Badami, once upon a time, a major city and capital of Chalukyas, had shrunk to a sleepy and biggish village by 2006 when I was a
first time visitor. I was back there a few weeks ago. The place has now grown into a very crowded town and lies lapping at the feet of those magnificent cliffs. The following pic
could give an impression that modern human settlements actually add to the visual magic of sandstone - quite the opposite is the case; Badami is spectacularly dirty and teems with the filthiest of pigs. And I know at least one visitor who chickened out of all but the most basic of sight-seeing, stayed cooped up in his hotel room and got the hell out as soon as he could! The powers that be ought to clean up the place, fast, for the present state of Badami is a scandal, even by Indian standards.
Badami (by Badami one means the entire Badami-Pattadakal-Aihole-Mahakuta cluster of sites) must be, by far, the south Indian city whose history witnessed the maximum number of distinct Muslim periods. From the invasion and brief occupation by the Delhi Sultanate (14th centuty), we see the Adil Shahi period (1560s to around 1700), a brief period when Aurangzeb came calling and a long spell under the Hyderabad Nizams interrupted briefly by incursions of Hyder and Tipu from Mysore(*). And, apart from a couple of arches and domed sandstone tombs and some walls, practically everything historical around Badami is ancient Hindu or Jain, the legacy of the Chalukyas, Rashtrakutas, Hoysalas etc (500 AD to 1300) - all those Muslim periods left the earlier relics of idolators practically untouched!
There is a even certain 'Lad Khan temple' at Aihole, a 1300 odd year old temple named after an obviously Muslim-named chap who used it as residence and left its multitude of sandstone sculptures pretty much as they were!
The contrast to the Quwwat ul Islam mosque - and its 'reused' temple pillars - or indeed, the glaring absence of pre 1700 Hindu-Buddhist-Jain structures in pretty much the entirety of the Indo-Gangetic plain cannot be starker(*)!
Aihole is a village that has grown around 7th and 8th century Chalukya sandstone edifices. The manner in which great ancient art and archicture lies embedded in 21st century life with all its filth and conjestion - and ultra-modern, bathroom-tiled shrines - is a sight in itself. Our stay here was curtailed by a severe cloudburst so let me only record a suspicion that at least a few genuinely ancient strucrtures have been repurposed as houses, cattlesheds or whatever. I am not advocating a summary 'recovery' but some kind of regulation that couples preservation with educating the locals on the treasures to which they are (sometimes unknowing) custodians.
Although the Aihole leg of our visit was marred, the weather was otherwise ok and we could do the trek from Badami to Mahakuta and back; it took about five hours of hard tramping through a rugged and otherworldly sandstone landscape, mostly in solitude. The path is not well-marked and one can get into trouble with aggressively territorial shepherd dogs but overall the experience measured up to the expectations - that I recorded a generation ago thus: "I am told there is a lonely trail winding past the lake and up among the boulders towards the sylvan precincts of the ancient Mahakuta temple..."
Just a couple more of observations: A lengthy safari across Karnataka undertaken in July made me revisit both Badami and Hampi many years after I had seen them for the first time. Hampi is still a magnificent realm but for me, it has lost its power to overpower, become 'domesticated'. But Badami is a different beast altogether. I want to go back there!
Despite the great heights they touch, the Badami sandstone sculptors were probably unaware of (or maybe uninterested in) the kind of polish sandstone can take; or maybe the stone in Badami is fundamentally different to what the Mauryan craftsmen got to work with!
Here is a jumble of pictures gathered from Badami-Aihole-Pattadakal with emphasis on details that struck me as unusual.
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I have never seen such steep crowns/hair-dos as sported by these three goddesses (only the Srilankan 'Bronze Tara' statue gets close):
A very stylish Kinnara couple:
Throughout this 'safari', I was looking for carvings of playful gobblins (a major subject in itself, actually) and such oddities. Here are a few unusual figures from the wall of a step-well; in the murky waters resides an eight foot plus cobra!
I don't remember seeing such a figure as this anywhere (he adorns the portion of a wall above a doorway):
Decorations on a pillar, including the almost ubiquitous, necklace-spouting 'Green man':
What sets this Mahishasuramardini sculpture apart is the buffalo; it crouches at the Goddess's feet like a docile pet - nothing demonic about it - and She is about to impale it!
On the pillars of many of the temples are carved amorous (not erotic) couples. Here is one such - a figure has been decapitated; one of the v v few such.
Another couple. What is unusual is the baby:
One more:
The finest such specimen (to my eyes):
A bit of decorative work from a ceiling, lotus, fish and all:
Two fantastic beings, seemingly with little love lost between them. One of them looks rather Grecian, curly hair and all, from waist up:
A graceful Salabhanjika:
More goblins; look carefully; one of them looks like Samuel Johnson(?)
Some Grantha inscriptions, the latter one quite elegant...
A beautifully done panel... note those rich crowns...
Vishnu, as Trivikrama, goose-steps into the heavens; an armed adversary, puny in comparison, has been sent flying. Among the figures paying the Uber-lord obeisance looks very Buddha - I know of no other ancient art piece anywhere that delicts him as part of the Hindu pantheon (although Indra etc can be seen in Buddhist art from even Sanchi - predating Badami by half a millennium).
The colors of sandstone:
Something of everything here with Siva, the dominant central figure:
Fluid patterns of rock colors convey a sense of the heaving cosmic ocean from which Varaha lifts Mother Earth:
Seems the dominant styles of temples in the north and south India both originated in these parts and diverged. What puzzles me is how such a graceful form as the foreground superstrcture fell totally out of favor in the south!
Here is an unusually multi-storeyed south Indian style temple:
A figure somewhat similar in pose to the iconic Ajanta Padmapani - am unable to locate him in the usual Hindu pantheon:
A magnificent 'Gajendra Moksha', an equal to the much more famous (and perhaps 2 centuries older) specimen from Deogarh.
Signing off with the famous Enthroned Vishnu
and Dancing Siva (facial features seem smoothened out, perhaps deliberately; somewhat reminiscent of some 'minimal Vandalism' that appears to have been done to temples at Lakkundi. And see how he holds a serpent up - reminiscent of how some folk dancers wield the 'thundu' or a multicolored towel):
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(*) The Muslim ascendancy was occasionally interrupted by the Marathas but the Banashankari temple apart, they seem to have added precious little value to the place. Arguably, the most intriguing character from the lengthy and often spectacular history of Badami was
"a blind Brahmin(!) by name Narasimha Dattatreya, who entered Badami in 1840 with a fierce band of Arab(!!) mercenaries, took possession of the place and its treasury and proclaimed himself King(!!!) (only to be) dislodged within a week by a modest British force" (as per the quite interesting, though somewhat overpriced, guidebook written by George Michell; the exclamations are mine).
Michell's book also mentions damage done to some mandapas and the two Shivalayas at Badami with suggestions that Pallava invaders (7th century) and not later Muslim conquerors were responsible - and a pic of a Mutilated Buddha carving with no acccusations attached.
