Report of a Tour through the Bengal Provinces/Barawang and Konch
Barawang, or Jylepoor Barawan, as it is spelt in the map (Indian Atlas), is situated beLween Konch and Goh, close to the road from Gaya to Dâudnagar; the place is noticed by Buchanan (Montgomery Martin’s compilation), but I found no time to visit it.
Konch is a large village about 18 miles from Gaya on the Dâudnagar road; there are numerous remains here, but the principal one is a temple of brick in good preservation at the north of the village. The temple as it stands consists solely of the sanctum, with its tower roof; it is a square externally of about 28 feet each way, and 11¼ feet internally. A lingam is the object of worship inside, which is partially filled in with earth and rubbish. The bricks used in the temple are properly shaped, well-burnt bricks, the largest measuring 11 × 5½ × 2¾ inches, but there are many measuring only 9 × 4¾ × 2¾ inches, and some 13 × 7½ × 2¾ inches. This variety in the sizes of the bricks used induces me to suppose that the temple has undergone extensive repair since it was first built, if indeed it be not only a restoration of an ancient temple; in the latter case, however, the restoration must have taken place so long ago that it is ancient even as a restoration.
The sanctum is roofed internally by tunnel vaults, not semicircular, but of arcs meeting at the crown in a ridge; the arch sheeting is entirely of brick cut to shape in the lowest course of bricks; in the arch sheeting, at the springing, the bricks are placed, not as usual with their beds horizontal, but on their edges with the beds vertical; over this row of vertical bricks are 8 or 10 courses of bricks, with their beds horizontal, or rather with their beds slightly inclined to the horizon, as they should properly be in a true arch. Beyond this the bricks are all on edge, with their beds vertical; this construction, however faulty in an arch of small depth transversely, as in walls, is of great strength when built of bricks cut to shape and of great depth transversely. With stone, especially sedimentary stone which has widely different strengths along and across the layers or plane of cleavage, a mode of construction which brings the line of pressures to bear not perpendicularly, but along the planes of cleavage, it is undoubtedly faulty; but in brick which is homogeneous, the construction of an arch of bricks edge to edge is positively an advantage, as the number of joints of compressible mortar is lessened by the arrangement; the only drawback, lateral weakness, does not come into calculation in long tunnel vaults, which in this direction have more strength than they need.
A cornice runs along three sides of the interior of the sanctum at the springing of the tunnel vaults, but there is no cornice in the back wall; further, the side walls of the chamber are each a little over 8 feet thick, while the fourth wall is 10 feet thick, and the back wall only 6¼ feet; these circumstances, combined with the fact that bricks of three different varieties occur in the temple, show that the tunnel vault is a subsequent addition; for if we, without altering the external dimensions of the temple, make the thickness of the walls all round 6¼ feet, by enlarging the chamber inside, we shall get a square chamber 15 feet square, placed centrically as it ought to be.
The absence of a cornice, too, on the back wall internally, shows that the original building was not cut up into two storeys by the interposition of the vaulted or any roof. It is clear, therefore, that the temple, as originally built, consisted of a chamber 15 feet square, with walls 6¼ feet thick all round; subsequently the vault was added by increasing internally the thickness of the side walls by 1¾ feet nearly, and thickening the front wall by additions internally to 10 feet, thus leaving a square chamber no longer 15 feet, but only 11¼ feet square, and eccentrically placed within the structure.
The walls of the temple internally are ornamented by niches, three on each side, doubtless meant to hold lamps.
The entrance is as usual represented by a great rent or opening in the face of the tower, consisting of vertical sides, spanned by an arch of overlapping bricks; the necessities of construction from the small size of bricks have caused this arch to assume the form of a tall isosceles triangle with indented sides.
This opening or entrance is divided into two portions by a stone let in right across a lower rectangular one, and an upper rectangle surmounted by the triangular opening; the lower rectangular entrance giving admission into the sanctum, the upper opening into the present, and, as I have shown, subsequently-built upper chamber.
It is an interesting question to determine when this division of the entrance into two was made. At first sight it appears only natural to suppose it to date only to the period when the vault was added, but from examples elsewhere, where, in the absence of the upper chamber, the architrave nevertheless exists, I am of opinion that it was a feature in the original temple; constructively, too, a little reflection will show that it was necessary, if the sanctum had the usual maudapa in front, and the remains here show that some sort of mandapa once existed in front of the sanctum of this temple.
The annexed diagram will help to illustrate what I say.
ADCB represents the front wall of the sanctum (the parts shaded being in section), BDEFGH the mandapa in front, which must have been roofed in; constructively, if the block CD do not exist, the rain from the roof of the mandapa will find its way straight into the sanctum, but by having the block CD the water is prevented from coming into the sanctum.
