Temples of Bihar (Set of 2 Books)

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Temple And Legends of Bihar

PREFACE:

The Sanskrit word Vihar means monastery and it is only natural that the State of Bihar should have a very large number of temples. Most of the temples of Bihar were built of bricks and have been subject to the ravages of time. The relics of ancient Pataliputra are mostly in bricks. Nalanda and Rajgir have both brick and stone temples. The images are usually of black stone and there is an abundant supply of stone-hard and soft-for making the images within the State. Many of the temples that we now see in Bihar are not very old. The temple of Mundeshwari near Bhabua in Shahabad district, which has been described in the text, is commonly accepted as the oldest temple in Bihar. But the legends clearly indicate that there must have many more ancient temples in different parts of Bihar. It may be worthwhile to have an inquiry as to whether some of the temples have not replaced older ones. This question arises because we see temples that are not very old, in which more ancient deities are installed. The temples of Lord Shiva at Deoghar (Santal Parganas district), at Singheshwarsthan (Saharsa district) and at Sonepur (Saran district) are instances. Legends and historic data definitely show that at many places the deities are more ancient than the temples.

The temples of Bihar do not all have the curvilinear Sikharas that are said to be the common type throughout North India. The temples particularly in North Bihar are of different type, while those in South Bihar usually follow the pattern of temples particularly in North Bihar are of a different type, while those in South Bihar usually follow the pattern of temples with sikharcs. With the exception of the Buddha Gaya temple, which is built of stone, and a few other temples, Bihar temples, as a rule, are not covered with sculpture from top to bottom. That is why they do not always present that splendid appearance which the temples of Bhubaneswar of Khajuraho present. Some of the Temples have remarkably independent styles. The famous temple of Baidyanath at Deoghar, the Shiva temple at Basukinath in Santal Parganas, the Vishnupada temple at Gaya, and also some other temples in North Bihar, have got simple but ample domes covering the shrine. In some cases the pillars of the mandapa, if made of stone, are carved and in some cases they are not. Some of the brick-cut temples are very few. Colgong and Umga rock-cut temples in Gaya district are good specimens. We have in Bihar excellent rock-cut sculpture in the temples at Sultanganj, Mandar and at other places, although such specimens are not many.

About the Author:

Graduating, with Honours in English and topping the list in History, in the M.A. examination, P. C. Ray Choudhury, M.A., B.L. (born February 10, 1903, at Cuttack, Orissa), has served in various Government posts of trust and responsibility. Specially selected (1952) to re-write the District Gazetteers of Bihar, he continues, though superannuated (1957), to function as the State editor of the District Gazetteers. Trained, as he was, in research by the late Sir Jadunath Sarkar, Shri Roy Choudhury has by now re-written fifteen District Gazetteers and very ably too. It is a measure of his flair for administrative work, comprehensive research, tours, personal contacts, and collation of data, not to speak of drafting. He had occasion to visit kathmandu, Jaipur and Bhubaneshwar, being officially invited by the Governments concerned for advising them on Gazetteer work. Shri Roy Choudhury has also compiled digests of old English Correspondence and other records in Saran, Hazaribagh, Gaya and Muzaffarpur and a research work, as well, on the 1857 movement in Chotanagpur and Santal Parganas, all of which have been published by the Bihar Government. His other Published books are Jainism in Bihar, Inside Bihar and Gandhiji's First Struggle in India. He is also a scholarly free-lance writer in English as well as in Bengali.

CONTENTS

	Kulapati's Preface	v
	Author's Preface	ix
1.	Phulher	1
2.	Ma Paudi	10
3.	Benusagar	24
4.	Mandar Hill	32
5.	Sultanganj	40
6.	Konch	47
7.	Mundesvari	55
8.	Parasnath	66
9.	Vaisali	82
10.	Nalanda	87
11.	Patan Devi	96
12.	Aranya Devi	104
13.	Shahabad	109
14.	Sonepur	115
15.	Uchaitha	122
16.	Kurkihar	127
17.	Masarh	131
18.	Maheshi	136
19.	Jagarnathpur	142
20.	Harmandir	152
21.	Deoghar	158
22.	Singheshwarsthan	167
23.	Mahabodhi	174

**Contents and Sample Pages**

Reenchantment- Masterworks of Sculpture in Village Temples of Bihar and Orissa

About the Book Reenchantment: Masterworks of Sculpture in Village Temples of Bibar and Orissa is book of more than 250 photographs of sculptures and shrines within 57 chapters, each accompanied by explanatory texts (300 to 2000 words each) introducing village temple sites with 8th-13th century sculptures.

