Eastern Ganga dynasty
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The Eastern Ganga Dynasty ruled 'Kalinga' (most parts of southeast India) during the 11th century [1]. Their capital was known by the name Kalinganagar, which is the modern Srimukhalingam in Srikakulam District of Andhra Pradesh. Today is most remembered as the makers of the World Heritage site, Konark Sun Temple at Konark, Orissa, built by King Narasimhadeva I (AD 1236-1264). During their reign (1076-1435) a new style of temple architecture came into being, commonly called as Indo-Aryan architecture. This dynasty was founded by King Anantavarman Chodaganga Deva (1077–1147). He was a religious person and a patron of art and literature. He is credited for having built the famous Jagannath Temple of Puri in Orissa.
King Anantavarman Chodaganga deva was succeeded by a long line of illustrious rulers. Among them was Narasimhadeva I (1238-1264), who built the famous Sun Temple of Konark in Orissa. The rulers of Eastern Ganga dynasty defended their kingdom from the constant attacks of the Muslim rulers. This kingdom prospered through trade and commerce and the wealth was mostly used in the construction of temples. The rule of the dynasty came to end under the reign of King Bhanudeva IV, in the early 15th century.
Chodaganga Deva (1077-1150), the greatest of the Ganga kings, built a new temple on the ruins of the old one. It is said that King Chodaganga was originally a Shaivite who became a Vaishnava under the influence of Ramanuja when he visited Jagannath Puri. Prior to the time of Ramanuja, there used to be a dog in black stone on the altar. Ramanuja had this dog deity removed, and improved temple service in other ways. Many other acharyas visited Puri after Ramanuja, including Madhva in the 13th century.
From various inscriptions it is known that King Anantavarman Codaganga Deva established the present temple some time near the end of the eleventh century. A copper plate inscription made by King Rajaraja III found on the Tirumala temple near the north entrance states that the temple was built by Gangesvara, i.e., Anantavarman Chodaganga Deva:
pAdau yasya dharAntarIkSam akhilaM nAbhis tu sArvA dizaH zrotre netra-yugaM ravIndu-yugalaM mUrdhApi ca dyaur asau
prAsAdaM puruSottamasya nRpatiH ko nAma kartuM kSamas tasyetyAdi nRpair upekSitam ayaM cakre’tha gaGgezvaraH
Previous king thought themselves incapable of building an appropriate temple to Lord Purushottam whose feet cover the three worlds, whose navel contains the entire sky, whose ears contain all the directions, whose eyes are the sun and moon, and whose head is the heaven above. The task that they had thus neglected was finally completed by Gangesvara.
lakSmI-janma-gRhaM payonidhir asau sambhAvitasya sthitir nAmAsi zvazurasya pUjyata iti kSIrAbdhi-vAsa-dhruvam
nirviNNaH puruSottamaH pramuditas tad-dhAma-lAbhAd ramApy etad bhartR-gRhaM varaM pitR-gRhAt prApya pramodAnvitA
Lord Purushottam had been sad and ashamed while living in the ocean of milk, in the house where Lakshmi had taken birth even though he was well-treated by his father-in-law. He thus preferred to have a new home on the shore of the salt ocean, seeing which he became joyful. Lakshmi Devi also happily left the home of her father and came to her husband’s new mansion.
Later, King Ananga Bhima Deva II (1190-1198) did much to continue the work of Chodaganga Deva, building the walls around the temple and many of the other shrines on the temple grounds. He is thus often considered one of the builders of the temple. He also did much to establish the regulations around the service to the Deity.
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[edit] The Sun Temple of Konark
The Sun Temple of Konark stands on a deserted stretch of coast in Orissa, overlooking the Bay of Bengal. For centuries sailors navigating the shore used this once lofty building. They called it the “Black Pagoda,” to distinguish it from the “White Pagoda", the famous Jagannatha temple twenty miles (32-km) up the coast in Puri.
Battered by storms and sea winds, nibbled by salt and sand, the temple seems to be gradually returning to its source, like some majestic galleon that is slowly but surely slipping under the waves. Now the Sun Temple stands nearly two miles (3-km) from the sea, but originally the Bay of Bengal came to within a few yards of the walled enclosure. In times of storm during the monsoons, flood tides still advance menacingly toward it.
