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Imperial Frontiers: Building Sacred Space in Sixteenth-

Century South India
Crispin Branfoot
Published online: 03 Apr 2014.

To cite this article: Crispin Branfoot (2008) Imperial Frontiers: Building Sacred Space in Sixteenth-Century South India, The
Art Bulletin, 90:2, 171-194

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00043079.2008.10786389

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 Imperial Frontiers: Building Sacred Space
in Sixteenth-Century South India
Crispin Branfoot
Studies of sixteenth-century South Asian art are dominated
by the achievements of the Mughal Empire in north India.
Later Hindu architecture, that is, after the twelfth century,
has been neglected until comparatively recently, under the
assumption that the finest productions of Hindu artists were
earlier and that later work was simply repetitive, debased, or
degenerate. The sheer number of temples to study and the
fact that they remain in use have also proved problematic. In
south India the temple architecture of the Vijayanagara Em-
pire is now better known, but many consider the fall of the
capital in 1565 to have resulted in the end of major temple
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construction. Close examination of one Hindu temple built
in the 1560s highlights a number of issues of wider signifi-
cance for our understanding of south Indian architecture
and the meaning of Hindu temples more generally. Ever
since the pioneering studies by Ananda Coomraswamy and
Stella Kramrisch in the first half of the twentieth century, the
meaning and symbolism of the Hindu temples built across
India from the fifth century onward have been taken as
manifestations of cosmic form and the process of cosmic
creation. Instead of more attempts to explicate the general
pan-Indian meaning of the Hindu temple across fifteen hun-
dred years as a supposedly unitary and unchanging phenom-
enon, more attention needs to be paid to the multilayered
meanings of particular temples in specific contexts.
Through his study of sacred architecture in another area,
medieval Europe, Richard Krautheimer established the
importance of the content or iconography of architec-
ture. l As Paul Crossley has noted, Krautheimer's theory of
the architectural copy joined the notion of symbolism both
to the intentions of the patron and to the response of the
medieval onlooker.
He noted that certain ancient and venerable structures
were frequently copied in early medieval architecture, not
accurately in order to produce an exact reproduction, but
approximately and vaguely, with just enough of the essen-
tial features of the prototype to evoke its meaning, to allow
the viewer to experience, at second hand so to speak, the
essential qualities of the original. The associative power of
architectural forms could thus be used by patrons to pro-
mote devotion, evoke holy sites, or . .. make political
propaganda.f
These interrelated layers of meaning-religion, sacred geog-
raphy, and politics-can be explored in the sixteenth-century
temple at Krishnapuram.
The "frontiers" of the title are geographic, political, and
cultural: this Hindu temple was built at the southernmost
extremity of the Vijayanagara Empire, about five hundred
miles from the imperial center; it was built around the deci-
sive defeat ofVijayanagara in 1565, which directly led to the
empire's disintegration; and it was built under the patronage
of the Madurai Nayakas, a dynasty of kings and former Vija-
yanagara governors who defined a distinctive era of cultural
and artistic vitality from the mid-sixteenth through the early
eighteenth centuries.
Approaching Krishnapuram
Along the river Tamraparni at the southern tip of the state of
Tamil Nadu are a number of Hindu temples clustered along
the fertile green riverbanks in an otherwise arid landscape.
Some of these temples are in large towns, while others stand
almost isolated in small villages. About 5Y2 miles (9 kilome-
ters) from the city of Tirunelveli is the village of Krishna-
puram, dominated by the temple to Venkitacalapati (Visnu),
its high walls painted with vertical red and white stripes that
stand out against the surrounding landscape (Fig. 1).3 Ded-
icated to a form of Visnu, who, together with Siva, is one of
the two main deities to whom Hindu temples in southern
India have been consecrated from the seventh century on,
this temple was a new foundation, built in the 1560s on a site
that was not previously sacred. The outer of two concentric
enclosures (prakaras) , both neatly proportioned in a ratio of
2:1, is entered via a pyramidal gateway (gopura) , characteristic
of the south Indian temple, at the center of the east side (Fig.
2). Within the enclosure is an open colonnade adjoining a
columned festival hall or mandapa (D); much of the remain-
der of the outer enclosure is empty but for two almost iden-
tical goddess shrines in the southwest and northwest corners
(Band C).
The remote location and modest scale of this temple with
outer walls measuring about 262 by 525 feet (80 by 160
meters) belie the arresting entrance to the main shrine to
Venkitacalapati, for here can be found some of the most
striking sculptures in southern India. Huge images of sinu-
ous, energetic warriors with swords and shields and rearing
mythical lion-headed animals stand alongside Rati, the ele-
gant goddess of love looking in a mirror while seated on her
divine bird-mount, and her male counterpart, Manmatha,
who holds the sugarcane bow with which he fires feathery
arrows of love. These architectural sculptures about 6Y2 feet
(2 meters) high seem to burst from the composite columns
that line the most prominent aisles in the temple (Figs. 3-5).
If the temple was all built at one time, the 1560s, then the
unprecedented number of large, high-quality composite col-
umn sculptures in the festival hall and the inner corridor
make this building highly significant. The form and subject
matter are rooted in earlier developments in the Tamil coun-
try, and indeed at Vijayanagara farther north in the previous
fifty years, but these examples mark a departure in architec-
tural sculpture that became a defining feature of south In-
dian temples in the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
The columns demonstrate important sculptural innova-
 172 ART BULLETIN JUNE 2008 VOLUME XC NUMBER 2
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1 Venkitacalapati temple, Krish-napuram (photograph by the author)
tions. The vast majority of Indian stone sculpture is integral,
having no separate pieces joined on, and the south Indian
composite column is no exception, being sculpted from a
single block, even when a small column or a large deity
projects from one side. The composite column is distin-
guished from the simple columns that developed beginning
in the seventh century in the Tamil region by the incorpora-
tion of a smaller column on one side, making the whole
rectangular, not square, in section. All elements are sculpted
from a monolith up to 16 to 20 feet (5 or 6 meters) high (Fig.
6). This scheme allows for substantial variation, for the com-
posite columns that developed beginning in the thirteenth
century may have several columns or colonnettes, sometimes
carved fully in the round on one or more sides of the core
column.
The adoption of the Tamil tradition of architecture at
Vijayanagara, the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire, in the
fifteenth century led to the use of composite columns in the
Deccan, the upland region of the modern states of Karnataka
and Andhra Pradesh (Fig. 7). The new form of column with
figural sculpture that developed there subsequently spread
throughout southern India. Many of the later temples at the
capital have composite columns, some with rearing iiI{is, a
mythical combination of a lion and elephant, though col-
umns with sculptures of deities are unusual there. The most
elaborate composite columns at Vijayanagara are those in the
open attached hall of the Vitthala temple built in 1554 and
the similarly dated cruciform hall next to it. Some of these
composite columns have twelve colonnettes and two rearing
ya{is spreading around the four sides of the core column."
This hall has some of the earliest examples of figural com-
posite columns, though at only about one yard (less than one
meter) in height, these images are much smaller than the
sculpture in Tamil Nadu created a decade or two later.
These individual composite columns gave rise to a change
in temple design. The wider top of this new column meant
that the bases were farther apart, resulting in wider aisles and
a greater sense of spaciousness at floor level. This new col-
umn coincided with the use of much longer beams that
spanned greater distances in higher, wider, and more open
corridors and halls. Earlier halls, by contrast, featured dense
rows of shorter columns, which left narrower aisles between
them. As the use of the simple composite column spread in
temples in Tamil Nadu from the mid-sixteenth century, so,
too, did the composite columns with figural sculptures.
Tremendous sculptural skill was required to produce these
elaborate columns. The rock used in Tamil Nadu for sculp-
ture in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is usually
described simply as granite, an igneous rock, whose key
characteristic is its extreme hardness. Granite and related
brittle rocks are not cut but smashed and shattered by
striking the stone with the tool held perpendicular to the
surface." As Nicholas Penny remarks, undercutting, projec-
tion, and perforation are generally avoided when sculpting
granite, for the composition of the stone makes these
techniques difficult and risky. Writes Penny, "Hammering
at a small area to achieve, say, the space between arm and
chest, could have caused a statue to shatter and would
certainly have weakened it.,,6 The hardness of the material
used for much south Indian sculpture is reflected in the
rough, unfinished appearance of some surfaces and in the
preference for carving figures attached to a stela or back
plate. Nonetheless, the sculpture at Krishnapuram is evi-
dence that sculptors in sixteenth-century Tamil Nadu had a
great sense of three-dimensional volume. This is seen both in
the way that the large figures avoid the rigid frontality of
much earlier sculpture, adopting energetic, sinuous postures,
and in the way the figures are freed from the orthogonal
block of stone (Fig. 8). The rectilinear shape of the original
monolith has disappeared, leaving the sculpture, not the
stone block, as the primary form. Furthermore, unlike much
south Indian sculpture, sixteenth-century sculpture has a very
 BUILDING SACRED SPACE IN SIXTEENTH·CENTURY SOUTH INDIA 173

fine polish, demonstrating further patient labor with oil and o. 10 .

abrasives on the part of the sculptors. The degree of under-
cutting, the fine detail, and the smooth finish all suggest that
the enormous technical problems associated with working in
very hard rock had been largely overcome.
In addition, these composite columns share the dynamic
qualities of emergence and expansion conveyed by Indian
temple architecture more widely, especially the figural exam-
ples. A common theme in South Asian art is the column of
power, whether sacred or secular. In sculpture this is clearly
represented by the linga, the principal aniconic image of Siva
in Saiva temples, which houses the sacred power of the god.
The power in these columns is not always static, for the
former is often seen to emerge from the latter, a phenome- " y"
, , , ! !
y y y y
" "
y y y y

non Heinrich Zimmer describes as "expanding form.,,7 Sculp- :0 D

tures depicting the myths of Siva as Lingodbhava or of Visnu y

ii
y
i
y
i
y
i
y
i
y
i
y
i
y
i
y
i , .
as the man-lion Narasirnha illustrate this concept/' The con- 6
:~:
Downloaded by [University Of Pittsburgh] at 10:56 11 November 2014

cept of expanding form is evident in individual Tamil figural

composite columns as well as in the development of this .~.

column form over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. ..

.~.

The deities on figural composite columns spread forward and

sideways, becoming larger and more active until they hardly
appear to be attached to their support at all.
@]
·· . ..
..
Krishnapuram boasts forty composite columns with large
figures sculpted from a monolith, each one a complex work .,y y~

of sculpture. In the inner enclosure can be found two door .,7 8.-

guardians, eight ya,jis, and six columns with deities; the festi-
.,.
.,y y ..

val hall in the outer enclosure has six columns with deities 10"

across the front and two rows of nine with ya,Jis inside. How- .,y y ..

ever modest in scale this temple is compared with the great

urban temples such as the Minaksi-Sundaresvara in Madurai
.,,, " .
..
",y y ..

or the Ranganatha at Srirangam, this was a costly, high-status

:[
Dv Dv

commission. To understand the artistic innovation of these L-..a..-..o -

columns, we need to consider the wider cultural landscape
and the role that temples played in the changing political
conditions of southern India in this period.

