Temple to Love: Architecture and Devotion in Seventeenth-Century Bengal

By Pika Ghosh

"[A]n excellent analytical study of a sensationally beautiful type of temple. . . . This work is not just art historical but embraces . . . religious studies, anthropology, history, and literature." —Catherine B. Asher

"[A]dvances our knowledge of . . . Bengali temple building practices, the complex inter-reliance between religion, state power, and art, and the ways in which Western colonial assumptions have distorted correct interpretation. . . . A splendid book." —Rachel Fell McDermott

In the flux created by the Mughal conquest, Hindu landholders of eastern India began to build a spectacularly beautiful new style of brick temple, known as Ratna. This "bejeweled" style combined features of Sultanate mosques and thatched houses, and included second-story rooms conceived as the pleasure grounds of the gods, where Krishna and his beloved Radha could rekindle their passion. Pika Ghosh uses art historical, archaeological, textual, and ethnographic approaches to explore this innovation in the context of its times. Includes 82 stunning black-and-white images of rarely photographed structures.

Published in association with the American Institute of Indian Studies

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Apr 20, 2005
• ISBN: 9780253023537

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Contemporary Indian Studies

Published in association with the American Institute of Indian Studies

Susan S. Wadley, Chair, Publications Committee/general editor

AIIS Publications Committee/series advisory board

John Echeverri-Gent

Brian Hatcher

David Lelyveld

Martha Selby

Books in this series are recipients of the

Edward Cameron Dimock, Jr. Prize in the Indian Humanities

and the

Joseph W. Elder Prize in the Indian Social Sciences

awarded by the American Institute of Indian Studies and are published with the Institute’s generous support.

A list of titles in this series appears at the back of the book.

This book is a publication of

Indiana University Press

601 North Morton Street

Bloomington, IN 47404-3797 USA

http://iupress.indiana.edu

© 2005 by Pika Ghosh

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ghosh, Pika, date

Temple to love : architecture and devotion in seventeenth-century Bengal / Pika Ghosh.

p. cm. — (Contemporary Indian studies)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-253-34487-5 (cloth : alk. paper)

1. Temples—India—Bengal. 2. Architectural terra-cotta—India—Bengal. 3. Terracotta sculpture, Indic—India—Bengal. 4. Architecture—India—Bengal—17th century. 5. Architecture and religion. I. Title. II. Series.

NA6007.B4G55 2005

726'1'09541409032—dc22      2004016533

1  2  3  4  5  10  09  08  07  06  05

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Note on Transliteration

Introduction

1 • Desire, Devotion, and the Double-Storied Temple

2 • A Paradigm Shift

3 • Acts of Accommodation

4 • Axes and the Mediation of Worship

Epilogue: A New Sacred Center

Glossary of Architectural Terms

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Illustrations

All photographs are by the author unless noted otherwise; drawings are by G. Murugan, The Landscape Company, Bangalore, India.

Illustrations are grouped at the end of each chapter.