The Konark Sun Temple is one of the many temples in India dedicated to the Sun God, but it is by far the finest. The main temple is embellished with intricate carvings both on the inside and outside. However, the high point of this temple is that it is said to be an exact replica of the chariot of the Sun God, as if frozen in stone.
[edit] The Legends
No one really knows why a temple was erected here, but there are many legends to account for its appearance. The most popular concerns ‘Samba’, the son of Lord Krishna. Samba was inordinately proud of his beauty. So proud that he once made the mistake of ridiculing a celebrated sage, Narada, who was not renowned for his looks. Narada was not amused.
Always mischievous, he decided to have his revenge on the arrogant boy. He managed to lure the unsuspecting Samba to the pool where his stepmothers, the luscious consorts of Krishna, were bathing in joyful abandon. When Krishna heard what his son had done, he was furious and cursed him with leprosy. Realizing later that the innocent boy had been tricked by Narada’s cunning, Krishna was mortified.
But he could not revoke his curse; all he could do was advise his son to worship the sun god Surya, healer of all diseases, and hope for a cure. After twelve years of penance and worship, Samba was at last instructed by Surya to go and bathe in the sea at Konark. He did so and was cured of his awful affliction. Samba was so delighted that he decided there and then to erect a Surya temple on these spot. It was called “Konark”, “Place of the Sun,” from which the modern name comes.
[edit] Historical Facts vs Myths
The temple was actually built by a king of the medieval ‘Ganga’ dynasty, “Narasingha Deva”. The king was popularly known as “Langulia”, “the one with a tail.” It is possible that he built the temple as a supplication to Surya to remove a spinal swelling of some sort.
In the eyes of his subjects, such an act would imply that ‘Narasingha’ was a descendant of, or even a reincarnation of, Krishna’s very own son. It was not unheard of for kings to align themselves in this way with the great heroes of antiquity or even with gods. To discover the roots of one’s family tree securely planted in heaven could be a distinct advantage.
A less romantic explanation is that Narasingha built the temple to commemorate his victories over the Muslims, who were pushing into Orissa from the west. During his reign he won at least three resounding victories over the invaders.
[edit] History Of The Temple
The Entrance to the temple is done from the Vantage Point, which is situated on the south wall of the complex, behind the two rearing figures of the Royal Horses. From here one can get the best view of the site as a whole. The temple originally consisted of three parts: sanctuary surmounted by a colossal spire tower, porch and the detached Hall of Dance. A wall surrounded the whole complex.
[edit] An Abode of Sun God
The temple was conceived as a massive chariot lying on an east-west axis, in which the Sun god, Surya, was pulled across the sky. Each day his journey brought life and light back to earth and his procession was a continual rejoicing. The chariot had twenty-four wheels, and was pulled by seven horses, representing the seven days of the week and the seven sages who govern the constellations.
Sun worship is central to India. The standard daily prayer of the Brahmins is the ‘Gayatri’, addressed to the sun, and on an esoteric level, the sun symbolizes the divine Self within. The idea of procession is also an integral part of temple worship. Deities are shown to the public on feast days and festivals and are pulled around the town in brightly decorated chariots. The most famous of these processions takes place every July, in nearby Puri. This is the festival of the Jagannatha Temple. A form of Vishnu, Shri Jagannatha, is paraded in an enormous chariot.
To the west of the Sun temple stand the remains of two earlier structures: the “Vaishnava temple” and the “Mayadev temple”. Thus looking from left to right across the site, one can trace a progression beginning with the earliest structure, the Vaishnava temple, and ending with the latest, the Hall of Dance.
[edit] Gradual Collapse Of A Magnificent Monument
The ‘Shikhara’ must have been extremely impressive, since it dominated the rest of the complex. Various theories have been put forward to explain its collapse: earthquakes, subsidence, lightning. In fact, both man and nature had a hand in it.
According to the historical records the Shikhara was originally crowned by a finial in traditional Hindu style: a water pot on top of a heavy spheroid base. The ‘Kalasha’ was made of copper, most probably gilded, and the ‘Amla’ of stone. The Muslims, who thought it was gold and wanted to melt it down, removed the ‘Kalasha’ at the beginning of the 17th century. The Amla underneath it was made of several massive blocks of stone, clamped together by iron dowels.
