Airavatesvara at Darasuram: The Chola Temple Built to Be Looked At

The temple's name and two of its associated kathas explain what the deity here is understood to do.

Airavata:

• Airavata is the white elephant of Indra, and one of the treasures that emerged at the Samudra Manthan
• In the katha attached here, Airavata was cursed by the sage Durvasa and lost his colour
• He worshipped Shiva at this place, bathed in the temple tank, and recovered it
• The deity is therefore Airavatesvara, the lord of Airavata

Yama:

• Yama, the deity of death and the judge of the dead, is held to have suffered from a burning sensation caused by a curse
• He worshipped here and bathed in the tank, and was relieved
• The tank is accordingly called Yamateertham

What both stories have in common. In each case a powerful being, one a divine elephant and one the god of death himself, is afflicted, comes here, bathes and is cured.

Why that is the pattern. Temples in this region very often carry a katha of exactly this shape, and the reason is functional.

• It establishes the site as a place of relief rather than only of worship
• It establishes that the relief is available to anyone, since if Yama needed it then nobody is above needing it
• It attaches the healing to a specific physical act, bathing in a specific tank, which a devotee can also perform

What devotees do with it. People bring afflictions here, and the temple's tank and its associations are part of why. That is worth stating alongside the architectural interest, because the building is not only a monument to a visitor and it is not only that to the people who come with something wrong.

As always, medical conditions need medical care. A tank at a temple is not a treatment, persistent symptoms need a doctor, and the tradition has never claimed otherwise.

The feature at Darasuram that most repays close attention runs along the base of the building and is easy to miss entirely.

What is there:

• A band of miniature panels carved along the plinth
• They are small, some only a few inches across
• They carry narrative scenes from the lives of the Nayanars, the sixty three Shaiva saints of the Tamil country
• The source is the Periya Puranam, the twelfth century Tamil work by Sekkizhar that tells their lives

Who the Nayanars were:

• Sixty three saints of the Tamil Shaiva tradition, roughly parallel to the Alvars on the Vaishnava side
• They came from every community, including kings, brahmins, a potter, a hunter, a washerman, a fisherman and an untouchable saint, Nandanar
• Their hymns, the Tevaram, are sung in Tamil Shaiva temples to this day
• Three of them, Appar, Sambandar and Sundarar, are the principal hymnists

What the stories are like. This needs saying honestly, because the Periya Puranam is not a gentle book.

Many of the Nayanar stories involve devotees who do something extreme to demonstrate the absoluteness of their devotion. Several involve violence, self mutilation or the sacrifice of what the devotee most values, and the text presents these as the highest devotion rather than as excess.

Modern readers find this difficult, and they should. The tradition itself has not been of one mind about it, and later commentators have read some of these episodes allegorically.

Why they are carved here. A temple built by a Chola king in the twelfth century, at exactly the period the Periya Puranam was composed, carved the whole cycle of saints' lives into the base of the building where a devotee walking the pradakshina would pass them at eye level.

That is a deliberate act of publication. The stories were being put into permanent circulation, in a medium that anyone could read without literacy, on the surface people would walk past most often.

Two features of the front of the temple deserve their own note.

The chariot mandapa:

• The front mandapa is built as a chariot, with carved wheels and horses drawing it
• The horses are shown in motion, straining forward
• The scale is such that the mandapa reads as a vehicle rather than as a building with decoration on it

As at Sarangapani in nearby Kumbakonam and at Konark in Odisha, the temple as chariot is a fully worked out idea rather than an ornament. What is being said is that the deity travels, that the building is his conveyance, and that it has stopped here.

The steps:

• The steps at the entrance were reported to produce musical notes when struck
• Different steps were said to give different tones
• They are now protected and are not to be struck, and visitors will find them roped off or restricted

On musical stone generally. India has several places where stone is reported to produce musical tones, and the best known are the musical pillars at temples including Hampi and various Tamil sites, where slender stone columns carved from a single block ring at different pitches when tapped.

