Church restrained from making changes at site of ancient temple
Madurai:T
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
The Madurai bench of the Madras high court on Monday restrained the management of St Peter and Paul Church at Serndhamaram in Tirunelveli district from making any further construction or alteration at the site of a 1,000-year-old Shiva temple located close to it. The bench of Justice V Ramasubramanian and Justice V M Velumani was hearing a petition filed by S Arumugam, a resident of Serndhamaram village.
Seeking inspection by an expert committee, Arumugam’s counsel T Lajapathy Roy contended that the church management is now attempting to destroy the temple structure. He said the temple had a ‘Lingam’ in the sanctum sanctorum and idols of deities sculpted on its pillars and hence it is necessary to have an expert committee set up under the guidance of an archaeologist to study the structure.
The petitioner sought directions to the state’s archaeology department to notify the temple as an ancient monument and to the collector take over the temple property.
According to the petitioner, the church management en
croached on the temple land during the British rule and constructed the church after demolishing the temple's entrance. It allowed the villagers to celebrate temple festival till 2012, but after that even that was denied, the petition said.
In 2005, the church initiated action to get some more land, but the special commissioner and commissioner of land administration in Chennai refused, it said. When the church management constructed a shopping complex in 2013 on the temple land, the tahsildar passed an order on April 22, 2013 to remove it, the petitioner said.
When the matter was brought to the notice of the district superintendent of police, an archaeological officer was appointed to study the issue. He visited the temple site on October 7, 2013 and filed a report saying there was no co-operation from the church management and he was restrained from entering the temple, the petitioner said.
Further, the inspector of the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowment department said in a report dated March 17, 2014 that the church had encroached on the temple land, he said. After hearing the matter, the bench granted an interim injunction and adjourned the matter by three weeks to enable the government and the church to file their replies.
The church's counsel K Mahendran said cases have been filed against the orders of the commissioner of land administration and the tahsildar. Both the cases are pending, he said.
-- Edited by Admin on Tuesday 17th of June 2014 08:21:10 AM
Epigraphist And Temple Historian Says Archaeology Can Be A Hobby
Epigraphist and historian Chithra Madhavan is a whiz at reading the past. Having been educated at Shishya and Padma Sheshadri, Ethiraj College and Madras University and finally acquiring her PhD from the University of Mysore, she has developed her expertise in ancient temples in Tamil Nadu. In a free-wheeling chat with Joeanna Rebello Fernandes she discusses the importance of temples today. Efforts of historians like you have redirected public attention to the cultural and social heritage of the state via its temples. Can you comment on the experience? There is indeed a sudden wave of talking about history and culture, and what is heartening is that there are more people ready to listen -people who really want to know about our heritage. Some of those who attend heritage walks and lectures are as young as 8 and 9 years old. How have temples of south India changed over the years? They're a whole lot cleaner than they used to be. People now smear haldi and kumkum on the walls instead of scribbling on them. Temple authorities though continue to be inattentive to the archeological or historical significance of temples. They `renovate' them in ways that destroy the centuries-old inscriptions on their walls and pillars. These inscriptions provide information about the history of the region and once you wipe out an inscription by sticking a glazed tile or a polished granite slab on it, the inscription is forever destroyed. Some of these inscriptions are more than 1000 years old. Epigraphy is your area of specialization. What do temple inscriptions generally convey? Most of the inscriptions are in Tamil (some in Sanskrit) and are donative in nature. They'd recount the currency used at the time, convey land measures, the customs and habits of the region, taxes, and so on. Apart from stone inscriptions on temples you also have copper plate inscriptions, which are now in museums. These are sheets of copper inscribed on and bound by a copper ring, with seal of the king. They recorded donations made by kings to a particular temple, or scholar. The first half of these plates would be inscribed in Sanskrit and the second part in Tamil. The Sanskrit part would talk about the complete genealogy of the dynasty that's as historical as you can get. The Tamil part would be the operative part, talking entirely about the grant in the language of the local people. It has been said that Indians lack a sense of history , but I disagree. In the past, temple tours constituted an important cultural tradition. Does this practice continue to persist among people of Tamil Nadu? Temple hopping across the state as it was once practiced as a cultural tradition in a devotional way in Tamil Nadu is now being replaced by tourism, where families are touring prominent temples to appreciate their architecture and heritage. And children, instead of being bored at having to visit a temple only for devotional reasons, are beginning to appreciate temple architecture at a young age because their parents encourage them to take pictures and make drawings of what they see. Has scholarship in temple architecture and archeology declined? There are fewer people pursuing ancient history and archeology , and it's because job opportunities are few today . In addition, you have to go through a whole gamut of degrees to land a decent job. People need not opt for ancient history or archeology as a profession because they're not tenable career-wise, but I do hope they take up these subject as a serious hobby .
Online learning in this field hasn't yet caught on in India, but there are short term, one-year courses available on the subject. I believe easy-to-read book on temple architecture are the need of the hour.
`Massive project needed to reveal hidden histories in temple inscriptions'
N Nandhivarman
It would be a fallacy to say Indians don't value history. Our ancients left detailed records. Tamils not only recorded events on palm-leaf manuscripts and copper plates but also on temple walls. In fact, old temples found all over the state have extensive inscriptions recording several events from small land donations to big wars. Pieced together, these records can offer significant insights into the lives of Tamil people.
The Survey on Indian Epigraphy (1996) says Tamil Nadu is the biggest source of inscriptions in India. Inscriptions written in Tamil occupy the first position in the volume, amounting nearly to 20,000, followed by those in Kannada (10,600), Sanskrit (7,500) and Telugu (4,500). Inscriptions in Tamil language dating to the third century BCE have been published in the survey .
The state department of archaeology has a separate epigraphy wing that was started in 1966. The primary function of this wing is to copy inscriptions on boulders, stone pillars, stones, temple walls and on copper plates. The inscriptions are deciphered, edited and published. So far, about 14,000 inscriptions have been copied and preserved in this wing. Some original copper plates and old palm leaf manuscripts are also under the custody of this department.
Yet, this is only a fraction of the inscriptions in the state that have been published. Despite several painstaking efforts in epigraphy , including by foreign scholars, the sad part is various universities and Tamil scholars show no interest in inscriptions.
Temple authorities forget these are treasure troves of history . They focus on deities neglecting temple history .
For instance, a team of epigraphists and photographers associated with the French government's Ecole Francaise de Extreme Orient visited the Mangaipagar temple in Piranmalai, Trichy district, several times between 2009 and 2014 to find new inscriptions and check on those published in the past. But the priest refused to let them enter despite the experts explaining that they wanted to read a Kulothunga Chozhan inscription of late 11th century . During the fourth visit, a new priest had taken over and he let the team in. The experts found that the inscriptions had been hidden under a coat of sandalwood paste `Santhanakappu.' Under the garb of renovation, masons, who have little idea of history , paint temples and re-arrange stones carrying inscriptions with no regard for their continuity. At Senthalai temple in Tiruvaiyarure gion of Thanjavur, the masons who under took the work had thrown the order of inscriptions out of gear by not putting the stone blocks back where they originally belonged. Trained epigraphists should revisit such renovated temples to ensure that the inscriptions in grantha and devanagiri scripts are in order.
In fact, the Archaeological Survey of India and the state archaeological department should jointly undertake a massive epigraphic project. A team should visit all temples in the state to ensure that inscriptions that have been already published are in order. Such visits would also reveal hidden histories that have remained unknown so far.
(The author is a socio-political activist and writer)
