Of Gods and Men Treasures of the Indus

The Indus River gave its name to India and along its banks

are the sites of some of the earliest urban settlements on earth.

Though the sub-continent was the birthplace of many

of the world's great religions, excavations of these cities

have uncovered no evidence of any organised religious practices.

But in the last 2,000 years a culture of religious

tolerance developed amongst the many faiths of these lands.

Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism all originated here, and the Mughal

conquerors built their Islamic mosques alongside Hindu temples.

In 1582, when Europe was in the grip of almost continuous

religious conflict between Christian sects, the Mughal Emperor

Akbar the Great exhorted his philosophers to seek a way for all

religions in his empire to co-exist.

To some extent this is still a society that is

tolerant of religious difference, but the balance has shifted

and today Hinduism is the majority faith in India

and consequently the third most popular religion in the world.

Hinduism has been evolving for thousands of years and its current

dominant status has been achieved by its willingness to change, its

genius for adapting to the changing circumstances of its followers,

absorbing the customs and beliefs of different faiths as it grew.

The temples constructed to nurture this faith are some of the

greatest architectural treasures in India and in this last programme

of the series we are in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

This is where Hindu temple culture reached its zenith and there is

no better place to understand the story of these remarkable buildings.

MAN SINGS

India is a country of over a billion people

and the Hindu majority understand and interpret their existence

in terms of their relationship with the divine.

Their faith, a complex synthesis of many ancient beliefs,

is inseparable from their everyday lives.

The sacred and the profane are inextricably entwined.

Even some of its most ardent followers will tell you that

Hinduism is not a religion but a cultural phenomenon.

The word Hindu is also derived from the mighty Indus river.

And for those who have not grown up in its homeland this most

Indian of faiths can be difficult to understand.

The myriad Hindu deities inhabit another dimension

but its followers believe that the world in which we live is

illusory and the goal is to break through this illusion

and discover the reality beyond.

The locus for this quest is the temple.

The Hindu temple is where the divide between illusion

and reality is at its most porous, where the opportunity to

achieve darshan, a vision of the divine, is most possible.

Every community in India, great or small, will have its own temple.

The centre of its social and spiritual life. And these places

have fostered the greatest flowering of Hindu artistic expression.

I've been studying these buildings for over 20 years.

They are remarkable works of art in their own right, but they are

also the cradle of creativity for sculpture, poetry, music and dance.

The very heart of a vibrant culture that is beating as strongly as ever.

My fascination began as a student,

when I set out across this landscape on a scooter

and discovered a way of life that stretches back over millennia.

Descending from the arid Deccan plateau the flat and forested

landscape of southern India is very different to the north.

This is a land apart - ethnically and culturally distinct,

and with a separate history.

Even the Mughal conquest did not reach this far south.

In the 6th century a dynasty known as the Pallavas came to

power in southern India.

Their empire thrived on trade, and the town of Mahabalipuram,

on the Coromandel Coast, was their principal port.

Fishing is now the mainstay of this coast, part of the modern state of

Tamil Nadu, but in a golden age in the 7th and 8th centuries the

Pallava kings turned Mahabalipuram into an artisan laboratory

for the craft of stone carving and it now has World Heritage status.

Beached like a petrified ship to the south of the town is one

of the earliest free-standing stone temples in India, the Shore Temple.

When this temple was built many of the elements of temple design

had already become standardised but the origins of this

architectural form are not buildings at all.

A few hundred yards inland from the Shore Temple is

a shrine from the start of the Pallava period that helps us

appreciate why these buildings evolved in the way they did.

Like many caves and natural rock formations in India,

an opening in this granite overhang has been enlarged and shaped

over many generations to provide a site to worship local gods.

The earliest temples were built at potent natural sites where it

was believed that these unfathomable beings were most likely to

reveal themselves.

These shrines could have been as simple as a clearing

in the forest, a source of spring water or, as in this case, a cave.

What they all shared was a setting where the natural

energy of the earth seemed to manifest itself.

