Origins of Temple Worship in Hindu Religion

Those of us living in the United States would remember the year 2015 for being  the  harshest winter in our recent memory. The cold air from the Arctic had timed itself perfectly to join hands with precipitation that moved from the south to dump record amounts of snow in the New England and upstate New York areas. Even cities like Boston and Buffalo, generally well accustomed to tough winter weathers, found themselves paralyzed by the ferociousness of the blizzard that hit them.   The ancient Indian city of Taxasila (Taxila in the present day Pakistan) happened to experience a similar situation in 4th century BCE, though from a foreign invasion rather than climate.

By 4th century BCE, Taxasila had become the ancient version of what we may call as a college town today. A number of scholars with incredible knowledge of Vedas as well as Buddhist and Jain thinking had found refuge in Taxasila and were probably running informal schools. The city had experienced occasional invasions from the Persian empire and even had been under the Persian Achaemenid empire for some time. Sitting at the cross roads of Indian, Chinese and Persian cultures, Taxasila was uniquely positioned to nurture scholarship. 

Around 323 BCE, the Greek Emperor Alexander had set on his 'global conquest', marching the Greek army through Egypt, Babylonia, Persia and finally to India.  In addition to the army, the Greek invasion had brought with it new God concepts, mythology, ideas of organized administration and skills of creating stone sculptures. These additional aspects made limited impact elsewhere but when they reached Taxasila and combined with the ideas of Vedic, Puranic and Budhist thinking already in place, what resulted was an incredible shower of new ideas on iconography.  From this was born the new dimension of temple worship in Hindu religion which finally became its most visible face. One could say that, of all those foreigners who invaded India, the Greeks were probably the only ones who brought in more than what they took!  

At the time of Alexander's invasion of Taxasila, there were two important personalities present in the city who would go on to influence India's future in a way that no one else had until that time. One was a great warrior in making, the young Chandra Gupta Maurya and the other a great scholarly statesman, Vishnugupta Chanakya.  Chandra Gupta Maurya went on to build the largest and most progressive Indian empire of the BCEs in India and Chanakya wrote the first Indian text on economics and statesmanship, the Artha Sastra or "The science of wealth"

Emperor Alexander stopped his invasion at the western border states of India and didn't continue into its heartlands, probably because of the challenge offered by the large Nanda army of the state of Magadha as well as the fatigue that had come over his army from the long campaign. Alexander's sudden death in Babylon during his return journey  left a power vacuum for some time but his successor for the Asian regions, Selucus was quick to take charge of the Indian subcontinent  part of the empire. Meanwhile, both Chandra Gupta Maurya and  Chanakya had learned whatever they needed to learn in terms of warfare and statesmanship from the Greeks. They joined hands to successfully overthrow the Nanda dynasty in Magadha leveraging this knowledge. The Maurya dynasty replaced Nanda dynasty in Magadha, established the capital city of Pataliputra (current day city of Patna in Bihar) and expanded all the way from Indian subcontinent's northwest states to areas east of Ganges. Following the successful reversal of an invasion attempt by Selucus, Chandra Gupta Maurya established friendly, cultural relations with the Selucids and even married Selucus's daughter, Helen. Anyway, what is of more interest to us in the current topic is the marriage between Hellenistic culture and India's religious systems.

In my opinion, the scholars of Taxasila would have come to know from the Greeks about the concept of building temples for Gods and worshiping them using icon-centric rituals. Many of these scholars who migrated out of Taxasila following the takeover of the city by Greeks, spread their new knowledge in India's mainland. Pataliputra was the new favorite destination for many of them, as the city flourished under the Maurya  empire. Until the Greeks arrived, India didn't have much expertise in working with stones, either for sculpting or for building palaces. This is one of the most likely reasons that we are unable to find large structural, city like remainders of our great civilization from the BCEs. Most of the construction material that were used at that time were probably blocks of stones, wood and mortar that do not stand the test of time. There was use of baked clay bricks for constructing the fire altar in Yagnas and this knowledge could have come from the Indus valley civilization who knew about making bricks from clay and were adept in pottery.  

Ajanta Caves

One of the first to pick up the granite sculpting techniques were Buddhist monks, who initially started with in-situ rock carvings and murals like those that we find in the Ajanta caves. The Buddha viharas started to have stone pillars and structures  called as Stupa similar to what we find in Saranath, declaring their special identity. Emperor Ashoka, the grand son of Chandra Gupta Maurya, placed most of his edicts across the empire on stone pillars.  The sculpting techniques later on expanded to making free-standing sculptures including the figures of Buddha and other Buddhist divinities.

An Ancient Hindu Temple

This was also the period when the seeds laid down for Puraanas by Sage Veda Vyaasa started to grow. Hindu religion began its move away from the Vedic Gods of Indra, Agni, Vayu etc. replacing their worship with Puraanic Gods of Siva, Vishnu, Brahma, Devi  etc. While the Vedic Gods were always propitiated with Yagna rituals, the Puraanic Gods could be worshiped using their iconic representations. The methods of this worship were formulated and codified closer to the 1st Century AD, and was called the 'Aagama'', meaning ' that which arrived'. Contrarily, the Vedic ordained means of worship were called as 'Nigama', or ' that which originated (here)'. Aagama Sastra developed further during the early centuries of AD,  formalizing the structure of Hindu Temple worship as we know of it today. (Please see my blog post  http://oupanishadam.blogspot.com/2015/02/what-i-see-when-i-go-to-temple.html if you are interested in the philosophical thinking behind the architecture of a Hindu Temple)

Unlike the Greek Gods, the Indian Puraanic God images were not just super human figures but rich philosophic metaphors.  For example, Lord Shiva was a representation of the absolute which is devoid of all earthly decorations; Parvathi represented the Nature relying on whose power everything in creation functions. Shiva is also considered 'ardhanariswara', one half of his body being the male figure of Shiva who is absolute and the other half being Parvathi, the feminine figure representing Nature. Shiva and Parvathi have two  off springs, Lord Ganesha who represents everything that is matter and physical in creation and Lord Karthikeya representing everything that is subtle and non-physical. As you can see, the creators of these iconic images have managed to represent the entire universe in this one single divine family!

Now, it is quite natural to ask the question why do we have to worship these images if they were only metaphorical? The Hindu religious leaders had recognized the fact that it is very difficult for ordinary minds to grasp the abstract thinking required to understand God . It is incredibly difficult to explain God in words. Therefore the next best option was use of metaphorical images.  As we all know, a picture is worth thousand words. Same is true for metaphorical, iconic representations too.  Images also have the ability to engage the mind in its totality and convey ideas that are otherwise extremely difficult to be communicate.

 The Hindu worship of iconic images are intended to stimulate contemplation and aid establishing the connection between the self and the absolute. This is why the Hindus who stand in line for hours for the glimpse of the deity in popular temples, mostly end up keeping the eyes shut during the precious few seconds they get to be in front of the deity! What they instinctively value more is the connection with divinity that the presence in front of the deity has enabled rather than the deity itself. Worshipful attitude is also a great means to rein in the ego that continuously identifies the self with the many worldly things that it really is not.

The Sanskrit word for visiting a Temple and viewing the deity is 'Darshana', which actually means insight. The image and icon are outside but the true vision of them happens inside.   The next time you visit a temple, I would encourage you to take a few minutes to close your eyes and contemplate on what insights you have about your on self, the world and God. This act of contemplation and reflection is the true core of Hindu religion.