Temple consecration rituals in ancient India text and archaeology

387 Pages·2006·5.27 MB·English

Temple consecration rituals in ancient India
text and archaeology

PROEFSCHRIFT

ter verkrijging van
de graad van Doctor aan de Universiteit Leiden,
op gezag van de Rector Magnificus Dr. D.D. Breimer,
hoogleraar in de faculteit der Wiskunde en
Natuurwetenschappen en die der Geneeskunde,
volgens besluit van het College voor Promoties
te verdedigen op woensdag 4 oktober 2006
klokke 13.45 uur

door

Anna Aleksandra Ślączka

geboren te Katowice (Polen)
in 1970
Promotiecommissie:

Promotor: Prof. dr. K.R. van Kooij
Copromotor: Dr. H.J.H. Tieken
Referent: Prof. dr. G. Bühnemann, University of Wisconsin-Madison, U.S.A.
Overige leden: Prof. dr. H.W. Bodewitz
Dr. M.J. Klokke
Dr. J. Stargardt, Cambridge University, U.K.
Preface

My first encounter with the Kâåyapaåilpa took place between rows 4 and 5 on the
first floor of the Kern Institute Library in Leiden – a wonderful location for
anyone interested in South Asia. I was browsing through the section containing
the Sanskrit treatises on art and architecture. Pained by the fact that the study of
ancient treatises on art was for a long time not particularly popular among
scholars of Indology, I was tempted to translate one of such texts in order to make
it available to the public and – surely – become famous. The Kâåyapaåilpa seemed
perfect for the purpose – it was a complete book, it had not been translated and it
was possessed by our library, so the study could be started right away. Luckily,
when I mentioned the idea to my guru, Prof. Karel van Kooij, he quickly made me
realise that, while translating the Kâåyapaåilpa is certainly a noble thing which
would make my name connected with it forever (for good or for bad, depending
on the quality of the translation), at the same time it is a very hard and long job.
Slightly discouraged, I still considered the Kâåyapaåilpa an interesting text
and could not part from it so easily. Browsing through it, I came across a chapter
curiously entitled ‘garbha-nyâsa-vidhi’, which can roughly be translated as ‘the
rule for the placing of the embryo’. The chapter happened to have nothing to do
with conception or conception rites, but everything to do with the building of a
Hindu temple. Intrigued by the title, I was willing to find out more about it, but
the information found in the secondary literature proved very limited. And so,
speaking in the language of the architects, the foundation for the present study
was laid. This dissertation is the fruit of the ‘embryo’ encountered on that day.
On the happy day of delivery, I would like to thank everyone who helped
me in my study. I want to thank the chief librarian of the Kern Institute Library,
Dr. Dory Heilijgers, for providing miraculous solutions at times when a so-much-
needed book could not be found or when the number of books I needed just that
very moment was considerably higher than I was allowed to borrow. I want also
to thank Drs. Pauline Lusingh Scheurleer for her remarks concerning certain parts
of the present dissertations, Dr. Janice Stargardt of the University of Cambridge
for her willingness to read and comment on my chapter on archaeology, Dr. H.I.R.
Hinzler for allowing me to publish some of the photographs from her collection,
and my colleague Véronique Degroot for our long discussions on peripih and
Javanese temples and for the help in reading Indonesian archaeological reports. I
want also to express my gratitude to Prof. Bruno Dagens and to the directors and
employees of the French Institute of Indology and the École Française d’Extr^eme
Orient in Pondicherry, India, for giving me the opportunity of studying in their
institutes and copying several manuscripts of the Kâåyapaåilpa and related texts,
and to Dr. Christophe Pottier from the École Française d’Extr^eme Orient in Siem
Reap, Cambodia, for allowing me to take photographs of the deposit stones
preserved at the Conservation d’Angkor. I want also to thank all the people, in
iv
Europe, India and elsewhere who, by means of a smile, a simple gesture or a word
of support helped me to accomplish this study.
CONTENTS

Chapter 1. Introduction....................................................................................................1
1.1 General introduction...................................................................................1
1.2 Terminology...............................................................................................6
1.2.1 What is a relic?..................................................................................6
1.2.2 Why do I prefer not to use the term ‘ritual deposit’?........................8

Chapter 2. Character, authorship, date of the Kâåyapaåilpa .......................................9
2.1 Kâåyapaåilpa - a Åilpaåâstra or an Âgama?...............................................9
2.2 The Kâåyapaåilpa and the Aäåumad......................................................10
2.3 The Kâåyapaåilpa and Kâåyapa...............................................................13
2.4 The supposed date of the Kâåyapaåilpa...................................................15