This remarkable rock architecture is 1,400 years old,

and the men who carved it were trying to harness

the spirit of the stone from which it is formed.

These beams mimic timber cross-members

and the whole structure was formed in imitation of wooden temples.

The columns appear to be holding the roof up

but it is all made from the living rock.

Inside is a small,

dark womb-like chamber where very little natural light penetrates and

this is regarded as the most sacred part of the temple, the sanctum.

On the back wall is a carved panel which tells us that this

temple is dedicated to Shiva, shown here with his consort, Parvati.

On the side-wall is a panel showing Vishnu,

reclining on the primordial waters.

Shiva and Vishnu are two of the principle gods of Hinduism.

Here in this early temple we see both Vishnu and Shiva co-exist,

but that won't last.

As Hinduism evolved,

here in southern India Shiva became the more popular deity,

while in the north Vishnu is more common

but both are aspects of the divine.

At the time these cave temples were made by far the most popular

faith in India was Buddhism and the people who worshipped here

would have been most surprised to discover they would one day

be regarded as part of an organised religion called Hinduism.

The earliest animist practices saw the spirit of the earth

and its power manifest in all natural things.

Despite its selection of recognisable Hindu deities,

this isolated rural shrine in a forest clearing has

a powerful sense of mystery.

When it was first venerated by the local villagers it would have

had little to do with Shiva.

The many hundreds of clay horses gently

decaying in the undergrowth tell us that this

shrine is dedicated to Ayyanar, a deity who protects rural

villages and is almost exclusively found in Tamil Nadu.

He rides around on horseback fighting the demons of the forest.

The inspiration for this holy place was spiritual rather than

religious - a potent nexus for the essence of the forest.

A similar sense of the power of natural forces is

evident by the shore at Mahabalipuram.

Set back from the sea we find the next

phase in the development of the Pallava stone carvers.

A row of rocky outcrops and boulders allowed them to work on a relatively

modest scale to try out some of their ideas for rock-cut temples.

These are the rathas, a word that means chariot,

and they are the first free-standing rock-cut temples in Indian

architecture and they are completely without precedent.

The rathas are not strictly temples because they were never finished

but they functioned as an aesthetic playground for the Pallava kings.

They are extremely architecturally diverse for the 7th century,

each one trying out different shapes and layouts

and with a rich variety of ornamentation.

The smaller outcrops were used to create animals

and other mythical figures.

However there were occasionally botched jobs.

Imagine the sorry group of stone cutters who stood around this

magnificent carving of Shiva's bull, Nandi and watched as a natural

fault in the granite caused his rear end to fall off.

But this challenge seemed to be one the Pallava craftsmen relished

and it was in stone that Hindu architecture came to life.

At the four corners of this last ratha are figures of Shiva and

other gods, with scripts in ancient Tamil carved in the masonry above.

One is thought to be the king, Narasimhavarman I,

with an inscription that proclaims his patronage of the site.

"Look on my works ye mighty and despair".

The skills developed in the Pallava times have not been lost.

In the back alleys of the town today there are hundreds of stone

artisans chiselling away in ramshackle street studios

meticulously turning stone into devotional art.

The granite that these stonemasons are carving is not found

locally and has to be transported from a quarry 50km away.

But what Mahabalipuram does have, which makes it the undisputed

centre of stone carving along this coast, are the craftsmen.

Right, so the skill is here?

-Yes, that's right.

-Do you take the craftsmen

to see the ancient temples?

The apprenticeship to become a master mason here takes a minimum of

seven years and in that time every aspect of the process is covered.

The workshop even manufacture their own chisels.

Do you see the production of sculpture as an act of devotion?

There is no doubt that the modern carvers have developed their

own style. Though they are depicting the same deities, these figures

are subtly different from those we see from 1,000 years ago.

There is some mechanisation to relieve the more laborious work, and

there are other welcome innovations, like hot chai at 3:00.