Introduction

0.1. Map of South Asia Showing Major Sites Discussed

0.2. Map of Bengali Cultural Region

0.3. South Façade, Shyam Ray Temple, Vishnupur

0.4. Temple No. 4, Barakar

0.5. Radha Ballabh Temple, Krishnanagar

0.6. South Façade, Keshta Ray Temple, Vishnupur

0.7. Kala Chand Temple, Vishnupur

0.8. Murali Mohan Temple, Vishnupur

0.9. Radha Vinod Temple, Vishnupur

0.10. South Façade, Madan Mohan Temple, Vishnupur

0.11. Radha Shyam Temple Compound, Vishnupur

0.12. Temple-Types of Bengal

0.13. East Façade, Keshta Ray Temple, Vishnupur

0.14. Domestic Hut, Vishnupur

0.15. Temples No. 1 and 2, Barakar

0.16. Celebration of Ratha at Madan Gopal Temple, Vishnupur

0.17. European Ships, West Façade, Keshta Ray Temple, Vishnupur

0.18. Dedicatory Inscription, South Façade, Shyam Ray Temple, Vishnupur

Chapter 1

1.1. Central Upper Pavilion, Shyam Ray Temple, Vishnupur

1.2. Terra Cotta Panel Depicting Kirtan, Central Upper Pavilion, Shyam Ray Temple, Vishnupur

1.3. Gokul Chand Temple, Gokulnagar

1.4. Central Upper Pavilion, Gokul Chand Temple, Gokulnagar

1.5. Plan of Shyam Ray Temple, Vishnupur

1.6. Kalanjay Shiva Temple, Patrasayer

1.7. Ratha Procession, Madan Gopal Temple, Vishnupur

1.8. Priest Sushanta Mukhopadhyay Attending upon Madan Mohan and Radha during the Annual Celebration Commemorating the Arrival of the Saint, Srinivas, Who Initiated the Vaishnava Transformation of the Region, Madan Mohan Temple, Vishnupur

