Abstract
The centrality and importance of temples to Hindu identity and culture cannot be negated, not surprisingly, Hindu temples as an object of study has received considerable scholarly engagement with studies situating themselves across varied disciplines such as Archaeology, Art History, History to Ethnography. The present volume under review aims to contribute to this academic study of Hindu temples, however, with a claim of bringing a fresh approach to the study of Hindu temples.
This is done by conceptualising Hindu temples as something which is not an unchanging monolithic entity, but rather as something which developed distinctly both in form and meaning depending on varied historical and geographical contexts (p. 1). Moreover, in its analysis of Hindu temples, the volume proposes to re-think temple space as something that is not limited to its precincts but rather as constituting a space which is tied to varied networks situating it within a broader regional and sub-continental network (p. 2).
For a study of such a kind, the volume advocates a contextual and multi-disciplinary approach, which is capable of taking the historical context and regional peculiarities into consideration in its understanding of Hindu temples. What’s particularly distinctive about the present volume is its focus on social history rather than chronology, architecture, or dynastic affiliation when it comes to analysing Hindu temples, and this is reflected in the way various sections of the volume are structured (p. 2).
The volume is divided into six sections, with each section dealing with a particular sub-theme. The first section is titled ‘Temples and Royalty’, the larger aim of this section is to salvage studies of Hindu temples from an almost hegemonic classificatory and explanatory model which emphasises the connection between the royalty and the establishment of Hindu temples to an extent to negate other explanatory possibilities.
The subsequent chapters under this section seek to re-situate Hindu temples in a larger socio-cultural and historical context, arguing that far from simply being a royal imposition, Hindu temples were often rooted in local cultural and political moorings and had a significant local base which was not limited to kings and Brahmins (Chapters 2 and 3), this at times facilitated the continued functioning of certain temples even after the breakdown of royal patronage (Chapter 1).
The second section goes with the title, ‘Temple Rituals’. The chapters under this section aim to understand temple rituals within the larger material context of the temple, taking into consideration the ways through which temple space, subsidiary shrines, sculptures, water tanks and other parts of temples are woven together with temple rituals, which were shaped and at times they shaped the materiality of the temple (p. 3, also see p. 107).
Extending the focus on the social history of temples, the third section is titled ‘Temple as Social Space’. The chapters in this section highlight the various ways through which Hindu temples acted as spaces where various social, economic, religious and political networks converged. Moreover, the chapters in this section emphasise the dynamic nature of Hindu temples, where there were not just changes in the material aspect of temples, but also with time and context interaction of temple institutions with various socio-economic, political and religious groups changed (p. 3).
Both section four and section five titled ‘Temple Landscapes’, and ‘The Temple and Beyond’, respectively, aims to understand Hindu Temples beyond the limitations of their form. While the primary concern of the fourth section is to situate Hindu temples within the larger conception of archaeological landscapes, the fifth section aims to understand Hindu temples beyond their immediate precincts, by highlighting the interactions between temples and the larger community constituting of both elite and the non-elite (Chapter 18), and also with institutions like mathas (Chapter 19).
The final section of the volume is titled ‘The Colonial Interlude’, and accordingly, it highlights how colonial intervention led to changes not only in the indigenous understanding of religious spaces but how it also transformed inter-religious cultural connections and continuities, creating sharp communal boundaries concerning religious places (Chapter 21).
The volume contains a total of 25 chapters which are thematically divided into six broad sections, dealing with a great diversity of issues. Hence, it will not be possible to comment on every aspect of this handbook in this review. However, certain key contributions of some of the sections namely, one, three and five can be discussed. The reason behind choosing these sections is that if taken together, they in my opinion provide a coherent framework which facilitates an alternative understanding of Hindu temples to emerge.
While section one through its critique of the exclusive emphasis on the role of royalty in connection to Hindu temples provides them with a wider social base, section three building on it, imagines Hindu temples as a social space in itself, further the fifth section highlights the linkages of temples with communities and institutions outside the temple space, hence, together these sections facilitates a social history of Hindu temples to emerge.
