Introductory Essay – I

I. AN EMANATIVE COSMOLOGY

Few if any architectural traditions attempt so systematically, yet inventively, to recapitulate a “creation myth” or cosmogenic metaphor in the design of their sacred monuments as the Karnata Dravida and Khmer. Hindu ontology3 could be said to emanate from a non-manifest, apophatic absolute, both nirguna, “without properties or attributes,” and niskala, “without form or dimension.” This “ground of being” is both indivisible and imperishable, imperceptible and incomprehensible – a cosmic essence immanent in all things yet transcending any of them. This non-theistic divinity first manifests itself as formless consciousness, descending gradually into the material forms of the empirical universe, diluted in direct proportion to their distance from its incorporeal source. A similar “clinamen” or inclination towards degeneration underlies much Western thought, for example, the lost Age of Gold, the decay of eternal, noumenal Platonic forms into transient phenomena or the “descent of man” in medieval Scholasticism’s “Great Chain of Being.” 

A continual resonance might therefore be said to exist in Hindu ontology between the manifest and non-manifest, between an expanding periphery and its dimensionless center, between palpable illusion and gnostic reality. Emanations must, accordingly, both be seen and seen through to their invisible source.  In advaita, non-dualist Hindu and Buddhist schools, these are just two aspects or moments of the same unitary absolute whose manifestations, paradoxically, occlude it. This emanative cosmology permeates Hindu mythology, dharma or doctrine and architecture. In one account, the Aum, the primordial tone, reverberates not through the universe but the universe itself, ringing out from Vishnu’s shankha or conch, calling entropic chaos to order. Similarly, the bindu, the originary “seed,” commemorated by the red dot on the forehead of the devout, represents the primal “drop” into being, rippling out in concentric circles of more diffused divinity. Analogies echo in many creation mythologies, not least Mosaic theologies’ “all-creating word,” which also was “in the beginning” before time.

In Hindu architectural practice, including Khmer and Karnata Dravida traditions, the prasada, prasat, vimana, mulaprasada or shrine is given dimension according to a regulating grid or mandala, emanating from a central point (or square) which is applied by an architect, the sthapati, in concert with a priestly consultant, the sthapaka.4 This vimana or shrine is comprised of a garbhagriha (Sans.> garbha womb + griha chamber, sanctum, cella, naos) and shikhara (Sans.> mountain peak) or superstructure rising above it. It is conceived as an icon or simulacrum of Mt. Meru, the holy mountain at the center of the universe, which does not so much rise from the terrestrial plane as spill creation around itself like the Aum and bindu. Originally home to the prasadas (Sans.> palace, also temple) of the Vedic pantheon of Indo-European sky deities, similar to the Greek gods ensconced on Mt. Olympus or Germanic on Valhalla, it was moated by six oceans and six mountain ranges where, at a judicious distance, humans dwelled on a distant, triangular continent pointing south.  The gods’ palaces or temples were represented on a vimana’s superstructure by miniature shrines or aedicules of itself; thus, it might be said, a Hindu temple is built out of its own replicas or images, embodying the continual interplay between emanation and origin characteristic of Hindu thought.

The Upanishads gradually replaced the polytheistic Vedic gods with a monistic (though not monotheistic) absolute, brahman, and Mt. Meru became a metaphor for ascending from maya, the sorcery of illusions, and attaining moksha, release from samsara, the suffering of reincarnation, through reunification with this unindividuated cosmic essence. Mahayana Buddhism systematized this image into what could be thought of as a “psychological ontology” consisting of thirty-one (or more) “planes of existence,” discrete levels of consciousness of which the human is, alas, fifth from the bottom.5

Cyclical Emanation

The oscillation between manifest and non-manifest or from emanation back to the dimensionless results in Hinduism’s cyclical view of time, comprised of three principal moments: 1) creation, 2) existence with its ineluctable changes and 3) destruction. These are played out over the vast timespan of a mahakalpa or “lifetime of Brahma,” roughly 311.04 trillion solar years, followed by a Great Pralayaorfallow period of equal duration, (compared with contemporary astrophysics’ mere blip of 14 billion years since the Big Bang.)

This cycle was eventually assigned to the Trimurti – creation to Brahma, preservation to Vishnu and destruction to Shiva, a trinitarian arrangement giving rise to nearly as great theological contortions as in Christianity.  With the rise of bakhti or devotional Hinduism during the period covered by these two websites, Shiva and Vishnu became personalized absolutes, responsible in the minds of their adherents for all three functions, with the other gods of this famously populous faith relegated to mere aspects of Adi-Shiva or Adi-Vishnu. (Shakti, the “female principle,” provided an unorthodox but not heretical, populist countercurrent or vamamarga/ vamachara throughout this period, often entwined with Vajrayana or Tantric Buddhism.)

Adi-Shiva or Mahadeva performed his “five sacred acts” or Pancakrityas – creation, preservation, destruction/dissolution, obscuration/occultation and redemption/grace – through the Pancabrahmas, the five Wisdom Kings, while his five-faced pancamukhalinga represented the five elements or pancamahabhutas.  Adi-Vishnu, Paratma or Narayana, manifested himself through the “primal quadruple expansion” of his chaturvyuhas, the four deified Vrishni heroes, as well as through his vibhavas or incarnations, such as the Dashavatara and Mohini, his arcavataras, his icons and cult statues, and his antaryam, soul or in-dwelling, redemptive grace. As the chart below illustrates, the “aspects” or emanations of Shiva and Vishnu map, perhaps too neatly, onto each other.

