Thousand Pillar Temple · Telugu History

Photograph inside a temple porch: massive lathe-turned stone pillars with ringed shafts and square bases, and carved beams overhead. · Fanny Bullock Workman and William Hunter Workman (opens in a new tab) · Public domain

The Thousand Pillar Temple at Hanamkonda has three shrines, for Rudra (Shiva), Vasudeva (Vishnu) and Surya (the Sun).¹² The Kakatiya ruler Rudradeva installed these gods in January 1163.¹² The temple’s inscription also records the wars of Rudradeva and his father Prola II.¹³

Founding

The Thousand Pillar Temple stands in Hanamkonda, the old Kakatiya capital of Anumakonda. Its own inscription dates it to the reign of Rudradeva.¹ That inscription is dated in the Saka year 1084 (January 1163).¹² It records that Rudradeva installed three gods at his capital: Rudra (Shiva), Vasudeva (Vishnu) and Surya (the Sun).¹² He named the Shiva image Rudreshvara after himself and gave a village for their worship.¹²

P. V. Parabrahma Sastry suggests that Rudradeva built the temple to mark his proclamation of sovereignty.⁴ The Imperial Gazetteer of 1909 gives its date of building as 1162.⁵ The Telugu name Veyi-stambhala gudi means “temple of a thousand pillars”.⁴⁶

The date: 1162 or 1163

A. Claude Campbell’s Glimpses of the Nizam’s Dominions (1898) also dates the temple to 1162.⁷⁸ It prints an English rendering of the inscription in which Rudradeva begins the temple “in 1084”.⁷⁸ It takes this year to be in the Vikrama era.⁷⁸ But the inscription itself names the Saka era: Fleet’s text reads Saka-varshamulu 1084, “Saka years 1084”.²

Saka 1084 (Saka is an Indian way of counting years) corresponds to 1162–63 CE.¹² The inscription’s date is the thirteenth day of the bright fortnight of Magha in the Chitrabhanu year.¹² This falls in January 1163.¹² T. W. Haig, writing in 1907, also gives Saka 1084 and dates the building to 1163.⁹ The figure 1162 in Campbell and the Imperial Gazetteer is the Saka year plus 78, the usual conversion, which does not hold for the last months of a Saka year such as January 1163.

Campbell’s rendering is loose in other places too. It says Prola spared a king Govinda and gave him back his kingdom.⁸ Fleet’s reading is that Prola defeated Govinda and gave his kingdom to another king, Udaya.²

Fergusson’s builder

James Fergusson wrote the History of Indian and Eastern Architecture.¹⁰ James Burgess revised it in 1910, with material supplied by Henry Cousens.¹⁰ This edition gives yet another builder.¹⁰ It dates the temple to 1162 from the inscription, but names its builder as “Pratapa Rudra”.¹⁰ It calls him a Kakatiya who, “though not a Chalukya in blood”, had “succeeded to their possessions and their style”.¹⁰ The inscription itself names Rudradeva, and Prataparudra reigned more than a century later.¹

Plan

The temple is a trikuta (triple-shrined) building.⁶ A square central hall has shrines projecting from it to the east, west and north, and a porch on the south.⁶ Opposite the main block is a second part of the complex, made up of ruined pillared halls.⁶ Parabrahma Sastry counts about three hundred pillars in the southern hall.⁶ He thinks the whole complex may once have had a thousand, as its name says.⁶

None of the shrines now has a tower (vimana).⁴ It is not known whether the towers were never finished or were destroyed later.⁴ Campbell, in 1898, stated plainly that the temple was never finished.⁷

Older descriptions

Older descriptions differ in detail. The Imperial Gazetteer described three spacious halls with a porch on about 300 pillars.⁵¹¹ Opposite the porch, it said, stood a star-shaped pavilion (mandapa) on 200 pillars.⁵¹¹ Three of these pillars carry inscriptions in Old Telugu and Sanskrit.⁵¹¹

Campbell gives the same figures.⁷ He describes the whole as raised on a platform about three feet high.⁷ Six stone steps lead up to the portico, the lowest a granite slab fully sixteen feet long.⁷ A small elephant carved in granite stands beside it.⁷

In 1900 Henry Cousens judged that the building belonged to two periods.¹² In his view the main block of three shrines and hall was contemporary with (of the same age as) the inscription.¹² The extended porch, the Nandi pavilion and the great detached pillared hall were probably later.¹² Parabrahma Sastry likewise suggested that the highly polished parts, such as the main doorways and pillars, might have replaced rougher work during the reign of Ganapatideva.⁴

The three gods

Campbell quotes an earlier statement of Cousens’s view, in which Cousens also argued about the gods of the three shrines.⁷⁸ Only the western shrine, Cousens noted, held a linga (stone emblem of Shiva).⁷⁸ The central shrine had a pedestal against its back wall for an image, which he took to have been Vishnu.⁷⁸ A carving of Vishnu’s Narasimha form was over its entrance, while a dancing Shiva was carved over the western shrine.⁷⁸ He was “strongly of opinion” that the temple had been dedicated to Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma.⁷⁸ The inscription itself names the third god as Surya, the Sun.¹

Fergusson’s description

Fergusson’s account counts one hundred and thirty-two free-standing pillars in the great portico in front of the temple, “disposed in a varied pattern”.¹⁰¹³ It gives the temple’s outside measurements as 102 feet from east to west by 83 ft 8 in from north to south.¹⁰¹³ The temple stands on a podium 10 feet wide.¹⁰¹³

