The Thousand Pillar Temple: A Building Taken Apart to Save It

The most remarkable thing that has happened at this temple happened recently, and most visitors are unaware of it.

The problem:

• The kalyana mandapa, the pillared hall standing separately in the compound, had been settling unevenly over centuries
• Pillars were out of plumb, the roof was distorted, and the structure was at risk
• Earlier interventions had not addressed the underlying cause, which was the foundation

What was done. Beginning in the early 2000s, the Archaeological Survey of India undertook a full dismantling and reassembly.

• Every stone was numbered and recorded before removal
• The hall was taken down completely, stone by stone
• The foundation was excavated and examined
• The original sandbox filling was found and studied
• The foundation was rebuilt using the same sand box principle, with material prepared to match
• The hall was reassembled, stone by stone, in the recorded order
• The work took many years

Why this is a big deal. Anastylosis, the reassembly of a monument from its original elements, is one of the most demanding operations in conservation.

• Every piece must be identified correctly, and a misplaced stone in a corbelled structure will not seat
• Original material must be retained as far as possible, with new material clearly distinguishable
• The structure must go back together without modern reinforcement that would alter its behaviour
• The work is slow and expensive and produces, at the end, something that looks exactly as it did before, which makes it a difficult thing to justify to anyone who wants visible results

Where else this has been done:

• The Borobudur restoration in Indonesia, one of the largest such projects ever undertaken
• The Abu Simbel relocation in Egypt, moved to escape the Aswan reservoir
• The Parthenon work in Athens, ongoing for decades
• Elements of Angkor
• Various Indian sites, including relocations for dam projects such as those at Nagarjunakonda

What the Kakatiya foundation taught the engineers. The excavation confirmed the sandbox technique in the original construction, which had until then been known primarily from the tradition and from Ramappa.

So a thirteenth century solution was recovered, understood and then reused in a twenty first century reconstruction of the same building. That is a rare piece of continuity and it is worth knowing about when you stand in the hall.

What visitors see now. A hall that stands straight, with its original stones, on a foundation built the way the original builders built it.

There is no plaque telling you that a generation of conservators took it apart and put it back. It looks entirely ordinary, which is the point.

The name invites a question that visitors ask immediately, and it should be answered honestly.

Are there a thousand pillars. No.

• The count across the temple, including the mandapas and the kalyana mandapa, is well under a thousand
• Estimates vary and depend on what you count as a pillar

Why the name then. Several things are going on.

• A thousand in Indian usage very often means many rather than exactly one thousand
• The same convention gives us the sahasranama, the thousand names, which are genuinely a thousand, but also the thousand petalled lotus, the thousand hooded serpent and the thousand eyed Indra, none of which are counted
• The temple is one of several in India called thousand pillared, including the Jain temple at Moodabidri and the mandapa at Madurai
• Some of the original pillared structure has been lost, so the present count is lower than the original

How to think about number claims at temples. This is a small case of a general habit, and recognising it saves a lot of pointless argument.

• 108, in mala beads, Divya Desams, Shakti Peethas and Upanishads
• 1008, in extended names and in temple lamp counts
• 64, in yoginis and in the arts
• 12, in Jyotirlingas and Adityas
• 51 or 52, in Shakti Peethas depending on the list

Some of these are exact and some are conventional, and the tradition is not always careful about which is which, because precision was not usually the point.

What is actually worth counting at this temple. Not the pillars. Look instead at:

• How no two pillars carry the same design in the principal hall
• The perforated screens, the jali work in stone, which are a Chalukya inheritance and are handled beautifully here
• The polished basalt, on the Nandi and on selected elements, and the contrast with the sandstone
• The ceiling panels, which carry lotus medallions and figural work
• The star shaped platform, and how the plan generates the wall surfaces, since this is the same planning logic as at Ramappa and in Hoysala temples

The star shaped plan explained. It is one of the defining features of Deccan temple architecture in this period.

• A square is rotated repeatedly about its centre, or a series of projections is stepped around the plan
• The result is a many pointed stellate outline
• The effect is to multiply the wall surface enormously compared with a plain square
• More wall surface means more space for carving, and more angles catching light and shadow
• It also produces a building with no flat face, so it reads differently from every position

That last point is the one to test on site. Walk around the temple slowly and watch how the outline changes. A square building looks the same from four positions. This one does not repeat.

The Thousand Pillar Temple is best visited as part of Warangal, and the city holds one of the most remarkable ruins in India.

Warangal fort:

• The Kakatiya capital, Orugallu, meaning one stone, after a great rock in the area
• A fortified city with concentric walls, earthen ramparts and a moat
• At the centre, the remains of a great temple complex, largely destroyed

The Kala Thoranam:

• Four free standing stone gateways, arranged at the cardinal points
• Each consists of two uprights and a lintel, richly carved
• They stood at the entrances to the central temple, which no longer exists
• They now stand alone in an open field, which is precisely why they are so striking

Why they matter:

• They are the emblem of Telangana, appearing on the state seal
• They are among the finest surviving Kakatiya carving
• The effect of four monumental gateways standing in a field with nothing between them is unlike anything else in Indian architecture

What happened to the temple they belonged to. The Swayambhu Shiva temple at the centre of the fort was destroyed, generally attributed to the campaigns of the Delhi Sultanate in the 1320s that ended Kakatiya rule.

The site is now a field of scattered carved stone, with pillars, lintels, brackets and sculpture lying where they fell or where they have been gathered.

How to look at a destroyed site. This is worth thinking about, because Warangal fort is one of the more affecting examples in India.