Chapter 3. Some remarks on the present edition of the three ritual chapters from
the Kâåyapaåilpa..........................................................................................17
3.1 Previous editions and unpublished manuscripts of the Kâåyapaåilpa......17
3.2 Editorial notes..........................................................................................18
3.3 The presentation of the text, the critical apparatus and the translation....21
3.4 Overview of the sources used for the edition...........................................22
3.5 Common errors in the manuscripts of the Kâåyapaåilpa..........................24
3.6 Unusual grammatical and stylistic forms in the Kâåyapaåilpa.................25

Chapter 4. Three chapters from the Kâåyapaåilpa: edition, translation and
commentary.................................................................................................29
4.0 Manuscripts and transcripts used in the edition......................................29
4.1 The placing of the first bricks (prathameæøakâ) on the basis of the
Kâåyapaåilpa: text, translation and commentary.....................................32
4.2 The placing of the consecration deposit (garbhanyâsa) on the basis
of the Kâåyapaåilpa: text, translation and commentary..........................73
4.3 The placing of the crowning bricks (mûrdheæøakâ) on the basis
of the Kâåyapaåilpa: text, translation and commentary........................113
4.4 Analysis of the ritual structure of the prathameæøakâ,
garbhanyâsa and mûrdheæøakâ on the basis of the Kâåyapaåilpa.........152
4.4.1 Prathameæøakâ.............................................................................152
4.4.2 Garbhanyâsa...............................................................................155
4.4.3 Mûrdheæøakâ................................................................................158
4.4.4 Concluding remarks....................................................................161
vi

Chapter 5. Broader textual context: the prathameæøakâ, garbhanyâsa and
mûrdheæøakâ rituals in the related texts..................................................163
5.1 Introduction............................................................................................163
5.2 The similarities.......................................................................................165
5.3 The differences.......................................................................................167
5.3.1 The differences determined by the geographical
origin of the texts........................................................................ 167
5.3.2 The differences determined by the religious
affiliation of the texts..................................................................168
5.3.3 The differences between the ritual and the architectural texts.....170
5.3.4 Minor differences between the texts.............................................171
5.4 Concluding remarks...............................................................................172

Chapter 6. The function and meaning of the garbhanyâsa, the prathameæøakânyâsa
and the mûrdheæøakânyâsa as expressed by the textual sources............175
6.1 The garbhanyâsa...................................................................................175
6.2 The prathameæøakânyâsa and the mûrdheæøakânyâsa...........................186

Chapter 7. Theory versus practice: traces of construction rituals in South and
Southeast Asia...........................................................................................189
7.1 Material traces of construction rituals in India.....................................189
7.1.1 Characteristics of the consecration deposits installed during
the prathameæøakâ, garbhanyâsa and mûrdheæøakâ rituals
according to the textual sources..................................................189
7.1.2 Consecration deposits excavated in India....................................194
7.2 The accounts of witnesses of construction rituals.................................198
7.3 Material traces of construction rituals outside India.............................199
7.3.1 Archaeological finds, discovered outside India, bearing
similarities with the prathameæøakâ ceremony as described
in the texts....................................................................................200
7.3.2 Archaeological finds, discovered outside India, bearing
similarities with the garbhanyâsa ceremony as described
in the texts....................................................................................204
7.3.3 Archaeological finds, discovered outside India, bearing
similarities with the mûrdheæøakâ ceremony as described
in the texts....................................................................................213
7.4 Consecration deposits discovered in Buddhist structures.....................214
7.5 Concluding remarks..............................................................................216
vii
Tables ............................................................................................................................223
Table 1........................................................................................................224
Table 2........................................................................................................225
Table 3........................................................................................................226

Appendixes ....................................................................................................................229
Appendix 1- List of Abbreviation...............................................................231
Appendix 2- List of Sanskrit texts describing the prathameæøakâ..............232
Appendix 3 - Index of the technical terms...................................................235
Appendix 4 - Catalogue of the archeological finds.....................................237

Reference list.................................................................................................................327
Primary sources...........................................................................................327
Secondary sources.......................................................................................330

Index...............................................................................................................................347