MUSIC: (Played on traditional Indian Instruments) Everything Stops For Tea

As well as doing a brisk business with passing tourists

the masons working in these yards are kept busy supplying

sculptures to temples all over the world, from Neasden to Nairobi.

These stone images would be used in temple shrines,

like this small rock cut building nearby,

which takes its inspiration straight from the rathas on the beach.

It consists of nothing more than the shrine-chamber itself

and a narrow veranda for worshippers.

So this temple has actually been consecrated with an image

of Ganesh and people are clearly leaving prayers and lighting lamps.

Ganesh is Shiva's oldest son

and as ever there are many versions of his story.

The most common tells how Parvati gave birth to a boy

while Shiva was on his travels.

She went to wash herself

and told her son not to admit any man to the house while she did so.

Shiva returned and found his way barred by the youth and,

in a rage, beheaded him.

Parvati emerged and revealed the identity of the boy

and a remorseful Shiva brought him back to life,

replacing his head with one from a passing elephant.

Family fidelity was restored.

As any Bollywood filmgoer will tell you, the Indians love a good yarn.

This passion for storytelling is extravagantly

indulged at Mahabalipuram's greatest treasure,

the low relief carving known as The Descent of the Ganges.

Carved in the early 7th century at the same time as the rathas,

this exuberant panorama is packed with life, spilling

down the faces of two monolithic boulders, some 43 feet high.

As far as story-telling in stone goes this is pretty hard to beat,

but it's also an example of inspired planning.

The sculptors have adapted a natural cleft in the rock to represent

the story of the Ganges whose life-giving waters are

so central to the Hindu world view.

So what are we being shown?

Well, the simple version is that the mythical sage, Bhagiratha is

entreating Shiva to bring the celestial river Ganga to earth.

The gods are rushing to the banks to see this miracle

and all the creatures of creation are watching in admiration,

including a family of life-sized elephants.

It's full of beautifully observed details and comic allusion.

Bhagiratha is shown as a sadhu, a holy man, balanced on one leg

but his holiness is somewhat undermined

when we see his pose imitated lower down by a cat.

For Hindus, Ganga is personified as a goddess flowing down from a

faraway source high in the Himalayas to water the plains of India.

So powerful was her force that Shiva had to break her

descent by extending his matted locks, lest she flood the earth

and thus you see the union of male and female forces.

A more complex alternative is that this is

an episode from the early Hindu epic tale, The Mahabharata.

The holy man is in fact a character called Arjuna standing on one

leg as a penance in the hope that Shiva will grant him

an invincible weapon to destroy his enemies.

We don't know which of these two narratives the original artists had

in mind, but both resist complete explanation with equal stubbornness.

What we are seeing here is an early example of the taste

for complex ornament and this seething mass of deities will

eventually become a staple of temple decoration.

Lots of people find Hinduism confusing

because of the multiplicity of gods and goddesses

but amid this profusion of deities lies a very simple idea.

These characters are all different aspects of one ultimate

energy which is beyond name and form.

So at its core, Hinduism is actually a monotheistic religion.

For the Pallavas their greatest moment was the construction

of the Shore Temple, a landmark not just for their own progress

as masons but for the development of the nascent Hindu faith.

The Shore Temple marked a significant move towards

building on a monumental scale.

But whether it was an architectural masterpiece or a simple

carving on the back wall of a cave, at the heart of any Hindu

devotional building is the shrine, the small sacred space where the

devotee experiences darshan, the presence of the divine.

As these buildings grew in size it became common to mark

the presence of the central shrine with an elaborately carved

tower, known as the vimana which stands as a marker,

very visibly proclaiming the temple's location to the faithful.

Though this building is a freestanding structure

the way the rock is carved harks back to the rathas.

It is not made of regular stone blocks and mortar

but huge sections of precisely shaped granite.

This temple, which has stood here for 12 centuries,

is only held together by the weight of its component parts

and a complex system of load distribution.

Time has proved this to be perfectly sufficient to withstand

the elements.

The 2004 tsunami hit this coast with considerable force

but the building survived.

