Sun Temple

The most famous temple to the sun is at
Konarak in Orissa state, right on the
shore of the Bay of Bengal. The temple
was built by King Narasimhadeva (r.
1238–1264), a monarch in the Ganga
dynasty, and the entire temple was
intended to be a likeness of the sun’s
chariot. It has twelve great wheels
carved on the sides at the temple’s lowest level, and in front, statues of several
colossal horses. As at the temples of
Khajuraho, the lower levels here are
covered with erotic and sexually explicit
carvings, to which people have given
differing interpretations: Some claim
that these sanction carnal pleasure as a
religious path, some interpret them allegorically as representing human union
with the divine, and still others view
them as teaching that the desire for
pleasure must ultimately be transcended
to attain the divine.
The temple was built on a massive
scale; according to one estimate, the
central spire would have been over 200
feet high. It is uncertain whether this
spire was ever actually completed, since
the sandy soil on which the temple platform was built would have been unable
to support the weight of such an enormous structure. This same unstable soil
has been the greatest contributor to the
temple’s increasing deterioration. The
primary structure left at the site is the
jagamohan (assembly hall), which was
filled with sand in the nineteenth century,
in an effort to prevent further collapse.
For further information see Roy Craven,
Indian Art, 1997.