Toshali Sands

Kon~Rk, The Epic In Stone (13th Century Ad)

Six!} five kilometres from Bhubaneswaron a good road, this unique temple is located on the seashore. As tradition has it, it was built on the sea front with water lashing its walls but now the sea has receded and the temple little away from the beach. It is little difficult to wnte about Konark because many poets of India have celebrated it in verse. It really doesn’t lend itself to the humdrum prose of a guide book like this. Built by Narasimha Dev of the Ganga dynasty, one can’t conceive what it was in its heyday.

Now only the Mukhasala or the porch and the Nata Mandap or the Dance Pavilion are left. Yet the porch alone rivals the great temple at Bhubaneswar in height and is superior in art to anything else built in Orissa or may be elsewhere. Some of the gigantic statues like the war elephants or the famous horses show the artists’ power of expression and carpenters’ skilllin handling such massive materials.

And yet the scenes of love and war, of dance’ and music have been finished with superb attention to details. The lady with the suggestion of an enigmatic smile on her lips, the amorous couple for whom the rest of the world is irrelevant or the horse, brimming with power in every limb is the product of the hands and minds of masters. The work of art is dedicated to God and the identity or the personality of the artist is irrelevant. The folklore speaks of the chief architect Sibei I Samantray, and the child carpenter(craftsman) Dharmapad, who could only finish the sikhar(top)construction, what 1200 senior carpenters could not.

The focal points of the whole complex are the images of Sun God to represent the morning, midday and sunset. The images are bursting with power and grace. The whole temple was conceived as a gigantic chariot represented by intricately carved out gigantic wheels at the basement. This itself was a revolutionary architectural conception. The image of the Sun God standing or mounted, wearing kneelength riding boots, by the power and majesty invokes from the viewer the vedic prayer:

Tat Savitrrr Varenyam Bhargodevasya Dhimaih Dhiyoyonam Prachodyat Oh Sun, the visible representation of the Brahman, The supreme being, who is of this world and all other worlds, You who control and direct, our intelligence, We pray to thee”.