Footloose, NOS, The News International
Temple nearing doom
Malot, the prettiest temple of the Salt Range that has withstood one millennium of minor geological changes, may collapse soon. Before that happens, it is essential to preserve it
By Salman Rashid
Sprinkled across the Salt Range of Punjab, there are five temple-fortress complexes. Beginning with the ruined Nandna fort and temple in the extreme southeast corner of the hill range, there are Ketas, celebrated by the Hindus as a Shaivite sacred site, Malot, Sassi da Kallara and Amb. Built by the Hindu Shahya rulers of Punjab, the temples are known by that name and date between the late 9th century and the early 11th.
Little is known of their history, but they were obviously built during a period of peace and tranquility. Between the end of the Central Asiatic incursions around the beginning of the first millennium CE and the advent of the Turkish raids, there were five hundred years of relative peace and the Hindu Shahya kings (themselves of Turkish extraction as their name suggests) ruled without the threat of invasion.
Among other things, they built the temple-fortress complexes of the Salt Range which either doubled as universities or were simply holy sites. Sitting on the edge of a five hundred-metre high escarpment overlooking the Punjab plains and now also M-2, Malot was one that was purely a Shaivite temple. For the purpose of security, a fortification ran along the north edge of the hill it stands upon. Nothing but two ruinous turrets now remain of that wall.
Constructed of locally quarried red sandstone, Malot certainly is the prettiest of the lot of Salt Range temples. Its beauty lies in the delightful synthesis of Kashmiran temple architecture with Greek tradition. This is very curious: Taxila was moribund when Malot was built. It is doubtful if any of Taxila’s Hellenistic buildings then survived, yet the architects and the stone masons at Malot were able to furnish this temple with fluted Greek pillars and stylised pillar bases and capitals that recall the Doric tradition.
Rudyard Kipling had never been to Malot, but in ‘Kim’ he comments on the continuation of the Greek architectural tradition introduced first by Alexander and more cogently by the Bactrian Greeks who came a hundred years after him. He wrote of buildings having been raised by “forgotten workmen whose hands were feeling, and not unskilfully, for the mysteriously transmitted Grecian touch.”
Through some two hundred generations, Punjabi stone masons had preserved the Hellenistic tradition and passed it down completely unspoiled. As one stands in front of the ruinous facade of Malot, one cannot but marvel at its striking Grecian aspect.
In the Kashmiran tradition, the elevation of the temple was reproduced in miniature on all outside walls. Here too we see the same trefoil archway, the fluted pillars with the same capitals and bases. The only difference is the very impressive spire – the sikhara that is missing in the main building. The spire once did indeed top the now flat roof, but it succumbed to some long ago earthquake. So long ago did this event happen that over the years the debris has been removed and perhaps gone into the building of the houses of Malot village.
In 1810 the Sikhs under Maharaja Ranjit Singh overran the Salt Range. In order to keep an eye on their Janjua adversaries, they built the ugly wart-like protuberance on the flat roof of the main temple. During daylight hours, a Sikh soldier kept the watch from that ugly cubicle.
Across the temple to the east and separated from it by about forty metres is another ruined roofless hulk. This, according to Dr Saifur Rahman Dar, was the entrance. Dr Dar postulates that a timber walkway once ran between the entrance and the temple.
The hill upon which Malot stands is riven with narrow chasms. This, according to geologists, is because Malot stands on an up-thrust that is imperceptibly rising. As it rises, the hill splits. One of these cracks ran very near the south side of the temple and in 1995 was grouted with cement on the orders of the then deputy commissioner. This was better than not doing anything at all.
Now with the building of a number of cement factories very near Malot, we do not know how the unstable geology of the Salt Range will shape up. But certainly the round-the-clock running of heavy machinery and huge lorries can only adversely affect the region.
Malot that has withstood one millennium of minor geological changes, may not have much more time left. Sooner or later it will collapse. But before that happens, it is essential that plans be made for its preservation. The Indus Valley School of Arts in Clifton, Karachi is housed in a building that once stood in Kharadar – a building that was a protected monument because of its age and was threatened not by nature but by greedy land-grabbers. It was systematically dismantled, the blocks numbered and re-assembled in Clifton.
Even if someone does not immediately dismantle and shift Malot, it is now time to prepare detailed drawing, number the building blocks in preparation for the time when the exquisitely beautiful one thousand year-old temple will have to be shifted to safer ground.