Chapter I: Introductory

The limits within which the Dravidian style of architecture prevailed in India are not difficult to define or understand. Practically they are those of the Madras Presidency, or, to speak more correctly, they are identical with the spread of the people speaking Tamil, or any of the cognate tongues. Dr. Caldwell, in his ‘Grammar,’ estimates these at forty-five or forty-six millions,[347] but he includes among them a number of tribes, such as the Tudas and Gonds, who, it is true, speak dialects closely allied to the Tamil tongues, but who may have learnt them from the superior races, in the same manner that all the nations of the south-west of Europe learnt to speak Latin from the Romans; or as the Cornish men have adopted English, and the Irish and northern Scots are substituting that tongue for their native Gaelic dialects. Unless we know their history, language is only a poor test of race, and in this instance architecture does not come to our aid. It may do so hereafter, but in so far as we at present know, these tribes are in too rude a state to have any architecture of their own in a sufficiently advanced state for our purposes. Putting them aside, therefore, for the present, we still have, according to the last census, some thirty millions of people speaking Tamil, Telugu, Canarese, and Malayalam, whom we have no reason for doubting are practically of the same race, and who, in so far as they are Hindus--not Jains, but followers of Siva and Vishnu--practise one style of architecture, and that known as the Dravidian. On the east coast the boundaries of the style extend as far north as the mouth of the Kistnah, and it penetrates sporadically and irregularly into the Nizam’s territories, but we cannot yet say to what extent, nor within what limits.

On the west coast its natural boundary northwards is the Kistnah, but it did at one time (A.D. 700?) reach as far as Ellora, in latitude 20°; but it seems to have been a spasmodic effort, and it took no permanent root there, while the reflex wave brought the northern styles into the Mysore or other southern countries, where their presence was as little to be expected as that of the Dravidian so far north.

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Although considerable progress has lately been made in the right direction, no satisfactory solution has yet been arrived at of the problem of the origin of the Dravidians. The usual theory is that, coming from the westward, they crossed the Lower Indus, passed through Scinde and Gujerat, and, keeping to the right, sought the localities in which we now find them; or rather, that they were pushed into that corner, first by the Aryans, who almost certainly crossed the Upper Indus, and passed through the Punjab into the valley of the Ganges, and afterwards by the Rajputs, who followed nearly in their footsteps.

In favour of this view is the fact first pointed out by Dr. Caldwell,[348] that the Brahuis in Belochistan speak a Dravidian tongue, and may consequently be considered as a fragment of the race dropped there _in transitu_. But against this view it may be urged that between the Brahuis and the northern Tamils we have a tract of civilized country extending over 1000 miles in which we have no evidence of the passage of the Dravidians, and where it is nearly certain, if it were a national migration, we should find their traces.

So far as history is concerned, in such glimmerings of tradition as we possess, they certainly do not favour this view of matters. Not only to they fail to afford us any trace of such a migration or conquest, but at the earliest time at which we find any mention of them the most civilized and important of their communities occupied the extreme southern point of the peninsula.[349] North of them all was forest, but between the Christian Era and the Mahomedan invasion we find the jungle gradually disappearing, and the southern races pushing northwards, till, in the 14th century, they were checked and driven back by the Moslems. But for their interference it looks as if, at that time, the Dravidians might eventually have driven the Aryans through the Himalayas back to their original seats, as the Maharattas, who are half Dravidians, nearly did at a subsequent period.

If any clear or direct relationship could be discovered between the Tamil and the Median or Accadian languages of Turanian origin, which the decipherment of arrow-headed inscriptions is revealing to us, it might help a good deal in explaining the original introduction of the Dravidians into India, and the numerous Assyrianisms that exist in the mythology and architecture of southern India. Till, however, more progress is made in that direction, it seems it would be more expedient for the present to assume that the Tamil-speaking races are practically aboriginal, and that the evidences of connexion between them and Babylonia are due to continued and close commercial intercourse between the Persian Gulf and the Malabar coast. That such did exist from very remote ages we may feel certain, and its extent seems such as to justify and explain any similarities that are now found existing in southern India.