The very weight of the stone served to keep the corbelled walls of the spire in position by counteracting their tendency to fall inward. But when the Kalasha was removed, the plaster covering the dowels was damaged and exposed and, over time, washed away. The iron underneath now began to erode, disintegrate, and finally fell apart. As a result, the stone slabs fell down, damaging the rest of the building and exposing further capping stones to the ravages of the elements. Worse still, the essential tensile balance of the spire was destroyed. There was nothing to prevent its crumbling. Remnants of the Amla coping stone now lie to the north of the porch.
Several years before the removal of the copper Kalasha, the local maharaja had removed the cult image of Surya from the sanctuary. It was taken to Puri, for safety from the approaching Muslim armies. Once the presiding deity had gone, the temple was shorn of its spiritual power, and local interest in it would have declined.
Added to which, the sanctity of the temple would have been further violated by the entry of the Muslims when they came to steal the Kalasha. Though there is no record of any iconoclastic destruction, their very presence inside the hallowed ground of the temple would have violated its sanctity. All in all, there was little reason for the local people to prevent the place falling into total neglect, which is just what happened.
The decay was gradual. Even in 1848 a corner of the tower still stood to a considerable height. In 1820 this was about 120 feet (35m) according to the Scots traveler, A. Stirling, who saw it then. The English architect Markham Kittoe, writing in 1838, estimated it had diminished to “80 or 100 feet, and has at a distance the appearance of a crooked column.” But this brave remnant was not to last long.
Ten years later, in 1848, it was blown down in a ferocious gale. When the Indian writer Rajendralala Mitra visited the site after another twenty years, even the sanctuary over which the proud Shikhara had towered was reduced to “an enormous mass of stones, studded with a few ‘Pipal’ trees here and there.”
The porch -- that part of the temple still standing -- suffered more from the greedy hands of man than from the elements. The chief villain of the piece was a raja of Kurda, who took a particular liking to the chlorite slabs that decorated the facade of the building. Nor were the local people averse to helping themselves to the iron clamps, for the metal. Fortunately, this vandalism was stopped by order of the government in 1838.
[edit] The Festivities
In fact, Orissa has had a history of independence and military honour second only to that of the Rajputs. Since earliest times the main annual festivals of the Hindu calendar in this part of the country have been military, rather than religious, affairs.
Until recently the autumn festival of ‘Dusserah’, celebrated all over India as a worship of Durga, consort of Shiva, was an aboriginal hunting festival in Orissa. Reserved forests were thrown open to the general public for hunting; the ancestral weapons were brought out and worshipped in each village, and the warlike past of the community was relived in ancient myth and songs. Leadership, bravery, and strength have always been the valued qualities here.
[edit] The Ancient Orissan Armed Force
Under the Ganga dynasty Orissa had a peasant militia of three hundred thousand men, with fifty thousand foot and ten thousand horses, and an elephant regiment twenty-five thousand strong. She was relied upon by the central power in times of crisis, her troops constituting what was, in effect, a national army.
Even the Muslims grudgingly admitted that a Ganga king could, at a moment’s notice, take the field with eighteen thousand men. And it was in Orissa that the first armed rebellions against the British took place in the early 19th century. This concern with martial arts invaded even the religious sphere. The priests at the Jagannatha temple in Puri were renowned for their physical prowess and exercised daily in the famous religious gymnasia. The ‘Pandits’ were accomplished and respected wrestlers.
Many of the common Orissan surnames, such as ‘Dalai’ and ‘Senapati’, originated in Ganga times. Interestingly, the higher posts in the army were held by the priestly Brahmin caste; thus ‘Bahinapati’ is a common Brahmin name.
Narasingha himself was more renowned for his valour than his piety. This, combined with Orissa’s impressive military history, supports the theory that Konark was a colossal tower of victory, erected to the sun god in thanks for his earthly representative’s victory over the dreaded Muslim. The profusion of carvings, on and around the temple, depicting military subjects, seems to confirm it.
At the end of the 16th century, Konark was famous far beyond the borders of Orissa. By then, it had become a great center of pilgrimage and attracted the praise of even such a discriminating critic as Abul Fazl, the court biographer of Emperor Akbar the Great.
All that now remains from those glory days is the ruined half of the main temple. Nevertheless, this mere fragment of Konark’s former glory constitutes what is often considered to be the most impressive temple in northern India.
[edit] References
- ^ Ganga Dynasty www.britannica.com.
