i recently visited konark sun temple. i had heard about it. but it was simply amazing what i saw. i had a similar feeling when i saw exhibition of salvador dali’s works in italy. it is a feeling of meeting someone few hundred times smarter than u. some of the most beautiful moments in life occur without notice. as kabir says ‘bin maange moti mile, maange mile na bheekh’. it is not just intricacy and skill and artisans but whole idea is simply wonderful.
plainly put, idea is simple. it is in form of chariot of sun god which has 24 wheels (representing 24 fortnights) riding on 7 horses (representing 7 days or maybe 7 colors of rainbow) with each wheel having 8 spokes which represent 8 parts of day (the spokes are not equidistant and rather work as sun dial) carrying sun god in a lotus shaped carrier.
rest of stuff is in proper vaastu shastra style which puts in plenty of guidelines, but also allow huge creativity. that is why no two temples look same.
this is relatively modern construction 13th century. by then, the udiyaas seem to have some interaction abroad. the walls have chinese dragon on them. so they mush have been in touch with china. one picture shows a girraffe being presented to king. maybe they were in touch with africa too.
apart from artistic aspects even logistics is mind boggling. to give an example govt. of bengal during british times tried to take away one of the columns of temple to calcutta. all the had to do was to carry it to sea which was 3km away. they could move it 200 ft and money assigned for project finished. then they cut it in 3 pieces but could not move it much. this is case of modern english engineers in 19th century failing to move just one column by 3 km. how the temple was built by bring several stones from various parts of country when they had no pulleys or steam engines is difficult to understand.
temple has become tourist spot since the idol of sun god is missing. some claim that fdear of muslim invaders made locals t take it away somewhere else. wahtever is reason, it is mainly tourists who visit here unlike puri which is visited mainly by devotees.
actually people from akbar’s court had seen this temple and have written extensively about its beauty. but after akbar vandalism started and some of idols wer broken and some went in exile, however, outside structure was just too huge to go by human efforts. that was done by cyclones and earthquakes. it is estimated that the temple we see now is just 1/3rd of what it was originally.
normally on exterior walls of temple thay show scenes from common life including couples making love. but what i liked most was a hall devoted to sculpures of dancers and musicians. they are wonderful. there are sculptures on sex, of king’s court, even mother-in-law daughter-in-law fight (how ancient r indian soap operas) and a woman admiring her new born child, woman waiting for her pardesi husband and so on, people cheating, meditating and so on. it is a kinda free drawing board for artisans to draw what they pleased.
sculpture at the entry is puzzing. it is a mun captured by elephant and elephant in turn is attacked and brought down by lion. few interpretations were there none of them satisfactory.
though orissa remains poor, skills of local artisans are still high. i bought a few hand carvings. someone was selling 10 incarnations of vishnu, looking closely, found that krishna was missing and was replaced by balarama. when i pointed this out, he offered another set. it had krishna, but buddha was missing, replaced by balarama. balarama is not considered incrnation of vishnu while krishna and buddha r. so this putting in balarama had to do with ignorance of artisans or uriyas have some facination with balarama, i donno.
Why Balarama is an incarnatin of AdiSesha right?
Anyway Orissa is still good as far as crafts go.It shares a border with Andhra.
I went there once to buy carvings made out of buffaloe horns.
We were trying to export them.