Hinduism by privileging the non-manifest over the manifest and endowing it alone with reality and truth, represents a radical form of “philosophical idealism” in which the emanated world becomes illusion, evenfalsehood, Plato’s “lies” of the imagination. This gives rise to a fundamental epistemological confusion in which humans attribute a false, independent or “self-arising” reality to “dependently generated” illusions or emanations. In the West. a parallel epistemological critique of reification, (object-ification or naturalization,) making an idea into a thing and then endowing it with an independent existence, can be found in the philosophies of Kant, Marx and Heidegger.6

if conscious experiences are nothing but illusions and if the self is nothing but its conscious experiences, some Hindu schools argue, the self must also be an illusion, indeed the most tenacious of all. Further, the idea of “being” must be another mentally “attributed” quality and therefore only “dependently generated.” If human “being” is an illusion then attachment to this life and this world can only bring disillusion, hence, the purpose of this life should be to insure one does not endure another, in other words, moksha, liberation from reincarnation.

The most expeditious means for achieving this release is detachment and renunciation of self, world and their samsaric “defilements” through asceticism and meditation, turning the mind against itself, to “snuff out,” (the literal meaning of Sans.> nirvana,) the flame of consciousness.7 Hinduism and Buddhism might therefore be said to replace the Judeo-Christian question of theodicy – why a benevolent and omnipotent creator would allow evil in his creation – with the question of ontology – why a non-manifest absolute would bother manifesting itself only to destroy its manifestations?

 

A Conundrum for Architecture

An emanative ontology in which the manifest is illusory and the non-manifest real would seem to present architecture with an insuperable challenge: how to represent a divinity “without form and dimension” in obdurate stone, indeed, in some of the largest structures ever built, without reinforcing samsaric illusions?  How to convey the resonance between emanation and retraction in monuments which have stood motionless for over a millennium? In architecture, this might be more concretely posed as how to rupture a vimana’s solid walls to reveal the hidden depths of the garbhagriha and, there, the shadowy, lurking non-manifest? One way of “reading” the one hundred and forty temples documented on these two websites might then be in terms of how they address (or ignore) this architectural paradox, in other words, how these buildings are understood or positioned within the cycle of emanation.

The garbhagriha could itself be seen as the fundamental rupture, splitting the materiality of a vimana’s (mulaprasada’s or prasat’s)core, opening a cave at the center of Mt. Meru where the god manifests or emanates itself, a “womb chamber” in which the god is reborn each morning, in effect, bringing Mt. Meru with him by becoming immanent in the vimana. The persistence of such chthonic associations with the divine has been attributed to a hypothesized, pre-Vedic substrate or Harappan fertility cult but could equally be seen as a “sky god” triumphantly bursting apart the dark, former mysteries of the earth with “enlightenment.” In either case, an axis is established connecting the telluric with the celestial, rising from a temple’s innermost depths to its shikhara’s peak. Other “temple mountain” traditions, for example, the pyramids of pharaonic Egypt and of Mesoamerica, display a similar bifurcation, a cavity at their core, in those instances associated with burial and passage through the underworld leading to resurrection in the empyrean.  

The garbhagriha may have prefigured – or been prefigured by – Buddhist and Hindu cave temples which pre-date and certainly over-lap the construction of the first, free-standing stone shrines on the Indian sub-continent. The primarily Buddhist monastic complex in the Ajanta gorge (2nd Century BCE – 480 CE) introduced the caitya/chaitya hall, (Pali > cetiya reminder, reliquary,) thought to be patterned itself after humble roadside shrines made from bent palm fronds and rushes with animist “roots.” Their vaulted naves seem to reproduce in rock the curved roofs of these shrines, with columned aisles, an apse with stupa at its rear and a horseshoe-shaped window over the entrance admitting light.

This window modeled the most ubiquitous architectural motif in Indian architecture – the gavaksha (Sans.> bull or ox eye; gavaksha, this general term for a chaitya-griha’s window, is, like kudu, a northern or Nagara usage; Prof. Hardy prefers the Karnata Dravida nasi.) It consists of 1)a kirtimukha, (Sans.> kirti glory + mukha face of,) which spews 2) a sikha orfinial, a gush of foliage, which in turn splits to form 3) a mukhapatti (Sans.> mukha face + patti molding, frame,) around 4) a gadha, window or tympanum, in which 5) a god or shrine aedicule may appear, initiating a kind of infinite regress.

The kirtimukha reveals the gavaksha’s Saivite associations since this creature was condemned by that god to eat itself, leaving only its face above the jaw; Shiva then ordered that this image be placed over the entrance to every temple as evidence of his puissance. In Karnataka, it was eventually replaced by a vyala, a curious hybrid horned lion with a salamander’s body. The god emerging in the gavaksha’s gadha window is accounted for by another Saivite myth in which Shiva appeared as an infinitely tall stambha or pillar of fire, a jyotirlinga (Sans.> jyotir radiance + linga sign.) Vishnu as his boar avatar, Varaha, and Brahma on his hamsa organder vahana, mount or vehicle, vowed to find the top and bottom of this column but failed. Shiva then split the pillar revealing himself in iconic form within a prabhavali, a full-body halo or mandorla;) this lingodbhava or “emergence from the linga” secured his pre-eminence among the Trimurti. (It goes without saying that this myth is not accepted by Vaishnavas.) The gavaksha’s mythic origin as a metaphor for emanation results in an isomorphism with many of the most common forms in South and Southeast Asian architecture – aedicules, dormers, decorative meshes, multi-lobed arches, lintels and pediments.