The Shore Temple shows just how far early Hinduism had

come by the 8th century, but there was plenty of opposition

for the hearts and minds of the people.

What was needed was a big marketing push to advertise its advantages

and that is exactly what it got.

It's too simplistic to suggest that Hinduism was just a more

attractive religious experience than the Buddhist or Jain alternatives,

but both these faiths demanded rather a lot from their adherents.

This is a sculpture of the Buddha during the six years

he spent fasting.

After this extensive road test even he acknowledged that this was

not the way to attain enlightenment.

But here in Tamil Nadu there was a group of characters who found

just the right sales pitch for Hinduism,

a set of holy men called the Nayanmars, or the Hounds of Shiva.

Between the 7th and the 9th centuries this

pantheon of 63 mystics and philosophers, also

known as the Tamil Saints, promoted a new kind of devotional Hinduism.

They're renowned

because they travelled through the Tamil country singing

the praises of the god Shiva in the most extravagant and wonderful way.

Their poetry today is still even in translation, is intoxicating.

Yes, it is quite wonderful.

And why are they so keen on Shiva?

Well, it's obvious, isn't it? I mean, he's about power.

He's both creator of life and of the cosmos and he's also the destroyer.

He's totally different in that respect from Vishnu who

sits in the middle who's the ideal husband, the ideal king,

the lord of settled society.

-Shiva is...

-Dynamic.

-Very often dynamic and at the extremes.

So he was very seductive.

Yes, if you're interested in an exciting life.

Yes.

Life was getting exciting for these Hindu revolutionaries,

their teaching was beginning to win a sizable following.

While Europe was groping through the Dark Ages,

in India Hinduism was moving slowly towards the light.

HE SINGS

The hymns written by the saints were central to their success.

The Nayanmars are said to have sung the Buddhists out of India,

and their songs are still sung in the temples today.

The Nayanmars offered a path to salvation that was open to all.

Their great attraction, that they shared with Islamic Sufism which was

developing around the same time in Northern India, was that a personal

expression of devotion was the way to become one with the divine.

Many of the rituals associated with Hinduism today,

such as the chanting of the names of the deities

and pilgrimages to holy sites, were established by the Nayanmars.

But in a practical sense the goal was also to give Hinduism

a popular face.

The fantastic array of gods meant that everyone could find their

own personal deity and set them to work on behalf of their soul.

But what they were striving for was a structure for Hinduism.

A way to formalise and codify its disparate rituals,

to give it order and therefore authority

and to do that they needed to write it all down.

Hinduism is not a "religion of the book."

There is no central source of authority like the Bible or

the Koran to refer to, to promulgate the absolute word of god

but that doesn't mean there is any shortage of scripture.

The whole cannon of Hindu philosophy thrives on debate

and spiritual enquiry, much of it delightfully contradictory.

If you tried to collect it all together it would fill

a myriad libraries.

What was added to

this at the time of the Tamil Saints was a far more rigorous

set of instructions for the devotee, the Agamas.

The Agamas are a set of rules to guide the Hindu devotee.

They are incredibly wide ranging,

offering advice on temple construction, on the intricacies

of the guru-disciple relationship, on meditations on the nature

of Lord Shiva, covering every moment of life from waking to sleeping.

This is the library of the French Institute in Puducherry

where 8,000 bundles of palm leaves have been

collected on which the Agamas are inscribed.

And how did they do the writing?

The palm leaf is scratched by the stylus

and then soot is rubbed onto the surface where it bonds with

the sap to leave the finely intricate script.

Once state-of-the-art technology, the palm leaf manuscripts

were painstakingly recopied every 100 years or so to

preserve them, but these copies lead a pampered life, stored in an

air conditioned library and are regularly

painted with lemongrass oil

to maintain their subtleness and prevent them being eaten by insects.

HE RECITES FROM PALM LEAF

The Agamas originated in Tamil Nadu

and are written in the ancient Tamil language.

All 8,000 bundles are now being translated before being

photographed and digitised allowing them to be accessed online.

