The Mughal Temple in Banaras and Beyond
Located on the hills of Kumbhalgarh, India, is a Hindu temple distinguished by three whitewashed domes and a pyramidal tower structure—shikhara—at one end of the building. Such temples are ubiquitous in this region and across South Asia. They are, however, often seen as anomalies. A source of puzzlement to visitors, pilgrims, and scholars of the built environment, in popular consciousness the shikhara marks this structure as a Hindu temple, while the domes suggest a building associated with Islam and Persianate culture. A legacy of nineteenth-century colonial and nationalist historiographies, such univocal associations between architectural form and religion and culture (language, literature, social norms) are at best a naive reading of architecture that interprets such juxtapositions as formally “corrupt,” and at worst pernicious in promoting the notion that Hinduism and Islam are culturally separate and irreconcilable. Such viewpoints inform much that has transpired in recent debates about temple building in India.
In contrast, I present a history that heeds Islam’s strong presence and deep histories in South Asia that began with various sultanates (ca. 1200–1526), and were followed by the early modern Mughal empire (1526–1858). Each political entity instigated political, cultural, and religious transformation in the Indian subcontinent. When viewed through such a lens, the temple at Kumbhalgarh (built ca. 1450), far from being anomalous or corrupt, reflects a contemporary cultural and architectural synthesis. In this milieu, the term “Mughal Temple,” is not an oxymoron—or even a sensational juxtaposition of two oppositional ideas—a Hindu religious structure and an Islamic patron.
Several historians of South Asian art and culture have, in recent decades, dismantled this contrived “Hindu/Islamic” oppositional divide and cleared a path to view artistic production in Indo-Islamic South Asia as a shared cultural activity. A non-specialist idea of an authentic Hindu temple precludes any inclusion of architectural forms or spatial configurations that could reference South Asia’s millennium-long Islamic legacy: think arches, domes, vaults. Hence, this is a particularly timely concern in the current Indian political climate, and yet, the work of these academics has largely remained confined to academic publications and discourse.[1] This essay therefore, is an effort at bridging this cultural and aesthetic divide and a plea to a larger audience and readership to embrace the idea of the Mughal temple.
Figure 1. Kumbhalgarh temple, ca. 1450. Photograph by Madhuri Desai.
Toward the end of the sixteenth century, Abul Fazl Allami, friend and chronicler of the Mughal emperor Akbar (r. 1550-1605), compiled a geographical, cultural, and historical survey of South Asia titled the Ain-i-Akbari (the reign of Akbar). In this voluminous work he described a great temple that once existed in the Hindu pilgrimage center of Banaras and was circumambulated by pilgrims in a manner similar to the Islamic practice of circumambulating the Kaaba in Mecca.[2] He ended his account by stating that this temple was destroyed by a twelfth-century Islamic invader who lacked, or so Abul Fazl implied, the tolerant sensibilities of the Mughals. Abul Fazl’s writings provide us with valuable insights into Mughal attitudes towards South Asia’s pre-Islamic past—in particular, the policies of cultural and religious pluralism that were practiced by three of the “great” Mughal emperors, Akbar, Jahangir (r. 1605-27), and Shahjahan (r. 1628-58). Their inclusive reigns have been overshadowed by the negative press received by their successor Aurangzeb (r. 1659-1708), the favorite bogeyman of colonial and nationalist historians. He remains a convenient villain for contemporary Hindu nationalist historians and politicians alike.
Abul Fazl’s accounts, besides their significance as historical sources, allow a more balanced picture of the Mughal state and the policies of individual emperors and this text is of paramount significance today. In the Ain-i-Akbari, he underlines a significant Mughal policy—that of providing direct and indirect state support for the building of major Hindu temples within their territories and securing their place within existing and renewed pilgrimage landscapes while also anchoring them to the nodes and arteries of Mughal urbanism.
“Mughal temples … are remnants of shared norms and aesthetic sensibilities that are conveniently forgotten during moments of cultural and religious chauvinism.”
A policy that built on a consistent feature of medieval Indian kingship—a strong connection between political authority and patronage for temple architecture—it was implemented through the actions of high-ranking Hindu courtiers (often also regional rulers) and prominent religious scholar-activists. In northern India, a number of Hindu Rajput rulers patronized temple architecture between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. Their designs were based in well-rooted regional architectural styles and building practices but were also created using elements such as domes and arches that patrons and designers drew from the mosques, madrasas, and palaces that were being built across Indo-Islamic South Asia. In most cases, the ritual and spatial separation of the sanctum crowned by a shikhara was retained, while the mandapa (a term for a pavilion or hall meant for public rituals and congregations) portion of the temple was designed with novel variations and interpretations. The temple at Kumbhalgarh (figure 1) is a case in point. The complex narrative and iconographic programs of pre-Islamic days became less common and the presence of figural embellishment, if and when employed, was a symbolic nod to tradition. Notwithstanding such adaptations during these early centuries of Indo-Islamic culture and politics, it was during the reign of the Mughal emperor Akbar that arcuated forms were innovatively integrated to create complex and volumetric spaces by designers and their patrons. As significant temples became associated with Mughal patronage, integrated vaulted and domed spaces were preferred in place of the more traditionally placed and distinct mandapas of an earlier time. As Catherine Asher has demonstrated, ideas around “Hindu kingship” remained a concern for Mughal courtiers, often articulated through forms that were aligned with a notion of “tradition.”[3]
The notion of “Hindu kingship,” was itself a fraught idea for Hindu courtiers who had risen to prominence through their association with the newly established Mughal imperium. Obscure origins could certainly be enhanced and embellished through patronage of literature, painting, and architecture (including temples), but in this context “tradition” could also become an inconvenience. At primary Hindu pilgrimage sites such as Banaras and Brindavan, Mughal interest and intervention were certainly inflected by the individual political agendas as well as personal beliefs of each emperor, and temple architecture can provide a window into imperial policies. Mughal interest in both sites is evidenced through accounts such as those by Abul Fazl, Mughal farmans (orders) ratifying existing ownership of religious properties, as well as new endowments to religious institutions.
