Figure 1.

Elephanta, Maharashtra,
Shaivite cave, sanctum with
Ungarn, ca. 540 A.D.

Figure 2. Elephanta, ground plan

Figure 3. Elephanta, image of

Shiva Mahadeva

Michael W. Meister

Access and Axes of Indian Temples

At the beginning, before the creation of the world, sex, and
death, the Creator Prajapati formed Rudra-Brahma as a
pillar to separate sky and water and to start time. This
pillar, called Skambha ("the frame of creation"), instead
retreated to the bottom of the cosmic ocean, and waited for
procreation to begin by other means. "By how much did
Skambha enter the existent? How much of him lies along

intended to shelter an icon of a deity (Fig. 4). It consists

of a small masonry cube with an inner sanctum and fourpillared portico, suitable for the approach of only one
person at a time. Such a temple was a point of power,
seen as a "crossing" ( tirtha ), a mechanism for seducing
the divine into the created world, and a tool for the
transformation of the worshiper.

that which will exist?" asks the sacred Hindu text Atharva

Veda (AV X.7.9).1 First built more than a millenniumThis manifestation of the divine was gradually marked
after the Atharva Veda was compiled, an early Indian
on temple walls by axes in the ground plan that project
stone temple echoes Skambha's condensed crouchingsacred
form.
interior spaces onto offsets of the exterior walls,
providing facets where sculptures of varying aspects of the
The cubical block of the sanctum in the famed sixthdivinity and creation could be placed and viewed
century A.D. Shaiva cave on Elephanta island near
(Figs. 5 & 6). In some temples in the seventh century,
Mumbai lies compressed between the floor and ceiling however, these cardinal projections show shuttered doors
of a mountain excavation (Fig. 1). Its four cardinal
rather than images, emphasizing the secure nature of
doorways are protected by giant guardian figures. This
the shrine and limiting visual access of the deity to those
cella can be approached from two directions: on axis whose function was to administer to it in the
from an eastern court along the central aisle of a pillared
sanctum (Figs. 7 & 8).
hall, or indirectly, from the north, along an axis facing
an immense bust of the "Great Lord" Mahadeva Shiva,
Image-worship increasingly replaced rites of sacrifice
incarnate with cardinal faces (Fig. 3). This Shiva image
by the seventh and eighth centuries, and temple rituals
rests within the mountain, as if looking into the cave's
began to focus more on the role of an audience of devotees
excavation from beyond a southern entry-portico2 (Fig. 2).
and the experience of worship. The cosmological plan
of the temple expanded, but access to the shrine and
Access to early temples was at first limited to the deity
sanctum remained limited and controlled. These temples
were "monuments of manifestation"3 in Stella Kramrisch's
and its cult functionaries. Temple 17, built at Sanchi (an
early first-century Buddhist site) ca. 425 A.D., has often
words- cosmic mountains, but also markers of creation,
palaces of the gods, and machines for social order
been called the earliest surviving stone Hindu temple,
33

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Figure 4. Sanchi, Madhya

Pradesh, temple 17, ca. 425

Figure 5. Projection of sacred space onto walls of the temple: Bhubaneshwar, Orissa,
Parasurameshvara temple, ca. 600 (left); Mahua, MP, Shiva temple no. 1, ca. 650-75

Figure 6. Bhubaneshwar,
Parasurameshvara temple,

Figure 9. Masrur, Himachal Pradesh, Shaivite temple,

Figure 8. Sirpur, Lakshmana temple,

ca. 725-75, section

view from southwest

south view

Figure 7. Sirpur, Chattisgarh, Lakshmana

temple, wall with blind shutters, ca. 600-25

Figure 10. Masrur, ground plan

Figure 11. Expansion of temple plans: North

and South India

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Figure 12. Vishnupur, Bengal. Eastern India in the 17th century

