Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | Friday Review | Cinema Plus | Young World | Property Plus | Quest | Folio |

MADRAS MISCELLANY

Lion pillars at Mamallapuram

A friend from Australia who wishes to remain anonymous recently wrote to me about some Shinto shrines he visited in Japan and Tao temples in Taiwan. He wrote because he was struck by certain similarities with Hindu temples in South India and wondered who influenced whom.

The concept of worshipping specific idols (reflecting shades of polytheism) and of heroic ancestors he noticed in both sets of temples, a concept not very different from Hindu practice. The temple lay-outs too reminded him of temple lay-outs in modern Kerala, though the gopuram, vimanam and sikara were not part of any of the constructions. However, there were features that did hint at the concept of the gopuram and the decorated entrance (mugappu) of a temple.

But what struck him most was the use of the lion as a favoured motif for decoration and the tall lampstands in the temples.

The Pallavas always used the lion motif in their temples, but why, particularly when the lion is “an unknown biological element in Southern India,” he wonders. He “suspects” the Pallavas had some Chinese connection. Many authorities have written that the Pallavas are of unknown origin. Against that background, my correspondent asks: “Could they have come into modern Tamil Nadu via northern Kalinga (Orissa) and prior to that from southern China, bringing with them some of the Chinese traditions, including the use of the lion motif as a symbol of power?”

In fact, I’ve long wondered about the Government of India using the Asoka Pillar with the lion motifs as its emblem. When and where did Asoka of Kalinga ‘discover’ the lion? Was it when his empire spread westwards in India or was it from Assyrian (Persian) influence, as some believe.

As for the lampstands he saw, my correspondent writes, “They were massive. Some were of wood, some of granite. Some were in use, others were merely decorative. But they all reminded me of the deepa stamba found in temples in Tamil Nadu and Kerala.” But what surprised him even more was that one of the lampstands in one Taiwanese temple stood on a tortoise-shaped base. He had only a few weeks earlier read in a Tamil magazine of a temple in Kanniyakumari that had a lampstand on a tortoise-shaped base!

I would be as interested as he in receiving any information on ancient Tamizhagam’s Far Eastern connections.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail