இந்தப் பதிவில்
A Jewelery, a saree, Russian Kingdom, a temple Vehicle, Mysuru kingdom, a story narrated by a common man, Karnataka government, Albania nation, a sculpture I have seen in person are all connected by a very strange common theme.
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| Figure 1: Sculpture in a temple pillar, Bengaluru |
The above sculpture is carved on a pillar in Ulsoor
Sri Someshwara temple of Bengaluru. It is called Gandaberunda. Though similar,
its spelling and pronunciation varies in different regions of India like
Gandaberundam, Gandaberunda Pakshi and so on. It is also referred to as double
headed eagle or double headed bird in general.
Depictions of many imaginary creatures is a common sight in Indian temples. One can easily assume this sculpture as a depiction of yet another imaginary bird. Yet, it is special. To understand its speciality let us check the direct and indirect details we can gather from this depiction.
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| Woodcarving of Rishaba Kunjaram
at Embekke Devalaya- Sri Lanka, Photo credit: Wikipedia |
We are all fascinated by looking at movements in nature. The sky, with its passing clouds, the ocean, with its curvy waves, the trees, with its fluttering leaves fascinate us! We miss seeing such movements in temple sculptures. Generally, the stories from the epics are depicted using multiple sculptures. The sculptures on the stones had the limitation of not able to depict the movement of an action with in a single frame. This was my belief until I saw few sculptures in Ulsoor Sri Someshwara temple at Bangalore.
It is very common to see a variety of imaginary creatures
in temple sculptures. It starts with Lord Ganesha, who is usually depicted with
a human body and an elephant head. This concept extends all the way to mix and
match of various animals and birds. For example, the imaginary animal Gajasimha
is a combination of an Elephant and Lion.
I came across this interesting sculpture on one of the
pillars in the mantap of this temple. It kindled my imagination as to what this
sculpture tries to depict!
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| Sculpture on a pillar at Ulsoor Sri Someshwara temple, Bangalore |
It is easy to ignore this sculpture as yet another imaginary bird with three heads. But how about dropping this idea and stretching our imagination along with the sculptor a little further. We can arrive at few other possibilities too.