A History of India, Third Edition

THE REGIONAL KINGDOMS OF EARLY MEDIEVAL INDIA

India the movement gained more and more adherents and ‘public’ temples
were constructed to accommodate the many devotees.
The idea of holy places which would attract pilgrims was deeply linked
with these popular religious cults. The Vedic gods of the Brahmins never had
any definite abode on earth—at best, they could be invoked by priests at the
time of a sacrifice. But gods such as Vishnu and Shiva, both of whom were
worshipped by Bhakti devotees, manifested themselves at numerous places
on earth as well as in their heavenly abodes (Shiva on Mount Kailash and
Vishnu on the snake encircling the universe). In the beginning a Bhakta
(devotee) might have seen them in a tree or a stone or a hermitage. The
traditions of many great temples recorded in later times still refer to such an
immediate local origin of the gods worshipped in them. Legends of this kind
are called sthala mahatmya and are supposed to emphasise the sanctity and
greatness (mahatmya) of the designated temple. The statues (area)
worshipped by the Bhaktas are considered to be incarnations (avatara) of
gods who had appeared before the people in tangible form. The Bhakta sees
and worships his god in this archa-avatara and this is why Manikkavasagar
exclaimed: ‘He has come to me who is of no use.’
Once the great gods were worshipped in terms of such local
manifestations, lesser gods and even village gods (gramadevata) also
claimed admission to the rapidly expanding Hindu pantheon. Many a local
god then made a great career by becoming identified with one of the great
gods and being served by Brahmin priests. Such local gods—previously
often worshipped in primitive non-iconic forms such as rocks—then
underwent a process of ‘anthropomorphisation’, culminating in the
installation of fully Hinduised icons in temples constructed at sites reputed
to be holy. Legends grew up which justified this transformation and
referred to the descent of a great god from heaven or to the visit of a great
saint. The cults were ‘sanskritised’ and related to the ‘great tradition’; they
were also incorporated in the great circuit of pilgrimages which covered
the whole of India. Often pilgrims made a vow to visit a certain number of
temples sacred to their favourite god, and a temple would recommend
itself by being identified with such a god rather than exclusively with an
unknown local deity.

The emergence of India’s temple cities

The history of the temple city of Chidambaram illustrates this
transformation of a local to a regional sacred place whose fame spread
throughout India. Chidambaram is identified with the cult of Shiva as the
‘King of Dancers’ (Nataraja). The origin of the cult seems to have been the
worship of a stone at a pond which subsequently became the temple tank.
The stone was later identified as a Shiva lingam and was worshipped as
Mulasthana (‘The Place of Origin’). There was also the cult of a goddess