But it is not constructively alone that CD is needed; æsthetically it is even a greater necessity. The votary entering the temple does not see the great rent above CD, nor can he see it even when he is beyond the entrance of the mandapa GH, by reason of the height of the roof DEF, which effectually hides the rent above CD on the outside, so that he is unaware of its existence, and is naturally surprised at the strong and very effective light which this rent, of which lie is not aware by reason of the interposed block CD, throws direct on the object of worship at the further end of the sanctum; and as the votary is not allowed to go beyond the threshold of the entrance, he completes his devotions much mystified by the to him inexplicable illumination of the statue, which he probably ascribes to supernatural causes.
Priestcraft has been as much an inherent feature of Buddhism as of every other religion.
The vault now would of course prevent this illumination of the object of worship in the cell, and at present the cell is dark.
The vault is only one brick deep at the crown, but as the bricks are disposed vertically it has great strength. There is or was a thick coating of mortar terrace over it. The upper chamber resting on the vault is 11½ feet square, but the wall is only 7 feet thick in front; this is due partly to dilapidation and partly to a very slight taper in the wall itself.
The chamber is roofed by slightly overlapping courses of bricks; thus the great height of the tower roof is a constructive necessity.
The external shape of the tower, however, differs from that of the great Buddha Gaya temple in being a curved and not a straight-sided pyramid; it is consequently more graceful than the temple at Buddha Gaya. The ornamentation externally consists of a great oval on each face, at a point nearly in the middle of the total height of the tower proper, and of various mouldings and indentations rather sparingly used; the whole of the ornamentation is of brick cut to shape, and it is evident from the way the ornaments are distributed that the whole of it was cut on the external faces of the tower after it had been built up plain. The labour required may easily be imagined; to this is due the fact that the face of the brick-work is so even; for I do not think it possible, without subsequent laborious rubbing down, that any amount of care in setting the bricks, and in the preservation of the shape and sharpness of edges of the brick during manufacture, could produce the wonderfully smooth even face that the work has to this day, notwithstanding the ravages of time.
The temple does not appear to have been originally covered with plaster, but portions of it are now covered with plaster, the remains, no doubt, of a coat put on at some subsequent period.
The tower is, or was, surmounted by a cylindric pinnacle like the temple of Buddha Gaya. This sort of pinnacle is very remarkable, and its form resembling a lingam may be more than a mere accident of construction. Constructively, it was evidently impossible to form in brick the amalaka which invariably surmounts temples of stone, itself again surmounted by either urns or tapering discs ending in a spire. But whether the cylinder with a hemispherical top bears a not merely accidental resemblance to a lingam, or whether it is intended to represent a chaitya or stûpa which, originally hemispherical, became gradually elongated till it resembled nothing so much as a lingam, is a point deserving of inquiry. The temple of Konch appears to have been Buddhist, if we assume, as is sometimes done by high authority, that the Buddhists alone adopted the effective mode of lighting up the object of worship in the manner explained before, while the Brahmanists were rather disposed to hide their gods in the gloom of a dark sanctum; but this is a view not only not supported by any evidence, but is contradicted by examples elsewhere; in the brick temples of the Central Provinces, notably in the example at Sirpur, which proves that the Brahmanists as early as, perhaps, the 5th century, did not hide their gods in the gloom of a dark sanctum, but actually adopted precisely the same mode of lighting the object of worship as is supposed to have been adopted by the Buddhists alone. This circumstance shows that on this ground alone the temple at Konch cannot be considered Buddhist, but there is other evidence more conclusive as to its Brahmanical character. The spout for letting out water used in libations by Brahmanists, but not by Buddhists, still exists buried under accumulations of rubbish at the centre of the north side of the temple, and the sculptures lying about are all Brahmanical, so that I conclude that the temple was originally a Brahmanical shrine and not a Buddhist one; the cylinder, therefore, which crowned it could not have been intended as the representation of a Buddhist chaitya.
But this is not all. General Cunningham ascribes the construction of the present Buddha Gaya temple to the 1st century after Christ. His arguments are very ingenious, but by no means conclusive;[1] and especially so, as he gives no argument to show that the temple was not built, as is expressly stated in the "Amara Devâ" inscription, by Amara Devâ, one of the nine gems in the Court of Vikramâditya, and with Amara Sinha, who lived about or after A. D. 500. (Report, Vol. I, p. 7.)
The existence of the cylindric pinnacle on the top of the temple may now be added as another argument against the construction of the temple so early as the 1st century A. D., if it be supposed to be a representatation of the Buddhist chaitya, for the Buddhist chaityas of the period were far from being the tall cylinder that is here represented; if, however, the temple be ascribed to A. D. 500, there is no difficulty on this score.