The Agamas now gave Hinduism a formal structure that is

still a keystone of its practice today.

In the wake of this change, we begin to see a significant

decline in the Buddhist presence in India.

Buddhism, a faith that had once counted itself as the main

religion of India and had been successfully exported to China

and across Asia, was now destined to disappear

from the land where the Buddha

had sat under a tree and attained enlightenment.

Why this happened is still a matter of fierce debate.

The two religions share many central beliefs

and there is some evidence to suggest that Hinduism simply

absorbed many adherents of Buddhism by borrowing their ideas.

There may have been some persecution

but there was no major conflict, just an increasingly rapid

acceptance of the newly invigorated Hindu teaching.

Towards the end of the 9th Century a new dynasty established

itself in Tamil Nadu.

From their origins on the banks of the Kaveri River the Cholas

quickly gained control of peninsula India

and spread their influence into Sri Lanka, ultimately becoming

the principal military, economic and cultural force in southern Asia.

Once established,

they turned their attention to the glorification of their new

capital, here at Thanjavur, and they certainly left an incredible legacy.

The Chola dynasty produced many notable kings but perhaps

the greatest came to the throne at the end of the 11th Century.

Raja Raja Chola was a rare combination of both

empire builder and patron of the arts,

but perhaps his greatest legacy

is as a builder, and this is his greatest triumph.

This building was completed in 1010 so has not long

since celebrated its 1,000th birthday.

It was started and completed in one continuous

push during the lifetime of

Raja Raja Chola, and in the immediate

aftermath of the Hindu revolution sparked by the Tamil Saints.

Its 300 years since the Shore Temple at Mahabalipuram

was built but we can clearly that a great leap forward has occurred.

It sheer size speaks of a building created for a dominant faith.

Inscriptions in ancient Tamil tell us

that Raja Raja Chola was instructed to build the temple in a dream,

but the real inspiration was surely the architecture of power.

It is, of course, dedicated to Shiva and the message is clear,

Raja Raja and Lord Shiva were two sides of the same coin.

As a work of art it established a distinctive Chola style, both in

design and ornamentation, which was to last for the next few centuries.

The multi-faceted columns

and their projecting square capitals were widely copied, but it

was the height of the central tower over the shrine, the vimana and its

monumental gateways, the gopurams that were its greatest innovations.

The temple gopurams that Raja Raja

built were more opulently embellished

and on a far grander scale than had been attempted before.

In the flat Tamil landscape these mighty stone doorways came to

dominate the view, announcing the presence of this colossal building.

So we're entering through the great stone gopuram of Raja Raja...

Dr Nagaswamy was formerly

the Director of the Archaeological Survey of India

and took a particular interest in this building.

He probably knows more about its construction than

Raja Raja Chola ever did,

starting with the very first marker peg the builders set in the earth.

When the sun rises the shadow will be

thrown on the western side that will be marked, and then on the same

day when the sun sets they draw the central line, exact central line.

The central axis is the basis of the sacred geometry of the temple.

Along this line the location of the main shrine is determined

and this point directly below the finial on the central tower,

the vimana, becomes the focus from which the entire complex is plotted.

Now in this plan,

you see the central vimana of the main tower...

And the inner sanctum.

Now this is exactly in the centre of this outer square.

This outer square which you call the back square is the original

cosmic diagram on which it is laid out and then that is doubled.

In many ways Raja Raja Chola was only doing what had been

done before on a monumental scale.

The vimana is only a few feet shorter than Westminster Abbey.

But Raja Raja couldn't just do as he pleased here,

he was bound by the rules laid down in the Agamas.

They prescribe that you must prepare the measuring scale.

So what are the measurements of this based on?

The central finger of the builder Raja Raja Chola.

I imagine it would take quite a few multiples of Raja Raja's

middle finger to reach 216 feet to the top of the vimana here,

but he seemed to have his finger in every aspect of the temple.

This inscription which says the King Raja Raja

covered the entire tall vimana at the back with gold.

