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The temple of Virabhadra in Lepakshi, in Anantapur district, is a store house of painting and sculpture. Its murals claim an honoured place in the annals of Hindu aesthetics. According to tradition the temple was built by Virupanna, helped by his brother, Viranna, in the reign of the Vijayanagar emperor, Achyutha. One day he happened to notice a small temple of Lord Papanasa on a hillock called the Kurmasaila, of the Hill of the Tortoise, from its resemblance to a resting tortoise. This stands near the village of Lepakashi. He decided to build a temple complex there . As a treasure
of the empire, and possibly also as Governor of the province of
Penukonda, Virupanna had
unlimited money at his disposal. This he used to build the temple, engaging
famous architects, sculptors and painters .To begin with, he had a
huge prakara wall built to enclose the Papanasa shrine and many others in its
vicinity. He had many mandapas also erected within. But, mean while, envious persons told the Emperor that the treasurer had embezzled imperial
money. He ordered Virupanna to his presence. Anticipating his punishment,
Virupanna plucked out his eyes and dashed them against a wall in the temple. Popular fancy points two red spots on the western wall. When it rains the red spots begin watering , and people say that Virupanna is weeping. According to tradition, the blinded Virupanna used to wander about the temple, of course left unfinished ,lamenting the hard fate that he had left his beloved temple in complete and the fact that he could not see the glory of the lord. Virupanna
was a historical character. He built the Kalyana Venkatasavara temple in
NaryanVanam, a fane associated with the Tirupati Pilgrimage.This was in
1541-42.He also made gifts to the Tirumala and Sri Kalahasti temples.From an
original post of his, some thing like the Mayor of Hampi, he was promoted to
high office in Penukonda and Chandragiri provinces .Tradition may have
embellished the story, but that he built the Lepakshi temple in fact. The temple's plan
is irregular because of circumstances under which it was built. Its
three main parts are the Virabhadra shrine with its ardhamandapa, the
mukha-mandapa, and the kalyanamandapa. All the three scintillate with painting and
sculpture. The kalyan mandap is an auxiliary structure and is unfinished. The
mukhamandapa, an oblong structure 24 m by 7 m, is borne on seventy brilliantly sculptured
columns. There are sixty more in the outer rows. Two of them hardly
rest on the ground, they are virtually hanging pillars. There are paintings
all over the ceiling. The other mandapa of note, the kalyana, has thirty-eight sculptured monolithic columns. They carry a veritable gallery of divine figures. The western part, the "hall of creepers", as it is called, is made up of forty-two pillars. These carry designs of flower and stalk and also geometrical designs. Textiles designers frequently copy these. Three huge boulders in the second prakara carry striking sculpture .One is the lord Ganesha. It is 2.3 m high, and it stands on on a pedestal 1.40 m high.Nearby is a huge Linga under a seven hooden cobra, a monolithic sculpture 5.5 m high. There is a spilt in the centre of the base. According to the local legend, one of the sculptors at work in the temple made the figure during his rest hours. When his mother brought him his meal and saw the sculpture, she was surprised. She expressed her surprised praise .There upon the best spilt of its own accord. A mother's praise of her son was considered inauspicious. The third sculpture is a low relief of the Kannappa story, as related above (Sri Kalahasti temple) About 200m, north east of the temple stands India's second largest monolith, the celebrated Lepakshi Nandi, which is smaller only then the image of Gomatesvara, the Jain saint, on the hill of Sravanabelgola (Karnataka). It is 8.25 m long and 4.6 m high. Though massive, it is a real work of art, of sounds proportions and absolutely realistic. On one of the chains round the neck there is the insignia of the "Ganda-bherunda", a double-headed eagle.This originated in Takshasila,the ancient university city, now in Pakisthan, a place which Alexander the Great and Emperor Ashok knew.The Vijayanagar Rayas used it, and from them the wodeyears of Mysore .So in a historical accident , did the Kaisers of Imperial Germany. Three other large Nandis in the country are in the Thanjavur Brahadisvara temple (Tamilnadu), on the Chamundi Hills, over looking Mysore (Karnataka), and in the Bull Temple, in Basavangudi, a suburb of Bangalore (Karnataka) The entire Lepakshi temple most originally have been painted.The survivals are on the ceilings of the mukhamandapa, the ardhamandapa, and the sancta. But with infinite labour the Archological Survey of India has been restoring murals in some other parts of the temple. The paintings are in the finest classical style. There are full of vitality, and they depict intense drama. Technically, they are in single plane, there being no attempt to suggest depth. Often the painter is content with telling his story. But in doing so he brings so his tasks not only his individual skill but also the accumulated traditions of his day. Here on these walls, sixteenth century South India comes alive. There are eight
rectangular painted panels on the ceiling of the mukhamandapa. In the
centre is a square. Its four sides have been made in to one panel. On both sides
there are each on either side, extending north to south. A panel at the
eastern end tells the story of Draupadi's marriage with the Pandavas. The famous
incident of Arjuna shooting with bow and arrow a revolving fish target while
looking at its reflection in water below has been rendered with spirit.There is
another mural rendering of the same theme in the Virupaksha temple in Hampi. In
the next panel no story is told.It depicts Sri Krishna as a Baby, recalling the
famous prayer in Kulasekhara's splended hymn,the "Mukundamala".In
another scene Lord Virabhadra is conferring grace on the builders of the temple,
Virupanna and Viranna. They are stately figures wearing conical
caps. Arjuna performs
severe penance in order to obtain the weapon. To test him Lord Siva, as a
hunter, accompanied by goddess parvathi and their retinue, go to meet him. At
the moment both observe a boar running by. Both shoot their arrows at it.
