Chapter XII: Appendix: A

THE TEMPLES OF CASHMERE.

Extract from “An Essay on the Arian Order of Architecture, as
exhibited in the Temples of Kashmír,” by Capt. A. Cunningham.
“Journal of the Asiatic Society,” Vol. XVII.

The architectural remains of Kashmír are perhaps the most remarkable of the existing monuments of India, as they exhibit undoubted traces of the influence of Grecian art. The Hindú temple is generally a sort of architectural pasty, a huge collection of ornamental fritters, huddled together with or without keeping; while the “Jain” temple is usually a vast forest of pillars, made to look as unlike one another as possible, by some paltry differences in their petty details.

On the other hand, the Kashmirian fanes are distinguished by the graceful elegance of their outlines, by the massive boldness of their parts, and by the happy propriety of their decorations.

They cannot, indeed, vie with the severe simplicity of the Parthenon, but they possess great beauty—different, indeed, yet quite their own.

The characteristic features of the Kashmirian architecture are its lofty pyramidal roofs, its trefoiled doorways, covered by pyramidal pediments, and the great width of the intercolumniations.

Most of the Kashmirian temples are more or less injured, but more particularly those at Wantipúr, which are mere heaps of ruins. Speaking of these temples, Trebeck says: “It is scarcely possible to imagine that the state of ruin to which they have been reduced has been the work of time, or even of man, as their solidity is fully equal to that of the most massive monuments of Egypt. Earthquakes must have been the cause of their overthrow.” In my opinion, their overthrow is too complete to have been the result of an earthquake, which would have simply prostrated the buildings in large masses. But the whole of the superstructure of these temples is now lying in one confused heap of stones, totally disjointed from one another.

I believe, therefore, that I am fully justified in saying, from my own experience, that such a complete and disruptive overturn could only have been produced by gunpowder.

The destruction of the Kashmirian temples is universally attributed, both by history and by tradition, to the bigoted Sikander. (A.D. 1396.) He was reigning at the period of Timúr’s invasion of India, with whom he exchanged friendly presents, and from whom, I suppose, he may have received a present of the villainous saltpetre.

As it would appear that the Turks had metal cannon at the siege of Constantinople in 1422, I think it no great stretch of probability to suppose that gunpowder itself had been carried into the East, even as far as Kashmír, at least ten or twenty years earlier—that is, about A.D. 1400 to 1420, or certainly during the reign of Sikander, who died in 1416.

Even if this be not admitted, I still adhere to my opinion, that the complete ruin of the Wantipúr temples could only have been effected by gunpowder; and I would, then, ascribe their overthrow to the bigoted “Aurungzíb.”

“Ferishta” attributed to Sikander the demolition of all the Kashmirian temples save one, which was dedicated to Mahadeo, and which only escaped “in consequence of its foundations being below the surface of the neighbouring water.”

In A.D. 1580, “Abul Fazl” mentions that some of the idolatrous temples were in “perfect preservation;” and Ferishta describes many of these temples as having been in existence in his own time, or about A.D. 1600.

As several are still standing, though more or less injured, it is certain that Sikander could not have destroyed them all. He most likely gave orders that they should be overturned; and I have no doubt that many of the principal temples were thrown down during his reign.

But, besides the ruthless hand of the destroyer, another agency, less immediate, but equally certain in its ultimate effects, must have been at work upon the large temples of Kashmír. The silent ravages of the destroyer, who carries away pillars and stone, for the erection of other edifices, has been going on for centuries. Pillars, from which the architraves have been thus removed, have been thrown down by earthquakes, ready to be set up again for the decoration of the first Musjid that might be erected in the neighbourhood. Thus every Mahomedan building in Kashmír is constructed either entirely or in part of the ruins of Hindú temples.

TAKT I SULÍMAN.

The oldest temple in Kashmír, both in appearance and according to tradition, is that upon the hill of “Takt i Sulíman,” or Solomon’s Throne. It stands 1,000 feet above the plain, and commands a view of the greater part of Kashmír.

The situation is a noble one, and must have been amongst the first throughout the whole valley which was selected as the position of a temple. Its erection is ascribed to Jaloka, the son of Asoka, who reigned about 220 B.C.

The plan of the temple is octagonal, each side being fifteen feet in length. It is approached by a flight of eighteen steps, eight feet in width, and inclosed between two sloping walls. Its height cannot now be ascertained, as the present roof is a modern plastered dome, which was probably built since the occupation of the country by the Sikhs. The walls are eight feet thick, which I consider one of the strongest proofs of the great antiquity of the building.

PÁNDRETHÁN.