The book is introduced with an 8500 word essay entitled "Reenchantment & Divinity's Identity Liquidity" on Buddhist imagery in contemporary Hindu contexts and vice versa, issues of Buddho-Brahmanical iconographic exchange, and historical examples of appropriation or re-identification.

The villages included are in south Bihar around Gaya, Bodh Gaya, Nalanda and Rajgir, as well as a selection of rarely documented village shrines of north Bihar (Mithila), in Begusarai, Darbhanga and Madhuvani districts. In Orissa, village sites represented are in Puri, Cuttack, Jajpur, Baleswar, Mayurbhanj, and Khorda districts.

The majority of the photographs were taken by the author in 2016-17 while conducting research in eastern India, along with a supplementary group of comparative photographs taken at some of the same sites in 1989-90.

About the Author Rob Linrothe is Associate Professor and current Chair of the Department of Art History at Northwestern University, USA. He earned a Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Chicago. A version of Linrothe's dissertation became Ruthless Compassion: Wrathful Deities in Indo-Tibetan Esoteric Buddhist Art (1999). In 2016-2017 Linrothe received a Senior Fellowship from the American Institute of Indian Studies to do fieldwork in eastern India on 8 to 13th century sculpture in Bihar, West Bengal and Odisha. His recent books are Seeing Into Stone: Pre-Buddhist Petroglyphs and Zangskar's Early Inhabitants (2016); Visible Heritage: Essays on the Art and Architecture of Greater Ladakh, edited with Heinrich Pöll (2016); and Collecting Paradise: Buddhist Art of Kashmir and its Legacies (2015, with contributions by Melissa Kerin and Christian Luczanits). Recent essays include: "Thirty Years On: Revisiting the Chuchikzhal Complex in Karsha," Orientations 51 no. 6 (2020); "Photography, painting, and prints in Ladakh and Zangskar: Intermediality and Transmediality," Etudes mongoles et siberiennes, centrasiatiques et Tibetans 51 (2020 online); "Art Historical Evidence for a Cult of the Triloknath Lokesvara in Zangskar," Journal of Tibetology 21 (2020); "Deeply Rooted Ritual: The Plurality of Sponsor Couples in Eastern Indian Sculpture, Ca. Eighth to Thirteenth Century, and an Explanatory Hypothesis," Journal of Bengal Art 24 (2019); and "Utterly False, Utterly Undeniable': The Akanistha Shrine Murals of Takden Phuntsokling Monastery," Archives of Asian Art (2017).

Introduction The word enchantment and such variants as T disenchantment and reenchantment have had a range of definitions, stemming from Max Weber's influential If controversial concept of "the disenchantment of the world" with the rise of so-called scientific rationality. These terms often have social, political, and/or economic connotations, such as those of Akeel Bilgrami,' but also have cultural resonance, as in Suzi Gablik's reenchantment reclamation project after modernism's rejection of the spiritual in art.? I have chosen to use reenchantment in this book's title for two reasons. First, for the most part the objects photographed and presented here were not preserved and transmitted aboveground in an unbroken continuity across the centuries. Rather, most of them were found while digging wells, irrigation canals, and septic tanks, or were uncovered while plowing fields. Many of them resurfaced in the process of dredging tanks and ponds, where for various reasons in the distant past they were abandoned. They are found not through archaeological excavation but by villagers in Bihar and Orissa going about their daily lives. Upon discovery of the sculptures, an immediate and hasty "reestablishment" generally follows, in the sense of setting up shrines around them and then, with a greater or lesser degree of formality, reconsecrating them for worship. By doing so, their original purpose as a deity is restored and they can no longer be treated simply as carved artifact and found object. That is the first, and primary, sense in which I use the term reenchantment here.

**Contents and Sample Pages**