A heroic conception

More or less, all the caves of Badami have a similar plan: the mukhamandapa, the mahamandapa and the garbhagriha with a lingam. But the most distinguishing features of all the caves are the life-sized panels, some of which are of outstanding merit, maintains Arun Gaur

FROM Hampi, it takes me eight hours to reach Badami. It was a tough time trying to make enquiries about buses and their schedules. They normally talked in irritated Kannada to me and the script on the buses imperiously told me nothing. The oft-repeated "w" letters made fun of me. Somehow, changing a bus on the way and hoping that I was on the right track, I reached Badami.

It was getting increasingly dark outside and through the bus-window, I could feel the shapes of the passing rocks as we lurched forward. Over them, clear star constellations were hanging silently.

In the morning, climbing the flanks of the sandstones, a part of the Kaladgi series, I sensed the shifted romance of the daylight. On my immediate right on the southern massif were the caves with their mysterious images. Down below was the big tank turned deep shining green probably due to the plantation growth in water. Near its bank the town-houses were huddled together uncannily like thousands of closely parked trucks trying to intrude into the U-shaped fault determinedly occupied by the tank. Scores of washerwomen, standing in knee-deep green water with their saress tucked high up, were busy in their scrubbings and lashings. Merciless beauties!

Their sarees — pink, blue, green, — looked beautiful in the early morning light. On the other end of the tank was the Bhutanath temple. It became glorious in the late diffused pallied light, the two blue-eyed German lasses told me. If we looked straight into the air, right across on the equivalent height was the desert of red rocks and scrub-bushes, with no tree visible. At places the structural temples looked as reddish as the rocks on which they stood.

The Aihole inscription of Pulaksein-II tells us that the "tiger-haired" king was a night of death for the Nalas, the Mauryas, and the Kadambas (Nala Maurya Kadambakal-ratri). Not only did the Chalukyas under the leadership of Pulaksein-I, Kirtivarman-I, Mangalesha, and Pulaksein-II halted the march of Harshvardhan on the northern banks of Godavari, but also kept, at least for sometime, under severe restraint the ever-ebullient Pallavas, and stretched their suzerainty far and wide in the south. Thus, it became almost imperative for them to create something which should be of outstanding artistic and religious merit; reminding the generations of what they were and incidentally and unintentionally, of what became of them later. The four caves of Badami turned out to be, partly, an intentional sequel to such a line of thought.

They are held to be the product of the sixth century. The foundation inscription of the cave-III of Manglesha dates that cave at 578 A.D. If we gradually climb up from the cave-I to the last cave-IV, the chronology of excavation should roughly follow the same pattern, though many scholars prefer a different time-sequence of excavation.

Lack of sufficient number of epigraphic sources, pin-pointing the date and other contextual information, creates uncertainty. Unlike the Pallavas, who enjoyed displaying their newly-developed Tamil script, the Chalukyas were somewhat deficient in this respect. Of course, we can also assign the relative periods under which a particular cave must have been excavated by noticing the cult-trends of iconography and trying to match it with the personal propensities of the different kings. Thus, while the first two caves have the Shaiva predominance, the third cave where Manglesha is said to have installed the image of Vishnu is patently Vaishnava. The fourth cave is Jaina. Neither the Chalukyas nor the Pallavas were hostile to Jainism; probably because of the similarities in their structural canon and even because of the sensitive inter-assimilation that took place between their respective sets of icons. Jaina, Vaishanava and Shaiva monuments may stand together. With the Buddhistic structures, the story may take a different, even a nasty turn.

More or less, all the caves have a similar plan: the mukhamandapa, the mahamandapa and the garbhagriha with a lingam or a provision of an image. But the most distinguishing feature of all the caves are more than life-sized panels, some of which are of outstanding merit.

Siva, busy in his tandava nritya, on the wall projected out of the first cave with his 64 kinds of hand-gestures, is not as enigmatic as the vinadhara vrishabhantika Siva in the mukhamandapa. The problem is how to unite man and woman in one whole. And they are united through the concordant notes of veena, when the fingers of both Siva and Uma play synchronistically on the same instrument. Observing this experiment, the emaciated figure of the Bhringi stands in a corner in an ambiguous stance. Everything in him seems to be sinking inward, only his eyes pop out. He salutes the divine pair with folded hands but he cannot conceal his amusement, a grin flits across his mouth.

The opposite harihara panel expresses the same problem not in terms of the male and the female worlds, but in terms of the union between the dark-unconscious world of Siva incorporating the jataka hair, the moon, the skull, the cobras and the bright conscious world of Vishnu. But in this case, in contrast to the musical union of man and woman, the two gods remain sharply bifurcated.

The trivikrama and the varaha of the cave-II are repeated in the cave-III much more imposingly. It is in the cave-III that many of the conflicting tendencies — thematic, structural or iconographic, seem to be settling down in the trivikrama, the narasimha, the harihara, the varaha and the vaikunthanatha panels. Not only are they designed to overawe the onlooker with the sheer sense of weighty divinities, almost brutal in carrying out their merciless predetermined designs, but also their being grouped together at such a lofty level enhances the feeling of terror in the believer and the non-believer alike.

The trivikrama that is outside the mukhamandapa, is the most striking figure. A monumental reserve of energy is held in pause by the fully outstretched straight leg of the deity. The straight lines crisscrossing each other lend a sense of pitiless determinacy. The vertical lines of head, sword blade firmly held to charge at a moment’s call and the parallel horizontal left arm and leg flung to their extremity where the demon-mask dangles hopelessly — all of these seem to make a mockery of the human-effort springing out of the so-called devilish aspirations. The reflected light from the fore-noon sun suffuses the divine face and the mukuta of Vishnu that glow. In contrast to this gigantic play of the force beyond human control, in the dramatic display of miniaturised figures, God is present in the form of an archetypal trickster figure asking Bali for his boon of destruction. Namuchi clings to Vishnu’s left leg in the left corner desperately trying to stall the design of divinity but would be soon contemptuously flung away.

Just in the neighbourhood of this panel, inside the mukhamandapa, there is a menacing leonine stare of the Narasimha. Above his hands seem to be hovering two ayuddha-devatas — the chakra and the shankha. But the standing Bhu supported on the palm of the varaha is just not as relaxed as many of the over enthusiastic commentators would make us believe. Otherwise enigmatic, it does not carry the sense of an action or a pause. Everywhere, the brutal energy — lion, boar, cobra — seems to be at the disposal of God.

The cave-IV of the Jainas, though not as grand as the Brahmanical ones, offers a different version of iconic-art and includes the Gommata with legs entwined with snakes.

Though these are the giant panels that are obviously the most outstanding accomplishments in cave-art, a different kind of delight awaits the onlooker when he beholds the mithuna couples and the other related figures formed within brackets. The contexts that many of these figures present give an insight into the social, ethical and philosophical background of the times: A lady arranging her hair in mirror, while her baton-wielding attendant is ready to quell any ogling; a lover supporting the limpid inebriated beloved, a woman about to bathe in the river, a male offering a bloom to a coy mistress. While the giant divinities restrain us with their overpowering sense of awe and fate, these are the delicate gestures in the secular scenes that let us breathe the essence of human freedom.