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Be all this as it may, as far back as their traditions reach, we find the Dravida Desa, or southern part of India, divided into three kingdoms or states, the Pandyas, the Cholas, and the Cheras, forming a little triarchy of powers, neither interfered with by the other nations of the earth, nor interfering with those beyond their limits. During the greater part of their existence all their relations of war and peace have been among themselves, and they have grown up a separate people, as unlike the rest of the world as can well be conceived.

Of the three, the most southern was called the Pandyan kingdom; it was the earliest civilized, and seems to have attained sufficient importance about the time of the Christian Era to have attracted the special attention of the Greek and Roman geographers. How much earlier it became a state, or had a regular succession of rulers, we know not,[350] but it seems certainly to have attained to some consistency as early as five or six centuries before the Christian Era, and maintained itself within its original boundaries till in the middle of the last century, when it was swallowed up in our all-devouring aggression.

During this long period the Pandyas had several epochs of great brilliancy and power, followed by long intervening periods of depression and obscurity. The 1st century, and afterwards the 5th or 6th, seem to have been those in which they especially distinguished themselves. If buildings of either of these epochs still exist, which is by no means improbable, they are utterly unknown to us as yet, nor have we any knowledge of buildings of the intervening periods down to the reign of Tirumulla Nayak, A.D. 1624. This prince adorned the capital city of Mádura with many splendid edifices, some of which have been drawn by Daniell and others. What more ancient remains there may be will not be known till the place has been carefully and scientifically explored.

The Chola kingdom extended northwards from the valley of the Cauvery and Coleroon rivers, whose banks seem always to have been its principal seat, nearly to Madras, all along the eastern coast, called after them Cholomandalam or Coromandel. The date of the origin of their kingdom is not known, but their political relations with Kashmir can be traced as early as the 6th century, and probably earlier.[351] Their epoch of greatest glory, however, was between the 10th and 12th centuries, when they seem to have conquered not only their neighbours the Pandyas and Cheras, but even to have surpassed the bounds of the triarchy, and carried their arms into Ceylon, and to have maintained an equal struggle with the Chalukyas in the north. After this period they had no great revival like that of the Pandyas under Tirumulla Nayak, but sank step by step under the Mahomedans, Mahrattas, and English, to their present state of utter political annihilation.

The Cheras occupied the country northward of the kingdom of Pandya, and westward of Chola, including a considerable part of what is now known as Mysore. Their rise according to their own annals took place nearly at the time of the Christian Era, but this most probably is an exaggeration; but there are inscriptions which prove that they were powerful in the 4th and 5th centuries. From this time they seem gradually to have extended their conquest northwards. Their sixteenth king boasts of having conquered Andhra and Kalinga,[352] and their twentieth king, Kongani Raya III., boasts of having conquered Chola, Pandya, Dravida, Andhra, Kalinga, Varada, and Maharastra desas as far as the Nerbudda river.[353] According to the dates in the Kongadesa Rajakal, this must have taken place in the 7th century, but from what we know of history, it could not have taken place till after the overthrow of the Chalukyan dynasty, and consequently hardly before 750. That a southern conquest did take place about that time seems almost certain from the eclipse of the Chalukyas between 750 and 1000,[354] and from the excavation of the Kylas and other temples of Dravidian architecture at Ellora about that time, and there seems no race but the Cheras who could have effected this.

Vira Chola (A.D. 927-977) seems first to have checked their victorious career, and Ari Vara Deva, another Chola king (1004), to have completed their destruction. He also boasts of having carried his victorious standard to the Nerbudda, and to have been a benefactor to Chillambaram, the then famed temple of his race.

This was the last great effort of the early triarchy; after this the rise of the Bellalas in Mysore, and the revival of the Chalukyas in central India, seem to have checked them to such an extent, that they never regained a perfect independence, though at times wealthy and powerful and capable of embarking in the most splendid architectural undertakings.[355]

Although, politically, these three states always remained distinct, and generally antagonistic, the people belonged to the same race. Their architecture is different from any other found in India, but united in itself, and has gone through a process of gradual change from the earliest times at which we become acquainted with it, until we lose sight of it altogether in the last century. This change is invariably for the worse, the earlier specimens being in all instances the most perfect, and the degree of degradation forming, as mentioned above, a tolerably exact chronometric scale, by which we may measure the age of the buildings.

