Ramappa: The Only Temple in India Named After the Man Who Carved It

The naming is worth dwelling on, because it runs against the entire grain of how Indian building history is recorded.

How craftsmen usually appear in the record:

• Not at all, in most cases
• Occasionally as a name in an inscription among a list, with no distinction
• Sometimes as a guild or community rather than an individual
• Very rarely with a title indicating status, such as sutradhara or sthapati
• The patron, by contrast, is named at length, with genealogy, titles and pious intent

Some who are known:

• Kunjaramallan Rajaraja Perunthachan, named in the Brihadisvara temple inscriptions at Thanjavur
• The Vishwakarma community, credited collectively across the tradition
• Sarvasiddhi Achari, associated with the Konark tradition
• Ramappa, here, whose name became the building's name

Why the difference matters. Indian temple building was a highly organised, deeply skilled profession with its own texts, its own training and its own hereditary transmission.

• The Shilpa Shastras and the Vastu texts set out proportion, iconography and technique in great detail
• The sthapati, the master builder, was a figure of real standing
• Building a major temple required organising quarrying, transport, hundreds of carvers, engineering and finance over decades

And the people who did it are, for the most part, anonymous.

Ramappa's exception. The tradition holds that Ramappa was the chief sculptor, that the work took decades, and that the quality of what he produced was such that the temple was known by his name from the beginning.

Whether that is documented or is a later tradition, the fact that it stuck is itself evidence. Communities do not attach a craftsman's name to a building unless the craftsmanship is the point.

Marco Polo. A quotation is very widely attributed to Marco Polo, describing Ramappa as the brightest star in a galaxy of temples.

It should be treated with caution. The attribution is repeated everywhere in tourism material but is not traceable to Polo's text, and Polo's Indian travels do not obviously include this region. It is best regarded as a modern piece of publicity rather than a historical source.

The temple does not need it. What it has is a UNESCO inscription, a dated foundation, and a sculptural programme that anyone can go and look at.

What to take from the naming. If you visit only one thing at Ramappa, look at the madanika brackets and remember that a person made each of them by hand, with a chisel, out of a stone hard enough to hold a polish for eight hundred years.

The temple's name is the only monument that person has.

Ramappa is known for two pieces of construction technology, and both are real, which is not always the case with such claims.

The lightweight bricks:

• The shikhara, the tower over the sanctum, is built of bricks that are unusually light
• They are widely reported to float on water, and the claim is repeated in official material
• Their low density is attributed to a manufacturing process producing a highly porous body, using organic material such as rice husk or sawdust burnt out during firing, leaving voids

Why it matters structurally. This is not a trick.

• A shikhara is the heaviest element of a temple and sits directly over the sanctum
• Its weight is the principal load the structure must carry, and it governs the thickness of everything below
• Reducing the density of the tower reduces the load on the walls and foundations dramatically
• That permits a taller tower, thinner walls, or a lighter foundation, and at Ramappa it appears to have permitted all three

On the floating claim. Porous fired clay with sufficient void space can indeed have a bulk density below that of water and will float until saturated.

Whether every brick in the shikhara does so, and for how long, is a different question, and visitors should not expect a demonstration. What matters is the underlying point, which is that somebody deliberately engineered a lighter building material for the highest and heaviest part of the structure, in the thirteenth century.

The sandbox foundation:

• The foundation is described as a sandbox technique, in which a pit is filled with a mixture of sand and other materials, and the structure built on top of the fill rather than on rigid bearing
• The purpose is to allow the structure to move and settle as a unit under seismic loading rather than cracking
• The sand transmits load evenly and absorbs differential movement

Does it work. The temple has stood since 1213 through the region's earthquakes, and parts of it have survived while adjacent structures did not.

The technique was reused in modern times when the Thousand Pillar Temple at Hanamkonda was dismantled and rebuilt, which is described in that entry, and the Archaeological Survey studied the original method in order to reproduce it.

Why this is worth knowing. Indian architectural history is generally discussed in terms of style, iconography and patronage, and much less often in terms of engineering.