Temples, Politics, and the Foundation of Krishnapuram

Founded in the 1340s, the Vijayanagara Empire had domi-
nated the whole of southern India for two centuries. In 1377
the Vijayanagara general Kumara Kampana defeated the
forces of the Madura sultanate near Madurai, ending a fifty- ... ·..
year period of rule by Muslims in the heart of southern India.
Temple worship was restored in the few places where it had
been disrupted, and Kannada- and Telugu-speaking outsiders ... ·..
from the Deccan established their authority over the Tamil
country. The far south was always a distant concern for the
Vijayanagara emperors, who throughout the fifteenth cen-
tury were occupied with the geopolitics of the northern fron-
tier between the Krishna and Tungabhadra rivers with their
Deccan sultanate rivals, at Bijapur and Golconda. Only in the
early sixteenth century did they take any great interest in the 2 Plan of the Venkitacalapati temple, Krishnapuram:
affairs of the Tamil country, visiting the great temple centers A) Venkitacalapati, B) Alarrnelu Mankai tajar, C) Padmavati
and, at the height of the empire's power, in the 1520s and (ayar, D) festival hall (ma1Jrtapa), Ba balipztha, Dh dhvajastambha,
Ga Garuda, Dv duarapala (door guardian), Y ya{i. 1. Draupadi,
1530s, establishing stronger regional rulers, the Nayakas, as
2. Kuratti kidnapping a man, 3. Arjuna, 4. Kama, 5. Kuraoan
local governors. kidnapping a woman, 6. Dancing woman (Minaksi'/Rambha),
Then, on January 23, 1565, at the battle of Talikota, a 7. Agni Virabhadra, 8. Aghora Virabhadra, 9. Rati, 10. Man-
confederation of the Deccan sultanates defeated the forces of matha, 11. Dancing woman, 12. Bhirna and Purusamrga (plan
the Vijayanagara Empire and sacked the capital, leading to by the author)
the gradual disintegration of the last great imperial power in
 174 ART BULLETIN JUNE 2008 VOLUME XC NUMBER 2
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4 North side of inner corridor with composite columns of Rati and
south India before the rise of the British Raj in the eigh-
teenth century. Following the disastrous battle, the imperial
capital moved south and east, first to Penukonda and then,
from 1592, Chandragiri. From the mid-sixteenth century,
south India was dominated by the increasing power and
influence of the Nayakas, as they challenged the declining
rule of the final Aravidu dynasty ofVijayanagara kings (rayas),
3 Inner enclosure corridor of
Venkitacalapati temple (photograph
by the author)
yaJis, Venkitacalapati temple (photograph by the author)
leading to a major civil war between 1614 and 1629. In the
Tamil country, three Nayakas dominated the region from
their respective centers at Gingee, in the north, and the older
seats of power at Tanjavur, the Chola imperial capital, and
Madurai, the capital of the Chola's imperial rivals, the Pan-
dyas. The Madurai Nayakas took power about 1529, toward
the end of the reign of Krishnadeva, the Vijayanagar em-
 BUILDING SACRED SPACE IN SIXTEENTH·CENTURY SOUTH INDIA
Downloaded by [University Of Pittsburgh] at 10:56 11 November 2014
5 Composite column of Virabhadra holding sword and shield
on south side of inner corridor, Venkitacalapati temple
(photograph by the author)
peror, and maintained rule within the family. The longest
lasting of the Tamil Nayakas, at their height of power they
controlled much of southern Tamil Nadu. The dynasty came
to an end only in 1736, defeated by the Nawab of Arcot. The
Nayaka dynasties of the Tamil country were outsiders to the
region, for they were largely from the Telugu-speaking parts
of the Deccan. Their legitimacy-political, religious, cultural-
was based on two factors: first, their relation with the Vijaya-
nagara emperor and the imperial center, and, second, their
association with the cultural traditions of their adopted ter-
ritory in the Tamil country. For the Madurai Nayakas this
meant specifically the Pandyas, who ruled the far south from
Madurai from at least the eighth century, and probably ear-
lier, until the early fourteenth century.
Like their imperial forebears, the Nayakas supported the
Hindu tradition, its cult centers, and its institutions, founding
new temples and making major additions to existing sacred
sites across the Tamil country in the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries." Temples are central to any understanding
of authority in south India from the fourteenth to eighteenth
175
Puspapotika (side)
Seated simha
5-part
3
Engaged
core column
column
Base
·11.1
-.:.~
Plan atA-B
6 Tamil Dravida composite column (adapted from Journal of
Indian Art and Industry, 1899)
centuries, for a defining feature of premodern south Indian
political communities is that kings, both imperial and local,
and the deities installed in temples share sovereignty. IO The
king must protect the temple and uphold dharma, religious
authority. His relationship with the deity of the temple both
sustains and displays his rule. Conceived as regents of the
deity, south Indian kings were often crowned in a temple
before the god. Harihara and Bukka, the cofounders of the
Vijayanagara Empire, dedicated their kingdom to the deity
Virupaksa, a form of Siva, whose most important temple was
at their capital. They ruled on Virupaksa's behalf, a practice
their successors continued up to the late sixteenth century;
Vijayanagara inscriptions usually end with "Sri Virupaksa"
instead of the king's signature. II The Nayakas of Madurai
similarly ruled as regents of the warrior goddess Minaksi, As
Arjun Appadurai notes, in the period from 1300 to 1700
"temples were ritually essential to the maintenance of king-
ship."12
The relation of kings and other political authorities with
 176 ART BULLETIN JUNE 2008 VOLliME XC NUMBER 2

Golconda
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\ \ GingeEY
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padmanabhapura~", / Tlruchendur f -t1
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I Miles _ _ _ _ _ _ _\ LANKA I
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7 Map of south India (drawn by the author) 8 Door guardian (dvarapala) , Venkitacalapati temple
(photograph by the author)