The important part, stated plainly. These features are being destroyed by use.

• Stone that rings does so because of its precise dimensions, and repeated striking wears and chips it
• At Hampi and elsewhere, decades of visitors tapping pillars have caused real damage, and access has had to be restricted
• The same has happened at Darasuram

So the rule is simple. Do not strike them. If a guide offers to demonstrate, decline. The demonstration is the mechanism by which the thing being demonstrated is being lost, and the pleasure of hearing it once does not justify being part of that.

What you can do instead is look at how they were made, which is remarkable in itself, and consider that somebody in the twelfth century worked out how to tune stone.

The UNESCO grouping is worth understanding because the three temples are genuinely different from each other and were built to do different things.

Brihadeeswarar, Thanjavur, around 1010 CE, under Rajaraja I:

• The largest, with a vimana of about sixty six metres
• Built at the height of Chola imperial expansion
• Its purpose is scale. It was the tallest structure in the region and announced what the Chola state was
• Its inscriptions are an extraordinary administrative record, listing endowments, staff, dancers, musicians and their entitlements

Gangaikonda Cholapuram, around 1035 CE, under Rajendra I:

• Built to found a new capital after the northern campaign
• Slightly smaller than Thanjavur and deliberately so
• Its sculpture is often held to be more refined than Thanjavur's

Airavatesvara, Darasuram, twelfth century, under Rajaraja II:

• By far the smallest
• Built when the empire was no longer expanding
• The finest in detail, and the one that most rewards close looking

What the sequence shows. Read in order, the three temples track the arc of a state.

• The first is built by a power that has just arrived and wants everyone to know
• The second is built by a power at its widest extent, founding a new centre
• The third is built by a power that is settled, no longer expanding, and putting its resources into refinement rather than into size

That is a very common pattern in the art of empires and it is legible here in three buildings within eighty kilometres of each other.

What living means in the designation. All three are still in worship, which is what distinguishes them from a great many World Heritage monuments. They are not preserved ruins. They are working temples with priests, offerings and festivals, which are also protected sites, and both roles have to be managed at once.

Getting there

• Darasuram, about 4 km from Kumbakonam, Thanjavur district, Tamil Nadu
• Kumbakonam has a railway station and is the practical base
• Roughly 40 km from Thanjavur and 90 km from Tiruchirappalli, which has the nearest airport
• Autos from Kumbakonam take a few minutes

Timings

• The site is open through the day, with the sanctum following worship timings including a midday closure
• It is both a protected monument and a working temple, so both sets of rules apply

When to go

• November to February for the most comfortable weather
• Early morning, both for the light on the friezes and to have the place quiet
• Avoid weekends and holidays if you want to look properly

How to see it

• The friezes along the base are the reason to come. Walk the entire plinth slowly, bent down, looking at the small panels
• Take binoculars or a camera with a zoom if you have one. Some of the finest work is above eye level
• Look at the chariot mandapa and its horses
• The large wall panels, including uncommon forms of Shiva
• The separate Periya Nayaki Amman shrine
• Allow two hours minimum. Most visitors give it twenty minutes on the way to somewhere else

Practical notes

• Do not touch the carvings and do not strike the steps
• Remove footwear at the appropriate point. The stone gets hot at midday
• Carry water
• A licensed guide is worth taking. The narrative panels are dense and a guide will identify episodes you would not

The Chola circuit

• Kumbakonam and its temples, 4 km away
• Gangaikonda Cholapuram, about 35 km north
• Thanjavur and the Brihadeeswarar temple, about 40 km
• Thiruvarur, Swamimalai and Oppiliappan are all within an hour

The three World Heritage temples can be done in two days from Kumbakonam, and doing them in chronological order, Thanjavur then Gangaikonda then Darasuram, makes the sequence legible.

A closing thought. Thanjavur will take your breath away from the car park. Darasuram will not do anything at all until you get down on your knees at the base of the wall and start looking at panels the size of a postcard, at which point it turns out to be the best of the three.