CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu is a gold mine for followers of architectural history, thanks to well-preserved, documented temples, inscriptions and archaelogical sites, many thousands of years old. But apart from the architectural niceties, it is also important to note the aesthetics behind it. City-based artist and sculptor, Prof SAV Elanchezian’s book Art and Architectural Glory of Chola and Pandya Region is piquing interest among connoisseurs for his unique aesthetic insights into Tamil architecture.
A graduate of the College of Fine Arts and an MPhil and PhD holder from the Thanjavur Tamil University, his years of experience working in the field of research had him visit almost all the temples of architectural importance in the State.
“There are a lot of people who have written on the morphological aspects of temples. But nobody has written about the aesthetical aspects of it. No one has visualised it from an art and aeshthetics point of view,” he says.
So how do aesthetics accentuate compositions of the temples? “Chola and Pandya architecture have so many intricacies that can be seen from a micro perspective, and draws a lot from culture,” he adds.
His book carries forward his studies and observations about the confluence of art in temple architecture. One of this is the Naganathaswamy temple in Manambadi village, Kumbakonam, which houses a sculpture that depicts the fight between an elephant and a spider to worship Lord Shiva.
“The spider weaves a web above the Sivalingam to keep stray leaves from falling on it. But the elephant on the pretext of cleaning the lingam takes water from the Kaveri and cleans it. This causes a clash between them and they are seen as being very aggressive. However, being divine characters, the elephant has four tusks instead of two, and the spider has 12 legs instead of eight,” he says.
Another important aspect he has talked about in the book is the sculptures of temples in Madurai. He has elaborated on one of them, which is a series of sculptures on Hiranyasura and Narasimhan in the Azhagar Koil in Madurai.
“The life size sculptures depict the fight between the two especially during the asura’s killing. However, you realise that each pillar has different poses of the same scene, which means that the sculptor is in effect animating the scene,” he says.
He has also elaborated on the use of vast viewing space in the Brihadeeswarar Temple, Thanjavur. “It goes against the norm that vast space is waste space, but the reason the architects of that time left so much space in the compound was so that people could see the composition and space that they used to render the architecture.”
These few examples are mere technicalities and do not serve much in giving context to historical structures, he adds calling this study as aesthetic excavation. He mentions Ceylonese art critic/philosopher Anand Coomarasamy and the British EB Havell as two pioneers who brought critiquing Indian art and architecture into vogue — and giving it a context. “In fact, most of Indian civilisation started out with abstract and then moved to realistic, rather than the other way around which is how Western art developed!”
‘Art and Architectural Glory of Chola and Pandya Region’ is available online for order and is published by Notion Press