The mandir, home of the divine

The way in. In the south it is the gopuram, a tower over the gate that from the Pandya and Vijayanagara periods grew taller than the shrine itself, so that a pilgrim sees it from miles away; the rajagopuram of Srirangam rises some 73 metres. In the north and in Odisha the gate is a torana, a carved arch, or a simple doorway guarded by the river goddesses Ganga and Yamuna. Dvarapalas, the door-guardians, stand on either side. You touch the threshold and step over it, never on it.

A tall pillar on the axis of the shrine, often sheathed in copper or gold, with the deity’s banner raised on it at the start of the brahmotsavam and other great festivals. The Agamas treat it as the spine of the temple standing outside the body of the building, and its height is fixed in proportion to the vimana. In Kerala temples it is the kodimaram; the festival begins with the kodiyettam, the hoisting of the flag, and ends when it comes down.

A low pedestal, often shaped like an inverted lotus, between the flagstaff and the hall. Cooked rice offerings are placed here for the deity’s attendants and the guardians of the directions, and smaller balipithas ring the shrine for the same purpose. Devotees leave their ego here, the saying goes: many prostrate before the balipitha and go no further with any grudge. In most traditions one does not prostrate again inside, once past it.

Facing the sanctum, eyes fixed on the deity, sits the vahana: Nandi for Mahadev, Garuda for Shri Vishnu, the lion for Devi, the peacock or elephant for Bhagwan Kartikeya, the mouse for Shri Ganesh. The devotee waits as the vahana waits. In Shaiva custom one takes Nandi’s leave before entering, and some whisper their prayer in Nandi’s ear. The great monolithic Nandis of Thanjavur, Lepakshi and Chamundi Hill each have their own pavilion.

Pillared halls lead to the sanctum: the mukha mandapa at the entrance, the maha mandapa where devotees gather, and in larger temples the nritya mandapa for dance, the kalyana mandapa for the divine wedding and the hundred- or thousand-pillared halls of the south. In Odisha the sequence is fixed as jagamohana, natamandira and bhogamandapa. The Mayamata and Manasara give rules for the number and spacing of pillars. Bhajan, katha, music and the feeding of pilgrims all happen here.

A short passage between the hall and the sanctum, the threshold between the world of the devotee and the presence of the deity. Here the priest stands to offer the arati and here the devotee stops for darshan in most temples; beyond it only those initiated for the service go. In Nagara temples the antarala carries a small projecting roof, the shukanasa, on the front of the tower.

The sanctum is small, square, unadorned inside and dark, lit by oil lamps alone. Its walls are thick and it has one door, facing east in most temples. The Shilpa texts place it at the Brahmasthana, the centre of the Vastu mandala, under the highest point of the tower. Everything else in the temple exists to lead to this room. Its darkness is deliberate: the deity is seen by the lamp held up by the priest, a little at a time.

The murti is carved by rule, in stone, metal or wood, to the proportions of the tala system set out in the Shilpa texts, and becomes the dwelling of the deity at the prana pratishtha, when the eyes are opened. There is the fixed mula murti in the sanctum and the utsava murti, usually bronze, that goes out in procession. Some are svayambhu, self-manifest: a linga of ice at Amarnath, a stone at Muktinath, the hill itself at Tiruvannamalai. A murti that is damaged is restored or replaced with rites, never thrown away.

Over the sanctum rises the tower, the mountain on which the deity lives: Meru or Kailasa in the texts. In the north it is the curving shikhara, built up of smaller turrets in later temples; in the south it is the vimana, a stepped pyramid of storeys ending in a dome. The Brihadeeswara vimana at Thanjavur, completed in 1010, stands about 66 metres. Seeing the tower from afar counts as darshan in its own right: shikhara darshanam papa nashanam, the saying goes.

At the top of a Nagara shikhara sits a large ribbed disc of stone, named for the amla fruit it resembles. It caps the tower and marks the point where the axis of the temple passes from the earth into the sky. Smaller amalakas crown the turrets around the main tower. Builders in Odisha call it the amla; at Konark and Lingaraja the amalaka alone weighs many tonnes and was raised with earthen ramps.

Above the amalaka or the dome stands the kalasha, a pot-shaped finial of stone, copper or gold, sometimes with a flag or the deity’s weapon above it: the chakra over Jagannath at Puri, the trishula over Shiva temples in the north. When a temple is renewed every twelve years or so, the kalashas are re-consecrated in the kumbhabhishekam, and the sacred water is poured over them from the top of the tower.

Darshan is followed by pradakshina, walking around the deity clockwise, keeping Bhagwan to one’s right. Many temples have an enclosed path around the sanctum and one or more open ones inside the outer walls; Srirangam has seven enclosures, the prakarams. Around a Shiva linga the round is a half: one turns back at the channel that carries the abhisheka water and does not cross it. Whole towns are walked around too: the Panchakroshi of Kashi, the giri-valam of Arunachala.

Almost every old temple has its water: a stepped tank, a kunda, a river ghat or a well. Pilgrims bathe before darshan, the deity is taken out on the tank in the float festival, the teppotsavam, and the water is itself a tirtha. Madurai’s Potramarai Kulam, the Mahamaham tank at Kumbakonam that fills with pilgrims once in twelve years, the Surya Kund before the Modhera sun temple and the 22 wells inside Rameswaram are among the best known.

The sacred ground is closed off by walls, one inside the other, each with its own gates, subsidiary shrines, kitchens, store-rooms, cowsheds and halls. In the great southern temples they became temple-cities: the outer streets of Srirangam and Madurai are lived in, with the chariot streets running around the walls, and the ratha of the deity is drawn along them at festival time. The walls also held the temple’s records: thousands of grants are cut into the stones of Thanjavur and Srirangam.