This name means the old capital, or ancient chief town. The name has, however, been spelt by different travellers in many different ways. “Moorcroft” calls it Pándenthán, “Vigne” Pandrenton, and “Hugel” Pandriton.

The building of this temple is recorded between A.D. 913 and 921; and it is afterwards mentioned between the years 958 and 972, as having escaped destruction when the King Abhimanyú—Nero-like—set fire to his own capital.

As this is the only temple situated in the old capital, there can be very little, if any, doubt that it is the very same building which now exists. For as it is surrounded by water, it was, of course, quite safe amid the fire, which reduced the other buildings to mere masses of quicklime.

Baron Hugel calls the Pándrethán edifice a “Buddhist temple,” and states that there are some well-preserved Buddhist figures in the interior. But he is doubly mistaken, for the temple was dedicated to Vishnú, and the figures in the inside have no connexion with Buddhism.

Trebeck swam into the interior, and could discover no figures of any kind; but as the whole ceiling was formerly hidden by a coating of plaster, his statement was, at that time, perfectly correct.

The object of erecting the temples in the midst of water must have been to place them more immediately under the protection of the Nágas, or human-bodied and snake-tailed gods, who were zealously worshipped for ages through Kashmír.

MÁRTTAND.

Of all the existing remains of Kashmirian grandeur, the most striking in size and situation is the noble ruin of Márttand.

This majestic temple stands at the northern end of the elevated table-land of “Matan,” about three miles to the eastward of Islámabád.

This is undoubtedly the finest position in Kashmír. The temple itself is not now (1848) more than forty feet in height, but its solid walls and bold outlines towering over the fluted pillars of the surrounding colonnade give it a most imposing appearance.

There are no petty confused details; but all are distinct and massive, and most admirably suited to the general character of the building.

Many vain speculations have been hazarded regarding the date of the erection of this temple and the worship to which it was appropriated.

It is usually called the “House of the Pandús” by the Brahmins, and by the people “Mattan.”

The true appellation appears to be preserved in the latter, Matan being only a corruption of the Sanscrit Márttand मार्त्तण्ड, or the sun, to which the temple was dedicated.

The true date of the erection of this temple—the wonder of Kashmír—is a disputed point of chronology; but the period of its foundation can be determined within the limits of one century, or between A.D. 370 and 500.

The mass of building now known by the name of Matan, or Márttand, consists of one lofty central edifice, with a small detached wing on each side of the entrance, the whole standing on a large quadrangle surrounded by a colonnade of fluted pillars, with intervening trefoil-headed recesses. The central building is sixty-three feet in length, by thirty-six in width.

As the main building is at present entirely uncovered, the original form of the roof can only be determined by a reference to other temples, and to the general form and character of the various parts of the Márttand temple itself.

The angle of the roof in the Temple of Pándrethán, and in other instances, is obtained by making the sides of the pyramid which forms it parallel to the sides of the doorway pediment, and in restoring the Temples of Patrun and Márttand I have followed the same rule.

The height of the Pándrethán temple—of the cloistered recesses, porch pediments, and niches of Márttand itself—were all just double their respective widths. This agreement in the relative proportions of my restored roof of Márttand with those deduced from other examples, is a presumptive proof of the correctness of my restoration. The entrance-chamber and the wings I suppose to have been also covered by similar pyramidal roofs. There would thus have been four distinct pyramids, of which that over the inner chamber must have been the loftiest, the height of its pinnacle above the ground being about seventy-five feet.

The interior must have been as imposing as the exterior. On ascending the flight of steps—now covered by ruins—the votary of the sun entered a highly-decorated chamber, with a doorway on each side covered by a pediment, with a trefoil-headed niche containing a bust of the Hindú triad, and on the flanks of the main entrance, as well as on those of the side doorways, were pointed and trefoil niches, each of which held a statue of a Hindú divinity.

The interior decorations of the roof can only be conjecturally determined, as I was unable to discover any ornamented stones that could with certainty be assigned to it. Baron Hugel doubts that Márttand ever had a roof; but, as the walls of the temple are still standing, the numerous heaps of large stones that are scattered about on all sides can only have belonged to the roof.

I can almost fancy that the erection of this sun-temple was suggested by the magnificent sunny prospect which its position commands. It overlooks the finest view in Kashmír, and perhaps in the known world, Beneath it lies the paradise of the East, with its sacred streams and cedarn glens, its brown orchards and green fields, surrounded on all sides by vast snowy mountains, whose lofty peaks seem to smile upon the beautiful valley below. The vast extent of the scene makes it sublime; for this magnificent view of Kashmír is no petty peep into a half-mile glen, but the full display of a valley sixty miles in breadth and upwards of a hundred miles in length, the whole of which lies beneath “the ken of the wonderful Márttand.”