1.9. Priest Subrata Pujari Carrying Madan Mohan from the Altar to His Dining Room, Madan Mohan Temple, Calcutta

1.10. Panel Depicting Double-Storied Temple, South Façade, Shyam Ray Temple

Chapter 2

2.1. Tantipara Masjid, Gaur

2.2. Qadam Rasul, Gaur

2.3. Goaldi Masjid, Sonargaon

2.4. Jami Masjid, Bagha

2.5. Masjid at Kushumba

2.6. Jami Masjid, Atiya

2.7. Egaroshindur, Sadi’s Mosque

2.8. Adina Masjid, Hazrat Pandua

2.9. Motichura Masjid, Rajnagar

2.10. Ruin, Kulut

2.11. Domestic Hut, Birbhum

2.12. Domestic Hut, Birbhum

2.13. Plan of Keshta Ray Temple, Vishnupur

2.14. Porch Ceiling, Shyam Ray Temple, Vishnupur

2.15. Eklakhi Mausoleum, Hazrat Pandua

2.16. Jami Masjid, Salban

2.17. Terra Cotta Wall Panels, Jami Masjid, Bagha

2.18. Jami Masjid Interior, Bagha

2.19. Court Scene, South Façade, Keshta Ray Temple

2.20. Tiger Taming, South Façade, Keshta Ray Temple

Chapter 3

3.1. Radha Damodar Temple, Ghutgeriya

3.2. Radha Damodar Temple Doorway, Ghutgeriya

3.3. Mathurapur Deul, Madhukeli

3.4. Terra Cotta Ornamentation, Mathurapur Deul, Madhukeli

3.5. Ratneshvar Temple, Jagannathpur

3.6. Malleshvar Shiva Temple, Vishnupur

3.7. Jadab Ray Temple, Jadabnagar

3.8. Terra Cotta Ornamentation of South Façade, Madan Mohan Temple, Vishnupur

3.9. Nandakishor Temple, Dvadasbari

3.10. Malla Estate Garden Pavilion, Vishnupur

3.11. Family of Shiva, North Porch, Shyam Ray Temple

3.12. Goddesses, West Porch, Shyam Ray Temple

Chapter 4

4.1. Worshippers Gathered in the Courtyard, North-South Axis, Madan Gopal Temple, Vishnupur

4.2. Plan of Madan Mohan Temple Compound, Vishnupur

4.3. Plan of Gokul Chand Temple Compound, Gokulnagar

4.4. Natmandir, Madan Mohan Temple, Vishnupur

4.5. Natmandir, Gokul Chand Temple, Gokulnagar

4.6. Priestly Activities in the Kitchen, East-West Axis, Gokul Chand Temple, Gokulnagar

4.7. Plan of Madan Mohan Temple, Vishnupur

4.8. Plan of Gokul Chand Temple, Gokulnagar

4.9. Plan of Radha Madhav Temple, Vishnupur

4.10. North Sanctum Wall, Shyam Ray Temple, Vishnupur

4.11. West Sanctum Wall, Shyam Ray Temple, Vishnupur

4.12. Images of Chaitanya and Nityananda, Altar on North-South Axis, Radha Shyam Temple, Vishnupur

4.13. Image of Krishna as Radha Shyam, Altar on East-West Axis, Radha Shyam Temple, Vishnupur

4.14. Kirtan Performance, South Façade, Madan Mohan Temple

4.15. Drummers, South Façade, Madan Mohan Temple

4.16. Blind Doorway, North Porch, Shyam Ray Temple, Vishnupur

4.17. South Façade, Lower Story, Shyam Ray Temple, Vishnupur

4.18. Wall Frieze, East Façade, Shyam Ray Temple, Vishnupur

4.19. Culmination of the Mahabharata, South Entrance, Madan Mohan Temple

4.20. Bamboo Frame of Hut, Outskirts of Vishnupur

4.21. Mihrab, Tantipara Masjid, Gaur

4.22. Mihrab, Jami Masjid, Bagha

4.23. Mihrab, Jami Masjid, Kushumba

4.24. Central Mihrab, Sadi’s Mosque, Egaroshindur

4.25. South Doorway into Sanctum, Radha Vinod Temple, Vishnupur

4.26. South Doorway into Sanctum, Madan Mohan Temple, Vishnupur

4.27. Animal-Headed Motif, Madan Mohan Temple, Vishnupur

4.28. Rasamandala, South Façade, Shyam Ray Temple, Vishnupur

4.29. Krishnalila Panels, South Façade, Keshta Ray Temple, Vishnupur

Epilogue

5.1. Govindadeva Temple, Vrindavan

5.2. Laterite Ratha, Vishnupur

Acknowledgments

The writing of this book was as humbling an experience as it was exhilarating. This project would not have been possible without the assistance of several institutions. The research and writing of the dissertation was funded by a Social Science Research Council Dissertation Research Grant, an American Institute of Bangladesh Studies Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, and a School of Arts and Sciences Fellowship and Schapiro Weitzenhofer Fellowship from the University of Pennsylvania. Subsequent revisions were facilitated greatly by an American Institute of Indian Studies Senior Fellowship, a J. Paul Getty Postdoctoral Fellowship in the History of Art and Humanities, and at the University of North Carolina from a Junior Faculty Development Grant, Research and Study Leave, and grants from the University Research Council and the College of Arts and Sciences.

Various people and organizations in Bangladesh made the research possible. Institutional support was provided by the Government of Bangladesh Department of Archaeology and the field museums, particularly at Mahasthangarh. I owe an immense debt of gratitude to Perween Hasan, who has always been a role model, a mentor, and a friend. Susan Lee, Khaled Ashraf, Mrs. Amina Chowdhury, and Dr. Rokiya Kabir assisted in various ways. In India I am grateful to the Archaeological Survey of India for the generous access to monuments provided by Mrs. Kasturi Gupta Menon, Mr. Bimal Bandopadhyay of the Bengal Circle, and Shekhar Datta, Bholanath Chatterjee, and the many members of the Vishnupur Subdivision. I thank Chittaranjan Dasgupta, Secretary of the Vishnupur Sahitya Parishad, for his insights into terra cotta iconography, and his family, who recounted the tales of Vishnupur’s gods over many cups of tea. Achintya Banerjee shared his knowledge of the town and its monuments and copied many local publications for me. Without the assistance of Dilip Datta I would not have been able to conduct many of the trips to remote temples in Bankura. Shyambhu Mitra, Dr. Ramakanta Chakravarti, Debarshi Nandi, Dr. Doel Mukerji, and Dr. Nimai Choudhury facilitated the field trips and my thinking about the monuments I examined. The curators of the Asutosh Museum of Calcutta University and the Gurusaday Dutta Museum provided generous access to their collections. Prashant Bhat and G. Murugan of The Landscape Company, Bangalore, spent many hours helping to make the drawings that sometimes express the ideas of the book more cogently than the text. The monuments could not have been measured, nor their layers of reconstruction unveiled, without the enterprise and meticulousness of Gangadhar Das of the Archaeological Survey of India. His goodwill in the town got us access to the interiors of several living temples. He also helped me discover the town and made our stay during that project extremely enjoyable.