Figure 2. Temple of Vishveshvur, Benares, 1831-33, by James Prinsep. © British Library Board, Shelfmark X751/3(8).
At Banaras, Mughal attention was centered on building a Shaiva shrine to Vishweshwur (ca. 1590), the city’s presiding deity as detailed in a fourteenth-century sacred text, the Kashikhand.[4] Since the temple was dismantled by order of the emperor Aurangzeb, in 1669, a decade into his reign, we can only conjecture its forms and spaces. The existence of the lone surviving wall and arch of the temple patronized by the Mughal grandee Todarmal and his scholar-mentor Narayan Bhatt, suggests that this was a sandstone structure, its spaces formed through a system of intersecting vaults with prominent pointed arches. This innovative spatial scheme was combined with a carved and iconic stone exterior (figure 2). Since this temple is no longer standing, other extant Mughal temples can provide a canvas for speculation on its formal and spatial characteristics. Architectural choices were connected to individual agency and aspirations for self-fashioning, that were never consistent or unidirectional, but rather contingent on quotidian political trends and shifting ideas of culture, religion, and identity.
Figure 3. Exterior of Govind Dev temple, Brindavan, ca. 1590. Photograph by Madhuri Desai.
The Govind Dev temple at Brindavan, built in 1590 by Todarmal’s contemporary, Raja Man Singh Kacchawaha, can provide a point of comparison for the temple in Banaras, that is only partially extant (figures 3 and 4). Its formal and spatial scheme indicates that it shared a number of similarities with Todarmal’s Vishweshwur temple. The Govind Dev interior is formed with iwans that intersect at right angles to form a spacious tri-lobed mandapa, with a sanctum at the end of the fourth arm and an aniconic but carved and molded sandstone exterior. The French merchant Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, who visited this temple ca. 1665, mentions the three shikhara forms that once surmounted the structure.[5] Tavernier distinguished them as a central, taller shikhara, flanked by two more diminutive ones. The extant roofscape of the Govind Dev temple does not bear out Tavernier’s description. It is possible however, that a shikhara or several shikharas were planned, and eventually not built.
Figure 4. Interior vault of Govind Dev temple, Brindavan, ca. 1590. Photograph by Madhuri Desai.
In his narrative, Tavernier recounted a visit to another edifice, the Bindu Madhav temple at Banaras, also built and managed through Kacchawaha patronage. This temple was also dismantled around 1669, by order of the emperor Aurangzeb, and replaced with the Dharhara mosque. Tavernier described an interior of intersecting pointed vaults culminating in an impressive central space that tied together each arm of the temple’s cruciform plan. At Brindavan, the jharokha (projecting window) as a distilled element of Mughal authority, is prominently visible on the exterior of the Govind Dev temple. The surviving elements of the Vishweshwur temple suggest that it was created within similar visual, spatial, and formal parameters (figure 5).
Figure 5. Jharokha (projecting window), Govind Dev temple, Brindavan, ca. 1590. Photograph by Madhuri Desai.
Mughal temples at important pilgrimage destinations in northern India were designed to make a strong statement of affinity with the Mughal political and cultural world and included visible symbols of Mughal political authority. They are remnants of shared norms and aesthetic sensibilities that are conveniently forgotten during moments of cultural and religious chauvinism.
NOTES
[1] Recent examples include Richard M. Eaton and Phillip B. Wagoner, Power, Memory, Architecture: Contested Sites on India’s Deccan Plateau, 1300-1600 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014). Also see Finbarr Barry Flood, Objects of Translation: Material Culture and Medieval “Hindu-Muslim” Encounter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009).
[2] Abul Fazl Allami, Ain-i-Akbari, trans. H. Blochmann. Volume 1 (1873; reprint Calcutta: The Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1993), and Abul Fazl Allami, Ain-i-Akbari, trans. H. S. Jarrett, Volume 2 (1891; reprint, Calcutta: The Asiatic Society, 1993).
[3] Catherine B. Asher, “Kacchavaha Pride and Prestige: The Temple Patronage of Raja Mana Simha,” in Govindadeva: A Dialogue in Stone, ed. Margaret H. Case (New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, 1996); “Manufacturing Tradition: Rajput Temples in the Mughal and Post-Mughal Era,” in Temple Architecture and Imagery of South and Southeast Asia, ed. Parul Pandya Dhar and Gerd J. R. Mevissen (New Delhi: Aryan Books International, 2016).
[4] For more on Banaras, see Madhuri Desai, Banaras Reconstructed: Architecture and Scared Space in a Hindu Holy City (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2017).
[5] Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, The Six Voyages of John Batista Tavernier (Book III) (London: John Starkey, 1678).
