FRACTAL MOUNTAIN UNIVERSE

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features of the environment, there are ancient associations -- ideas of reaching

up to heaven, contacting a higher spiritual realm.(4) We think of the Himalayas,

Olympus, Fuji, Sinai, and the temple mount in Jerusalem, as well as holy

mountains in the Andes, and in China, to name but a few.

Mountains prefigure the sacred sanctuaries around the world.

Photos by Herb Tobin.

 

 

 

In the Hindu experience the idea of the archetypal mountain of existence is

mythologized in the cosmic mountain named Meru, the mythological center or

navel of the universe. Temple scholar and historian George Michell writes: "In

the superstructure of the Hindu temple, perhaps its most characteristic

feature, the identification of the temple with the mountain is specific, and

the superstructure itself is known as a 'mountain peak' or 'crest' (shikhara).

The curved contours of some temple superstructures and their tiered

arrangements owe much to a desire to suggest the visual effect of a mountain

peak."(5) The fractal structure of some mountains has been researched and

discussed by analysts-- self-similar angles of sloping stone are often

observable once one has acquired "an eye for fractals."(6)

In North India the superstructure is "a solid tower with curvilinear vertical

ribs, bulging in the middle and ending in a very narrow necking covered by a

distinct ribbed piece of round stone known as amalaka."(7)Temples in South

India (an area of about 20% of the subcontinent) typically have a more

pyramid-shaped tower, composed of "gradually receding stories divided by

horizontal bands, and ending in a dome... or barrel-shaped ridge."(8) South

Indian Dravidian culture was already highly evolved before Sanskritic

influences arrived from the North-- this accounts for the different styles. In

the South tall gateway towers (called gopuras) form entrances to the temple

compound; they attained a greater height than the temple superstructure.

Here are examples -- one of each kind.

North Indian style temple (left) and South Indian style temple (right).

Left photo by Wes Tedrow, right photo by official temple photographer.

 

 

 

While there are a number of variations on the mountain shape in Indian temples

but nevertheless "the purpose of the superstructure is always one and the same.

It is to lead from a broad base to a single point where all lines converge. In

it are gathered the multifarious movements, the figures and symbols which are

their carriers, in the successive strata of the ascending pyramidal or

curvilinear form of the superstructure. Integrated in its body they partake,

each in its proper place, in the ascent which reduces their numbers and leads

their diversity to the unity of the point."(9) Thus a structure such as the

Kandariya Mahadeva temple in Khajuraho visually conveys a recursive

sensibility. It is a whole of self-similar peaks clustered and rising, forming

a consistent coherent totality-- the rising slopes of a cosmic mountain. The

rising and falling lines lead up to one

supreme point of transcendence, symbolic of the ultimate unity which is of

supreme importance in many great Hindu traditions. All the features are parts

of the ultimate oneness, and so they share the same style, though on various

levels and scales of significance and attainment.(10)

 

 

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