This book is based on my doctoral dissertation, which was supervised by Michael Meister at the University of Pennsylvania and generously advised by Tony K. Stewart of North Carolina State University. I owe them an enormous debt of gratitude for their encouragement, thoughtful suggestions, and advice. My intellectual debt to Michael Meister in my understanding of the monuments is clear throughout this work. Tony Stewart guided my reading of Gaudiya Vaishnava literature and deeply shaped my understanding of that material.

The revision of that dissertation has been enriched by wonderful suggestions and insightful readings provided by various scholars: Catherine Asher, Janice Leoshko, Padma Kaimal, Pallabi Chakrabarty, Leela Prasad, Joanne Waghorne, Dorothy Verkerk, Mary Sheriff, Ajay Sinha, Margaret Ewalt, Sarah Weiss, David Gilmartin, David Curley, Richard Eaton, Rebecca Manring, Tracy Pinchtman, Donna Wulff, Cynthia Atherton, and Debby Hutton. Rebecca Brown deserves special thanks for painstakingly going through the entire manuscript. Many scholars generously shared their knowledge and advice about publication, including Frederick Asher, John Cort, and Romila Thapar. I thank the anonymous readers and the committee of the American Institute of Indian Studies, particularly Susan Wadley and Brian Hatcher, who nominated the manuscript for the Edward C. Dimock Prize.

My family has supported this project with enthusiasm since its inception. My grandmother accompanied me on most of the field trips to deserted temples and spent many months in Vishnupur, asking the most basic questions, which made me stop and reconsider my assumptions. My sister and brother-in-law took on several adventurous field trips and ran numerous errands toward the completion of this project. To my mother and my mother-in-law I owe a huge debt for doggedly pushing me to fulfill dreams they did not have the opportunity to pursue. Rai arrived at the tail end of the process and gave me a new perspective on the whole enterprise. Branavan read, heard, and responded to innumerable versions, and shared his faith from our graduate school years to the end.

Note on Transliteration

For the sake of accessibility, diacritics have been avoided, and the names of sites and monuments are standardized in accordance with current popular use and the Archaeological Survey of India. The names of well-known historical figures, deities, communities, and texts (for example, Chaitanya, Krishna, Vaishnava, and Ramayana) appear in their generally accepted anglicized form. The diacritized versions of Sanskrit technical architectural terms are provided in parentheses when they are used for the first time.

Introduction

For the pleasure of Sri Radhika and Krishna a new bejeweled temple was given by Maharaja Sri Raghunatha Singh, son of Sri Vir Hambir, the king in the Malla Saka year 949 [1643].¹

This proclamation greets us as we approach the main entrance to the Shyam Ray Temple, one of the earliest monuments in the town of Vishnupur in Bankura district, West Bengal (figures 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.18). The inscription boldly asserts that the temple is new by using the phrase new bejeweled temple (navaratna ratnam), and unveils the new Ratna (jewel) typology.² As architectural innovations reformulated the region’s traditional temples, this new multi-faceted form emerged, reflecting—like a jewel—the remarkable creativity and cultural fluidity of the period.

These seventeenth-century monuments have remained unnoticed for the most part, occupying the margins between architectural formations that have been given pride of place in the mapping of South Asia’s artistic heritage. As one art historian recently observed, they are no more than a footnote in South Asian architecture, and indeed few introductory textbooks deem them worthy of an illustration. (In chapter 2 I address the historical conditions that produced such a canon.) However, cultural interstices are often the site of some of the most exciting and creative interactions, as much recent scholarship, new historicism, and subaltern studies, to name a couple of strands, have shown us. In the case of seventeenth-century Bengal, the energetic architectural experimentation left its mark on two major empires: that of the Mughals, who dominated north India during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and later that of the British. To the Mughals it provided the bangla³ that Emperor Shah Jahan employed to frame his image as a cosmopolitan world ruler, and for the British it inspired the ubiquitous bungalows that gradually dotted, and even plotted, their domination of South Asia through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This book is my attempt to bring these temples to the fore, to promote an appreciation of the originality that their inscriptions marveled at.