temples is expressed through inscriptions on walls or on The five copperplates are bound by a ring and inscribed
copperplates stored in the temples. These record donations on both sides in Sanskrit verse.l" At the top of the first plate
of land or villages, whose produce supported the rituals and is the Vijayanagara dynastic symbol-the boar, downward-
ceremonies that honored the resident deity. The date of the pointing sword, sun, and moon-and the symbol of the Ten-
grant and the presiding ruler are usually mentioned; occa- kalai sect of Srivaisnavism, the dominant form of Visnu de-
sionally they may record the foundation of the temple itself. votion in Tamil Nadu, flanked by the conch and discus of
The Venkitacalapati temple at Krishnapuram is well Visnu. Following a detailed genealogy of Sadashiva, the plate
supplied with epigraphic sources: two inscriptions on the records the foundation of a temple to Tiruvenkatanatha by
temple walls and a set of copperplates. The inscriptions, Krishnappa Nayaka, son of Vishvanatha and grandson of
in Tamil, are on the outside walls of the outer enclosed Nagama Nayaka. Dated in the Sakayear 1489 (ca. 1567/68),
hall (mahama1J4apa), on either side of the entrance to the the inscription describes the temple, which was encircled by
main shrine. 13 The one on the left dates to the reign of the a wall with a high gopura and featured a large, beautiful
Vijayanagara ruler Sadashiva (1542-70) in the year 1485 of columned hall (rangamm:uJ,apa). Broad streets were laid out
the Saka era (ca. 1563/64).14 It records the gift of six villages for the annual chariot festival, when the deity was dragged
and some land to the temple of Tiruvenkatanathadeva by around the sacred site on a mobile wooden temple (ratha or
Krishnappa Nayaka (r. 1564-72) for the spiritual merit of his ter). Sadashiva donated villages at the request of Krishnappa
father, Vishvanatha Nayaka. The right-hand inscription dates for the daily pujas, or offerings, of light, incense, and flower
to the Sakayear 1499 (ca. 1577/78) in the reign of Sri ranga garlands, and for the annual festivals, including both the
I (1572-86). Though much damaged, it records a gift by chariot festival and a float festival, when the deity was pulled
Virappa Nayaka (r. 1572-95) for the merit of his father, around a water-filled tank on a floating temple.i''
Krishnappa Nayaka, to the temple of Tiruvenkatanathadeva These inscriptions provide a wealth of detail about the
at Krishnapuram on the bank of the Tamraparni river. context in which this temple was built. Their secure dates of
 BUILDING SACRED SPACE IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURY SOUTH INDIA
1563/64, 1567/68, and 1577/78 indicate the temple's foun-
dation date, about 1567/68. Reliably dated temples are un-
usual in the Tamil country after the fourteenth century,
especially as the numbers of inscriptions decline in the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries. The inscriptions also fur-
nish firm evidence of patronage by the Madurai Nayakas.
Patronage of temple construction in Madurai itself by the
Madurai Nayakas is clearly established from the mid-sixteenth
through the seventeenth centuries, to be seen at the huge
Minaksi-Sundaresvara temple complex at the center of the
city. Outside Madurai, however, where the broad patterns of
temple construction in the regions ruled by the Madurai
Nayakas suggest they were actively involved in building pro-
grams, the detailed evidence is much more fragmentary. A
study of Madurai Nayaka patronage of architecture in the
period of their rule in southern India from about 1529 to
1736 would result in only a partial understanding of the many
Downloaded by [University Of Pittsburgh] at 10:56 11 November 2014
temples in the geographic area of their rule, from the Kon-
gunadu region in northwestern Tamil Nadu to Ramesvaram
and Kanyakumari in the south. The temple foundation at
Krishnapuram in the 1560s is thus one of the earliest clear
examples of Madurai Nayaka architectural patronage.
Through the later sixteenth century, the Madurai Nayakas
repositioned themselves in relation to both their nominal
Vijayanagara overlords and the Tamil communities over
which they now ruled. One element in this negotiation was
the choice of deity to whom the temple is dedicated. The
inscriptions at Krishnapuram name the temple's deity as
Venkatesvara, the name of Visnu at Tirupati (also known as
Tiruvenkatanatha, both meaning "lord of sacred Venkata
[hill]"). This is one of the most important Vaisnava temples
in south India in what is now southern Andhra Pradesh.
Tiruvenkatam (or Tirupati) looms large in the devotional
poetry of the twelve Alvar.> ("those who are immersed" in love
of Visnu), the poet-saints of Srivaisnavism, the dominant sect
of south Indian Vaisnavism, who lived between the sixth
and ninth centuries. Srivaisnavas regard their poetry as
revealed scripture, and the gathering of the Alvar.>' poetry
into a systemized canon, the "four thousand sacred verses"
(Naliiyiradivyaprabandam), from the tenth century and its rec-
itation in temple worship ensured the Alvar.> a key place in
later Tamil Vaisnavism, The twelfth to fourteenth centuries
were significant across southern India for the rise in impor-
tance of Vaisnavism. Srivaisnavism was Tamil in origin, based
on the teachings of Ramanuja (traditionally 1017-1137), with
major centers at Srirangam, Kancipuram, and Tirupati.
Beginning in the period of the Alvar.>, deities acquired
names reflecting the site myths and local characteristics of
the deity and temple. Then, around the fourteenth or fif-
teenth century, "copies" were made of the greatest pilgrim-
age sites. Often this replication was in name alone, rather
than in the physical layout and form of the temple or whole
pilgrimage site.!" The most widespread was the reproduction
of the great northern holy city of Kasi (Benares, Varanasi) on
the river Ganges; all across southern India are temples iden-
tified as a "southern Kasi." Next in importance in this process
is the temple to Visnu as Venkatesvara at Tirupati, among the
most revered Tamil Srivaisnava pilgrimage sites. Krishnappa
Nayaka's choice of dedication at Krishnapuram is thus signif-
icant, for it shows he wanted to evoke the illustrious sacred
177
past of the Alvar.> as much as the specific religious associations
of Tirupati.l"
The Tirupati temple would have had great resonance for
Krishnappa. The temple gained the preeminence it main-
tains to this day under the patronage of the Vijayanagara
rulers, especially the great early-sixteenth-century Tuluva
kings Krishnadeva and Achutyadeva, both great devotees
of Tamil Srivaisnavism.'" Both visited the temple on nu-
merous occasions, and Achutyadeva was crowned there
before the deity in 1529. Venkatesvara grew increasingly
popular at Vijayanagara from the mid-fifteenth century on.
Eight temples are identified as dedicated to the deity,
most commonly known in the capital as Tiruvengalanatha.
The most notable of these is the large north-facing temple
founded in 1534 by Achutyadeva's brother-in-law Hiriya
Tirumalaraja.e" The Telugu-speaking Nayakas are often
considered outsiders to the Tamil region to the south.
Though the Madurai Nayakas may have come from the
Kancipuram region of northern Tamil Nadu,judging from
their inscriptions, that adjoins the Telugu-speaking area in
modern Andhra Pradesh where Tirupati is located, they
are still outsiders to the far south of the Tamil region. 21 By
dedicating the temple to Visnu as Venkatesvara, Krishnappa
Nayaka was supporting a Tamil religious community. In ad-
dition, and importantly, he was aligning himself with and
emulating his Vijayanagara imperial overlords in their sectar-
ian preferences, and it was precisely these two rulers, Krish-
nadeva and Achutyadeva, who about 1529 had established the
Madurai Nayakas as regional governors.
However, the relationship of the Madurai Nayakas with the
Vijayanagara Empire was not simply one of subordination or
emulation, as the content of the inscriptions at Krishna-
puram demonstrates. The earlier inscription and the copper-
plates name the Vijayanagara king Sadashiva, the last ruler of
the Tuluva dynasty. Yet, in reality, power throughout his reign
(1542-70) was in the hands of Ramaraya and Tirumala, sons-
in-law of Krishnadeva (r. 1505-29). After Ramaraya's death in
1565, Tirumala controlled the empire as Sadashiva's regent.
Only after Sadashiva's death in 1570 did Tirumala crown
himself raya and founder of the final Aravidu dynasty of
Vijayanagara kings, and it was his son Sriranga I (r. 1572-86)
who is named in the later inscription of about 1577/78. The
inscriptions at Krishnapuram thus straddle not only the de-
feat of Vijayanagara in 1565 but also the shift in the capital
southeast to Penukonda and the establishment of a new
dynasty. The Madurai Nayakas' inscriptions before 1565 in-
variably praise the Vijayanagara king and give the Nakayas'
position as agent of the king. 22 The Krishnapuram copper-
plates mark a shift in rhetoric, for they note that grants are
made by the sovereign not of his own volition but at the
request of the Madurai Nayaka.f" In earlier inscriptions, as
noted, the initial eulogy (prasasti) was devoted to the king
alone. In the Krishnapuram copperplate dated to 1567/68,
by contrast, praise is given not only to Sadashiva but also to
the Nayaka in his own right. Among a long list of virtues,
Krishnappa Nayaka is said to know the truth about duty and
is described as "the establisher of the Pandya dynasty"
(Pa1Jcj,yakulasthapanacharya) .
Some early scholars have viewed the statement that Krish-
nappa knew the truth about duty as clear evidence of the
 178 ART BULLETIN JUNE 2008 VOLUME XC NUMBER 2
Nayakas' loyalty to the Vijayanagara king. 24 Such an interpre-
tation is questionable, though, given that the inscription
marks a key moment in the Madurai Nayakas' shift toward
greater independence, however subtle this move was at such
an early date. As Nicholas Dirks remarks, "These lesser kings
have moved from being passive reflections of the great and
undisputed overlordship of the Vijayanagara kings to acting
in more innovative ways.,,25 The epithet "the establisher of
the Pandya dynasty" is also of uncertain meaning but appears
to indicate the Madurai Nayakas' growing awareness of their
regional dynastic heritage. With these words they were pre-
senting themselves as the rightful heirs to Pandyan rule from
the age-old capital at Madurai, or even as Pandyans them-
selves. This, despite the presence of a later Pandyan dynasty
at Tenkasi (southern Kasi), that was building temples in the
far southwest corner of the Tamil country in the fifteenth
century and issuing inscriptions into the seventeenth cen-
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tury.26 Later sources attempted to represent the Madurai
Nayakas as the rightful rulers of Madurai. In the early-eigh-
teenth-eentury Telugu text Tanjaouri-ondhra rajula caritra, the
goddess Minaksi tells the general Nagama that his son Vish-
vanatha is the proper man to rule the kingdom in her pres-
ence. 27 A similarly close relationship between goddess and
Nayakas is shown in a ceiling painting in the Minaksi-
Sundaresvara temple in Madurai dating to about 1690-1700.
There the queen regent Mangammal receives the scepter of
authority (cenkol) directly from the Pandyan warrior goddess
Mlnak~i herself.
The inscriptions at this new temple at Krishnapuram
should therefore be seen not just as reflections of historical
processes and political relationships but as the means by
which these were enacted.f" The act of temple foundation
and the naming of the new sacred site as Krishnapuram may
also be interpreted in like manner. For Krishnapuram is not
only the city of Krishna, the deity, but the city of Krishnappa,
the Nayaka; he named the new town after himself. In doing
so he followed the precedent of Krishnadevaraya, who in
1513, after his successful conquest of the Gajapatis of Orissa
in eastern India, founded the Vijayanagara suburb of Krish-
napura and a new Krsna temple there. The Madurai Nayakas
based their political legitimacy on Vijayanagara's golden past
of the early sixteenth century. The Telugu Rayavacakamu
(Tidings of the King), an account of the reign of Krishnade-
varaya written later in Nayaka-period Madurai, about 1595-
1600, can be read as an ideological justification for the power
wielded by the Madurai Nayaka regime.f'' In it, the loss of the
city ofVijayanagara in 1565 is seen as crucial to the Aravidu
emperors' legitimacy, for they no longer possessed the ritual
authority sought by dependent kings such as the Nayakas to
augment their own authority. The Rayavacakamu intimates
that the throne of Madurai derives its legitimacy not from the
faded contemporary Vijayanagara of the Aravidu monarch
Venkatapati II (r. 1586-1614) but directly from the glorious
Vijayanagara of Krishnadevaraya some eighty years earlier. As
Phillip Wagoner has observed in his discussion of the
Rayavacakamu,
Given the ideological basis for Nayaka legitimacy, the po-
litical situation in the latter half of the sixteenth century
clearly must have generated a deeply problematic contra-
diction for the Nayaks of Madurai. Nayaka power was real,
but ideologically dependent, while Vijayanagara's power,
even though remaining ideologically absolute, had all but
vanished in any real sense. With the legitimacy of their
legitimising overlord now itself in question, Madurai's
rulers were confronted with a serious dilemma that could
be resolved only by means of a thorough transformation of
the ideological system on which all political relations were
based.f"
This process was clearly under way in the years immediately
following 1565, as the inscriptions at Krishnapuram suggest.
The Tamil Temple Tradition
The temple at Krishnapuram is built in the Tamil Dravida
tradition of temple architecture, with roots one thousand years
old. Indian temple architecture is broadly divided into two
traditions or languages of architecture: the Nagara, roughly
corresponding with the north, and the Dravida in the south.
The Dravida tradition is subdivided into Karnata Dravida and
Tamil Dravida, broadly associated with the modern states of
Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, respectively. An artistic tradition
that stresses continuity, it accommodated gradual innovation
in details and elaboration in planning. All Hindu temples,
whether village shrines or the vast temple cities of the south,
have at their core a small chamber for the presiding, resident
deity. This main shrine, often with a pyramidal tower above,
is called the oimana in southern India. Attached to this is a
series of halls (mar.u!apas) that allows priests to enter the main
shrine and that allows devotees, who are prohibited from
entering the shrine itself, to see and be seen by the deity from
a short distance away, a ritual act called darsana: Around the
main shrine a series of rectangular, often concentric enclo-
sures (prakaras) may be built to enlarge the sacred area with
subsidiary shrines for other deities, especially one or more
consorts. Further detached columned halls may be included
for the celebration of festivals, long corridors for processions,
water-filled tanks for ritual bathing by deities and devotees,
and, on one or more sides, the monumental pyramidal gate-
ways (gopuras) that are a defining feature of both the Tamil
Dravida tradition of sacred architecture and indeed the land-
scape of southern India to this day.
Two interrelated design principles characterize Tamil
Dravida architecture. First, all building types in Tamil tem-
ples have the same elevation: a basement of distinct mold-
ings; columns, or a wall with pilasters or engaged columns; a
curved eave with high-relief horseshoe arches (Sanskrit nasi,
gavak$a; Tamil kUlu) along its length; and above that, one or
more rows of miniature pavilions (Fig. 9). The second prin-
ciple, first observed by James Fergusson in the 1870s and
demonstrated more recently in detail by Adam Hardy, is that
most Indian temple architecture is composed of multiple
small shrines or aedicules: "in its developed forms, this archi-
tecture depends for its visual structure, its expression and
meaning, on the combination and interrelation of images
and shrines.,,31 Aedicules are not merely surface decoration
but are conceived as embedded within the larger structure
and to be seen as gradually emerging from it. They are
distinguished across the facade by their roofs: square-roofed
kiuas at the corners; rectangular, barrel-vaulted salas in the
 BUILDING SACRED SPACE IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURY SOUTH INDIA
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1st
tala
9 Elevation of a Tamil Dravida
temple. Each of the first four stories
(talas) has the same sequence of
c;=~==~~==:=~============~\~
aedicules across: kiua (K)-panjara (P)-
d=============~ r
sala (S)-panjara (P)-kuta (K). The
uppermost tala has the large capping
sikhara (drawing by the author) K p
center; and horseshoe-arched paiijaras in between these two.
The elements of the elevation (basement, wall, superstruc-
ture) are not distinct entities but are connected vertically
through the structure and organized horizontally (Fig. 10).
From the earliest surviving examples in stone to the seven-
teenth century, temple design could vary in several key re-
spects: overall aedicular composition, particularly the increas-
ing density of aedicules, one emerging from within another;
the form of the pilasters or engaged columns; the composi-
tion of the basement and its details; the type of eave kapota, a
molding at the top of a basement or wall (Fig. 10), and the
size, form, and ornamentation of the high-relief horseshoe
arches; the location and type of figural sculpture; and, finally,
the overall scale and proportion. With this brief introduction
to the language and tradition of Tamil Dravida architecture
in mind, the particular significance of the Venkitacalapati
temple at Krishnapuram can be understood.
The main temple dedicated to Venkitacalapati consists of
the usual uimana with a smaller, inner attached hall (ardha-
mmJf!apa), a larger, outer one (mahamm:u!apa), and a porch.
The oimiina has straight walls with pilasters supporting a
central barrel-vaulted sala with square-roofed kutas to either
side in the superstructure above the wall (Fig. 11). At the
center of each side is a split pilaster supporting a lintel with
a mythical monster arch in relief (makaratora'(ta). This niche
is quite shallow and, rather than containing a figure of a
deity, as is usual in most Tamil temples, simply has a foliate
strip in relief; small images of deities appear within the
makaratorana instead. The whole temple is raised on a base-
179
j
<3
(
Adhisthana
Upapitha
s p K
ment (adhi$thana) alone, though a subbasement (upapztha)
may be buried under later renovations. The basement is very
plain with continuous, regular moldings all around. In fact,
little about this shrine indicates a Nayaka-period date in the
sixteenth century. Its formal elements-straight walls with no
aedicular articulation; no bold ornamented projections and
recesses; shallow pilasters rather than round, angular, or
fluted engaged columns; plain basement with no variation in
moldings or even decoration-all suggest an early date, a
low-budget commission, or deliberate, purposeful archaism.
Even the bracket capitals are of the bevel-edged tenon type
commonly encountered on monuments of the tenth and
eleventh centuries. The adjoining halls are similarly plain.
One of the few concessions to the general elaboration of
Nayaka-period style is the monkey on the south eave of the
outer hall; the introduction of high-relief sculpture of mon-
keys, cats, lizards, and birds is a lively and distinctive feature
of Tamil temple sculpture at this time.
The plainness of the oimana contrasts with the elaborate
porch with its two large door guardians (dvarapalas) , the
large figural composite columns that line the inner aisle, and
those in the outer enclosure's festival mandapa (Fig. 2). Lin-
ing the inner aisle are two rows of seven very deep composite
columns with six large-scale figural groups alternating with
ya{is, all slightly different from one another. Large seated
lions (sirhha) and flower-bud bracket capitals (pu$papotika),
both characteristic of the sixteenth century and later, support
a high, raised roof.
A small open area on the north side of the inner enclosure
 180 ART BULLETIN JUNE 2008 VOLUME XC NUMBER 2

Stupi

Silchara

Griva
Vedi -----T'i==ii==i'i==~

, .. .. ...
Pada

, , \
Vyalamala ~ \,l;\

Eavekapota ji'
.Y I) ~A

Puspapotika -~ A ~
Phalaka -~ ~
Ital »: '9? ~"= ~ "~
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" E'" .
~b
Pada

Nakaipantam-c.s;
~ "

~ I
Kapota ( ~ rn \
Kantha r=r Adhisthdna
Kumuda
Jagati
Vyalamala
I ~ I
" ,. .<> 11 Main shrine of Venkitacalapati temple (photograph by the
Kapota ( ~ "I author)
Kantha Upapitha
Padma . . .. ..
Upana