Both claim the pray, and a furious contest ensues. Finally, the Lord reveals
Himself and grants Arjuna his wish. This is the story the Lepakshi painter depicts in a number of scenes. He evokes life in dense forest. The animals are in sympathy with the changing moods, as he has observed them . He is an acute observer. In this panel there are a few scenes unrelated to the story. The story of how Ravana, who had own the Atma Linga from Lord Siva, was made by Sri Vinayaka to part with it is told in another panel.Yet another narrates some scenes from the "Ramayana". The eighth panel is badly damaged. The
ardhamandapa paintings depict fourteen forms of Lord Siva and one of Devi.
The former included Lingodbhavamurti, Andhakasuramardhanamurti,
Dakshinamurti, Chandesaanugrahamurti, Bhikshatanamurti, Harihara, Ardhnarisva,
Kalyanasundara,Tripurantaka, Gauriprasadaka and Nataraja. The other depictions
here are not identifiable. The form of Devi too can not be identified. But this
painting is one of the most beautiful of women that Indian art, in all its range
knows. Asia's largest painting is on the ceiling of the sanctum; it is set in a huge rectangular panel about 7.6 m by by 4.3 mm. Around the main figure of Lord Virabhadra there are panels. The main painting is "mostly in gray, with strong, evenly flowing black lines all over". Its technique is different from that of the others in the temple. "The drawing is strong, the colour subdued, and it acquires the appearance of a gigantic figure floating in and dominating the whole sky.T hough no physical and outward movement is attempted in this painting , it is internally dynamic.This achieved by the innumerable rhythmic, dark, evenly flowing lines on gray, which cover entire picture,detailing and illuminating every part. This remains a masterpiece of all time in Indian art, not simply by its size, but by the orginal treatment given by the un-known immortal artists of Lepakshi".At the bottom of this magnificent composition Virupanna, with his family, is offering obeisance to the Lord. A beautiful boarder of textiles designs frames this masterpiece. Elsewhere on the ceilings in this area there is what some scholars consider the story of the origin of the Hoysala dynasty of kings in early mediaeval Karnataka, which built three temples i.e., Belur, Halebid and Somnathpur. The story is that the name of the dynasty, Hoysala, derives from an incident when a sage directed a boy, named Sala, to kill, or "hoy", a lion which had intruded into their hermitage. Many Hoysala temples contain lithic sculptures depicting a individual stabbing a lion. whether this incident is historical or not , obviously the Hoysalas themselves believed that it was.A variant of the story seems to be depicted in the Lepakashi mural. A prince in hunting a spotted cheetha, it entres the hermitage of an ascetic and tries to kill a boy there. In the next composition the boy is stabbing the animal. Else where in the panel a king and a number of women are worshipping Lord Siva. There are many more paintings on the ceilings here. Some are of Lord Siva and Goddess Parvathi. In the Raghunatha shrine, the ceiling contains murals of seven of Lord Vishnu's incarnations, the Matsya, the Kurma, the Varaha, the Parsurama and the Rama. Two panels nearby are left bare. This fact, like the unfinished kalyana mandapa, indicates that the temple could not be completed . The sculptures in the temple, considered as a whole, fall in to many divisions. There are divine images, two stories are told in the narrative style, there are human representations from a study of which the scholar may obtain an idea of the social life of the day, there are floral, geometric and abstract designs, particularly in the kalyanamandapa, some of which have been limited by textiles designers."Lepakshi saris" are popular. Finally there are reliefs of bird, animals, tree and plant. The two sculptural stories are those of Siriyala and Arjuna's quest for weapons to use in the war against the Kauravas. Thus, the latter story is depicted in Lepakshi in two forms, in lithic relief as well as mural. Both
stories appear in a continuing series of reliefs on the walls of the
ardhamandap. On both sides of the entrance from this mandapa into the
sanctum there are three long parallel bands of relief. In the top band,55
centimetres wide, swans march in procession. In the bottom band,71 centimetres
wide swans march in procession. In the bottom band, 71 centimetres at its widest
there is a march of elephants. It is in the central band, about 61 cm wide, that
the two stories are told. |
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