Tower is called Maha Meru. Maha Meru means the golden mountain

beyond the Himalayas which is a mythical mountain

but that was the place where Shiva is said to reside.

Yup. Shiva's mountain abode.

The inscriptions are extraordinarily comprehensive.

Just like the Tamil Saints who preceded him Raja Raja was

codifying Hinduism, recording the operational practices of his temple.

Every detail fully transparent, how much money

he was given, for what purpose and then he says at the end

so long as the sun and the moon lasts this gift must be protected.

The rules of temple architecture which are laid down in the Agamas

were followed by Raja Raja Chola when he came to build this temple.

But though he was a man of refined aesthetic taste

he was also an able administrator.

Raja Raja created a multi-layered system of government

in which the temple was the central authority,

and the largest employer, with a vast permanent workforce that

included priests and ceremonial officers, financiers,

maintenance teams, cooks and kitchen staff, but also the most

talented youngsters in the arts of poetry, singing and dance.

The Temple dancers were apprenticed at an early age,

and usually for life.

The disciplines of classical Hindu dance come from a 2,000 year

old work called the Natya Shastra, and remarkably, it is

still being taught today.

Classical dance is a comprehensive study.

It is not only the movement of your body, it is a total

union of all your senses.

Your body, mind and soul.

SHE SINGS

One obvious way in which these skills are still

evident in modern Indian culture is in the dance

routines of Bollywood films, but the complex vocabulary of gestures

that these students are learning has been refined over centuries.

It's kind of hard because of subtle emotions.

In today's other art forms which are more popular

like commercial art forms there is no

place for subtle emotions. It's all very blatant and very strong.

But here you can see how subtle can be strong.

SHE SINGS

We also need to have that divine connection,

for people who really believe in it. There are dancers who really

believe in, you know, connecting with the temple.

It is very important that it goes beyond cast, creed,

nationality because ultimately it's a language.

Yes, it has come out of the temples but now it's a totally

different scenario. We have festivals organised by the temple authorities

where dancers are invited to dance in the temple precincts.

Classical dance is one aspect of temple culture that has

found its way into mainstream Indian life

and is now invited back inside the temples to participate

again in the sacred rituals that originally inspired it.

Beyond its function as a community centre, workplace

and school, the primary purpose of a temple was spiritual

and right at its centre is the shrine of the main

deity where the devotees come to receive darshan.

This is the route of circumambulation,

and it leads us to a powerful image at the heart of Hinduism.

We move from profane to sacred space as we approach the central shrine.

In this most potent place is kept a phallic symbol, the lingam.

The lingam is a smooth column of stone rising out of a circular

base that represents the female.

Here we have one in one of the side shrines,

which shows the yoni, the female yoni,

with Shiva rising as progenitor of the universe, from the centre of it.

The lingam represents the presence of Shiva,

and to gaze on it is to receive darshan.

The room where it is kept is the direct descendant of the

recess in the back of the cave that we saw back in Mahabalipuram.

The surprise is that inside there is no embellishment,

no grand design, no incredible ornamentation that you

see on the exterior of the temple -

just a simple potent space where the devotee can be one with the divine.

Unlike a church there is no congregation, no liturgy.

Every temple has its own tradition

and everyone is on their own journey.

The Nayanmars concept of supreme personal devotion to

a god like Shiva, meant that you travelled

together on your journey through life, but even with Shiva's

guidance where your journey led you was largely up to you.

Reincarnation is a central tenet of all the religions that

originate in India and your behaviour during this life

will determine how you return in the next.

The intensely personal nature of Hinduism made it very

attractive to people of different needs and aspirations.

Each chose their own journey and selected the gods from whom

they would seek guidance.

The object of the journey was to accrue good karma,

behavioural brownie points, and to ultimately obtain

release from the endless cycle of birth and rebirth.

In pursuit of that supreme challenge we can see how the

form of this remarkable building evolved, channelling worshippers

towards the central shrine and the presence of the divine.

It's a long way from a forest clearing.