10 Elevation of a Nayaka-period Tamil Dravida ku{traedicule
(drawing by the author)
may have been used for storing either a set of portable
bronze festival images (utsavamurtis) or a complete set of
bronze images of the twelve AJvars. The festival images are
now safely located in the ardhamandapa before the main
shrine, The kitchen for cooking the food offerings for the
resident deities and distributed as prasada to devotees is in
the canonically correct southeast corner. A small, plain gate-
way in the north wall is the "heaven's gate" (Tamil corkkaoacal
or paromapataoacab , an exit used by deities in procession,
found only in Vaisnava temples, always located on the north
side and used on one day once a year.
The temple complex is entered through the single large
pyramidal gateway (gopura) on the east side. Gopuras are
formally composed like a main shrine but split in two, with a
series of embedded aedicules arranged in an ascending series
of stories (talas) to a barrel-vaulted roof topped with a row of
kumbhas (water pots). The brick-and-plaster superstructure
rises from a stone basement. The gopura at Krishnapuram is
of modest size compared with many built in the sixteenth
century but nonetheless displays the elaborate ornamenta-
tion typical of the Nayaka period.
Beyond the gateway an open corridor houses the three
elements that mark out for the devotee the main ritual axis of
the south Indian temple: the flagpole (dhvajastambha) , the
sacrificial altar (balipztha) , and the animal vehicle (vahana) of
the temple's presiding deity (Fig. 12). The uahana; as the
deity's main devotee, faces it and thereby prominently indi-
cates the dedication of the temple: here the uahana is the
hawk man, Garuda, kneeling with his hands in prayer, facing
Visnu, The flagpole rises through the flat roof, which ob-
scures the top; a flag is hoisted to mark the beginning and
end of temple festivals. In earlier periods temporary flagpoles
were probably erected at the start of a festival, but certainly by
the Nayaka period, with the proliferation of festivals, perma-
nent stone dhvajastambhas, often gilded, were erected in tem-
ples. The dhvajastambha and balipztha are placed just before
the entrance to the inner zones of the temple, which polluted
Hindus and non-Hindus were prohibited from crossing, and
thus indicate not only the primary axis of worship but also
divide outer from inner, a major division of sacred space.
Between the gopura and the oimana in the outer enclosure
is a large south-facing festival hall with bold figural columns.
Tamil temples from the twelfth century onward often feature
detached halls for use in annual and more frequent festivals.
Small examples are occasionally present alongside the earli-
est temples, but by the sixteenth century they are often very
large, numerous, visually impressive, and the location of
some of the finest stone sculpture in the temple. Festival
 BUILDING SACRED SPACE IN SIXTEENTH·CENTURY SOUTH INDIA
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12 Outer enclosure corridor of Venkitacalapati temple with
balipztha and dhvajastambha; festival hall to right/north
(photograph by the author)
mandapas are built for use during a festival, when a deity
comes out on procession from the temple's main shrine and
stays in the hall for a period of a few hours or many days.
These structures are for the deity both to rest in and for
receiving worshipers, and their form reflects this purpose.
They are usually rectangular, with an exterior elevation sim-
ilar to the other temple structures. The interior is based
around a single processional aisle leading to a throne plat-
form for the deity to rest on. Even very large mandapas with
dense rows of columns will have a wider central aisle with a
higher ceiling leading to a platform, so though there may be
space to move around between the columns, the focus is on
the approach to the deity. These festival halls may be under-
stood as galleries: they are both a space to move through and
a space for display, in this case of a deity or deities. As a
temporary shrine, festival mandapas share many features with
the permanent shrines. With the introduction of larger sup-
porting composite columns that enabled greater distances
to be spanned, both grander processional paths toward the
enthroned deity could be created and more devotees were
able to assemble in rows down each side as a modest congre-
gation.
Krishnapuram's festival hall, currently called the Virappa
Mandapa, has a wide central aisle lined with huge, very deep
yali columns (Fig. 13). Even more striking than these, how-
ever, are the six composite columns with figural sculpture
across the front, discussed below. The Krishnapuram copper-
plates mention that Krishnappa constructed a mobile temple
181
13 Interior of festival hall of Venkitacalapati temple with yali
composite columns leading to throne platform (photograph
by the author)
14 Southern goddess (tayar) shrine to Alarmelu Mankai,
Venkitacalapati temple (photograph by the author)
or chariot (ratha, ter) for a chariot festival (rathotsava), for
which broad roads were built around the temple, and also
gave sufficient land for a tank and a float festival (teppotsava)
to be instituted, underlining the importance of festival ritual
to even such a small temple and its initial patron. No sign of
a festival tank exists today.
The two remaining structures in the outer enclosure, in the
northwest and southwest corners, are shrines dedicated to
Alarmelu Mankai (south) (Fig. 14) and Patmavati (north),
Visnu as Venkatesvara's local goddess consorts (tayar) at Tiru-
patio Goddesses have played a role in Tamil Hinduism at least
from the early centuries CE, both as powerful, independent
deities and as peaceful consorts of the gods. Visnu has two
eternal consorts, Bhu and Sri, together with one or two local
ones (tayar). When a deity was accorded a second, local,
bride, as is very common throughout southern India, Tamil
temples beginning in the late twelfth century frequently in-
cluded a separate shrine for one or more such local consorts.
k.t~al, the sole female Vaisnava poet-saint (alvar) , may also be
enshrined in a Visnu temple. In small temples, such as that at
 182 ART BULLETIN JUNE 2008 VOLUME XC NUMBER 2
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15 Vimana of Kutal Alakar temple, Madurai (photograph by
the author)
Krishnapuram, the goddess shrine is usually placed just be-
hind and to one side of the god's shrine within the first or
second enclosure. In temples to Visnu, stone images of his
eternal consorts Sri and Bhu are placed alongside the pri-
mary image within the main shrine. In larger temples the
goddess's shrine may be so important that it may become a
significant temple in its own right, either with its own enclo-
sures within the principal deity's concentric prakaras or as a
separate temple entirely, adjoining the principal one or even
at some distance. The temple for the local consort of
Venkatesvara, Alarrnelu Mankai, for example, is located not
within the main temple at Tirupati but several miles away in
another village at Tiruchanur (Alamelmangapuram).
The two goddess shrines at Krishnapuram are very similar
in design, consisting of the same plan of attached hall and
porch with a long columned aisle in front. Exhibiting the
distinctly ornamental character of the Nayaka period, the
subsidiary structures of this temple are all clearly sixteenth
century.
16 Yimana of Adinatha temple, Alvar Tirunagari (photograph
by the author)
Building a Sacred Past
How can the variation in architecture within one temple be
explained? Is it the result of different periods of construction,
as is the case with many south Indian temples that have
expanded gradually around an early central foundation?
Though only the main shrine may be securely dated by
inscriptions, there is no reason to believe that the whole
temple complex cannot be dated to the same single period of
construction in the 1560s. The name of the festival hall, the
Virappa Mandapa, may refer to Krishnappa's son and succes-
sor, Virappa, who donated land for the merit of his father. If
the gift of land coincided with the construction of the festival
hall, it would mean that the festival hall was built only a
decade or so later than the main shrine. Then, too, the
different form of the goddess shrines does not argue for their
being later additions, for any new temple built in the Nayaka
period would have included them as part of the original
construction.
The deliberate archaism of the main shrine at Krishna-
puram suggests that the design reflects the ritual importance
of the deity and of the site on which the temple was built. A
number of Nayaka-period monuments exhibit a correlation
between the supposed age and sanctity of a site and the
design of the oimana: In short, many shrines on old, estab-
 BUILDING SACRED SPACE IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURY SOUTH INDIA
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17 Vimana of Krsna temple, Srivilli-
puttur (photograph by the author)
lished sacred sites incorporate elaborate designs, whereas
newly established temples often feature plain designs.
Architectural elaboration in the Nayaka period can be seen
in aedicules projecting from the main wall surface with dif-
ferent shaft forms for each one, in different molding on the
basement, and in the projection of full secondary aedicules
from within the primary one. Such an elaboration of the
formal structure coincides with a greater stress on decorative
details, such as finer, crisper moldings for the basement or
the addition of monkeys and parrots in high relief to enliven
the wall surfaces. Characteristic Nayaka-period decorative
emphasis can be seen, for example, at the Kutal Alakar
temple in Madurai (Fig. 15), the Copalakrsna temple on
Srirangam Island, and the Adinatha temple at Alvar Tirunagari
(Fig. 16).
By stark contrast are the main shrines of the Krsna temple
at Srivilliputtur (Fig. 17) and the Kulasekharanatha temple at
Tenkasi. As is the case with the Venkitacalapati temple at
Krishnapuram, inscriptions of about 1570 securely date these
two temples as new foundations. Yet they are not elaborately
designed like the temples similarly dated mentioned above.
Formal complexity, then, is clearly not directly correlated to
the period of construction, and the tendency toward ever
more elaborate designs did not consistently unfold across the
Tamil country. Other factors come into play. Lack of money
cannot explain why these three shrines were built in a plain
style, for all of them have examples of major figural compos-
ite columns placed away from the sacred core: two figural
composite columns and two rows of ya!is in the festival hall of
the Kulasekharanatha temple at Tenkasi, and eight figural
composite columns in the outer enclosure of the Krsna tem-
ple at Srivilliputtur. The Venkitacalapati temple at Krishna-
puram, of course, boasts forty figural composite columns.
Composite columns are complicated, elaborate sculptures,
not the work of second-rate craftsmen. These plain shrines do
not represent a regional style either; within a few miles of
each is an example of an elaborate Nayaka-period oimana:
That no single design can be related to a period or an area
183
is a highly significant conclusion. The linear stylistic develop-
ment of the Tamil Dravida tradition over its thousand years of
transformation, from the earliest Pallava-period monuments
of the seventh century through the later Chola- and Pandyan-
and so on to Vijayanagara- and Nayaka-period structures, was
not consistently practiced by passive, anonymous architects
within a deeply conservative artistic tradition. Proposed here
is one factor that may have influenced the decision to build
shrines in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries in a plain or
an elaborate style, and thus to determine the meaning that
building evoked. The determining factor was the nature of
the site on which the temple was built, whether it was an old
and specifically a sacred site or not.
The Tamil country has a rich sacred geography, and myths
often grew up around the temples in towns and villages to
explain their existence in that location. Temples are grouped
by sectarian affiliation and mythological association. For ex-
ample, there are five sites where Siva as Nataraja danced, the
five locations of elemental iingas (earth, air, fire, water, and
ether), the six places sacred to Murukan, and all the sites
made sacred by association with the lives of the Tamil poet-
saints. In many ways the sixty-three Saiva Nayanmar (the Saiva
equivalent of A/vars) and the twelve Vaisnava A/vars estab-
lished Tamil sacred geography between the sixth and ninth
centuries, singing the love of Siva or Visnu in specific places.
Tamil Srivaisnavism highlights the A/vars in its theology and
worship and established 108 sacred places (divyadesas), the
majority of which are in southern India. Of the elaborate
shrines cited above, all are Vaisnava temples on old sacred
sites where there had been or is an older temple: the Kutal
Makar is in Madurai, one of south India's oldest sacred sites,
now better known for the Saiva Minaksi-Sundaresvara temple;
the Copalakrsna temple is within the great Vaisnava temple
of Ranganatha on Srirangam Island, the second most im-
portant Tamil Vaisnava sacred site after Vaikuntha, Visnu's
heaven; and the Adinatha temple at Alvar Tirunagari is the
