Rameswaram
This article has been extracted from THE IMPERIAL GAZETTEER OF INDIA , 1908. OXFORD, AT THE CLARENDON PRESS. |
Note: National, provincial and district boundaries have changed considerably since 1908. Typically, old states, ‘divisions’ and districts have been broken into smaller units, and many tahsils upgraded to districts. Some units have since been renamed. Therefore, this article is being posted mainly for its historical value.
Rameswaram
Town m Madura District, Madras, situated in 9 17' N. and 79 19' E., on the island of Pamban. Population (1901), (3,632. It contains one of the most venerated Hindu shrines in India, which was founded, according to tiadition, by Rama himself as a thank- offering for his success in his expedition against Ravana, the ten-headed king of Ceylon, who had carried off his wife, Sita. For centuries the temple has been the resort of thousands of pilgrims from all parts of India j and until recently they had to traverse on foot the inhospitable wastes of the Ramnad estate which separated it from the nearest railway station at Madura. The pilgrimage is now rendered easy by the railway which has lately been built from that place to Mandapam, a point on the mainland facing the town of Pamban, 8 miles from Rarneswaram,
The gieat temple stands on slightly rising ground in the north- eastern part of the island. It is in the form of a quadrangular enclosure, 650 feet broad by about 1,000 feet long, and is entered by a gateway surmounted by a gopuram or tower 100 feet high. The oldest portion is built of a dark and hard limestone, traditionally said to have been brought from Ceylon, while the more modern parts are constructed of a friable sandstone quarried in the island itself. The inner prakaram or corridor is ascribed to the piety of an early Madura Naik, while the outer mantapam was the work of two of the Ramnad chiefs or Setupatis, with the history of whose line, as the 'lords of the causeway' leading from the mainland to Pamban Island and the protectors of the pilgrims, the history of the temple has for centuries been intimately connected.
Mr. Fergusson, m his History of Indian Architecture^ thus describes the building . '
' If it were proposed to select one temple which should exhibit all the beauties of the Dravidian style m their greatest perfection and at the same time exemplify all its characteristic defects of design, the choice would almost invariably fall upon that at Rameswaram. In no other temple has the same amount of patient industry been exhibited as here ; and in none unfortunately has that labour been ^ so thrown away, for want of a design appropriate to its display. It is not that this temple has grown by successive increments ; it was begun and finished on a previously settled plan, as regularly and undeviatingly carried out as Tanjore, but on a principle so diametrically opposed to it that, while the temple at Tanjore produces an effect greater than is due to its mass or detail, this one, with double its dimensions and ten times its elaboration, produces no effect externally, and internally can only be seen in detail, so that the parts hardly in any instance aid one another in producing the effect aimed at.
'Externally, the temple is enclosed by a wall 20 feet m height with four gop u rams, one on each face, which have this peculiarity, that they alone, of all those I know in India, are built wholly of stone from the base to the summit. The western one alone, however, is finished. Those on the north and south are hardly higher than the Wall in which they stand, and are consequently called the ruined gateways. Partly from their form, but more fiom the solidity of their construction, nothing but an earthquake could well damage them. They have never been raised higher, and their progress was probably stopped in the beginning of the last century, when Muhammadans, Marathas, and other foreign invaders checked the prosperity of the land, and destroyed the wealth of the priesthood. The eastern fagade has two entrances and two gopurams. The glory of the temple, however, is in its corri- dors. These extend to a total length of nearly 4,000 feet. Their breadth varies from 20 feet to 30 feet of free floor space, and their height is apparently about 30 feet from the floor to the centre of the roof. Each pillar or pier is compound, and richer and more elaborate in design than those of the ParvatI porch at Chidambaram, and certainly more modern in date.
' None of our English cathedrals is more than 500 feet long, and even the nave of St. Peter's is only 600 feet from the door to the apse. Here the side corridors are 700 feet Jong, and open into transverse galleries as rich in detail as themselves. These, with the varied devices and modes of lighting, produce an effect that is not equalled certainly anywhere in India. The side corridors are generally free from figure sculpture, and consequently from much of the vulgarity of the age to which they belong, and, though narrower, produce a more pleasing effect. The central corridor leading from the sanctuary is adorned on one side by portraits of the Rajas of Ramnad m the seventeenth century, and, opposite them, of their secretaries. Even they, however, would be tolerable, were it not that within the last few years they have been painted with a vulgarity that is inconceivable on the part of the descendants of those who built this fane, Not only these, but the whole of the architecture has first been dosed with repeated coats of white- wash, so as to take off all the sharpness of detail, and then painted with blue, green, red, and yellow washes, so as to disfigure and destroy its effect to an extent that must be seen to be believed.
'The age of this temple is hardly doubtful. From first to last its style, excepting the old vimana, is so uniform and unaltered that its erection could hardly have lasted during a hundied years; and if this is so, it must have been during the seventeenth century, when the Ramnad Rajas were at the height of their independence and prospeiity, and when their ally or master, Tirumala Naik, was erecting buildings in the same identical style at Madura. It may have been commenced fifty years earlier (1550), and the erection of its gopitrams may have extended into the eighteenth century ; but these seem the possible limits of deviation.'