That is a gap. The people who built these temples were solving structural problems, and the solutions are visible if you look for them.

• The corbelled roof, used because the true arch was not the tradition's method
• The interlocking of stone without mortar in most classical Indian building
• The iron beams at Konark
• The load path thinking evident at Lepakshi's hanging pillar
• And the deliberate density engineering at Ramappa

None of it is magic, and all of it is more impressive when you understand what problem it was solving.

The bracket figures at the roof line are what most people come to Ramappa for, and they deserve to be looked at properly rather than photographed and left.

What they are:

• Figures placed at the junction of the pillars and the projecting eaves, at an angle
• Carved from polished black basalt, a much harder stone than the reddish sandstone of the main structure
• Approximately life size at the upper body, though the whole figure is smaller
• Highly polished, to the point of reflecting light
• Depicting dancers, musicians and female figures in a range of postures

Why the different stone. This is the technical point that visitors miss.

• The temple body is built of a local sandstone, which carves easily and weathers reasonably
• The brackets are basalt, which is far harder, holds a much finer edge and takes a polish that sandstone cannot
• The craftsmen therefore imported a harder material specifically for the figures that most needed detail
• Working basalt with iron tools is slow, difficult work, and the level of finish here represents an enormous investment of labour

What to look at, specifically:

• The fingers and nails, which are individually carved
• The jewellery, in which individual beads are separated and undercut
• The feet, including anklets with bells rendered as separate elements
• A famous detail is a figure wearing sandals with a strap, which is a genuine record of period footwear
• The musculature and pose, which are observed rather than formulaic
• The holes and undercutting, where the sculptor has cut right through the stone to separate a limb from the background

On the dancing figures and Nritta Ratnavali. The postures shown correspond to positions described in the Nritta Ratnavali, a thirteenth century Sanskrit treatise on dance written by Jayapa Senani, a commander under Ganapati Deva, the same ruler under whom this temple was built.

That is a remarkable coincidence of documentation.

• A treatise on dance, written at a specific court
• A temple built under the same court, in the same decades
• Sculptural figures at that temple in postures the treatise describes

It means the sculptures are not generic. They are a record of what dance actually looked like at that court, checked against a written source, which is very rare anywhere in the world for a period this early.

Perini Sivatandavam. The Kakatiya period is also associated with Perini, a vigorous male dance form performed before battle in tradition, which was reconstructed in the twentieth century by Nataraja Ramakrishna working substantially from the Ramappa sculptures and from the Nritta Ratnavali.

So the carvings on this building were used, seven hundred years later, to bring a lost dance back into performance. That is an unusual afterlife for architectural sculpture.

How to see them. The brackets are high, at the eave line, and the light matters.

• Come in morning or late afternoon, when the light is angled and picks up the modelling
• At midday the figures are in their own shadow and read as dark shapes
• A zoom lens or binoculars genuinely help
• Walk the full circuit and look at all of them. They are not repetitions of one design

Ramappa belongs to the Kakatiya period, and knowing something about that dynasty makes the whole Telangana landscape legible.

Who they were:

• A dynasty ruling much of the Telugu country from roughly the twelfth to the early fourteenth century
• Capital at Orugallu, modern Warangal
• Rose from feudatory status under the Western Chalukyas to independent rule
• Principal rulers include Ganapati Deva, Rudrama Devi and Prataparudra II

Rudrama Devi. She is the reason many people have heard of the Kakatiyas at all, and rightly.

• She ruled in her own right in the late thirteenth century, one of very few women to rule an Indian kingdom as sovereign rather than as regent
• She was named heir by Ganapati Deva and performed the putrika ceremony, being formally treated as a son for purposes of succession
• She ruled under the name Rudradeva in inscriptions
• Marco Polo, who did reach the Deccan coast, wrote admiringly of a queen ruling in this region, generally taken to refer to her or to her successor's realm
• She faced and survived revolts and invasions and reigned for around three decades

What the Kakatiyas built:

• The Warangal fort, with its extraordinary free standing Kala Thoranam gateways, now the state emblem of Telangana
• The Thousand Pillar Temple at Hanamkonda
• Ramappa at Palampet
• The Ghanpur temple group
• A very large number of tanks, which is arguably their most consequential legacy

The tank system. This is the part that gets least attention and mattered most.