• The quality of the carving is visible in the fragments, and it is very high
• The scale can be reconstructed from the gateway spacing
• The gateways survived because they were free standing and had no roof to collapse
• What is gone is the building they framed

There is nothing to be gained by treating a site like this as an occasion for grievance, and nothing to be gained by pretending it did not happen either. A temple was destroyed in a war eight hundred years ago, its gateways remain, and the state that governs the ground now puts those gateways on its seal.

That is the whole history in one object, and standing in the field with it is more instructive than any amount of argument about it.

Other Warangal sites:

• Bhadrakali temple, on the lake, a Devi shrine of considerable antiquity with a striking seated image
• Warangal fort and the Kala Thoranam
• Padmakshi temple, on a hill, with Jain associations
• Siddheshwara and other Kakatiya shrines
• Kazipet and the modern city

The Warangal weaving tradition. Warangal and the surrounding districts have a substantial handloom tradition, and Pochampally ikat, from Bhoodan Pochampally in Nalgonda district, is among the best known Indian textiles with a GI tag. It is worth building into a trip.

The three deities at Hanamkonda belong to a framework that shaped Hindu worship across most of India, and it is worth understanding.

What Panchayatana is:

• The worship of five deities together, arranged around a central one
• The five are Shiva, Vishnu, Surya, Devi and Ganesha
• The worshipper's chosen deity, the ishta devata, goes in the centre, and the other four around
• A Shaiva places Shiva in the centre, a Vaishnava places Vishnu, and so on

Where it comes from. The arrangement is strongly associated with Adi Shankaracharya and with the Smarta tradition, and the standard account credits him with formalising it.

What problem it solved. This is the substantial point.

• By the early medieval period, the major traditions had developed strong sectarian identities
• Shaiva and Vaishnava rivalry could be sharp, occasionally violent, and is documented in polemical literature on both sides
• The Saura and Shakta and Ganapatya traditions had their own claims
• Panchayatana provided a framework in which all five were legitimate, with the difference between traditions reduced to which one you put in the centre

Why that is philosophically coherent. In the Advaita framework Shankara taught, the various deities are forms of one reality, and the choice of which to worship is a matter of temperament rather than truth.

• The ishta devata is the form through which a given person approaches
• The form is real as a means and is not the ultimate reality
• Placing five around a centre states this arrangement visually

Where you see it:

• In household shrines across India, in the standard five stone arrangement using specific stones for each deity, the saligrama for Vishnu, the bana linga for Shiva, and so on
• In temple plans with subsidiary shrines
• At trikutalayams like this one, in reduced form
• In the Pancharama and other five site groupings

Why only three here. Hanamkonda holds Shiva, Vishnu and Surya. Devi and Ganesha are not given separate sanctums.

That is a partial expression of the same idea, and three shrined temples of exactly this combination are common in the Deccan. The choice reflects the architectural form more than a theological restriction.

What it tells you about the patron. Rudradeva was a Shaiva ruler, as most Kakatiyas were, and Shiva has the principal sanctum here.

But he built for Vishnu and Surya in the same temple, on the same platform, sharing the same hall. That is a statement about how a ruler wished to be seen by all of his subjects, and it is a considerably more generous statement than a ruler was obliged to make.

A closing observation. India's religious history contains a great deal of sectarian argument, and it also contains a very large number of buildings like this one, where somebody deliberately put the rival deities under one roof.

The arguments get written about more. The buildings are more numerous.

Getting there

• Hanamkonda, part of Warangal city, Telangana
• About 150 km from Hyderabad
• Warangal and Kazipet railway stations, both well connected, with Kazipet a major junction
• Hyderabad for air
• The temple is within the city and autos go there directly

Timings

• Generally open through the day. The temple is with the Archaeological Survey and remains in worship. Check current timings

When to go

• October to February for weather. Warangal is very hot from March to June
• Maha Shivaratri, the principal festival
• Karthika Masam, November or December
• Morning, for light on the carving and to combine with the fort in the same day

Seeing it properly

• Give it an hour
• Look into all three sanctums, not only the Shiva one
• Look at the kalyana mandapa and remember what was done to it
• Look at the Nandi, and note the polish on the basalt
• Look at the perforated screens and the pillar variety
• Walk the full circuit of the star shaped platform and watch the outline change

Combining the visit

• Warangal fort and the Kala Thoranam, which should be done in the same visit
• Bhadrakali temple, on the lake
• Padmakshi temple
• Ramappa at Palampet, about 70 km, which is the natural pairing
• Ghanpur temple group, near Ramappa
• Laknavaram lake
• Pochampally, for ikat weaving, on the way back toward Hyderabad
• Bhongir fort, also on the Hyderabad road

A two day Kakatiya itinerary:

Day one, in Warangal: the Thousand Pillar Temple in the morning, Warangal fort and the Kala Thoranam in the afternoon, Bhadrakali at the end of the day.

Day two, out of the city: Ramappa at Palampet, then Ghanpur, then Laknavaram lake.

That covers the Kakatiya period about as well as two days can, and takes in a UNESCO site, a trikutalayam, a destroyed capital, a Devi shrine, a temple group nobody visits and a lake with a suspension bridge over it.

Practicalities

• Traditional dress is appropriate
• Warangal has hotels and food at every level
• Summer here is severe. If you must come between March and June, do everything before ten in the morning

A closing thought. The most interesting thing about this building is invisible.

A hall was falling down. People spent years numbering stones, taking it apart, digging down to find out what the original builders had done, discovering that they had filled the foundation with sand on purpose, and then doing the same thing again before putting every stone back where it had been.

You cannot see any of that. You can only see a hall standing straight, which is exactly what they were trying to achieve.