Figure 13. Osian, Rajasthan, Sachiyamata hill, temple

complex, 8th - 20th century

(Figs. 9 & 10). Temple Hinduism gradually took on

The remarkable thing is that the once-closed machine
political and social roles that transformed the temple,
of the temple has, over time, taken on the flexibility to
expanding its plan along a path of human approach,
adapt to radically changing social circumstances, giving
an "axis of access." As architecture and changing usage
access to a variety and multitude of communities (Fig. 13).
Even as the Creator Prajapati's Skambha cowered in the
evolved over many centuries, open halls were added to
walled halls, additional pavilions were built, enclosing
primordial waters long ago, the potential for creation of
fences became compounds, and compounds grew to cities. the sexually charged, multivalent, multicultural universes
In South India, seasonal festivals and rites evolved that
served by Hindu temples had become its ordering force.6
brought the deity out into the city and countryside, giving
Early Hinduism focused on rites of sacrifice. Temples
access to populations not allowed entry to the sanctum
(Fig. 11).
to shelter images of deities were built in early medieval
India as instruments of priestly cults. To patronize cult
As I have noted elsewhere, "The Hindu temple must also
communities became a means to extend kingship. Yet
act as access and approach for aspirants and worshipers. through such community patronage, temples gradually
This role changes the temple from a centralized,
became public institutions.7 Today communities have
bilaterally symmetrical structure (reflecting the nature oftaken the place of kings, and temples function in fresh
the cosmogonie process) to one with a defined longitudinalways, with a renewal of multiple pivots of access.
axis. On that axis the worshipers approach their personal
divinity within the sanctum; but also on that axis the
aspirants increasingly can place themselves, in halls built
for that purpose, as if under the umbrella of the sacrificer, Notes
positioning themselves for ascent."4
1. Atharva-veda Samhita, trans. William Dwight Whitney, rev. and ed. Charles
Rockwell Lanman, Harvard Oriental Series, vol. 7-8 (Cambridge: Harvard
Two alignments, however, coexist. One is centralized,
University, 1905).
symmetrical, and expresses a cosmic order in which the 2. Stella Kramrisch, The Presence of S'iva (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
deity dwells. The other is linear, signifying the approach 1981), 443-68.
of humans in this world. In seventeenth-century Bengal, a3. Stella Kramrisch, The Hindu Temple (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1946),
new type of temple was created, built in brick, for rituals passim.
4. Michael W. Meister, "Temple: Hindu Temples," in The Encyclopedia of Religion,
"hidden" from Islamic hegemony. These temples retain
ed. Mircea Eliade (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company) vol. 14, 372: '"The
an east-west axis for priests to enter the sanctum and
whole intention of the Vedic Tradition and of the sacrifice is to define the Way by
attend to the god. But they also have a north-south axis which the aspirant ... can ascend [the three] worlds,' wrote Ananda Coomaraswamy.
'Earth, Air, and Sky ... compose the vertical Axis of the Universe.... [These are] the
to provide visual access to an assembly of devotees who
Way by which the Devas first strode up and down these worlds ... and the Way for
sing and dance in the temple's court, "emphasizing the
the Sacrificer now to do likewise.'"
participation of the community" (Fig. 12). 5 These temples 5. Pika Ghosh, Temple to Love, Architecture and Devotion in Seventeenth- Century
take on the form of a village compound. Such dual axes Bengal (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2005), 138.
6. Michael W. Meister, "Sweetmeats or Corpses? Community, Conversion, and
for esoteric and popular rituals had already been augured Sacred Places," in Open Boundaries, Jain Communities and Cultures in Indian
at Elephanta (Fig. 3), yet here communities of worshipers History, ed. John E. Cort (Albany: State University of New York, 1998), 111-38.
7. Arjun Appadurai, "Kings, Sects and Temples in South India, 1350-1700 A.D.," in
commanded access that in previous centuries had often

been limited or denied.

South Indian Temples, ed. Burton Stein (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1978),

47-73.

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