Like Campbell, it judged that the temple “was never finished”.¹³¹⁴ In its view the work was too large for one king’s reign.¹³¹⁴ The Muslim invasions of 1310 ended it before it was taken up again.¹³¹⁴ Its woodcut of a shrine doorway, made from a photograph, shows what it called the “general ordinances” of the pillars of the great hall.¹⁴

Decoration

The pillars of the entrance hall, the doorways, the stone base of the Shiva linga and the great Nandi bull are carved with rich ornament.⁶ They are polished to a high finish.⁶ Parabrahma Sastry counts the Nandi among the finest made by Kakatiya sculptors, who were noted for their bulls hung with bells.¹⁵ He saw the temple as following the building tradition of the Western Chalukyas, from whom the Kakatiyas inherited their style.¹⁶¹⁷ Campbell says the Nandi is carved in black basalt and that the temple’s pillars are of polished basalt.⁷¹⁸

Fergusson thought nothing in Hindu art “more pleasing than the pierced slabs which the Chalukyas used for screens and windows”.¹⁴¹⁹ He admired the pillars as “rich, without being overdone”.¹⁴¹⁹ The four central pillars of the main hall are alike in design and finely carved.¹⁴¹⁹ Great carved slabs cover the roof.¹⁴¹⁹

The inscribed stone

The founding inscription is cut on all four faces of a stone about 8 feet high standing at the temple.¹ J. F. Fleet thought it might be a dhvajastambha, or flag pillar.¹ It runs to 166 lines.¹³ The first eight are in Old Telugu prose and the rest in Sanskrit verse composed by the ascetic Achintendra.¹³

Besides the gift to the three gods, it records the wars of Rudradeva and his father Prola II.¹³ It also describes the city of Anumakonda.¹³ Fleet published it in 1882 from an ink impression supplied by the Hyderabad authorities.¹ He corrected earlier readings that had misdated it by decades or centuries.¹ The Imperial Gazetteer also noted a fine well near the temple.⁵

Temple and religion

The temple combined the three gods in a single building. P. Sreenivasachar noted that temples named after Kakatiya kings, such as Proleshvara, Beteshvara, Rudreshvara and Ganapatishvara, were common.²⁰ He connected the custom of setting up a linga in one’s own name with hero-worship and political flattery.²⁰

Condition and conservation

Cousens found the temple “in a filthy state” in 1900 and urged that it be walled in and repaired.¹² He called it “one of the finest monuments in Hyderabad territory”.¹² The Nandi pavilion between the main block and the great hall had stood until about ten years earlier.¹² By then it was a heap of ruins.¹² Campbell, in 1898, likewise found the pavilion fallen and the bull “tolerably intact”.⁷

Besides Rudradeva’s record, Cousens listed two other inscriptions:²¹

a Telugu inscription on a wall of the temple recording a gift for the merit of a Kakatiya king²¹
the names of two visitors carved on a pillar²¹

In 1928–29 the Hyderabad Archaeological Department repaired the temple.²² Its works were these:²²

The elaborate cast-iron railing put round the building about forty years earlier, which the department called “an eyesore”, was replaced by a plain pipe railing.²²
A cracked lintel in the western porch of the outer hall was propped with masonry.²²
The court was levelled and laid with paths for visitors.²²

J. F. Fleet, Sanskrit and Old-Canarese Inscriptions, No. CXVIII, Indian Antiquary XI (1882), p. 9 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸ ↩¹⁹ ↩²⁰
Fleet, Sanskrit and Old-Canarese Inscriptions, No. CXVIII (1882), pp. 10, 12 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰
P. Sreenivasachar, A Corpus of Inscriptions in the Telingana Districts, Part I (1942), pp. 8, 11 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵
P. V. Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 300. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵
Imperial Gazetteer of India, Provincial Series: Hyderabad State (1909), p. 173 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵
Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 301. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸
A. Claude Campbell, Glimpses of the Nizam’s Dominions (1898), p. 480 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵
Campbell, Glimpses of the Nizam’s Dominions (1898), p. 482 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹
T. W. Haig, Historic Landmarks of the Deccan (1907), pp. 65–68 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩
James Fergusson, History of Indian and Eastern Architecture, revised by James Burgess, vol. I (1910), p. 432 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸
Imperial Gazetteer: Hyderabad State (1909), p. 164 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³
Henry Cousens, Lists of Antiquarian Remains in His Highness the Nizam’s Territories (1900), p. 46. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷
Fergusson, History of Indian and Eastern Architecture, vol. I (1910), p. 433 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶
Fergusson, History of Indian and Eastern Architecture, vol. I (1910), p. 434 and woodcut 252 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸
Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 303. ↩
Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 101. ↩
Parabrahma Sastry, The Kakatiyas of Warangal (1978), p. 299. ↩
Campbell, Glimpses of the Nizam’s Dominions (1898), p. 140 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩
Fergusson, History of Indian and Eastern Architecture, vol. I (1910), p. 435 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
P. Sreenivasachar, A Corpus of Inscriptions in the Telingana Districts, Part I (1942), p. 18 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²
Cousens, Lists of Antiquarian Remains (1900), p. 48. ↩ ↩² ↩³
G. Yazdani (Director), Annual Report of the Archaeological Department of H.E.H. the Nizam’s Dominions, 1928–29 (1931), p. 13 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