THE GETTY PROJECT: SELF-PRESERVATION AND THE LIFE OF TEMPLES
Michael W. Meister
[Paper presented at the ACSAA Symposium, Charleston SC, November
1998]
[Illustrations for this essay can be found by clicking here.]
[1-2] We art historians too often speak of temples as if built by kings,
but they are built for
communities; as ritual instruments the use of which changes; one
function of which is to
web individuals and communities into a complicated and inconsistent
social fabric through
time. They survive by communities making use of them in a reciprocal
relationship of
self-preservation quite removed from agendas of historical conservation,
Osymandias-like
memorialization, or archaeological concerns.
This panel represents a preliminary review of a project on "Continuities
of Community
Patronage" carried out by the panel's three participants, with a field
tour in western
Rajasthan for five months last spring, funded by the J. Paul Getty
Trust's program for
interpretive research.
[3-4] The one temple we briefly studied most likely to have been built to
fit a king's agenda
was the Ranchodrai Vishnu temple near Balotra. Sited in the ancient town
of Khed, a
medieval capital for Paramara kings, this temple was built in the 9th
century; its fronting
hall reformulated and made grander in the 11th century; and a new marble
image installed
in its sanctum. Over time its use seems to have devolved from kings to
local Thakurs as
patterns of regional power shifted and the capital declined. Finally, in
this century, saved
from its physical isolation, it has been intermittently and sporadically
restored, most
recently because of a loyal sage; [5-6]
and over the last thirty years re-mirrored to serve a modern merchant
community of
Agrawals in Balotra -- what L. A. Babb calls its "Lion's Club" function.
[7-8] More suggestive of earlier processes of re-definition and
re-appropriation is the Mahavir
Jain temple built at Osian. Founded in the eighth century at a time when
a charismatic
Jain sage had converted a part of the local population to Jainism, the
temple was
reconfigured in the 10th century by an Oswal family that claimed in an
inscription that the
temple's ancestry then reached back to the time of the great king
Vatsaraja Pratihara two
centuries before.
The date of this 10th-century reconfiguration, however, has entered the
lists of Jain holy
places as if the temple had been built then, making the temple's position
as Western
India's oldest Jain shrine a matter to be established by modern
scholarship. A torana-gate
and subshrines were added over the next centuries, the two-storied entry
re-ceilinged, and
the main temple's tower replaced in the 15th century.
[9-10] The story of Osian's conversion to Jainism recorded in the history of
the Upakeccha
Gaccha has been mined by both L.A. Babb and myself in recent articles in
relation to the
important dispersed merchant clan of Oswals. Indeed, that myth itself,
as recorded in the
18th century, had attempted to explain the disappearance of all resident
Jains from Osian.
In the mid-19th century, another charismatic sage returned, finding the
temple buried in
sand up to the top of its shikhara according to one ephemeral account,
who instructed the
absent Jain community of the temple's importance and urged its
restoration. Taken up by
Jain families from Pokaran-Phalodi, this effort has created a new myth of
the temple's
refounding, although the bhojak priests AST the temple claim to have been
serving the
temple for more than the past 200 years.
[11-12] Again, in this century, a wandering Jain teacher interested in
restoring the Osian lineage
urged that a Jain school be established as part of the temple to return
resident Jains to
Osian. Built in the second and third decades of this century, this
school compound, now a
dharmshala, expanded the compound of the original temple to become an
integral part of
the 20th-century shrine. Contemporary patronage from a Trust in
Ahmedabad has again
transformed this now-perceived-as "historical" temple, without, however,
substantially
changing its community role or that of the school. This new course of
construction,
however, has helped develop a network of craftsmen that has altered the
third temple of
our study, that of the goddess Saciyamata on a central hill at Osian.
[13-14] This goddess temple, built originally in the 8th century, has played
a complicated role in
the conversion story of Oswal Jain origins. The goddess's own conversion
from
meat-eater to sweetmeat-eater probably reflects the passing of another
Jain sage in the
11th century at a time the main temple itself was replaced with the
complex structure we
now see. Its compound, however, had had three Vaishnava subshrines added
in the
previous two centuries; and animal sacrifice still occurred outside the
temple earlier in this
century at a time the temple was still claimed as an origin temple by the
Shankla Rajputs.
[15-16] In the past thirty years the Jain school at Osian has been
reformulated to claim a
physical/mandalic relationship with the Saciyamata temple. Complex
negotiations of
overlapping community use have been mapped by creation of a Saciyamata
temple-trust to
fit modern India's changing laws about sacred property; but
reconciliation of conflicting
claims now among local landholders, non-resident pilgrims, and the
priestly community can
be seen in the development of the temple's real-estate itself.
[17-18] A set of nine Navadurga shrines, designed to make the temple
ritually unique by an
important past chief-priest now surround the older temple-compound, and
new gateways
march up processional stairs to the hill. Jains from neighboring
Shekavati - now many in
Calcutta and Bombay - drawn by the temple's recent reputation as a
"healing" temple, [19-20]
have contributed to a vast expanse of dharmashalas and bhojanshalas
around the hill;
and a new hotel-like compound on the roadside - still built by Jain
donations - with its
meeting halls used by the local Committee to great visiting dignitaries -
was not
inappropriately designated the "Maheshvari dharmshala" by one of the
priests.
[21-22] The fourth of the temples we studied - that of the goddess
Dadhimatimata near to
Nagaur - had a seventh-century inscription that stated it was founded
with resources from
local Dahima Brahmins, a community that still claims the protection of
the goddess and the
temple as its kul-devi shrine. The remaining sanctum is a ninth-century
structure - what art
historians focus on - surrounded by a compound of four courtyards built
in the 19th
century.
[23-24] This reformulation of the temple, recorded by another neglected
inscription, occurred
when a Dahima sage was rewarded by the Maharana of Udaipur, who funded
the
restoration. Now often conflated with legends of the temple's original
founding, this
"new" structure indeed becomes the new temple, its origins conflated with
the time of the
original myth, when the Goddess appeared to a herdsman, only partly
emerging from
natural stone. A king's reward in these myths built both temples, but
the recipient of
patronage controls the myth and the temples, not the other way round.
There is a complex but quite fascinating story we can tell of the
Brahmin Dahima
community's redefinition of itself in the 20th century and the role of
this "old/new" temple
in its present refashioning. More interesting for the moment, however,
may be the tale of
a different community - Jats from the nearby town of Ratava who claim the
temple also
as their protector and the goddess as their kul-devi. We heard the story
from one Jat
engineer who had heard it from his clan genealogist more than thirty
years ago. No
Brahmin seems to know this story (nor perhaps that many Jats); but it
plays a
centuries-long role in the layered self-preservation of the temple itself.
25-26] Our project I hope will continue to weave these patterns together -
and the tales are
lengthy and interesting - but my point in this forum must be that a
temple is not one
structure, nor of one period or even one community. It moves through
time, collecting
social lightening and resources. It must be repositioned constantly to
survive. If it serves
one king it may die with that king. Let each tell its long story: both
temples and the
communities they serve continually redefine their pasts and renegotiate
the present. That
is what they are.
Let me turn now to one of my colleagues, John Cort.