Lepakshi: The Pillar That Does Not Touch the Ground

This is what most visitors come for, and it needs stating carefully because the popular version overstates it.

What is actually the case:

• The mukha mandapa is carried on around seventy pillars
• One of them does not sit flush on the floor
• There is a gap at its base, and visitors pass a cloth or a sheet of paper under it from one side to the other
• The pillar is otherwise fully engaged at the top, carrying its share of the ceiling

What is not the case:

• The pillar is not floating. It is a stone column attached at the top to the structure above
• The gap is not uniform all round in every account, and the clearance is small

How it happened. There are three explanations in circulation and it is worth being honest about which is which.

• Deliberate feat. The traditional claim is that the builders did it on purpose, as a demonstration of skill, engineering a load path so that the column hangs from the ceiling rather than standing on the ground
• Settlement. The structure may have settled unevenly over five centuries, lifting one column clear
• Colonial interference. A widely repeated account holds that a British engineer tried to dislodge the pillar to understand how it worked, shifted it slightly and disturbed the surrounding structure. Whether this is accurate is contested

An honest assessment. Nobody has published a definitive structural analysis that settles it, and the temple authorities do not permit the kind of investigation that would.

What can be said is that the builders at Lepakshi were plainly capable of deliberate structural showmanship, that this is a stone trabeated building where a column can indeed be carried by the beam above it if the loads are arranged for it, and that the claim is at least plausible rather than absurd.

On temple marvels generally. India's temples come with a long list of claimed impossibilities, and they fall into three groups.

• Things that are true and verifiable, like the Lepakshi gap, the Mahanandi springs, or the solar alignment at several sun temples
• Things that are true but ordinary, correctly described but with the explanation inflated
• Things that are not true, repeated confidently by guides and now by the internet

The useful habit is to ask what exactly is being claimed and whether you can check it standing there. At Lepakshi you can, which is more than most such claims allow.

The paintings are the reason Lepakshi matters to art history, and most visitors give them ten minutes when they deserve an hour.

What survives:

• Extensive painted ceilings across the mandapas
• A very large panel of Veerabhadra on the ceiling before the sanctum, around seven metres by four, described as the largest fresco of a single figure in India
• Narrative sequences from the Ramayana, Mahabharata and the Puranas
• Scenes including the Kiratarjuniya, the marriage of Shiva and Parvati, and Draupadi's swayamvara
• Panels showing the donors and their retinue, in the dress of the period

Technique. These are painted on a lime plaster ground, in mineral pigments, and the palette is limited and characteristic.

• Ochres, reds, browns, blacks and whites predominate
• Blue is scarce and green is used sparingly
• Figures are outlined in black, with the outline doing much of the work
• The style is linear and flat rather than modelled, and the compositions read like textile designs

What to look at, specifically:

• The textiles. The saris, the printed and woven patterns and the ornament in these paintings are a primary source for sixteenth century south Indian dress, and the detail is extraordinary
• The hair and headdresses, which vary by figure and are precisely observed
• The donor panels, which show real people rather than deities and are the closest thing to a portrait record of the period
• The eyes, which follow the Vijayanagara convention and are the quickest way to recognise the style

Condition. The paintings have suffered from soot, damp, earlier cleaning attempts and time. Some panels are clear and some are barely readable.

Lighting. The interiors are dark and the ceilings are high. Bring nothing that flashes. If you want to see the paintings properly, come when the light outside is strong and let your eyes adjust, and give it time rather than sweeping a phone torch across them.

Why the survival matters. Very little pre modern Indian painting on architecture survives.

• Ajanta, from the Buddhist period, is the great exception
• Badami, Sittanavasal, Ellora and a few others hold fragments
• Vijayanagara period painting survives at Lepakshi, at Hampi in the Virupaksha temple in part, and at a handful of other sites

It is a thin record, and Lepakshi is one of the thickest points in it.

The kalyana mandapa at Lepakshi is unfinished. The columns are carved, the sculpture is in place, and then it simply stops, with no roof.

The story attached to it is the temple's other famous claim.

As it is told:

• Virupanna was a treasury official under Achyuta Deva Raya at Penukonda
• He undertook the building of the temple and, in the telling, drew on the treasury to fund it
• Word reached the king, or reached him through enemies at court
• An order was issued that Virupanna be blinded as punishment
• Before the order could be carried out, Virupanna blinded himself, striking his own eyes against the temple wall
• Two dark marks on the wall near the kalyana mandapa are shown to visitors as the stains
• The hall was never completed

What can be said about it historically:

• Virupanna and Viranna as builders are attested
• Inscriptions record the temple's construction and endowment
• The hall is genuinely unfinished, which is a fact and needs some explanation
• The blinding story is a tradition, and traditions of this kind attach themselves to unfinished buildings very reliably

The general pattern. Unfinished monuments across India collect stories about why the work stopped, and the stories are almost always more dramatic than the likely reason.