Plates

Chapter 1

Introduction

1.1 General introduction

The principal aim of this book is to study three important construction rituals of
the Hindu tradition: the laying of the first stones, the placing of the consecration
deposit and the placing of the crowning bricks. These rituals are described in
numerous Sanskrit texts on architecture and religion, which date from ca. 7th to
16th centuries AD.1 It is therefore hardly surprising that the present study is based
mainly on textual sources. The chief source is the Kâåyapaåilpa, a South Indian
treatise on art and architecture and ritual, written in Sanskrit, usually dated 11th –
12th century AD. Three chapters from the Kâåyapaåilpa, which deal with the three
construction rituals mentioned above, have been critically edited, translated and
provided with a commentary (see Chapter 4). For this purpose, unpublished
manuscripts of the Kâåyapaåilpa were collected in various Southern Indian
libraries. In order to place the three chapters of the Kâåyapaåilpa in a broader
context, the descriptions of the construction rituals given by cognate texts, some
of them still unpublished, have also been studied (see Chapter 5).
The construction rites play an important role in Sanskrit texts on ritual and
architecture. Nevertheless, this topic has thus far largely been neglected by
scholars. This is particularly striking in view of the numerous publications, which
have appeared on the outer appearance of temples, the technical aspects of temple
building and temple worship. With the exception of Kramrisch (1946), whose
interpretations should be treated with caution (see, for example, Chapter 6 note
12), there has never been an attempt to study the construction rituals as a whole
and to explain their function and meaning.
For those who want to arrive at an understanding of the construction
rituals, textual sources alone are not sufficient. The texts are mainly technical
treatises, which provide only a very limited interpretation for the actions they
describe. Moreover, for the questions about the relation between the textual data
and practice the answer has to be sought outside the textual sources. Have rituals,
such as those described by the Kâåyapaåilpa and the related works, ever been
performed? And if so, were the rituals performed according to the textual
prescriptions?

1 The placing of the first stones is mentioned in a few earlier texts, for example in the 6th century
AD Bùhat Saähitâ (BùS 52.110, ed. Dvivedi; 53.112, ed. Bhat).
2 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION
In order to answer this question, I began a search for possible traces of
construction rituals in various fields: I looked for direct accounts that mentioned
the performance of such rituals and browsed through archaeological reports and
museum catalogues guided by the thought that since the construction rituals are
described by a great number of Sanskrit texts, there should be plentiful traces of
these ceremonies on the Indian subcontinent. The search for written accounts,
however, did not prove very fruitful, at least not for the period in which the texts
originated.2 The study of archaeological remains, on the other hand, resulted in a
mass of evidence and revealed a highly interesting pattern: there were very few
material traces of construction rituals in India itself (as far as I could establish),
while plenty of them were reported in other Asian countries. In fact, the search
resulted in more than over two hundred archaeological remains, all most probably
testimonies of building rituals, of which only around fifteen actually originate
from India. The remaining two hundred were found in Sri Lanka, Nepal and in the
countries of Southeast Asia: Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia and
Indonesia. The majority of them date from the 8th to the 14th AD.3 Many of the
archaeological remains correspond with the lists of objects that may be placed in a
consecration deposit according to the Sanskrit texts.
The situation is thus that a group of texts is available which provide
descriptions of a set of construction rituals. However, it is not sufficiently clear
where (if ever) their systems were employed or in vogue. At the same time, a
considerable number of archaeological remains pointing to construction rituals in
a large geographical area are available, but the ideas that guided their installation
are not directly evident. Bringing the two sets of data together unavoidably
requires reflection on the relation between the different regions involved,
especially India where the texts have originated, and the diverse places in South
and Southeast Asia. It should also be noted that the extensive geographical area in
which the search for the traces of construction rituals was conducted roughly
corresponds with what Sheldon Pollock has recently called the ‘Sanskrit
cosmopolis’, the “most complicated – and as a totality least studied –
transregional cultural formation in the premodern world” (Pollock 1996: 197).
This area, stretching from Pakistan to Vietnam and from Nepal to Indonesia, was
the place where the political elite cultivated, or was familiar with, Sanskrit and
Sanskrit texts as is testified by numerous Sanskrit inscriptions (ibid., 197-198).
The presence of varying but still remarkably similar construction rituals, which is
evidenced by the archaeological finds, may be seen as an additional characterising

2 The majority of the accounts written by witnesses of construction rituals concern the period from
the end of the 19th century AD up to the present. The only exception is the Oriya manuscript Baya
Cakaèâ dated 13th century AD (see Boner, Åarma and Das 1972 and Chapter 7.2).
3 The ‘consecration deposits boom’ happened in different periods in various regions. For the
overview of the consecration deposits excavated in South and Southeast Asia, see Appendix IV.