From the late sixteenth to the seventeenth century, architects experimented with the region’s traditional curvilinear-towered temple form, which belongs within mainstream north Indian Nagara (Nāgara) temple construction (figure 0.4). These experiments culminated in the development of a completely new temple-type that stands apart from that preexisting tradition. Features of mosques and local thatched huts were combined to form a double-storied temple-type that served newly developing religious traditions. It also served the needs of local Hindu rulers for visual and symbolic self-definition in a world no longer dominated by Hindu monarchs. As Mughal presence was gradually established after the conquest of Bengal in 1575, local Hindu landholders took advantage of their distance from the imperial capital at Delhi and the delays and difficulties of establishing a provincial administration. During this time they enjoyed a remarkable degree of independence. They employed sacred architecture to assert their role in the dynamic Indo-Islamic political culture of the region, and to redefine it for themselves.

The inscription cited above also points to the reconceptualization of temples as the pleasure grounds of the gods, where Krishna and his beloved Radha could rekindle their passion. Krishna is the focus of Gaudiya Vaishnavism, the bhakti (devotional) movement led by the Bengali saint Chaitanya (1486–1533) that swept up Bengal and Vrindavan in north India in a frenzy of ecstatic devotion and passionate song and dance over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.⁴ Chaitanya advocated a deeply emotional and intensely personal engagement with Krishna, modeled on Radha’s single-minded dedication. The inscriptions’ deployment of terms such as mudita (pleasure, happiness, delight) and rasa (taste, deliciousness), given specific connotation in a century of literary texts, leaves no doubt that the monuments were dedicated for the expression of this intensely passionate love shared by Radha and Krishna. Two terra cotta depictions of the divine lovers flank the text. On the left Krishna plays his flute for Radha, while a devotee kneels at their feet. On the right, however, is a less conventional image of Krishna seated with Radha on his lap. He lifts her chin with one hand to draw her closer. The intimacy of the amorous scene makes the text’s claim explicit. The inscription thus heralds the new architectural form as the immanent site of Krishna and Radha’s divine play (lila), the object of the devotee’s aspiration.⁵

This new epigraphic convention marks a shift in what a temple meant to Bengal’s Gaudiya Vaishnava community at the time. It diverges from earlier inscriptions that typically emphasized the role of the king as patron and his personal relationship to the primary deity, praised the donor’s generosity in funding the monument, and indicated the specific end sought through the act of patronage.⁶ The formula embraced at Vishnupur, one focused on Radha and Krishna’s mutual pleasure, was repeated for more than a hundred years with minor variation, emphasizing through the epigraphs the purpose of the new bejeweled architectural form.

Over a hundred red brick and terra cotta Ratna temples studded the lush green delta, from Midnapore and Bankura districts in southwestern West Bengal to Jessore and Khulna in southern Bangladesh, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.⁷ Monuments surviving in relatively good condition at sites such as Vishnupur in Bankura district, Ghurisha in Birbhum district, and Krishnanagar, Bansberia, and Guptipara in Hooghly district in West Bengal share significant commonalities and can be treated as a regional architectural corpus (figures 0.2, 0.5). The end of Mughal rule can be conveniently used as an approximate date to separate these temples from those built subsequently, when increased European contact and then British political hegemony introduced further complexities in temple form and style.

This study revolves around a smaller group revealing the early burst of architectural experimentation. I focus on the structures standing at Vishnupur, where over thirty temples were built in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The town is thus an experimental laboratory, driven by the religious enthusiasm of Gaudiya Vaishnavism and sponsored by the Mallas, a dynasty of local kings that came to power at the end of the sixteenth century and held sway over most of Bankura district during the next hundred and fifty years.⁸ Most of these monuments are dated and therefore facilitate discussions about the beginnings of this new architectural style. In addition, the circumstances surrounding their patronage and use are better known than at other sites. Therefore, while I will discuss the broad range of Ratna temples in the Malla territories and beyond for comparative reasons, the primary monuments addressed in this book are the Shyam Ray Temple of 1643 (figure 0.3), the Keshta Ray Temple of 1655 (figures 0.6, 0.13), the Kala Chand Temple of 1656 (figure 0.7), the Lalji Temple of 1658, the Madan Gopal and Murali Mohan Temples of 1665 (figure 0.8), the Radha Vinod Temple of 1659 (figure 0.9), the Madan Mohan Temple of 1694 (figure 0.10), the Radha Madhav Temple of 1737, and the Radha Shyam Temple of 1758 (figure 0.11). Spanning the years from the mid-seventeenth century through the mid-eighteenth century, these temples enable investigation into the formation of the Ratna temple form while they illustrate the new space for Krishna and Radha’s pleasure gardens within the religion, politics, and social organization of Bengal during these years.