But I am not disposed to attach much weight to this argument, as I do not consider it likely that it represents a Buddhist chaitya. The story of Hwen Thsang about the temple having been built by a Brahman by order of Mahâdeva tends to show that the emblem is really a Saivic one. Nothing is more natural than that a Brahman building a temple to Buddha, by order of Mahâdeva, should place the symbol of that deity as the crowning ornament of the temple, and the occurrence of the same finial in other and indisputably Brahmanical Saivic temples tends to show that it really is meant to represent the symbol of Mahâdeva, and that its occurrence in the Buddhist temple of Buddha Gaya is not only not reason for supposing the temple at Konch to have been Buddhist, but is, on the contrary, an evidence in support of the tradition that the Buddhist temple at Gaya (in which it occurs) was built by a worshipper of Brahmanical deities.
In this view, therefore, I do not consider that the age of the Buddha Gaya temple can be even approximately inferred from the existence of this pinnacle on its top; that question must be decided on other grounds; and although I have taken the liberty of pointing out the weak point in General Cunningham’s argument, I am not disposed to dispute his finding, as it does not appear to me that there is sufficient evidence for or against, and therefore I bow to his superior experience and authority.
But whether the 1st or the 6th century be finally fixed upon, when sufficient evidence is forthcoming, as the date of the temple, it is clear from the existence of this pinnacle, and quite independent of the coincidence of the features of the existing temple with Hwen Thsang's description, that this temple was built by a Brahman; and as there is record of a Brahman having built the temple but once, whether it be in the 1st or the 6th century A. D., the opinion of Mr. Fergusson, that its "external form" belongs to the 14th century, must, notwithstanding his high authority, be unhesitatingly set aside.
Reverting now to the Konch temple, I have remarked that the statues lying about are all Brahmanical; these, besides the lingam inside and the statues of Haragauri, which are not scarce, consist of the Ashta Saktis, and the Das avatàrs. Buddha avatâr is represented by a standing figure holding a staff diagonally across; the Kâlki avatâr is represented by a man and woman beside a horse, the man with his arm round the woman; the fish incarnation is represented by a fish standing vertically on its tail; the tortoise incarnation bears a close resemblance to the Saivic emblem of the argha and lingam, with the sole addition of a couple of human figures on the sides holding a string which is wound round the lingam, which does duty for Mount Mandar. It is needless here to point more than cursorily to the unmistakable Phallic features of these two Vaishnavic sculptures.
The temple, I conclude from the lingam inside, apparently undisturbed, and from the other Saivic statues, to have been Saivic; the existence of Vaishnavic statues is no objection, as it is not uncommon to see temples where all three—Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva—are sculptured, but of whom one alone is considered pre-eminent and assigned the place of honour.
There lie outside several pillars of granite, of which four are entire ones, five pilasters, and some fragments; besides these, the remains of eight pillars in the shape of eight capitals are now ranged along the steps leading up to the temple. The four pillars I take to represent the four central pillars of the maha mandapa; there must have been more than five pilasters, but only five now exist. The pillars are of granite, very short and massive, and evidently very old.[2] They taper somewhat, being 1 foot 4 inches square at the base and 1 foot 2 inches at top; the total height of the shaft, including the lowest plain square portion, is 5 feet 6 inches, so that they are llttle more than only 4 diameters in height. They must have stood on bases, but none are now to be seen; the capitals were plain and massive, with little drops at the four corners; the capitals were not cruciform, though a cruciform capital may have surmounted the square one, as is not unfrequently the case; the pillars are ornamented by a single lotus carved on each of the faces in the lowest square portion of the pillar.
I can find no clue as to the precise date of the temple, but the massiveness of the pillars shows that it must have been built at a very early period; tradition, as noticed by Captain Kittoe, assigns it to Bhairab Indra, and says it was dedicated to Sûrya, but I could hear nothing of this at Konch itself. The following lines are all I could get in the way of tradition regarding Konch:—
"Konch base sab soch mité
Durj Raj pasend Mahámun gyán
Bed Puránan hi charchá
Tánhá punjat hai ád Bhawám,
Sáh, Saráf, haráf chhab jiwan par lan bakhám
Jatenhi Tatenhi Thun Mathun ki jánhá det
Abhay bar Sewsimbh Bhawasü"
which, as far as I can make out, means-
"Konch was established, all troubles ceased, Durj Raj chose a wise Mahámuni (as chief?), and discourse of Vedas and Purânas spread. There is worshipped Bhawâni; merchants, good men, evil men, all life (heard of) the fame; on going (there) the gift of fearlessness and virile strength is bestowed by Siva and Bhawâni."
But many of the words are obsolete, and people disagree as to their meanings.
On the other side of the village road, i. e., to the south, is a mound, the ruins of another temple; the bricks are being carted away to Tikâri; two pillars are lying on the site. This temple, and also the one previously described, are assigned to the Kol Rajas.