptions composed between around 1078 and 1215 have been recovered from the site. They establish that from the moment of the temple's construction, generations of Śaiva gurus of the Śakti Pariṣad division of the Kālāmukha order strove to maintain and enhance Dakṣiṇa Kedāra. The Hoysaḷas and their intermediaries who ruled over this region supported the efforts of these gurus. Inscriptions describe some of the many mechanisms used to re-create Kedāra at Balligamve. In one composed in 1129, a court poet directly compared the temple and its setting to the Himalayan tīrtha.

The course of the source of that sacred bathing stream there at the temple [at Balligamve] is like that of the Ganges at Kedāra, the lofty tower of the Śiva temple piercing the sky rises up like the peak of Kedāra, and the holy ascetics performing penances there [at Balligamve] are like the holy ascetics at Kedāra whose minds are bent on the performance of the most difficult penances,— thus this is a new Kedāra, the standing crops of its fertile fields resembling the horripilation arising from Śiva liṅga worship, its temple the abode of Paramaheśvara. The god Kedāra therein, who thinking with supreme benevolence on his faithful worshippers,—(who are) afraid of the cold and unable to make the distant pilgrimage (to Kedāra)—frees them from all sins (here) . . . —may he protect you.

An inscription composed in 1162 reveals additional efforts to re-create Kedāra at Balligamve. Its composer recorded activities intended to promote devotion, scholarship, and tolerance in the settlement. The Kālāmukha gurus and their supporters believed that these values were the Himalayan tīrtha's hallmarks and wished to replicate all of these at Balligamve.

There [in Balligamve] is the Kodiya maṭha which has become the abode of the god Kedāra of the South,—a field charming with a crop which is the standing erect of the hairs of the body that is induced by doing worship to the liṅga of Śiva,—a place devoted to the observances of Śaiva saints leading perpetually the life of celibate religious students,—a place for the quiet study of the four Vedas, the Ṛc, Yajus, Sāman, and Atharvan, together with their auxiliary works,—a place where commentaries are composed on the Kaumāra, Pāṇinīya, Śabdānuśāsana, and other grammatical works,—a place where commentaries are composed on the six systems of philosophy, namely the Nyāya, Vaiśeṣika, Mīmāṃsā, Sāṃkhya, Bauddha, etc.,—a place where commentaries are composed on the Lākula-siddhānta, and the Pātañjala and other Yogaśāstras,—a place for (studying) the eighteen Purāṇas, the law books, and all the poetical compositions, the dramas, the light comedies, and the other various kinds of learning,—a place where food is always given to the poor, the helpless, the lame, the blind, the deaf, and to professional story-tellers, singers, musicians, bards, players, and minstrels whose duty it is to awaken their masters with music and songs, and to the naked and the crippled, and to (Jain and Buddhist) mendicants, to (Brāhmaṇa) mendicants who carry a single staff and also those who are carrying a triple staff, to haṃsa and paramahaṃsa mendicants, and to all other beggars from many countries,—a place where many helpless sick people are harbored and treated,—a place of assurance of safety for all living creatures.

(Excerpted with permission from Nachiket Chanchani's Mountain Temples & Temple Mountains; published by Niyogi Books)