This book examines the monumental transformations in the purpose and formulation of Hindu temples claimed in the inscription’s assertion of originality. The architecture reveals radical changes from the way in which temples were organized earlier. As a series, the temples disclose various experiments that the architects conducted to incorporate a festival pavilion, and therefore point to the transition from a single- to a two-storied form. The addition of a second altar in the sanctum below resulted in a reorientation of temples from the conventional east-west axis to a north-south one that is unusual. Facing a central courtyard, the new south-facing altar in the sanctum provided the focus of collective ritual activity, while the east-west axis was converted into one of priestly services. Further, porches were gradually closed off to provide space for more private worship. These changes culminated in the organization of a temple compound with multiple structures. A close scrutiny of the buildings hand in hand with observation of current practice thus also reveals the ways in which the new temples shaped ritual worship. The choices in the content and organization of terra cotta imagery on the monuments’ façades draw attention to these novel elements, as do the confident declarations of their inscriptions.

These distinctive architectural features have never been analyzed before, not least because entry into many parts of the temple complexes is difficult. To protect the sanctity of the deity’s space, priests demarcate the threshold beyond which devotees may not enter, and the attendants of the Archaeological Survey of India stand guard to protect the monuments from vandalism. Unprotected monuments have often fallen into such ruin that their ceilings and stairs have given way. Further, some sites are remote and difficult to reach, off the arterial roads and railway lines. They require an art historian to wade across streams with a camera and tripod, or to crawl through the dense undergrowth of teak forests. Consequently, the inaccessibility of sites and of the entire temple compound has contributed to the neglect of their architectural properties in both popular discussion and scholarly literature. In attempting to correct this, this study fills a gap in the scholarship on eastern Indian art and architecture, between the literature on the earlier Pala sculpture and Sultanate mosques and that on later Bengali art that expresses a colonial world and then resists British power.

There are, however, many other problems in attempting to produce a narrative surrounding these temples, and these too may well have deterred scholarly commitment to them. For a start, the examples that remain standing are chance survivors from a much larger corpus of monuments that have perished for a variety of reasons, including the merciless monsoon rains and the dense vegetation they bring with them. When I walked around Vishnupur for the first time in the summer of 1994, I recall feeling distinctly dismayed at the vigorous banyan trees erupting through brick and mud ruins. I seemed to encounter them in larger numbers than the beautiful, well-preserved temples. The ruins are living testimony that there were probably many more innovations and variations that we can no longer discern or appreciate. Likewise, three hundred years have left their mark on the survivors. Most have been altered, modified by generations of users who made the space their own. A summer of measuring the structures with an architect-surveyor revealed that doors have been closed off, porches blocked, and halls transformed into shelters for the local homeless and madmen. Scratching through the lush green gardens and floral beds, I found rubble that marked courtyard floors and foundations of accessory structures that have fallen away. Such changes hide the architectural patterns that only a near-decade of searching had taught me to look for. Likewise, the temples disclosed the dramatic shifts in appearance caused by the stripping of the heavy white lime plaster that protected the terra cotta surfaces. However, a few temples that continue to be owned privately are repainted regularly, in vivid colors that highlight the terra cotta sculptural ornamentation (figure 0.5).⁹ They remind us of the aesthetic shifts that occur over three hundred years. They also point to the divergent interests of devotional communities, who wish to maintain a ritually potent building, and archaeological preservation, which is driven by a modernist preference for terra cotta rather than brightly colored paint. They reiterate the lessons learned