- The Dancing Hall
Thank you for joining me from Part I here.
Climbing up a few steps from the entrance, we reached the dancing hall. Interesting carvings beckoned us, but after we learnt the story behind each carving we were more than enamored.
Climbing up a few steps from the entrance, we reached the dancing hall. Interesting carvings beckoned us, but after we learnt the story behind each carving we were more than enamored.
The center hall is beautifully spacious with a tall ceiling. The ceiling
is designed like a lotus with around 100 petals distributed in 4
whorls.
The Ceiling In The Dancing Hall |
The dancing hall depicted the marriage of Lord Shiva and Parvathi.
Rambha, one of the chief apsaras in the devaloka or the abode of the gods,
is performing a dance on this occasion. All the other gods including
the sun and moon god are seen playing various musical accompaniments to
support her dance.
Rambha - The Apsara Of Devaloka |
And the others
Tucked away in one corner is a carving of sage Bhringi. Sage Bhringi has
3 legs. It is said that sage Bhringi lost all his strength or 'Shakti'
after he enraged Goddess Parvathi - the source of shakti, by refusing to
worship her and only worshipping Shiva. Seeing his emancipated condition,
Lord Shiva gave him the third leg as a support to stand upright. Here he is seen in a dancing pose with his three legs.
Our guide told us that he is the dance master to the gods. Though the only reference I found to corroborate this was with respect to Lepakshi temple. It is seen that Rambha was mimicking sage Bhringi's dance movements as both carvings have the same pose.
Sage Bhringi |
Our guide also added that sage Bhringi is placed in such a way that
he is in the line of view only to Rambha because he was invisible to
everyone. He is also supposed to be dancing at all times and hence
the third leg was really useful while wanting to rest one of the legs. I
would however take both these information with a big pinch of
salt.
There was an interesting way to look at sage Bhringi's statue here. If
any one of the legs is covered at any time, the other two legs will show a
different dance pose.
Behind sage Bhringi's sculpture is the story of Annapoorneshwari, the
goddess of food. When Shiva and Parvathi have a fight with respect
to materialism and asceticism, Parvathi went into hiding for a while to
teach Shiva the importance of materialism too.
The Story Of Annapoorneshwari |
When the entire world including the devotees of Shiva started starving, the maternal instinct of Parvathi took over and she took the form of Annapoorneshwari and set up a kitchen in Varanasi to serve food for the children of the world. When Shiva heard of this, he went to Varanasi, dressed as a beggar to get alms from her. She served him food while helping him understand the importance of materialism in the world too.
All over the ceilings of the dancing hall are colorful and interesting
murals. Join me in part III for more about them.
Location map:
3 comments:
Well detailed explanation and also very nice photos. It was like an walk back in History.
Thanks so much Shankar.
The last image is of kanakalamurti
Pls read ths following attatchment
https://www.facebook.com/104221672300771/posts/pfbid0273ReV6vQnX7ri8rhvwG1UaJdds7ZPQwoCd93cSkDrzsvQZTNUj7gMRi6Jhm8e4P3l/?mibextid=Nif5oz
Reference is from Elements of Hindu iconography by Gopinath
Post a Comment