LAKHENA TEMPLE, POLO FOREST, GUJARAT, INDIA
The 15th century in western India witnessed a very interesting revival and translation of the Maru-Gurjara temple architecture of the 12th century. The Maru-Gurjara style is the outcome of the merging of two styles – the styles of Marwad and Gujarat. Both these styles had very different sensibilities – in the Marwad style, a temple is treated as a monolithic entity which is sculpted from one single mass, whereas in the Gujarat style, the temple is made with an attention to joinery and careful masonry. Largely, the difference can be characterised as the former being a stereotomic tradition versus the latter being a tectonic tradition. The merging of these two styles resulted in an integration where some aspects of each were accentuated, while some were neutralised. This slow process of coupling was a result of communities of people moving within these two regions of western India over a period of almost a century. During this time, there was also a constant fluctuation in the political and regional boundaries of these kingdoms. This resulted in the birth of the Maru-Gurjara style that was acceptable to all of western India. By the end of the 13th century, the Gujarat sultanate was established under an Islamic ruler, and as a result temple building stopped completely. In the 15th century, with trade flourishing, the Hindu and Jaina merchant classes were gaining financial strength. As a result, on the periphery of the sultanate, they began to build temples. But due to the long halt in temple building, the chain of oral transmission of knowledge from one generation to another was broken. As a result in the 15th century, they could only replicate what they saw around them and construction was left to interpretation. This included some elements that Muslims brought along with them. Hence, what we see here in this temple, is a merging of not only three different building traditions, but also of elements and motifs from other parts of the country. Here we see a layering of architecture from different parts of the country over a long period of time. For the patrons of these temples, these objects were to stand as manifestations and proof of their economic power and hence objects of pride. These temples became objects of hope against the might of the Sultanate. Hence, the aim here was to translate the grandeur of the Maru-Gurjara temple away from the Sultanate centres, but the older construction quality and technique was left behind. The translations of what was grand also varied and in this way each translation was partial and partisan. It is clear that the different styles were interpreted and then transformed into a completely new form, where the process of transformation took place through communities migrating and new cultures conquering provinces. The idea of decay and decadence is crucial here, because the scholarly work on temples since the Indian Independence has almost discarded the study of such late temples as being impure. This notion of impure is extremely subjective, since this temple is an interesting example of layered assimilation of ideas and building traditions into one object. In the case of this temple, evolution becomes translation. Interpretation of the builders of this object becomes translation, and interpreting itself becomes a translation.
Architecture in Translation
Sunaina Shah
Architecture in Translation
Sunaina Shah