The very first section, titled ‘Temples and Royalty’, as stated earlier, aims to rescue the academic study of Hindu temples from an explanatory model which binds Hindu temples exclusively to royal patronage through the medium of the brahmanas. Ashish Kumar in chapter three under this section through his use of archaeological and epigraphical data from parts of central India, argued for a larger social base of Hindu temples involving not just the local elites but also the non-elite sections such as artisans, traders, non-Brahmins, and hence, he questions the validity of the ‘temple–king–brahmana paradigm’ (p. 51), which sees establishment of Hindu temples as a mechanism for state consolidation and legitimation through the brahmana intermediaries (p. 41).
While this is certainly an important contribution, what such critiques fail to do is to provide an alternative framework which is capable of explaining the relation of temples with the larger society at a broader level, this is possibly because of the extremely localised nature of their analysis. Hence, what such studies often appear to do, is to highlight the exceptions to the ‘meta-narratives’, and to not invalidate the ‘meta-narratives’ altogether.
The third section of the volume is titled ‘Temple as Social Space’, it aims to locate Hindu temples beyond their material form, as a social space in itself, where various social, economic, religious and political networks converge. Within this section, the choice to include the chapter by Tara Sheemar Malhan is remarkable, given that unlike most of the other contributions to this volume which base their study on material remains of Hindu temples, her work is exclusively based on the analysis of an early-medieval text known as Kathasaritsagara.
Her analysis not only compliments but also corroborate many studies included in this volume, by not only showcasing how Hindu temples were accessed by different social groups employing a diversity of worship and ritual practices but also how such religious spaces were perceived by the larger community, not as material structures, but as socio-cultural and religious spaces, which were often utilized for the so-called ‘non-religious’ purposes such as acting as a meeting spot for lovers, hence reflecting the ‘lived realities’ of such spaces.
Coming to the fifth section of the book titled, ‘The Temple and Beyond’, aims to highlight the larger linkages of Hindu temples with institutions and communities outside the temple precincts. The chapter ‘Monasticism and the Hindu Temple’ by Himanshu Prabha Ray is particularly important given the relative negligence of Hindu monasticism in academic studies of Hinduism. Prof. Ray rightly observes the need to study the relationship between Hindu temples and mathas (p. 364). Hindu asceticism/monasticism appears to have a unique engagement with temple establishment, this even led Hiuen Tsang to observe that unlike Buddhist ascetics living in viharas, the ascetics of the two major Shaiva sects of the time appear to live in temples (as cited in Ghurye 1953, 6).1 Hence, it becomes important for us to not only study the relationship between temples and mathas, but also how this relationship marks the uniqueness of Hindu monasticism/asceticism.
Though deriving contributions from different scholars, it will not be an exaggeration if one places this handbook within the larger academic engagement of Prof. Himanshu Prabha Ray, one of the key editors of this volume, the other two editors being her students trained under her.
Prof. Ray’s larger academic concern has been to emphasise the role of archaeological data in the construction of historical narratives, and presently she is also serving as a series editor of ‘Archaeology and Religion in South Asia’ book series brought by Routledge Publication in collaboration with Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies,2 which aims to ‘reflect on the complex relationship between religion and society through new perspectives and advances in archaeology’.
In this background, the choice of the present volume to use the materiality of Hindu temples as an ‘entry point’ for further exploration well fits in. Similarly, many of the key ideas of this handbook can be traced back to past academic engagements of Prof. Ray, for instance, the choice to not divide the book as per commonly held classificatory schema employed to categorise Hindu temples (p. 2), is built upon an earlier work of Prof. Ray (see Ray 2007, 2).3 Similarly, the emphasis on highlighting a non-royal support base has been a constant theme in the works of Prof. Ray and her students (see Verma and Ray 2016, 93).4
Hence, this volume has to be seen as the culmination of years of academic labour of Prof. Ray and also as an entry point to the unique method for historical exploration that she proposes. In any case, this handbook is truly remarkable in bringing diverse, multi-disciplinary and yet contextualised studies of Hindu temples in one place, and it is bound to act as one of the important reference points for future studies on Hindu temples.