Interview with Robert Jacobsen
Curator of Asian Art
1. What does this architectural fragment teach us?
From what we can tell about Indian architecture, the stone fragments that remain down to the present day were modeled after buildings made originally in wood—that is to say, ancient wooden temples. This lintel arch comes from a temple dedicated to the god Vishnu, one of the three major deities of Hinduism.(1)
There was a wooden tradition preceding all of this marvelous work in stone. And as the culture itself developed enough wealth and permanence, they began to turn their attention to creating temples and other buildings—and even to some degree some palaces—out of stone rather than wood, which would deteriorate and disintegrate within a few years in the monsoon climate that is much of India.
2. Could you tell us about Vishnu and the other important Hindu gods or deities?
Yes, this lintel arch is only a fragment of something that would have protected beneath it a grey limestone image of Vishnu. Vishnu is the preserving deity—the idea of Vishnu is that he is a preserver of things. Vishnu is a good, all-around deity. He's there to keep things going on an even keel, simply put.
Shiva, another important deity in Hinduism, has to do with destruction and regeneration or rebirth.(2)
The third deity, by the way, though worshipped far less than Vishnu or Shiva, is Brahma, who's seen as the creator.(3) He's sort of the beginner of it all.
But Vishnu is a deity that is popular, to say the very least. Thousands and thousands of stone images of this deity have survived. But in their context, many of them were actually carved in relatively low relief and set into these niches, which this lintel arch would have framed.
3. Can you say more about the arch's place within the temple?
The arch would have been the uppermost decorative protector of a niche that would have been cut right into wall of a stone temple dedicated to Vishnu. The arch itself would have been supported on either side by columns, also intricately carved. And they, in turn, would have then surrounded the standing frontal image of the god, Vishnu.
There would have been several other niches as well, decorated almost the same way, surrounding this temple. They would have gone around all four sides typically, and up several tiers into the air. The main image of Vishnu in the inner sanctum would have received most of the worship.
Typically these temples were very large, freestanding stone edifices. Most of them—those that fragments like this came from—would have been done during the 11th or 12th centuries in Northern India. The state of Rajasthan—a very important state—represents a very colorful part of Indian culture, with a great history behind it.
4. What's going on in the imagery?
Most of the figures have to do specifically with the god Vishnu. Quite often, they will display important instances from Vishnu's life, or deeds that he performed as a preserver.
And quite often gods and deities have a counter-part. They all have a female counterpart if they're male and vice versa. The marriages will often be depicted. Their attributes, usually in the form of animals will often be depicted along with them. An adoring public will often be shown flanking them to either side, looking on, showing the kind of reverence that these deities ultimately were held in.
5. That reverence has been a very enduring one.
In India by this time, Buddhism would have already come and gone, quite literally. Hinduism lived on, and continues, of course, down to the present day. It's fair to say, the majority of Indians today will be, one way or the other, followers of one of the Hindu deities—Shiva or Vishnu and the like. So it remains a very, very vibrant religion to these people.
And temples, like the one that this would have come from, to a degree are still being made today. Some out of carved stone, quite often covered over in stucco, and colored very brightly.
6. So the temple-goers would have seen something much different a thousand years ago.
We should keep in mind that while we're looking at the grey limestone from which the arch was carved, in its day it would have had bright color applied to it. And these gods and deities and lesser deities, all drawn from the pantheon of Hinduism, of course, would have been very, very vibrant against these deep blue skies of Northern India. So the whole complex, I think, is hard for us to imagine, since this is just a very small fragment.
It's interestingly carved though, in that it does show us, upon close examination, smaller elements of freestanding architecture. There are here, on the arch, small images of Vishnu that are placed within three miniature temples.(4, 5, 6) Again, these temple forms, in miniature, take on aspects or characteristics of what the larger temple would have looked like—multi-tiered towers, rising sometimes to great heights into the sky, totally covered over in smaller carvings of the gods or deities from the pantheon.
7. What about the practical aspects of temple construction. Who did the work? How was it paid for?
The carving was done almost entirely by professional carvers that would have been employed by the temple precincts putting up these edifices.
The money was raised, much as it is today for non-profit institutions, just by asking for money from the general populace. The believers in the religion would have contributed within their villages or cities towards the construction of the temple complexes that something like this would have come from.