location of many events in the early life of the poet-saint
Nammalvar.
 184 ART BULLETIN JUNE 2008 VOLUME XC NUMBER 2
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18 Mucchukundesvara temple, Kodumbalur, 10th century
(photograph by the author)
A distinction is sometimes made between those Tamil tem-
ples built on "sacred" and those built on "royal" sites. "Sa-
cred" temples grow by accretion over centuries and have no
particular association with rulers, whereas "royal" temples are
built in one phase, are associated with a particular king, and,
if not abandoned, were at least added to. The Rajarajesvara
temple at Tanjavur and the Rajendracolisvara temple at Gan-
gaikondacolapuram in central Tamil Nadu, both from the
eleventh century, are cited most often as examples of the
"royal" temple. This, however, is a simplification, for "royal"
temples are of course sacred, and new structures may also be
added to them. These great Chola temples are still in active
worship and, significantly, were completed not in the Chola
period but long after, in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies under the local rule of the Tanjavur Nayakas. Within
the enclosure of the Rajarajesvara temple a new, very elabo-
rate Subramanya temple was built in the seventeenth century.
New construction was possible because the site had been
sanctified by antiquity.
Nevertheless, the three plain uimanas at Srivilliputtur, Ten-
kasi, and Krishnapuram may be considered royal sites be-
cause their inscriptions explicitly refer to royal patrons and
the temples' foundation dates. An archaic design was chosen
for the oimama, the sacred and ritual heart of the temple, to
make it appear to be older than it actually was. Although a
direct equation between plain and old, or indeed late and
elaborate, is not the case today any more than it was in the
sixteenth century, the basic characteristics of these plain shrines
are associated with the older Tamil temples. Comparing these
deliberately archaic sixteenth-century temples with a tenth-cen-
tury example, such as the Mucchukundesvara temple at Kodum-
balur on the periphery of the area ruled by the Madurai Nayakas
just south of Srirangam, makes this clear (Fig. 18).
Why, though, put inscriptions on a temple if the point was
to convince the viewer that it is an old structure? In any event,
inscriptions are not a major visual feature of Hindu art, and
labels identifying deities are very rare. 32 Temple inscriptions
primarily serve to record details of donations and not to
convey meanings about the building's design or iconography.
In a richly oral culture, the temple makes its statement
through its visual impact, not through a small inscription,
often inaccessible or unreadable to many sixteenth-century
(not to mention, modern) visitors. At Krishnapuram the
Tamil inscriptions were carved on either side of the entrance
to the main shrine, where they might have been read by
visitors or perhaps read for them by an accompanying priest.
Often inscriptions on Tamil temples are placed on the lower
moldings of the base or on other less prominent locations.
But the two inscriptions at Krishnapuram do not describe the
foundation of the temple, just donations to the presiding
deity. It is the Sanskrit copperplates in the elite literary
language that outline the temple's foundation, and these
were stored out of sight in the temple. The audience for these
was at the court, where they were composed and engraved,
and for the temple authorities who took possession of the
plates as legal documents.
Because age confers status and sanctity, the most important
temples are often those of great antiquity. Visitors to many
Tamil temples, for example, are often told by the priests that
the temple is five thousand years old. Writing about the
Minaksi-Sundaresvara temple at Madurai in the 1780s, Adam
Blackader noted that "the age and founder of these buildings
is not to be ascertained, as the brahmins conceal the dates,
from an idea that their great antiquity increases the venera-
tion of the people."33 Pointing out to a priest that the entire
temple was actually built about three hundred years ago is
missing the point; it is the site, not the architectural fabric,
that is sacred. This is clear from the examples of temples on
old sacred sites that were wholly replaced in the Nayaka
period in the highly elaborate form described above. Build-
ing in an archaic style would thus confer enhanced sacred
status on a new structure. A oimana in an archaic style such as
that at Krishnapuram would be entirely appropriate for an
old and venerable deity like Venkatesvara,
Contemporary literature is also witness to the growing
awareness of the impact of individual sacred sites. The Nayaka
period was marked by political instability and temple construc-
tion, in both numbers and size. An element of this expansion
was the composition of site-related mythological literature, the
sthalapumno». David Shulman has noted that Saiva sthalapuralJas
typically attempt to elevate the particular site to great antiquity
and mythological importance.P" Though undoubtedly pre-
ceded by oral literature and now-lost texts, the bulk of the
 BUILDING SACRED SPACE IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURY SOUTH INDIA
sthalapura1Jas known today were written down exactly when
many temples were being expanded or founded, in the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries.Y
The relief sculpture at Krishnapuram also illustrates the
growing weight attached to sacred landscape, the site-specific
character of deities and their representation, in temple de-
sign. Vertical panels beneath the flat roof of the first enclo-
sure's entrance corridor and the interior of the festival hall
depict many forms of Visnu, His iconography in these panels
varies-standing with Bhu and Sri, lying on the serpent Sesa
with various hand gestures, or seated on Sesa-s-each one in the
specific form related to a particular site, such as Ranganatha at
Srirangam or Padmanabha at Trivandrum. The sacred Vaisnava
landscape is therefore an aspect of temple ornamentation as
much as it is an influence on architectural design.
If the intention of the patron and architect of this temple
was to evoke the past through design and for later viewers to
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see this, then it may further be asked, what past? Among the
many Vaisnava temples across the Tamil country the most
revered are those included in the auspicious Srivaisnava sa-
cred places (divyadeSas), the locations of the 108 manifesta-
tions of Visnu sung about by the twelve Alvars. The first of
these is Vaikuntha, Visnu's heaven; many Tamil temples are
described as "Heaven on Earth," and their layout is similar to
literary descriptions of Vaikuntha. The majority of the divya-
deso», however, are located in the Tamil country and became
the sites of important temples. By founding a temple in the
sixteenth century that aimed to evoke the past, the patrons of
Krishnapuram were specifically commemorating the era of
the Alvars, the founding figures of Tamil Vaisnavism.i''' A
further layer of meaning may be attributed to this temple's
sacred status, for the temple is dedicated to one of the 108
manifestations of Visnu: Visnu as Venkatesvara at Tirupati. As
noted above, the temple at Krishnapuram is an architectural
"copy" of the more famous religious site at Tirupati. That the
temple at Krishnapuram does not materially replicate the
form of the earlier, ninth-century foundation at Tirupati is
not essential to its identification with the other site. The
names of the presiding deity and his two consorts sufficed to
arouse associations with the prototype.
The Madurai Nayakas may have been attempting a two-
pronged approach to establish the supposed age of Krishna-
purarri's oimana. They wanted the archaism of the main
shrine to imply that the temple dated from the era of the
Alvars and was a "copy" of a more famous pilgrimage site.
Moreover, they wanted the temple to be thought a small
Pandyan foundation that they had gloriously expanded and
ornamented. In claiming to be the successors of the earlier
dynastic Pandyan rulers or even Pandyans themselves, Krish-
nappa and the other Madurai Nayakas were following histor-
ical precedents of using deliberate archaism in design for
political propaganda. A notable north Indian example is the
imperial Gupta use in the fourth and fifth century CE of
third-century BCE Mauryan artistic forms to plant an associ-
ation with the greatness of the earlier rulers.Y In the fif-
teenth century the Vijayanagara appropriation of Tamil ar-
chitecture for the creation of an imperial temple style may
similarly be seen as a desire to visually emulate the stature of
the earlier Chola Empire.i'" George Michell has also proposed
that the temples built by the Tanjavur Nayakas at Kumbakonam
185
from the early seventeenth century are deliberately archaic, a
form he calls "Neo-Chola" to suggest the continuity of the
Tanjavur Nayakas with their more powerful and illustrious
predecessors in the same region. 39 To some degree, the
Tanjavur Nayakas' sense of continuity with the Cholas was
expressed not in terms of style but in their choice of which
temples to expand. They transformed the Riijagopala temple
at Mannarkuti into their dynastic shrine and made significant
additions to both the Rajarajesvara temple at Tanjavur and
the Tyagaraja temple at Tiruvarur, all important foundations
of the Chola period even if not all clearly royal. Temple
traditions are understood primarily regionally rather than
dynastically, but this does not in any way preclude patrons'
use of architectural language to convey meanings about the
present and indeed the past. The archaism of Krishna-
puram's uimana may be a deliberate effort to make the
temple look like an earlier foundation, perhaps one from
the Pandyan period like those at nearby Srivaikuntam or
Tirunelveli, itself a Pandyan capital. Many temples in the
southernmost Pandyan region dating to the eighth to twelfth
century are striking for their relative simplicity of design
when compared with the contemporary foundations in the
central Chola region.
Epics, Folk Drama, and Nayaka-Period Sculpture
The sculpture at Krishnapuram, like the architecture, illus-
trates the attempts of the Madurai Nayakas to negotiate their
role as heirs not only to the recent imperial past ofVijayana-
gara but also, to a lesser extent, to the longer, imperial, and
religious past of Pandyan southern Tamil Nadu. The visually
arresting composite column figures as well as the reliefs on
the columns' surfaces demonstrate both continuity with the
past and significant innovation.
Figural composite columns are generally placed in two main
locations in Tamil temple complexes: along corridors that lead
into and surround the main shrine; and in detached festival
halls. They are invariably placed symmetrically, like opposite
like. Thus, an aisle may be lined with a variety of composite
columns, some with yalis, others with deities, and others plain,
but each of these types will face a similar one. In addition, a
sculpture of a deity is often paired with that of a related deity,
either on a neighboring column or on the one opposite. All
these distribution patterns are seen at Krishnapuram.
The figural composite columns of Nayaka-period Tamil
Nadu present a broad range of subjects. The most common is
the yali and the related cavalryman on a rearing horse. Also
portrayed are deities, both those known across the whole of
India and local gods and goddesses, figures from folk litera-
ture, guardian figures, and portraits of donors or kings. The
examples at Krishnapuram illustrate a great number of these.
The local nature and unprecedented depiction of many of these
subjects make their identification difficult at this early stage in
the study of later south Indian art. 40
The inner enclosure at Krishnapuram houses two pairs of
deities unusual before the sixteenth century but very com-
mon in the Nayaka period: Siva as Virabhadra, here embod-
ied in two forms (Figs. 5, 19), and Manmatha (or Kama)
together with his consort Rati. These three deities appear as
large-scale figural composite columns in Nayaka-period tem-
ples all across the Tamil country. Virabhadra is a fierce form
 186 ART BULLETIN JUNE 2008 VOLUME XC NUMBER 2
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19 Composite column of Virabhadra holding sword and kombu
(horn), on north side of inner corridor, Venkitacalapati tem-
ple (photograph by the author)
of Siva, created in anger after he had been insulted by Daksa
and the latter's daughter Sati, Siva's consort, had killed her-
self. Virabhadra destroyed Daksa's sacrifice in a frenzy. After
Virabhadra killed Daksa and severed his head, Daksa was
reborn with a goat's head. Virabhadra is manifested as a
menacing, energetic figure, usually two- but sometimes eight-
or ten-armed, with a sword in one hand. In another hand he
holds either a small shield or musical instrument, perhaps
the crescent-shaped horn (kombu).41 In Nayaka-period tem-
ples columns with two versions of Virabhadra, named Agni
and Aghora Virabhadra, sometimes described as brothers, are
often placed either opposite or next to each other. On the south
side at Krishnapuram the mustached Virabhadra raises a shield
above his left shoulder and points a sword held in his right hand
down to the ground; a garland of small heads is draped across
