The mechanics of historic (South Indian) temple architecture: Pillars

Besides fulfilling the spiritual/religious needs of devotees are historic South Indian temples only sculptural marvels? What else can they teach us? In this post I limit the discussion to pillars and address other elements in subsequent posts. The question of what a temple structure can teach us became relevant after a visit to one of the many large temple complexes in Tamil Nadu. The temple's carved pillars are justly famous, which however led to a problematic outcome-the pillars were seen as free-standing sculptures with no other purpose than ornamentation, completely sidelining their essential functional role.

At a pragmatic level from a conservation standpoint I found this problematic as the probably historic stone floor and any (un-carved) available portion of the pillar and beam arrangement, including the capitals, had been drilled into, in order to insert electrical wiring, conduits, tube-lights, switchboards, meter boards, and floodlights to highlight the 'glorious carvings' (see image below). Setting aside the issue of isolating the pillars from their context and potentially harming the structure's integrity, what can the carved pillar teach us besides an appreciation of the aesthetic?

First, it shows an understanding, on the part of the sthapathi, of structural forces and how building load transfer occurs across parts of a structure. He/she knew exactly how much material could be removed from a large block of stone (the shaft or vertical element of the pillars are typically monolithic-made of a single stone block) without the carved-out block getting crushed under the substantial and combined weight and downward thrust of the stone capital, stone brackets, stone beams, stone roof slabs, and lime concrete waterproofing above it. This was probably a result of trial and error, of decades, and maybe centuries of acquired knowledge. Early free-standing stone temples generally had simple straightforward shafts (see image below left) and as the sthapathi's confidence and knowledge of the material grew, they became more decorative. Such accumulated knowledge helped later-day carvers decide which bits of a stone block were superfluous and unnecessary, neither needed to bear load nor transfer weight and so could be removed (carved out) without affecting the building's structural integrity. The result is the elaborate South Indian temple complex structure that some of us are familiar with and tend to take for granted. Often, we forget or remain unaware that such complexes are a composite of decades or centuries of knowledge on construction styles and technologies. Even if a temple patron managed to put in place an assembly line of sthapathis, stone cutters, and stone, only occasionally has it been possible to build such a complex within a lifetime.

  
The structures themselves hold clues to such growth and extension, which one can read as a book to understand and/or appreciate centuries of empirical knowledge transfer. For example, garbha griha pillars would usually have simple and straightforward shafts compared to more decorative pillar shafts of outer mantapas because the sanctum is usually the oldest part of the complex (see image above centre). But don't be fooled into thinking this is always true, historic structures have a way of misleading the observer. It is possible that the builder used carved material from elsewhere to construct the garbha gudi/mantapas or maybe a later day builder dismantled the older structure and reconstructed it in imitation of the earlier style...A trained eye can however find clues to assess which parts were built earlier and which parts later; by reading different 'mason marks', chisel marks, cutting style, masonry infill and the like. It is therefore advisable  to engage a trained professional, one who is experienced in reading such structures, before initiating a (holistic) conservation programme. The temple I visited vividly showed the problem with the piece-meal approach: because focus was exclusively on the carved pillars, a plastic water tank had been mounted on top of the equally historci outer mantapa as it was taller than the rest of the structure. The result (see image above right) was moss, damp, fungal growth which will inevitably weaken the whole structure over time.

NOTE: image source author. All images used for representation purposes only.