Setubandha

Author(s): Krishnakant Handiqui
Publisher: Prakrit Text Society Ahmedabad

Page 40

INTRODUCTION that, according to some, the Lord's tāndava is occasioned by rapture born of Yogic contemplation (yogānanda).
It may be noted that in the age of Pravarasena and thereabouts Saivism had made considerable progress in the Tamil country; and Saiva doctrine was formulated in a definitive form by the saint theologian Tirumūlar, who has been assigned to the sixth century or thereabouts. The cult of Natarāja was wide-spread in the South ; and the mystic interpretation of the external symbols of the image of Națarāja as worshipped at Cidambaram already appears in Tirumūlar's poetical treatise Tirumandiram, which also enumerates different categories of the dance of Śiva.' The glorification of the deity by Pravarasena independent of these developments might represent an earlier phase of the purely devotional aspect of the cult of Nataraja in Deccan. A noteworthy feature of South Indian Saivism, on the other
1 Ayyar (op. cit.), pp. 229, 361 ff. 2 The cult of Nataraja was popular in Deccan ; and the sculptural representation of the
deity appears to have been fully developed by the sixth century. The colossal figure of Națarāja with sixteen hands in one of the caves at Badami presupposes a fairly long period of development. These caves are assigned to the sixth century on the basis of an inscription of 578 A.D. in the Vaişnava cave no. 3. See Banerji, Bas-reliefs of Badami, Calcutta, 1928. There are statues of Națarāja in all the Brahmanical caves at Ellora, of which the most remarkable is that in the Rāmesvara cave assigned to the sixth century. Other notable examples exist at Aihole, Elephanta and Pattadakal. Jouveau-Dubreuil, Iconography of Southern India, pp. 29, 118. Paris, 1937; Burgess, A Guide to Elura Cave Temples p. 43; Gupte, The Art and Architecture of Aihole, pp. 37, 77, 85, 109, Bombay. 1967; Journal of Indian History, Vol. XLIII, p. 513 ff. ; Cousens, The Chāluk yan Architecture of the Kanarese Districts, p. 63 ff; A Guide to the Pattadakal Temples. Kannada Research Institute, Dharwar, 1961. In South India the beginnings of the famous temple of Nagarāja at Cidambaram are roughly traced to the sixth century A.D. As regards sculpture, the figure of Națarāja on a pilaster of the cave-temple built by Mahendravarman (circa 580-630 AD.) at Siyamangalam in North Arcot District is perhaps the earliest extant representation of such a form in the South.' Krishna Sastri, South - Indian Images of Gods and Goddesses, p. 88. Madras, 1916; Srinivasan, Cave Temples of the Pallavas, p. 92. ASI, 1964.