THE HINDU TEMPLE SANCTUARY AS CAVE

September 12, 2005

George Michell explains the importance of the cave in Hindu practices and in temple design: "The cave is a most enduring image in Hinduism, functioning both as a place of retreat and as the occasional habitation of the gods. Caves must always have been felt to be places of great sanctity and they were sometimes enlarged to provide a place of worship... In all Hindu temples the sanctuary is strongly reminiscent of a cave; it is invariably small and dark and no natural light is permitted to enter, and the surface of the walls are unadorned and massive. Penetration towards the image... is always through a progression from light into darkness, from open and large spaces to a confined and small space. [There are fewer and fewer images, such as sculptures, paintings or decorations, as one goes further toward the sanctuary.] This movement from complexity of visual experience to that of simplicity may be interpreted by the devotee

as a progression of increasing sanctity culminating in the focal point of the temple, the cave or 'womb.'"(20) (As a contemporary teacher of Hindu spirituality once put it, "The inner you go the more it's pure and simple.") Cool, quiet, with less sensory stimulation, the sanctuary is an "objective correlative" (to use T.S. Eliot's term) of serene deeper consciousness discussed in Hindu philosophy.

Image of Hanuman in a shrine in Banaras, with cavelike darkness in the recess.

Photo by Wes Tedrow.

The simplicity of the inner recesses keeps the subjective experience focussed, in the intimacy of silence, to face the mystery of the sacred. Psychologically this deepening of awareness and awe corresponds to the elevation of the shikhara above: "Accompanying this penetration inwards toward the cave is the ascent upwards to the symbolic mountain peak, whose summit is positioned over the center of the cave-sanctuary. This means that the highest point of the elevation of the temple is aligned with the most sacred part of the temple, the center of the inner sanctuary which houses the image of the god. Summit and sacred center are linked together along an axis which is a powerful projection upwards of the forces of energy which radiate from the center of the sanctuary."(21) Penetration to the inner unknown is thus at the same time an ascent to enlightenment-- the temple is meant to express

and facilitate this experience.

Corridor in the Ramanatha Swamy temple, Rameshwaram, Tamil Nadu, South India. The pillars give a sensation of recursion suggesting infinite depth.

Photo by official temple photographer.

Approach to the garbhagriha, the cave-like cube-shaped "womb room," often involves recursive architecture. The pilgrim passing evenly spaced columns experiences a rhythmic sensation. "The architectural rhythms of the Hindu temple impart to each building its consistency and wholeness. They evoke in the devotee an adjustment of his person to its structure; his subtle body (sukshma, sharira) responds to the proportions of the temple by an inner rhythmical movement. By this 'aesthetic' emotion the devotee is one with the temple; and qualified to realize the presence of God."(22) In the rhythms there is a kind of visual music. To amend Paul Claudel's famous verse, music is the soul of [temple] geometry. The name garbhagriha refers to the pilgrim finding his way to this secret inner place

and being reborn from it, emerging later, transformed, into the light.

Emerging into the light from a South Indian temple.

Photo by Marcia Plant Jackson.

Unseen, invisible, but used as the conceptual pattern drawn on the floor plan, the archetype of the Purusha or cosmic person, is another feature fundamental to the design of the Hindu temple.

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