Temples of Orissa (3): Koṇārka

The temple of the Sun at Koṇārka is the grandest achievement of this Eastern School of architecture, standing entirely by itself, some twenty miles in a north-easterly direction along the sea-coast from Puri a great mass of masonry and rising like a pyramidal mound above the sand-dunes and forming from the sea a prominent landmark known as Black Pagoda, it had become a deserted ruin resurrected in recent times. It was built in the reign of king Narasiṃha-deva (1233-64). Even its ruined structure is an amazing performance, Percy Brown remarks: “The conception of this temple was that of a genius, but its colossal grandeur out-stripped the means of execution, for its materialization was beyond the capacity of its builders, its scale was too great for their powers, and in the constructional part they failed. It was, however, a magnificent failure, for without unduly straining the imagination, it is possible to see even in its ruin, that it was one of the finest architectural efforts the Indian master-mason ever made”.

In the history of devotional upsurge in India, Sūrya, the Sun God had also occupied a prominent position. A good many sun-temples were raised, the largest and most remarkable Saura-Prāsādas being Koṇārka in Orissa, Mārtaṇḍa in Kāśmīra and Modhera in Gujarata. In the planning and execution of this stupendous undertaking the whole mythology and artistic canons coupled with the genius of the land and superb arts-craftsmanship of the region have played their equal part. Firstly it represents the crystallised and accumulated experience of several hundred years of this type of temple-buildings, hence it shows the most reasoned and systematic co-ordination of its parts into an architectural unity.

It therefore illustrates in every respect the fulfilment and finality of the style. Secondly in its conception, it is supremely imaginative in character. Thirdly it is based on the traditional representation of Sun God as conceived by the Ṛṣis of the Ṛgveda (I.115.4). Visualizing the deity as time’s winged chariot urging on his team of seven horses, with which he blazes his way through the heavens. Percy Brown therefore remarks: ‘This spirited allegory moved the designers to translate it into temple form to realize it as a great spectacle in stone, the building to be fashioned like a ratha or wheeled car being whirled along by the seven horses of the sun.’ This is only a bare outline of its architectural conception and the execution thereof. Its sculpture however, is superbly rich and is a subject of an independent investigation, as much of its plastic decorations and mural sculptures are grossly obscene. Though few buildings can boast of such an unrestrained abundance of plastic decoration as this vast structure, depicting conventional foliage, mythical animals, fabulous beings, half human with half serpent coils, figures satanic and figures divine of any conceivable motif and subject known to the Indian mind and in a technique, which ranges from patterns cut with minute precision of a cameo to powerfully modelled groups of colossal size, but nowhere sexual perversion is so blantly exploited as on the walls of the temple of the sun at Konārka.