his thigh (Fig. 5). On the north side this figure holds the
musical instrument in his raised left hand and a sword in his
right, both now broken (Fig. 19).42 The royal figure alongside
him holds a VItia (a stringed instrument) in his right hand.
Virabhadra, although rarely depicted in the sculpture of
earlier periods in Tamil Nadu, was commonly worshiped in
the Deccan.Y When Telugu speakers from the eastern Dec-
20 Manmatha (Kama) composite column, south side, inner
corridor, Venkitacalapati temple (photograph by the author)
can migrated south in large numbers beginning in the fif-
teenth century, they most likely brought with them their
worship of Virabhadra. Settling in Tamil Nadu as far south as
the Tirunelveli region,44 they came as both agriculturalists,
settling in previously marginal areas, and as warriors, eventu-
ally exerting considerable power as the later Nayaka dynasties
of the seventeenth century. Virabhadra's cult attained con-
siderable popularity at Vijayanagara about this time; many
shrines to the deity were established there, and a major
Virabhadra temple was built at Lepakshi farther south be-
tween 1530 and 1542. 45 Virabhadra composite columns are
found in temples across the southern districts of Tamil
Nadu-at Krishnapuram, Madurai, Tattikompu, Srivilliputtur,
Tenkasi, Tirunelveli, Srivaikuntam, Tirukkurunkudi, Tiruvattar,
Avadaiyarkoyil, and Ramesvaram.t'' Even though there are
few temples dedicated to Virabhadra, the distribution of
columns of this deity suggests a link with this Telugu migra-
tion. The move from north to south resulted in a change in
iconography: the passive stance of Deccani sculptures of
Virabhadra is replaced by the energetic postures of the much
larger Tamil Nayaka-period figural columns.
Manmatha and Rati, the god and goddess of erotic love,
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21 Rati composite column, north side, inner corridor,
Venkitacalapati temple (photograph by the author)
are the second-most common figural composite columns in
Nayaka-period Tamil Nadu, after those of the ya{i and horse-
man. They are usually placed together, either facing across
an aisle, as at Krishnapuram, or next to each other at the
entrance to a mandapa. Manmatha is generally depicted in a
fashion similar to the many active warriors, standing with a
bow in one hand. In this instance, however, the bow is made
of sugarcane (Fig. 20). In two examples in Kancipuram in
northern Tamil Nadu, Manmatha rides a large parakeet, but
in the more widespread sculptures in southern Tamil Nadu
he is shown stepping forward holding a sugarcane bow in one
hand and a flower arrow in the other, often riding in a
four-columned chariot (ratha). Although at Krishnapuram he
does not ride in a ratha, he is attended by two women, one of
whom holds a parasol. His consort Rati is almost uniformly
shown riding on a mythical bird (hamsa), holding a mirror in
one hand and a flower in the other. Sculptors often paid
great attention to the detail in the feathers of Rati's mount or
her jewelry: a small hole in Rati's nose in the fine example at
Krishnapuram is apparently for the addition of a separate
ornament (Fig. 21). Whereas sculptures of these two deities
featured occasionally in earlier Tamil art, their prevalence in
the Nayaka period is striking. Manmatha is also associated
187
22 Kama, festival hall in outer enclosure of Venkitacalapati
temple (photograph by the author)
with Vasanta, Spring, personified as an attendant. The cele-
bration of Vasanta festivals appears to have become more
common in this period in southern India, and specific struc-
tures for their celebration began to be built. 47
One also sees in Nayaka-period composite columns an
increased emphasis on figures from the epics the Ramaya'(la
and the Mahabharata and on figures drawn from local Tamil
folk myths and literature. All the remaining figures at Krish-
napuram fit into this broad category. Figural composite col-
umns in southern Tamil Nadu are distinguished by the great
numbers of figures that are locally identified as based on the
Mahabharata. This immense epic poem, compiled in its
present form between the fourth century BCE and the fourth
century CE, recounts the rivalry between two families, the
Kauravas and the Pandavas, for control of northern India.
The Sanskrit versions of the epic are complemented by a host
of regional tellings, all of which have been, and continue to
be, a source of inspiration in the arts and literature. The
Mahabharata was not new to sixteenth-eentury Tamil Nadu.
References to the epic can be found in several earlier sources:
Tamil texts of the fourth to sixth centuries; the Cankarn
 188 ART BULl.ETIN JUNE 2008 VOLUME XC NUMBER 2
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23 Arjuna, festival hall in outer enclosure of Venkitacalapati
temple (photograph by the author)
literature (the earliest body of literature in Tamil) and the
Cilappatikaram; a mid-ninth-century Tamil version composed
by Peruntevanar, only a portion of which survives; an inscrip-
tion of 1210 from the Vataranyesvara temple at Tiruvalankatu
that refers to the donor, possibly an officer of Kulottunka III,
who was said to have translated "the Paratam into sweet
Tamil"; and the finest of all Tamil versions, the Villiparatam,
composed by a Vaisnava Brahmin, Villiputturar (or Villiput-
tur Alvar) about 1400. 4 8 Like the regional versions of the
Ramayar;,a, these texts incorporate folk themes and thus ex-
press a distinct Tamil understanding of the Mahabhiirata.
While the Mahabharata itself may not have been new to
Nayaka-period Tamil Nadu, depicting the main figures from
it in major sculpture certainly was.
Among the figures from the Mahabharata at Krishnapuram
are Arjuna and Kama, famed archers, whose combat occu-
pies a central place in the Karnaparoan, the eighth book of
the epic. They appear next to each other in the entrance to
the festival hall, Karna, on the west side, with a broken bow in
his left hand and a snake held up high in his right hand (Fig.
22), and Arjuna, on the east, with a bow and arrow (Fig. 23).
The snake in Kama's hand is the miraculous and most deadly
24 Fight between Bhirna and Purusamrga, south side, inner
corridor, Venkitacalapati temple (photograph by the author)
weapon the nagastra (snake arrow), which he fired at the
height of the battle. Arjuna was saved by his divine charioteer
Krsna, who lowered their chariot so that the arrow hit only
Arjuna's headdress.l''
Also drawn from the Mahabharata is Arjuna's brother Bhima,
who is identified by his club. Architectural sculpture of southern
Tamil Nadu often features the battle between Bhima and a
lion-legged figure also armed with a club, called Purusamrga
(Sanskrit, "man-beast"; in Tamil, Purusamirukam) , occasion-
ally portrayed with another warrior with a club. This fight is
shown either on facing columns or in several examples as
figures encircling a single column, as at Krishnapuram (Fig.
24). The myth is not in Sanskrit versions of the Mahabharata
and is a local Tamil folk theme.P" Though the Purusamrga
alone-a composite half man- half animal-is represented in
earlier relief sculpture, the fight between him and Bhirna
appears in Tamil sculpture only in the sixteenth century,
often on a large scale as at Krishnapuram and restricted to
the southern districts of the Tamil country. Other good
examples can be seen at nearby Madurai, Tirunelveli, and in
a cluster just south of Tirunelveli at Kalakkad, Tirukku-
runkudi, and Nanguneri.
The third figure on the column with Bhirna and Puru-
~amrga is Yudhisthira. To fulfill an important ritual, Yudhis-
thira needed the milk of Purusamrga, a devotee of Siva, who
 BUILDING SACRED SPACE IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURY SOUTH INDIA
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25 Minaksi/Rambhii, festival hall, Venkitacalapati temple
(photograph by the author)
lived in the forest. Yudhisthira's younger brother Bhirna ob-
tained the milk while Purusamrga was performing a deep
penance, or meditation; when the latter realized the offense,
he gave angry chase. The Pandava prince was captured and
could not escape Purusamrga's powerful grip, and so called
on Yudhisthira to adjudicate the dispute. At Krishnapuram
Bhirna and Purusamrga spread around two sides of the
monolithic composite column, waving their clubs; Yudhisthira
stands on the other side passing judgment with one finger held
upright.
Three images of women at Krishnapuram may be related to
these epic figures: one opposite the Bhirna-Purusamrga col-
umn in the inner enclosure and the women at either end of
the porch of the festival hall. The former stands in a relaxed
dance posture (calura) with one hand on her hip and her right
hand raised with the index finger pointing up (sucimudrii); a
grotesque knock-kneed clown with a toothy grin, holding a club
and a bird, appears to her right.
The two women in the mandapa are difficult to identify but
may relate to the central scene, the conflict between Aijuna
189
26 Kuraoan kidnapping a princess, festival hall, Venkitacalapati
temple (photograph by the author)
and Kama. At first glance, both look like dancers, but the
presence of objects in their hands and similar figures in
nearby temples indicate that they can be identified more
specifically. The figure at the east end, who holds a par-
tially broken flower garland in her hands, may be Draupadi
offering a garland to her favored husband, Arjuna, after
his defeat of Kama: a similar group of figures at nearby
Tirukkurunkudi is identified as these characters from the
Mahabharala. Whereas Draupadi is well known in pan-
Indian, Sanskrit literature as the wife of the five Pandavas,
she became a significant folk deity in northern Tamil Nadu
from the fourteenth century. The rise of regionally based,
folk cults in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries may
explain the appearance of such a goddess in the period's
sculpture. 5 1 The woman at the west end holds small objects
in each hand, perhaps a small flower in her right and a
fruit in her raised left (Fig. 25). If the "fruit" is identified
as a small breast with the nipple pointing up, this figure
may be Minaksi, a warrior goddess born with three breasts
who lost the third when she met her future husband
Sundaresvara, a form of Siva. The myth of Minaksi was
central to the Madurai Nayakas, who ruled as regents of
this powerful goddess. They celebrated the myth in festi-
vals, as do their successors to this day.
Installing two powerful goddesses, Draupadi and Minaksi,
 190 ART BULLETIN JUNE 2008 VOLUME XC NUMBER 2
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27 Kuratti kidnapping a prince, festival hall, Venkitacalapati
temple (photograph by the author)
at either end of the mandapa makes sense in the broad
context of Madurai Nayaka patronage in southern Tamil
Nadu. An alternative identification, however, suggested by
modern worshipers at the site, links the woman at the
western end more closely with the iconographic themes of
the mandapa as a whole. This figure could be Rambha, one of
the most beautiful of the apsaras, the celestial beauties and
dancers of the gods dwelling in Indra's heavenly paradise,
Svarga. When Arjuna lived in Svarga as the goddess Indra's
guest during his twelve-year exile in the forest, Rambha
danced in honor of Arjuna on the occasion of his birthday.52
If she is Rambha, then the identification and meaning of the
objects in her hands remain unclear.
The emphasis on local, folk sources is continued by the
final pair of sculptures at the front of the festival hall. These
depict, in the center of the west side, a well-dressed man with
a mustache, holding a sword and bow, abducting a smaller
woman, who pulls a cape over her head (Fig. 26). The paired
figure in the center of the east side shows the reverse: a larger
woman holding a small bird in her right hand running off
with a smaller man on her shoulders who is clutching a sword
(Fig. 27). These figures are locally identified as a KUravaIl
kidnapping a princess and a Kurattirunning off with a prince.
The Kuraoanci dance-drama featuring these characters was a
productive genre of Tamil literature written between about
28 Kuratti reading the palm of another woman on rear of
Kuratti composite column, Venkitacalapati temple (photo-
graph by the author)
1680 and 1800, originally performed in temples during festi-
vals. 5 3 The drama centers on two love affairs, linked by the
Kuraoanci or Kuraui, a woman from the Kuraoar caste, who
are sometimes described as gypsies, itinerant bird catchers,
and fortune-tellers. In one part of the drama, the Kuraui tells
the fortune of a high-caste woman who has fallen in love with
a passing prince, while another episode centers on the Ku-
ratti's love for a man from her own group. Examples of the
main protagonists feature in temple sculptures from the
1560s, thus reversing the expected relationship between text
and image, notably in the thousand-column mandapa at Ma-
durai, at Tirunelveli, and at Tirukkurunkudi, where the Kura-
vaIl and Kuratti are presented as individual sculptures. The
incidence of these sculptures in temples of the sixteenth
century again reflects the migration of new social groups
through southern India and the increasing representation of
previously marginal groups in the public sphere. Although
these kidnapping themes do not feature in the later literary
portraits of these groups in the Kuraoanci dance-drama, the
