Like the Parthasarathy temple in Chennai was built to commemorate Krishna as the warrior in the Mahabharatha; the little ambegalu Krishna temple in Chennapatna was built to remember Krishna as a crawling baby etc.
No matter what the idols are or what the story might be, many temples think that the best ways to decorate the idol is to dunk it under half a ton of flowers and leaves.
Excuse me Mr. Vadiyar, if you do this, how in the world am I supposed to know what I'm praying to?
Sure, I could take the long view and say, well, everything alive and beautiful is God therefore it really doesn't matter what I'm praying to, even if it is just a mound of flowers and twigs, but then why bother worrying about the exact way of alankar then?
I would much rather see an idol like this:
Firstly, you can see the face and the expression. You're like, hey, that's a friendly, if a little startled-looking, God.
You can see the carvings, you can see the markings on the wood. This idol is one that allows you a bit of imagination.
The idol's been carved out of wood (and kept in a silver casket under water and brought out every 40 years.. this year is a 40th year and as usual, a lot of hullabaloo). This is before the idol got covered up in a lot of ghee and honey and milk and all the other stuff they like to dump on it. No wonder He looks startled...
God only knows who these idols are supposed to be... Krishna, Balarama and one of Krishna's wives? Rama and co? Some other version of either God? You could put in anything in there which is a bit golden and shiny and all of us would just take your word for it for what it actually is.
I know these are deeply personal and religious matters and that some acharya many thousands of years ago must have laid out precise instructions for exactly how each idol has to be decorated on which particular day. I'm not arguing against any of that.
I'm just saying, might be nice to see a proper face once in a while.
No comments:
Post a Comment