Heritage Architecture India- A Healthy Amalgamation Of Temples and Arches

Architectural constructions often belie set ideas about individualistic styles as evidenced in temples, palaces and edifices from the Mughal era in India which display a healthy amalgamation of styles, Ranjita Biswas finds

Temples in India are showcased as prime examples of Hindu architecture. Mosques, geometric gardens, domes, on the other hand, are regarded as examples of Mughal or Islamic architecture. It is interesting to find that both have borrowed extensively from each other in a cross-cultural amalgamation while constructing their edifices and interiors as academics point out in Beyond the Mughal Arch: Temple in Modern Hindustan (MARG magazine, Vol 77, No 3).

The focus of this well-researched volume is the period between the 16th-19th centuries - an era less explored in the history of architecture in India. As editor Naman P. Ahuja points out, ‘The design and context of temple construction between the 16th and 19th centuries, largely in north Indian plains, is not a subject included in most curricula on political histories in the early modern period or on the history of Indian art.’ He observes that studies tend to consider that the period of grand temple architecture ended in north central India in the 12th century, a popular misconception, he observes.

The essays in the volume dispel this fallacy. As well as that Hindu architecture, read temples, were destroyed unequivocally during the Mughal reign.

In the mid- 17th century French gem merchant Jean-Baptiste Tavernier travelled across the Mughal empire and found that many of the best gemstones were found in non-Muslim shrines in what was supposed to be a Muslim empire. In Puri he was awed by the extraordinary Jagannath Temple and in Mathura, by the Keshav Rao temple.

The volume attempts to show how temples morphed and changed in the centuries of Mughal rule in the subcontinent by exploring new styles of architecture. One can refer to the haveli temples, the domed Shivalaya and the Navaratna temples, for example.

As Ahuja points out, ‘Mughal architecture was itself accretive…it continued with the use of Indian elements like corbelled arches, chajjas (overhanging eaves) chhatris (canopies) and gumbads (domes). It was the harmonious amalgamation of these elements that made the sum of the parts classic. In turn, this aesthetic benchmark – the “Mughal style” – was to be emulated across the length and breadth of South Asia over the next three hundred years.’

Writer Samuel Wright (‘The Reign of Shah Jahan: A View from Bengal’) gives the example of the famed terracotta temples of Bishnupur in Bengal which were built during the rule of the Mallas when Shah Jahan was the Mughal emperor. Though devoted to Krishna and Radha in Vaishnavite tradition, ‘The terracotta panels also depict Mughal court life…including, rituals such as the kurnish …as well as figures dressed in Mughal attire and caparisoned horses.’

On the other hand, temple architecture in Bengal influenced Shah Jahan’s imperial aesthetics. The bangla- a downward curved-roof style characteristic of Bengali thatched -roof huts, was used for his imperial ‘throne jharokha’.

Pushkar Sohoni in the essay ‘Beyond Iconoclasm: Temple Construction under the Sultanates’ points out that in Gujarat, which has a long history of Muslim communities much before the advent of political Islam in India, mosques were often inspired by temple forms. The Adinath temple (1439) in Ranakpur is an amalgam of both these types.

Sam Dalrymple throws light on constructions other than Hindu and Jain places of worship under the Mughal Empire i.e. of Christians, Sikhs, Parsis, Jews, etc. One prime example is the Guru Ram Rai Darbar Sahib in Dehradun which preserves the earliest surviving murals of the Sikh gurus- depicted strikingly, in Mughal attire. Aurangzeb granted land to Baba Ram Rai to build a dera that gives the city its name – Dehradun. The central structure resembles a Mughal tomb, with a raised domed structure surrounded by four minarets. Several Hindu temples also boast a similar design- the 17th century Shyam Rai temple in Bishnupur and the Nabaratna temple in Bardhaman in Bengal, and the Mahakali temple in Chandrapur.

Dalrymple gives examples of early chapels built by the newly-arrived Jesuit priests incorporating domes and delicate jali work in Mughal style. Emperor Akabar frequently visited such a chapel near the Agra Gate in Fatehpuri Sikri.

All these instances of interchange in architectural styles, apart from in other fields of art and culture, establish how ideas and creativity flow unhindered by political or religious constraints in different parts of the world, as also during the Mughal rule in the country.

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