The principal buildings that still exist in Kashmír are entirely composed of a blue limestone, which is capable of taking the highest polish—a property to which I mainly attribute the beautiful state of preservation in which some of them at present exist.

Even at first sight one is immediately struck by the strong resemblance which the Kashmirian colonnades bear to the classic peristyles of Greece. Even the temples themselves, with their porches and pediments, remind one more of Greece than of India; and it is difficult to believe that a style of architecture which differs so much from all Indian examples, and which has so much in common with those of Greece, could have been indebted to chance alone for this striking resemblance.

One great similarity between the Kashmirian architecture and that of the various Greek orders is its stereotyped style, which, during the long flourishing period of several centuries, remained unchanged. In this respect it is so widely different from the ever-varying forms and plastic vagaries of the Hindú architecture that it is impossible to conceive their evolution from a common origin.

I feel convinced myself that several of the Kashmirian forms, and many of the details, were borrowed from the temples of the Kabúlian Greeks, while the arrangements of the interior and the relative proportions of the different parts were of Hindú origin. Such, in fact, must necessarily have been the case with imitations by Indian workmen, which would naturally have been engrafted upon the indigenous architecture. The general arrangements would still remain Indian, while many of the details, and even some of the larger forms, might be of foreign origin.

As a whole, I think that the Kashmirian architecture, with its noble fluted pillars, its vast colonnades, its lofty pediments, and its elegant trefoiled arches, is fully entitled to be classed as a distinct style. I have therefore ventured to call it the Arian order—a name to which it has a double right; first, because it was the style of the Aryas, or Arians, of Kashmír; and, secondly, because its intercolumniations are always of four diameters—an interval which the Greeks called Araiostyle.

EXTRACT FROM VIGNE’S “TRAVELS IN KASHMÍR.”

The Hindú temple of Márttand is commonly called the House of the Pandús. Of the Pandús it is only necessary to say that they are the Cyclopes of the East. Every old building, of whose origin the poorer class of Hindús in general have no information, is believed to have been the work of the Pandús. As an isolated ruin, this deserves, on account of its solitary and massive grandeur, to be ranked not only as the first ruin of the kind in Kashmír, but as one of the noblest among the architectural relics of antiquity that are to be seen in any country. Its noble and exposed situation at the foot of the hills reminded me of that of the Escurial. It has no forest of cork-trees and evergreen-oaks before it, nor is it to be compared, in point of size, with that stupendous building; but it is visible from as great a distance. And the Spanish sierra cannot for a moment be placed in competition with the verdant magnificence of the mountain-scenery of Kashmír.

Few of the Kashmirian temples, if any, I should say, were Buddhist. Those in or upon the edge of the water were rather, I should suppose, referable to the worship of the Nágas, or snake-gods. The figures in all the temples are almost always in an erect position, and I have never been able to discover any inscription in those now remaining.

I had been struck with the great general resemblance which the temple bore to the recorded disposition of the Ark and its surrounding curtains, in imitation of which the Temple at Jerusalem was built; and it became for a moment a question whether the Kashmirian temples had not been built by Jewish architects, who had recommended them to be constructed on the same plan for the sake of convenience merely. It is, however, a curious fact, that in Abyssinia, the ancient Ethiopia, which was also called “Kush,” the ancient Christian churches are not unlike those of Kashmír, and that they were originally built in imitation of the temple, by the Israelites who followed the Queen of Sheba, whose son took possession of the throne of Kush, where his descendants are at this moment Kings of Abyssinia.

Without being able to boast, either in extent or magnificence, of an approach to equality with the temple of the sun at Palmyra, or the ruins of the palace at Persepolis, Márttand is not without pretensions to a locality of scarcely inferior interest, and deserves to be ranked with them as the leading specimen of a gigantic style of architecture that has decayed with the religion it was intended to cherish, and the prosperity of a country it could not but adorn.

In situation it is far superior to either. Palmyra is surrounded by an ocean of sand, and Persepolis overlooks a marsh; but the temple of the sun in Márttand is built upon a natural platform at the foot of some of the noblest mountains, and beneath its ken lies what is undoubtedly the finest and the most prononcé valley in the known world.

We are not looking upon the monuments of the dead. We step not aside to inspect a tomb, or pause to be saddened by an elegy. The noble pile in the foreground is rather an emblem of age than of mortality; and the interest with which we perambulate its ruins is not the less pleasurable because we do not know much that is certain of its antiquity, its founders, or its original use.