Introductory Essay – Endnote 12

12 Nasi Cascade:” East (Suryanarayana) Vimana, Kasivisvesvara, Lakkundi 

In Indian Temple Architecture: Form and Transformation (Abhinav Publications, New Delhi, 1995, pp. 168-208,) Prof. Adam Hardy provides the most complete available exegesis of both east and west vimanas of the Kasivisvesvara, Lakkundi, which he analyzes as a paragon of the mainstream “Lakkundi School” of Later Chalukyan architecture. The description of “nasi cascades,” (a term he coined,) both here and elsewhere on the karnataka100temples.com website is indebted to his insights.

On the east (Suryanarayana) vimana of the Kasivisvesvara, a vyala disgorges the mukhapatti or frame of a gavaksha (nasi, kudu) onto the kapota (eave) of the  prastara (1st tala.) It also drips a beaded pendant which splits that gavaksha into three lobes, forming an opening, like a chaitya-griha cave temple, with four aisles and a nave supported on four columns. This pendant is isomorphic or homologous with a jyorilinga hence, a god (Shiva) emerges at its base spreading a mandorla as in a lingodbhava. The allusion to a jyotirlinga at a Surya shrine is not uncommon since in southern Indian Shiva Siddhanta, Surya is one of that god’s multiple aspects, logically associated with light and fire; many Saivite temples, like the Hoysalesvara, Halebidu, have separate Surya sub-shrines visited prior to offerings in the principal, western Shiva vimana. Here at Lakkundi, this tri-lobed “chaitya hall” plummets through the prastara’s kapota coming to rest on the roof of an empty, double-story, wall shrine with Surya’s seven horses of the sun at its base. This empty shrine bursting through the garbhagriha’s walls or devakostas could be imagined as the “stable” for the god’s chariot charging across the southern sky each day to carry the sun along the ecliptic. It is quite possible that an actual wooden ratha (here a chariot, not a projection) was carried from this point through the village streets during the god’s festivals.