• Telangana is a plateau with erratic rainfall and no large perennial river running through the middle of it
• The Kakatiyas built an enormous network of cheruvu, tanks, in chains, so that the overflow from one fed the next
• The Ramappa and Pakhal and Laknavaram lakes are Kakatiya works and are still in use
• This system supported agriculture across a difficult landscape for centuries
• Its decline under later regimes, and its partial restoration in recent decades, is a live subject in Telangana

A temple and a tank were frequently built together as a single act of patronage, which is why Ramappa temple stands beside Ramappa lake.

The end. The Kakatiyas fell to the Delhi Sultanate in the 1320s, after repeated campaigns, and Prataparudra II was taken. Warangal was absorbed, and the region passed through the Bahmanis, the Qutb Shahis and the Asaf Jahis to the Nizams.

Why the dynasty is culturally important in Telangana now. The Kakatiya period is treated as the region's classical age and as evidence of a distinct Telangana identity separate from coastal Andhra, and the Kala Thoranam is the state emblem.

That is a political use of history, as at Kaleshwaram, and it is worth recognising while also noting that the buildings are genuinely of the first rank and would deserve attention under any flag.

Getting there

• Palampet, Mulugu district, Telangana
• About 70 km from Warangal and roughly 220 km from Hyderabad
• Warangal is the nearest railhead and the practical base
• Hyderabad for air
• A vehicle is the sensible option. Buses run to Mulugu and local transport onward

Timings

• Generally open through the day, roughly from morning to evening. The temple is with the Archaeological Survey and remains in worship
• Check current timings, which have changed since the UNESCO listing

Tickets

• There is an entry ticket. Rates for Indian and foreign nationals differ, as at all ASI sites

When to go

• October to February for weather. This region is very hot from March to June
• Morning or late afternoon, which matters here more than at most sites because of the bracket sculptures and the light
• Maha Shivaratri, if you want the temple in worship rather than as a monument
• Weekdays if you want it quiet. Visitor numbers rose substantially after 2021

Seeing it properly

• Give it at least two hours
• Walk the full external circuit and look at every bracket figure
• Look at the ceilings, which carry extensive relief work that visitors walk under without noticing
• Look at the platform carving, at the base, which is a continuous band of narrative and ornament
• Visit the Nandi mandapa, and note the polish on the basalt
• Look at the shikhara from a distance and consider the brick
• Compare the sandstone of the body with the basalt of the brackets, and see the difference in what each stone allowed

Photography

• The brackets are high and a zoom lens is genuinely useful
• Check current rules on tripods and drones. Drones are generally not permitted at ASI sites

Combining the visit

• Ramappa lake, immediately adjacent, a Kakatiya tank
• Ghanpur temple group, about 5 km, a cluster of Kakatiya temples that almost nobody visits and which are excellent
• Laknavaram lake, about 20 km, with suspension bridges over the water
• Warangal, with the fort, the Kala Thoranam and the Thousand Pillar Temple at Hanamkonda
• Medaram, about 50 km, for the Sammakka Saralamma Jatara in season
• Bhadrakali temple, Warangal
• Kaleshwaram, further north

A suggested route. Warangal as a base for two days: the fort, the Kala Thoranam and the Thousand Pillar Temple on one day, then Ramappa, Ghanpur and Laknavaram on the next.

That covers the Kakatiya period comprehensively and is one of the better short itineraries in south India.

A closing thought. The official name of this building is Rudreswara, after a general who paid for it.

Nobody calls it that. Eight hundred years later it is still called Ramappa, after the man who did the carving, and that is a small correction to the record that the people of that district made themselves and have never let go of.