The Chariot of Konaditya

 

The Chariot of Konaditya

 

 ‘Hire a good guide’ was my Intellectual old time Odiya colleague’s advice.

The summer having set in and it being exam time in schools, there were few tourists that late March forenoon at the Sun Temple Konark.  The nearby coconut water seller seemed to attract a larger crowd that than the entry ticket counters to the temple site. 

As the group joined the process to arrange their entry, a spectacled gentleman with a genial smile walked across towards us and introduced himself. ‘My name is Srikant Beura’ he announced and quickly, almost in the same breath,  mentioned his impressive credentials – ten years’ experience as a part-time guide at Konark; can speak German, French and Italian besides English and has been commended by several foreign tourists.

‘I have been waiting for you’ he said, as if having had a premonition that someone truly interested to learn about the temple would be coming that day, braving the early summer heat.

Beura’s charges were modest and were readily accepted.  Once the ‘accounts’ were settled, he took complete charge of the group.  The Entry tickets for all of us came in a jiffy and we enthusiastically followed him into the Konark temple complex.

The first pitstop of this visit was at the first steps at the entrance to the main temple which had sculptures of lions on either side subduing elephants, who in turn were trampling human figures. Beura explained the significance of this symbolism as the need for a templegoer to eradicate the ego within before he enters the temple complex.

Temples in Odisha, Beura elaborated comprised of three distinctly separate structures – the sanctum sanctorum, the dance and  the dining halls.   He spoke at length on how invasions had impacted temple architecture and muted later day structures.  Konark, had not been ravaged by the mindless early mayhem of the likes of Malik Kafur but much later, during the reign of Akbar’s son, Jahangir otherwise known for his sense of  justice.  Not Jahangir himself,  but ‘Kalapahad’, one of his lieutenants, ironically a Hindu named Kalachand who converted to Islam because of some humiliation he suffered and adopting the name Mohammad Farmuli,  he ransacked not just the temple of Konark but the temple of Lord Jagannath at Puri as well.

The next discourse was on the symbiotic relationship between temples and dance and how dance was in effect, a form and medium of  expressing devotion.  The effort and perfectionism in dance, especially in the early times when  dancers also sang as they performed,  can well be imagined.

We next halted by one of the enormous chariot wheels that in fact epitomise the marvel of Konark. Luckily, some of these wheels have survived the ravages of destruction and weather and still remain intact. Beura demonstrated how each of these wheels is actually a sundial by placing a ball pen at the centre and calculating the exact time from line of the shadow. 

The high structure popularly referred as Black Pagoda does not cover the whole temple.  An even higher canopy covered the dance hall which had been destroyed.  But there was still magic in what remained as the  pillars of the dance hall were aligned with such precision as to allow the morning rays of the sun to fall directly on a diamond embedded in the forehead of a statue of the Sun God on days of the summer and winter solstice.

Even more mystifying was that the statue of the deity  in the temple sanctum itself remains suspended midair held in position by the counter forces of powerful magnets placed above and below. The existence of such powerful magnets is a clear indicator to the technological prowess in Odisha at that time.  Konark, Beura asserted, represents an amalgam of the high level of Astronomy, Science and Architecture of Ancient India.

It is only illiterates and the uncultured who are unable to see and appreciate the glory of such marvels of human creativity and want to destroy them. The final destructive stroke upon Konark, as per Beura, came from the Portuguese who removed these magnets for reason that they interfered with the compasses on their ships. There was no scientific basis, Portuguese sailors came in force and simply took the magnets away.

Beura’s next discourse was on temple sanctity.  He led the group to a well near the ruins of the Temple of Mayadevi, one of the wives of the Sun God that was a source of water to the temple kitchen.  A temple is not a place for any human to reside and therefore, the Priests of the time having used the hallowed temple complex as their own place of residence was sacrilege.  Which is why, he emphasised, in just a few decades after its having been built, this magnificent temple ceased to be a place of worship. In comparison, the Jagannath Temple at Puri and the Lingaraj Temple at Bhubaneswar have continued as places of worship to this day because there was no such outrageous sacrilege committed there.

At the time of its construction, the Sun Temple at Konark, now several metres inland, was right on the sea coast a point Beura emphasised by mentioning a obviously popular tale of a young lad having jumped from the temple top directly into the sea. 

Beura asked everyone to close their eyes and imagine the shafts of light from the morning sum coming through the maze of pillars to light up a diamond studded statue suspended in mid-air in the dark portals of the temple.   Only then would we realise and even experience the wonder of Konark and on a philosophical plane, it is only in darkness that the value of light and that of its ultimate giver, the Sun, is truly realised.  The twenty-four stone wheels of this immense chariot appear to move synchronously towards the Sun God, establishing a connect between Suryadeva (The Sun God) and Konaditya (The Temple deity).   It could be that the force of this pull between the two had been at some time been so strong as to make this grand chariot in stone move!

Such was the knowledge, communication skills and above all, passion for the temple that this guide who it was our fortune had shown us around and explained its intricacies of the Sun Temple in such detail.   

Thank you, Srikant Beura.  But for your scholarship, masterly guidance, the Sun Temple would have remained just another marvellous structure built by Ancient Indians and a great lesson in the history and culture of Konark, of Odisha as indeed of India, imparted with such feeling and zeal, would have been missed.