accuracy of the local identification is demonstrated by other
sculptural details. A central narrative in the Kuraoanci drama
involves a Kuraui reading the palm of another woman: this
event is sculpted on the back of one of the columns at
Krishnapuram (Fig. 28).54
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29 Virabhadra with sword and kombu (horn), festival hall in
third enclosure of Kallapiran temple, Srivaikuntam (photo-
graph by the author)
How was the iconographic program at Krishnapuram as a
whole viewed by an audience of both pilgrims and deities in
procession? Devotees entering the temple through the gate-
way are struck first by the huge figures bursting from the
festival hall's front columns. Going through the interior en-
closure toward the main shrine, worshipers are flanked by the
columns paired across the aisle. These sculptures are also
seen by the deities in procession, who emerge from the main
shrine during festivals and enter the festival hall for a short
period of hours or days. The sculptures illustrate two related
emphases: the importance of regional Tamil traditions of art
and myth and the large number of characters drawn from the
Manabharata. Although no two Hindu temples are the same,
the architectural design and the style and subjects of the
architectural sculpture may be shared with nearby temples.
For example, at Alvar Tirunagari composite columns of Ar-
juna and the dancing woman are very like those at Krishna-
puram; at Srivaikuntam there is a similar pair of Virabhadras
across the front of the larger festival hall (Fig. 29); at Tiruk-
kurunkudi Kama and Arjuna (Fig. 30) appear alongside the
figures identified at Krishnapuram as Draupadi and Minaksi/
Rambha, The similarity of subject matter, scale, and style
suggests that these architectural sculptures, and indeed the
mandapas they are part of, all date to about the same period
in the late sixteenth century and were perhaps created by the
same group of sculptors.
191
30 Draupadi composite column, cruciform entrance hall in
third enclosure of Alakiya Nampirayar Perumal temple,
Tirukkurunkudi (photograph by the author)
Even if the 6Y2-foot-(2-meter-)high figures sculpted on the
composite columns are clearly the boldest, most striking
sculptures in the temple at Krishnapuram, they do not con-
stitute its sole ornamentation. The majority of the surfaces of
the flat columns bear a relief of a human or divine figure, an
animal, or a pattern; as each shaft has three cubical blocks,
there are twelve surfaces for reliefs per column. The great
variety of subjects is entirely consistent with similar temples
built at Vijayanagara, yet the reliefs at Krishnapuram are in
deeper relief and the figures correspondingly more rounded.
A detail of these reliefs confirms a date in the 1560s for the
entire temple at Krishnapuram. All the small royal figures
depicted in the temple-in the gopura's gateway, the festival
hall, the corridor before the main shrine (Fig. 5), and those
before the goddess shrines-wear the tall, conical cloth cap
with a rounded top called a ku!!ayi. This form of cap, which is
derived from a Persian form of headwear, the cloth kulah, was
worn by south Indian kings only from the late fifteenth or
early sixteenth century.i" In the early seventeenth century
royal figures began to wear a tighter-fitting cloth cap. This
detail argues against dating the composite columns much
 192 ART BULLETIN JUNE 2008 VOLUME XC NUMBER 2
later than the plainer main shrine. Even if construction spread
over a decade or more, the temple at Krishnapuram was entirely
built in the 1560s and 1570s. The artists at Krishnapuram can
be seen to have taken sculptural genres known at the capital
of the empire, the reliefs on columns and the innovative
composite columns, and adapted them to a new geographic
and political context-one that is Tamil, located in the deep
south, and set after the disastrous defeat of Vijayanagara in
1565 that led to the rise in power of the Nayakas.
Commemoration and Innovation in Nayaka South India
The construction of the Hindu Venkitacalapati temple at
Krishnapuram in the 1560s created a new sacred site on the
frontier of the rapidly disintegrating Vijayanagara Empire, a
frontier far distant from the capital and on the cusp of a new
political and cultural era in southern India. This temple is
noteworthy for the clearly dated inscriptions outlining its
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foundation and the patronage by the regional rulers, the
Madurai Nayakas. In the three dated inscriptions from the
site and in the architectural and sculptural design of this new
temple, its artists and patrons demonstrate their engagement
with both the immediate Vijayanagara imperial past and with
the older, local Tamil past. The deliberately multilayered
meanings of this temple, drawn from the material evidence of
the building itself rather than from Sanskrit texts, cannot be
stripped down to simply stating that the Hindu temple serves
as an image of cosmic form. The conscious archaism of the
main shrine, built in an architectural tradition one thousand
years old, overtly expresses a connection with the past and
commemorates it. This is a primordial past, evoking the
structure of the universe and Visnu's heavenly abode, but is
specifically the sacred past of the founding figures of Tamil
devotionalism, the A]vars of the sixth to ninth centuries. The
temple at Krishnapuram, as a "copy" of a more famous tem-
ple, the Venkatesvara at Tirupati further north, aimed to
arouse the religious associations, charisma, and power ema-
nating from the latter.
The Madurai Nayaka patrons of this temple were also
aware of the political dimension of temple patronage, an
association expressed not only in the written word of inscrip-
tions but also visually in the choice and deployment of archi-
tectural and iconographic motifs. The temple at Krishna-
puram, like its patrons, connects with both the Pandyan
imperial past of southern Tamil Nadu and the more recent
past of the fragmenting Vijayanagara Empire. Various con-
notations are present in an Indian temple such as Krishna-
puram that "vibrate," to paraphrase Krautheimer, in the
mind of the sensitive observer. Such layering of meaning
recalls the Indian literary concept of Slesa, or double enten-
dre. Both the architects and patrons of south Indian temples
must be considered as active agents in making their contri-
bution with regard to the location and design of their tem-
ples, in a wider sacred, political, and artistic landscape. The
widely acknowledged increasing ornamental nature of south
Indian temple design is not a passive linear process from
earlier to later periods. Architects and patrons make choices,
even in a deeply conservative tradition such as Hindu temple
architecture.
The commemoration of the past-primordial, Tamil Vaisnava,
Pandyan, and Vijayanagara-accompanied significant artistic
innovation, as is most clearly demonstrated in the architec-
tural sculpture of this temple. But this innovation was re-
served for the outermost sections of the temple, those at a
distance from the sacred core of the main shrine. A tendency
among some scholars of Indian temple architecture to dis-
cuss the main shrine in detail and then dismiss the surround-
ing structures as later additions or of lesser interest belies the
scale, innovation, ritual, and artistic interest taken in the
additional shrines, corridors, halls, and gateways of the de-
veloped south Indian temple. The temple at Krishnapuram is
important evidence for the cultural dynamism of the [ate
sixteenth century in the Tamil country, despite the apparent
political and military weaknesses of the Nayaka rulers them-
selves. For the temple has dated examples of an innovative
new form of architectural sculpture, the monolithic compos-
ite columns with six- to nine-foot-high figures of deities and
other figures attached. The subjects depicted, especially the
emphasis on figures from the epic Mahabharata and local folk
literature, illustrate the temple builders' concern with both
long-established cultural forms and new artistic currents in
this period of south India's history. Far from being an era of
stagnant late medieval culture at the tail end of the Vijaya-
nagara Empire, whose cultural vitality is now acknowledged,
the Nayaka period in the Tamil country, with its great expan-
sion of temple construction and its new artistic forms, can
claim to be a dynamic cultural period in its own right.
Crispin Branfoot's research focuses on the art and architecture of
early modern southern India. He is the author of Gods on the
Move: Architecture and Ritual in the South Indian Temple
(2007) and co-editor with Ruth Barnes of Pilgrimage: The Sacred
Journey (2006) [Department of Art and Archaeology, School of
Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University ofLondon, Thorn-
haugh Street, Russell Square, London WCIH OXG}.
Notes
I would like to thank James Allan, Anna Dallapiccola, Leslie Orr, the anony-
mous readers, and the editorial team at The An Bulletin, including Fronia
Simpson, who edited the manuscript, for their comments and criticism of this
article. The research on which it is based was generously funded by the British
Academy, the Society for South Asian Studies, and the School of Oriental and
African Studies.
1. Richard Krautheimer, "Introduction to an 'Iconography of Medieval
Architecture." in Studies in Early Christian, Medieval and Renaissance An
(London: University of London Press, 1971), 115-50.
2. Paul Crossley, "Medieval Architecture and Meaning: The Limits of Ico-
nography," Burlington Magazine 130 (1988): 1I6-2I. Oleg Grabar has
similarly investigated the meaning of Islamic architecture, noting the
importance of studying a monument in the fullness of its historical cir-
cumstances; Grabar, "The Iconography of Islamic Architecture:' in Con-
tent and Context of the Visual Ans in the Islamic World, ed, Priscilla P.
Soucek (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1988),51-
65.
3. This is the normal modern Tamil spelling of the deity better known by
its Sanskrit or Telugu form as Venkatesvara.
4. Pierre-Sylvain Filliozat and Vasundhara Filliozat, Hampi-Vijayanagar: The
Temple of Vithala (New Delhi: Sitaram Bhartia Institute of Scientific Re-
search, 1988),29,32-37.
5. Peter Rockwell, The An of Stoneworking: A Reference Guide (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993), 19.
6. Nicholas Penny, The Materials of Sculpture (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1993), 24.
7. Heinrich Zimmer, Myths and Symbols in Indian An and Civilization
(Washington, D.C.: Pantheon Books, 1946), 130-36.
 BUILDING SACRED SPACE IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURY SOUTH INDIA
8. The myth of Lingodbhava concerns the emergence of Siva from within
a great column or linga of fire to quell the pride of Brahma and Visnu,
In sculpture, Siva in anthropomorphic form steps out of an oval frame
ringed by flames from within a cylindrical column; small images of
Brahma and Visnu are sometimes placed above and below, fruitlessly
seeking the limits of this awesome divine power. Visnu in his man-lion
form as Narasimha saves the pious devotee Prahlada from his antigod
father, Hiranyakasipu, who had usurped the authority of the gods.
Hiranyakasipu challenged Prahlada's faith in Visnu by saying that if he
was supreme and all-pervading then he must even be in a column of
the palace. When Hiranyakasipu kicked the nearest one, the column
split open to reveal Visnu in his terrifying form as Narasirnha, who
promptly tore Hiranyakasipu apart. The myth is usually depicted with
Hiranyakasipu lying across Narasimha's lap, sometimes with the split
halves of the column behind them.
9. The existing scholarly literature on the architecture and sculpture of
the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Tamil temple is still limited.
Many major sites have scarcely been described, let alone critically stud-
ied. See Crispin Branfoot, Gods on the Move: Architecture and Ritual in the
South Indian Temple (London: Society for South Asian Studies, 2007).
Brief discussions of Krishnapuram include George Michell, Architecture
and Art of Southern India: Vijayanagara and the Successor States (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 115, 189, who mentions the
sculpture but does not include any illustrations and dates it 150 years
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too late, and a short, descriptive, unillustrated article in Avvai Natara-
jan and Natana Kasinathan, Art Panorama of the Tamils (Madras: State
Department of Archaeology, 1992),35-39.
10. Burton Stein, ed., South Indian Temples: An Analytical Reconsideration
(Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1978), 7-8.
II. Anila Verghese, Religious Traditions at Vijayanagara as Revealed through Its
Monuments (New Delhi: Manohar and American Institute of Indian
Studies, 1995), 19.
12. Arjun Appadurai, Worship and Conflict under Colonial Rule: A South In-
dian Case (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981),63. It is
questionable, however, how relevant this conception is for the preced-
ing Chola period.
13. Annual Report on Epigraphy (Archaeological Survey of India, Southern Circle)
nos. 16, 17 (1912).
14. The Saka era, beginning on the first day of the month Caitra in 78 CE,
is the standard era system in south India from the sixth century CEo
