Padma Kaimal, Colgate University

Mapping Artistic Space: The Kaveri Style

This paper is about uses of space in southern India during the ninth and tenth centuries. Specifically, it is about some surprises in ways that the work of people living the southern peninsula defined regional units of space. My access to this subject is through dozens of durable stone temples that workshops of artisans built for various patrons across the south during this period. Some of these temples were dedicated to the worship of Siva, some to goddesses, some to Jaina tirtankaras. These temples were also social, economic and political centers for their local communities. So these temples had significance for their original users that extended beyond the esthetic sphere. The very forms of temple buildings can, therefore, reveal dimensions of that social, economic or political world and they can reveal perceptions of space and uses of space.

In the forms of these temples, I see patterns of similarity and difference indicating that geography, and specifically the watersheds of the great river systems, played a strong role in defining regional space. I find that temples built across the vast watershed of the Kaveri River and its many tributaries share a common architectural style. This is surprising because the Kaveri is, in many other ways, divers. Climate, government and language distinguish Karnataka's upper Kaveri highlands from Tamil Nadu's lower Kaveri delat, and they did so in the 9th century as well. And yet, temples built in these two regions during the 9th and 10th centuries are so similar in style that they must have been built by the same groups of artisans. Artisans, in other words, worked and moved freely between these regions; language shifts and political discontinuities were not barriers for them. The spatial unity of the Kaveri watershed was a more compelling influence on their lives and actions.