Buddhism, as before hinted, does not seem to have ever gained a footing of much importance among any of the Dravidian races of India, and as early as the 7th century the few votaries of Buddha that existed in the south of India were finally expelled.[356] So completely was it extirpated that I do not know of one single Buddhist monument south of the Kistnah, except the tope at Amravati described above, and am inclined very much to doubt if any really important ones ever existed.

The Jaina religion, on the contrary, continued to nourish at Conjeveram and in the Mysore, and seems to have succeeded Buddhism in these places, and to have attracted to itself whatever tendency there may have been towards the doctrines of Buddhism on the part of the southern people. Though influential from their intelligence, the Jains never formed more than a small numerical fraction of the people among whom they were located.

The Hindu religion, which thus became supreme, is now commonly designated the Brahmanical, in order to distinguish it from the earlier Vedic religion, which, however, never seems to have been known in the south. The two sects into which it is divided consist of the worshippers of Siva and of Vishnu, and are now quite distinct and almost antagonistic; but both are now so overloaded with absurd fables and monstrous superstitions, that it is very difficult to ascertain what they really are or ever were. Nor are we yet in a position to speak confidently of their origin.

Recent discoveries in Assyria seem, however, to point to that country as the origin of much that we find underlying the local colouring of the Vaishnava faith. Garuda, the eagle-headed Vahana, and companion of Vishnu, seems identical with the figure now so familiar to us in Assyrian sculpture, probably representing Ormazd. The fish-god of the Assyrians, Dagon, prefigures the “Fish-Avatar,” or incarnation of Vishnu. The man-lion is not more familiar to us in Assyria than in India, and tradition generally points to the West for the other figures scarcely so easily recognised--more especially Bali, whose name alone is an index to his origin; and Maha Assura, who, by a singular inversion, is a man with a bull’s head,[357] instead of a bull with a man’s head, as he is always figured in his native land. It is worthy of remark that the ninth Avatar of Vishnu is always Buddha himself, thus pointing to a connexion between these two extremes of Indian faith; and we are told by inscriptions of the 14th century that there was then no appreciable difference between the Jains and Vaishnavas.[358] Indeed, as pointed out in the introduction, it seems impossible to avoid considering these three faiths as three stages of one superstition of a native race--Buddhism being the oldest and purest; Jainism a faith of similar origin, but overlaid with local superstitions; and Vishnuism a third form, suited to the capacity of the natives of India in modern times, and to compete with the fashionable worship of Siva.

Both these religions have borrowed an immense amount of nomenclature from the more abstract religions of the Aryan races, and both profess to venerate the Vedas and other scriptures in the Sanscrit language. Indeed it is all but impossible that the intellectual superiority of that race should not make itself felt on the inferior tribes, but it is most important always to bear in mind that the Sanscrit-speaking Aryan was a stranger in India. It cannot indeed be too often repeated that all that is intellectually great in that country--all, indeed, which is written--belongs to them; but all that is built--all, indeed, which is artistic--belongs to other races, who were either aboriginal or immigrated into India at earlier or subsequent periods, and from other sources than those which supplied the Aryan stock.

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There does not seem to be any essential difference either in plan or form between the Saiva and Vaishnava temples in the south of India. It is only by observing the images or emblems worshipped, or by reading the stories represented in the numerous sculptures with which a temple is adorned, that we find out the god to whom it is dedicated. Whoever he may be, the temples consist almost invariably of the four following parts, arranged in various manners, as afterwards to be explained, but differing in themselves only according to the age in which they were executed:--

1. The principal part, the actual temple itself, is called the _Vimana_. It is always square in plan, and surmounted by a pyramidal roof of one or more storeys; it contains the cell in which the image of the god or his emblem is placed.

2. The porches or _Mantapas_, which always cover and precede the door leading to the cell.

3. Gate pyramids, _Gopuras_, which are the principal features in the quadrangular enclosures which always surround the _Vimanas_.

4. Pillared halls or _Choultries_, used for various purposes, and which are the invariable accompaniments of these temples.

Besides these, a temple always contains tanks or wells for water--to be used either for sacred purposes or the convenience of the priests,--- dwellings for all the various grades of the priesthood attached to it, and numerous other buildings designed for state or convenience.