See Richard Salomon, Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscrip-
tions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages (Oxford: Ox-
ford University Press, 1998), 182-84.
15. T. A. Gopinatha Rao and Rao Sahib T. Raghaviah, "Krishnapuram
Plates of Sadashivaraya, Saka Samvat 1489," h-pigraphia Indica 9 (1907-
8): 328-41.
16. Further information about Krishnappa's activities in southern Tamil
Nadu is recorded in a Tamil text published by William Taylor in the
1830s. It states that Krishnappa built a town called after himself, Krish-
napuram, and there "he built a Saiva temple, a Vaisnava temple, and
agraras [agrahiiras, Brahmin settlements]; had a terpacolam [teppakuiam.
water-filled tank for the float festival] dug; and furnished the town with
every other customary appurtenance." Only the Vaisnava temple survives,
the subject of this article. The text also records that he built a similar town
west of Tirunelveli, though no trace remains of this. Krishnappa's founda-
tion of Krishnapuram was clearly significant to the Tamil author, for little
else is mentioned from his eight-year reign. See Taylor, Oriental Historical
Manuscripts in the Tamil Language (Madras: Charles Josiah Taylor, 1835),
vol. 2, 23. An inscription recording a gift of land to the Nellaiyappar tem-
ple in Saka 1483 (1561/62) at Tirunelveli records Krishnappa's patronage
of temples in this region earlier than his foundation of Krishnapuram,
and before the death of his father in 1564; see Annual Report on h-pigraphy/
Archaeological Survey of Madras, no. 121 (1894).
17. The practice of architectural copies is well known in medieval Europe,
as Krautheimer, "Introduction," emphasized with the key example of
the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The first major Islamic monument,
the Dome of the Rock, also in Jerusalem (built 691-92), has also been
copied across the Muslim world: see Grabar, "The Iconography of Is-
lamic Architecture"; and Ebba Koch, The Complete Taj Mahal and the
Riverfront Gardens of Agra (London: Thames and Hudson, 2006), 125.
The Mahabodhi temple marking the site of the Buddha's enlighten-
ment at Bodhgaya in eastern India has also been reproduced, both as
full-scale buildings in Nepal, Burma, and Thailand and as miniature
pilgrimage souvenirs, physically embodying the sacred charisma of the
site across Buddhist Asia; Janice Leoshko, ed., Bodhgaya: The Site of En-
lightenment (Bombay: Marg Publications, 1988). Hinduism does not
have such an established, hierarchical sacred geography as Christianity,
Buddhism, or indeed Islam, and so the choice of architectural copy,
like the nature of the Hindu sacred, is more diffuse.
18. But why did Krishnappa choose Krishnapuram as the location for a
193
new temple? One likely explanation is that Krishnapuram is on a trade
and pilgrimage route along the Tamraparni River. A major group of
nine Vaisnava temples, collectively known as the Navatirupati (Nine
Tirupatis) and including the Kallapiran at Srivaikuntam and the
Adinatha at Alvar Tirunagari, is situated on either side of the river to
the east, halfway between Tirunelveli and the great Murukan (or
Subramanya) temple by the sea at Tiruchendur.
19. Venkitacalapati at Krishnapuram is the modern Tamil spelling of the
same deity. On the rise of Tirupati under Vijayanagara patronage, see
Burton Stein, "The Economic Function of a Mediaeval South Indian
Temple," Journal of Asian Studies 19 (1960): 163-76; Anila Verghese,
"Royal Legitimation through Religion: A Case Study of Vijayanagara,"
Journal of the Asiatic Society of Mumbai 77-78 (2002-3 and 2004): 214-35;
and T. K T. Viraraghavacharya, A History of Tirupati, 3rd ed., 3 vols.
(1953; Tirupati: Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam Religious Publications,
1999).
20. Verghese, Religious Traditions, 72-73.
21. Vishvanatha Nayaka is mentioned as coming from Kancipuram in sev-
eral inscriptions: see Annual Report on South Indian Epigraphy, no. 255
(1930), no. 245 (1933), and no. 111 (1939).
22. For example, Krishnappa's father, Vishvanatha, is described as the
agent of Ramaraya, in two inscriptions from Mannarkoyil and Melach-
chevval dated respectively Saka 1480 (1558/59) and Saka 1472 (1550/
51); see Annual Report on Epigraphy, nos. 385, 599 (1916).
23. Nicholas Dirks, The Hollow Crown: Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom, 2nd
ed. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), 46.
24. R. Sathyanatha Aiyar, History of the Nayaks of Madura (Madras: Oxford
University Press, 1924), 72.
25. Dirks, The Hollow Crown, 46.
26. N. Sethuraman, "Tenkasi Parakrama Pandya and His Successors" (pa-
per, Eighth Annual Congress of the Epigraphical Society of India in
Bhopal, 1982); and Sethuraman, "The Later Pandyas (1371-1759)" (pa-
per, Ninth Annual Congress of the Epigraphical Society of India,
Tiruchirappalli, 1993). T. A. Gopinatha Rao notes that although the
Pandyas fade from the historical record in the early seventeenth cen-
tury, two copperplates from the Kurralanatha temple at Kuttralam be-
long to the supposed reign of one Alaganperuma] Sivala-Varagunarama
Pandya Kulasekharadeva, "who brought back the past," a refrain re-
peated in later Pandyan inscriptions, both dated Saka 1675 (1753/54);
T. A. Gopinatha Rao, "Some Inscriptions of the Later Pandyas or the
Decline of the Pandya Power," Travancore Archaeological Series, vol. 6
(Madras: Methodist Publishing House, 1911-12), 41-152, esp. 59.
27. Velcheru Narayana Rao, David Shulman, and Sanjay Subramanyam,
Symbols of Substance: Court and State in Nayaka Period Tamil Nadu (New
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992),51.
28. Daud Ali, "Royal Eulogy as World History: Rethinking Copper-Plate
Inscriptions in Cola India," in Querying the Medieval: Texts and the History
of Practices in South Asia, by Ronald Inden, Jonathan Walters, and Ali,
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 165-229.
29. Phillip B. Wagoner, Tidings of the King: A Translation and Ethnohistorical
Analysis of the Rayavacakamu (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press,
1993).
30. Ibid., 30.
31. James Fergusson, History of Indian and Eastern Architecture (London:
John Murray, 1876), 285; and Adam Hardy, Indian Temple Architecture:
Form and Transformation (New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Centre for
the Arts, 1995), 18.
32. Compare, for example, the prevalence of inscriptions in Byzantine art
to identity figures in cases where the iconography alone was not con-
sidered sufficient.
33. Adam Blackader, "Description of the Great Pagoda of Madura, the
Choultry of Trimul Naik, in a Letter from Mr. Adam Blackader, Sur-
geon to Sir Joseph Banks, Bart. P.R.S.F.A.S.," Archaelogia or Miscellaneous
Tracts Relating to Antiquity 10 (1792): 454.
34. David Shulman, Tamil Temple Myths: Sacrifice and Divine Marriage in the
South Indian Shaiva Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1980),40-89.
35. Ibid., 353-54.
36. In a similar manner, Grabar ("The Iconography of Islamic Architec-
ture," 55) suggests that the hypostyle mosque, with a single minaret
and an elaborate mihrab area first developed in the seventh and eighth
centuries, was often the first type of mosque built in a newly converted
or conquered area, because in the collective memory of Muslims this
building type had associations with an early, unadulterated form of Is-
lam.
37. Joanna G. Williams, "A Recut Asokan Capital and the Gupta Attitude
towards the Past," Artibus Asiae 35 (1973): 225-40.
 194 ART BULLETIN JUNE 2008 VOLUME XC NUMBER 2
38. George Michell, "Revivalism as the Imperial Mode: Religious Architec-
ture during the Vijayanagara Period," in Perceptions of South Asia's Visual
Past, ed. Catherine B. Asher and Thomas Metcalf (New Delhi: Oxford
and IBH Publishing Co., 1994), 187-97.
39. George Michell, "Chola and Neo-Chola Architecture at Kumbakonam,"
MS in the author's possession, 1998. Alternative explanations may be
relative poverty (the Kumbakonam temples are not among the finest
Nayaka-period creations) or the continuity of a local, regional tradition
of architecture.
40. There is no need to invoke "Western influence" for the supposed in-
creased naturalism of these sixteenth-century and later architectural
sculptures, as A. V. Jeyechandrun has suggested, particularly of new
subjects such as the royal portraits and "gypsies" (kuratti) discussed be-
low. See Jeyechandrun, The Madurai Temple Complex (with Special Refer-
ence to Literature and Legends) (Madurai: Madurai Kamaraj University,
1985), 296. A clear example of Western influence on this genre of
south Indian sculpture may be observed at the Sharada temple at
Sringeri in southwest Karnataka. This temple, built about 1906 by In-
dian artists trained in the British-established Madras School of Art who
had just finished working with the architect Henry Irwin on the new
palace at Mysore, includes four approximately six-foot-high Hindu god-
desses sculpted in the manner of images of Britannia or Queen Victo-
ria.
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41. P. Sambamoorthy, Catalogue of Indian Musical Instruments in the Madras
Museum (Madras: Government Press, 1931), 17 and pI. Ill.
42. The northern "happy" Virabhadra, holding a sword and the kombu
(horn) and sometimes identified as Pakadai Raja in southern Tamil
Nadu, also appearing in the Nellaiyappar temple at Tirunelveli, the
Kallapirajj at Srivaikuntam, and the Nampiraya at Tirukkurunkudi. He
seems to be a comic figure, a stock character in Sanskrit drama, the
vidusaka, and more specifically in Tamil literature of the eleventh cen-
tury on. For the comic theme in Tamil literature and its relationship to
ideas of south Indian kingship, see David Shulman, The King and the
Clown in South Indian Myth and Poetry (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1985). Local guardian deities are sometimes identified with the
pan-Indian Virabhadra in the Tamil country even if they do not share
the same iconography.
43. H. Krishna Shastri, South Indian Images of Gods and Goddesses (19 I6; New
Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1986), 159.
44. David Ludden, Peasant History in South India (Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 1985), 50-52; and Burton Stein, Peasant State and Society in Medi-
aeval South India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 394-96.
45. Verghese, Religious Traditions, 23-25.
46. Virabhadra, though a form of Siva, appears in both Siva and Visnu
temples.
47. For Manmatha, Rati, and the celebration of a Vasanta festival at Vijaya-
nagara, see Anila Verghese, Archaeology, Art and Religion: New Perspectives
on Vijayanagara (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000), 222-38; and R.
Champakalakshmi, Vaisnava Iconography in the Tamil Country (New
Delhi: Orient Longman, 1981), 172-73.
48. See Annual Report on Epigraj}hy/Archaeological Survey of Madras, no. 482
(1905), for the Tiruvalankatu inscription; Alf Hiltebeitel, The Cult of
Draupadi 1, Mythologies: From Gingee to Kuruksetra (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1988), 13-15; Shulman, The King and the Clown, 13-14;
M. S. H. Thompson, "The Mahabharata in Tamil," fournal of the Royal
Asiatic Society, 1960: 115-23; Kamil Zvelebil, Lexicon of Tamil Literature
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995), 395-96.
49. See Vettam Mani, Puranic Encyclopaedia: A Comprehensive Dictionary with
Special Reference to the Epic and Puranic Literature (Delhi: Motilal Banarsi-
dass, 1975),392; and Shulman, The King and the Clown, 385.
50. Anna Dallapiccola and Anila Verghese, "Narrative Reliefs of Bhima and
Purushamriga at Vijayanagara," 73-76, and Crispin Branfoot, "Bhirna
and Purusamirukarn in the Nayaka-Period Sculpture of Tamilnadu,"
77-82, both South Asian Studies 18 (2002). For a broader overview. see
Raja Deekshitar, "Discovering the Anthropomorphic Lion in Indian
Art," Marg 55, no. 4 (June 2004): 34-41. For a discussion of the myth
of Bhirna and Purusamirukam at Krishnapuram, see R. K. Das, Temples
of Tamilnad (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1964), 39.
51. See Hiltebeite1, The Cult of Draupadi.
52. Mahabharata, Adiparva chap. 122, v. 62 and Anusasanaparoa chap. 43, v.
29; see Mani, Puranic Encyclopedia, 642.
53. Indira V. Peterson, "The Evolution of the Kuravarici Dance Drama in
Tamilnadu: Negotiating the 'Folk' and the 'Classical' in the Bharata
Naryam Canon," South Asia Research 18, no. 1 (1998): 39-72; and Peter-
son, 'The Drama of the Kuravanci Fortune-teller: Land, Landscape and
Social Relations in an Eighteenth-Century Tamil Genre," in Tamil Geog-
raphies: Cultural Constructions of Space and Place in South India, ed. Mar-
tha A. Selby and Peterson (Albany: SUNY Press, 2007).
54. A connection between the kidnapping figures and the figures next to
Draupadi and Arjuna is suggested by Hiltebeitel's brief discussion of a
Turopatai Kuravaiui, a Tamil Draupadi cult drama, in which the god-
dess disguises herself as a gypsy fortune-teller (kuratti) and Arjuna as a
kuravar; Hiltebeitel, The Cult of Draupadi, 301-9.
55. Phillip Wagoner, '''Sultan among Hindu Kings': Dress, Titles, and the
Islamicization of Hindu Culture at Vijayanagara," journal of Asian Stud-
ies 55, no. 4 (1996): 851-80; and Anila Vergese, "Court Attire ofVijaya-
nagara (from a Study of Monuments) ," QuarterlyJournal of the Mythic
Society 82, nos. 1-2 (January-:June 1991): 43-61.