• The builder was punished
• The patron died
• A curse fell on the work
• The craftsmen were maimed so they could not repeat it

The likely reasons are duller. Money ran out, a patron died without the successor caring, a war came, or the political centre moved and the project lost its sponsor.

At Lepakshi the last is plausible on its own. The Vijayanagara empire's collapse after Talikota in 1565 ended a great many building programmes across the Deccan, and Penukonda, the nearby capital to which the court retreated, was not in a position to finish anything.

Why the stories persist anyway. An unfinished building is a question that the eye asks and cannot answer, and people find an unanswered question uncomfortable.

The story about Virupanna gives the abandoned hall a meaning. Whether it is true or not, it is what the place has instead of a record, and the marks on the wall are shown with complete conviction.

The name Lepakshi. The other story here is older and belongs to the Ramayana.

When Jatayu, the vulture, fought Ravana to prevent Sita's abduction and was mortally wounded, he fell to earth. Rama, finding him, is said to have said le pakshi, rise bird, and the place took the name.

A bird figure at the site is identified with Jatayu, and a large modern sculpture marks the association.

Two pieces of sculpture at Lepakshi are worth the journey on their own account.

The Nandi:

• Carved from a single block of granite
• Roughly 4.5 metres high and around 8 metres long, among the largest monolithic Nandis in India
• Situated about two kilometres from the temple, on open ground beside the road
• Elaborately carved, with a decorated collar, bells and ornament rendered in the stone
• It faces the temple, and specifically it faces the Nagalinga within it

That alignment is the point. The bull is looking at the linga two kilometres away, which is a piece of planning at landscape scale.

The Nagalinga:

• A seven hooded serpent, coiled and rearing, sheltering a linga beneath its hoods
• Carved from a single granite boulder in situ
• Among the largest such sculptures anywhere

The story of its making. Tradition holds that the sculptors carved it in the time it took the cook to prepare their midday meal, working on the boulder while they waited because there was nothing else to do.

The story continues that when the sculptor's mother came out and saw what her son had done in that time, her astonishment cracked the stone, and a fissure is shown as the result.

This is plainly a story rather than a record, and the sculpture would have taken a very long time. What the story preserves is the reaction, which is the correct one. The thing is astonishing.

The unfinished element again. Look at the Nandi and the Nagalinga and then look at the kalyana mandapa. Lepakshi was clearly a project of great ambition, executed by first rate craftsmen, and stopped before it was done.

That combination, superb work and an abrupt halt, is the signature of the last Vijayanagara decades all across the Deccan.

Lepakshi handicrafts. The name is now attached to a handicraft brand and to a style of textile and woodwork promoted by the state, and the association is worth knowing about but is a modern development rather than an ancient one.

Getting there

• Lepakshi, Sri Sathya Sai district, Andhra Pradesh
• About 120 km from Bengaluru, which is the practical base and the nearest airport
• About 15 km off the Bengaluru to Hyderabad highway, near Hindupur
• Hindupur has a railway station, about 15 km away
• It makes a comfortable day trip from Bengaluru

Timings

• Generally open through the day, roughly from early morning to evening. Check locally
• The site is with the Archaeological Survey and in worship, and both apply

When to go

• October to February for weather
• Maha Shivaratri, the principal festival
• Mid morning to early afternoon if you want light on the frescoes, since the interiors are dark and the paintings need the ambient light from outside
• Avoid weekends if you want the place quiet, since it is close enough to Bengaluru to be busy

Seeing it properly

• Give it two to three hours, not thirty minutes
• Do the Nandi as well. It is two kilometres away, on the road in, and most tour vehicles stop there first
• Look up. The frescoes are on the ceilings and visitors who walk through looking ahead miss almost all of them
• Walk the unfinished mandapa and look at the carving on the individual pillars, which is exceptional and includes musicians, dancers and a great deal of detail
• Find the hanging pillar and check it yourself

Photography

• Do not use flash on the paintings, which are fragile and have already been damaged
• Interiors are dark and a steady hand or a support is needed
• Check current rules on tripods

Combining the visit

• Puttaparthi, about 90 km
• Penukonda, about 70 km, the second Vijayanagara capital, with substantial remains and very few visitors
• Hampi, the empire's capital, is a long way further north but is the natural companion to Lepakshi and the two together tell the whole story
• Nandi Hills and Bengaluru to the south
• Gandikota, further north east

Lepakshi and Hampi together. If you have any interest in Vijayanagara, do both.

Hampi gives you the scale, the city, the ruined magnificence and the sense of an empire. Lepakshi gives you a complete building, with its roof on, its paintings intact and its deity still receiving worship.

Between them you get something neither gives alone, which is a picture of what those ruined halls at Hampi actually looked like when the paint was fresh.