Temples of Mayūrbhañja

Mayūrbhañja reprerests the first movement where at an ancient temple-site of Khiching a good piece of architecture and sculpture has been unearthed to rank it as one of the noblest monuments of Indian architecture and sculpture. The districts of Burdwan and Bankura illustrate the Southern Bengal development of art. It also resolves itself into two distinctive types, one allied to Orissan movement, the other by self-originated mode, expressive of the people and their environment. The former arc built mainly of stone masonary and as in Khiching pattern, are isolated towers or Śikharas enclosing a cella for the image or symbol, the liṅga. They are designed on the same principle as those of Bhuvaneśvara. A striking illustration is a group of shrines at Barkar in the Burdwan district locally known as Begania group owing to a fancied resemblance to the fruit of egg-plant “Begana”, they are probably of the Pala period and therefore of 9th or 10th centuries. Among the other example of this clase [case?] is the temple of Telkupi in the Manbhum district. The most ornate is the Sidheśvara [Siddhesvara] temple at Behulara in the Bankura district of the 10th century. Numerous other temples of the order are found distributed throughout south-western Bengal and Manbhum district all apparently built while Pala dynasty was in power and hence dating between 8th to 11th centuries,

The other phase of this movement as already referred to is an indigenous form of building adopted on the soil and moulded into some ornamental pattern. Though cabin-like structure it gradually evolved into a system derived from the śālā houses i.e. the wooden houses and bamboo thatched huts of ancestral forest dwellers. Brown remarks that this mode of building, although superior to what may be termed folk-architecture, never rose to classical heights. It nevertheless speaks of freshness and spontaneity.

As regards the second phase (Hindu-Buddhist phase), Paharpur in the Rajshahi district reveals a monumental edifice of stupendous proportions after excavation. Founded by the Pala ruler Dharmapāla towards the end of the 8th century it was known as the great Vihāra of Dharmpāla. Each of the cells presumably contained a large statue of metal, one of which may have been that fine figure, a product of the famous Varendra foundry, discovered at Sultangunj and now deposited in the Birmingham Art Gallery.

Now remains the last of the great movements which brought to Bengal a phase of building art noted for considerable elegance and consequence. Percy Brown describes it as an extension of the “Eastern School” of architecture and art which due to the incentive of the Pala and Sena dynasties to have flourished with great vigour at Lakhnauti, the capital of the Senas now almost a lost site near Maida but originally comprising a large complex of basalt buildings of a particularly substantial and ornate description. It was however completely despoiled by the Mohammedans after its capture in 1197 in order to provide the materials for their capital at Gaur. The lost temple type of pre-Islamic Bengal may be studied from the materials employed in the great congregational Mosque at Adina in Pandua.

A particular interest lies in a moulding formed of the ropilike [rope-like?] convolutions of Śeṣa, the endless serpent surrounding the jambs with a close and realistic cluster of the same coils comprising the ‘keystone’. Outside this, is a series of trefoil niches and wherever required are scrolls of foliage, enclosing various symbolic forms among which interpretation of ‘vase and foliage’ of the Guptas may be identified.

The high lights of the secular architecture can also be corroborated from the materials taken from the palace of Ballala Sena and built into Muslim edifices. Triveni and Saptagrama were noted for their exuberance of characteristic architecture. The Mazar of Zafar Khan Ghasi illustrates this. Now as regards the influences of these two powerful movements in giving rise to the monuments of Greater India, we shall see them in proper place—vide Greater India Hindu temples.