By the time it was finished the basic precepts of Hindu worship

were set in stone, but though this building was the peak of Chola

artistic achievement their lasting legacy was not in granite at all.

More than 1,000 years ago it was discovered that the

sand at this particular bend in the Kaveri river had a purity

that was supremely good for bronze casting.

It was in bronze that the Chola craftsmen

established their artistic heritage, creating beautiful

works of sculpture that are still being replicated today.

Just like the stone masons in Mahabalipuram the main subjects

for the bronze sculptures made here are likenesses of the Hindu deities.

Today the furnace is powered by this venerable old motor which

began its working life under the bonnet of an Ambassador taxi,

but in most other respects nothing has changed here for 1,000 years.

The figures are made using an ingenious process called

lost wax casting and the first step

is to make a wax version of the sculpture.

The material in this heated basin is actually a mixture of beeswax

and resin and part of the skill is the constant warming of the wax

while it is being worked.

The team all have their own specialities

and they develop extraordinary speed and dexterity.

In fact, they make it look so simple I thought I'd have a go.

OK? Let's go.

Mine doesn't look like yours

Ah.

Then you get the thumb.

I have to admit, I had a little bit of help.

Now this is where the all-important mud comes in.

The wax sculpture is encased in a mould made from Kaveri river

sand, making sure all the details are retained.

This is then allowed to dry out.

For every mould we make two holes and then I put it in a potion

-and we cover it with iron strings to become more strong.

-Sure.

Then after we heat the mould the wax will be lost here

so we get a negative hollow inside the mould.

In the furnace area the moulds are gently

cooking on a fire on one side of the room to drain away the wax,

while the bronze is being brought up to temperature in the fire pit.

Trusting only in the protection of their cotton lunghis the team

begin to pour the metal.

There's something incredibly captivating and primordial

about this fire and also the way all these men work together.

Even after the moulds have cooled

and are broken open there's still plenty to do cleaning up

the figures rough edges, but the end result makes it all worthwhile.

This is magnificent, look at this.

This was also made out of one mould.

Yeah, this is about 800kg.

Like the stone Shiva lingam in the temple shrine,

this is another manifestation of Shiva.

Known as the Nataraja this is an avatar, originally a Hindu

word for an incarnation of the deity when they descend to the earth.

In this form Shiva is the cosmic dancer, creating the universe

while stamping down the dwarf of ignorance.

-This is the cycle of time?

-Exactly.

The universe and this is the fire circle also

and it is dancing in the fire circle.

So how do you achieve this kind of balance?

In the wax we make the measurement, even though

the circle is also coming in to everything is a single mould.

So you create the whole figure in wax?

In wax. Exactly.

So part of preserving the tradition is not just

preserving the product but also the process.

Exactly.

These bronze deities are made in every size, from the largest

temple figures to the smallest domestic gods for a bedroom shrine.

The material allows for a fluidity of movement, softer expressions

and gestures, communicating messages of benevolence and forgiveness,

and the more beautiful and refined the bronze god is the more

likely the spirit of the real deity is to inhabit the sculpture.

The other great advantage to a sculpture

cast in bronze as opposed to stone was that it was portable.

For centuries the stone gods in the temple shrines were a fixed

and immoveable presence, drawing the faithful to darshan,

but the advent of portable bronze figures meant that the

deities could leave their shrines.

This is Madurai, one of the great temple cities of South India.

The figure on the palanquin is, once again, Shiva.

He is being taken on a nightly excursion around the temple

and this ceremony shows how devotional practices

changed in the period after the Tamil Saints.

The bronze statue of Shiva is hidden from our view behind the curtains

but for the priests carrying him he is very real.

He is being taken to spend the night with his consort, Parvati,

known here by the name of one of her avatars, Meenakshi,

and the tryst will take place in her shrine.

These golden footprints represent Shiva

descending from his palanquin to enter Meenakshi's shrine.

The local legend tells us that Shiva

and Meenakshi were married in Madurai in a ceremony performed

by Vishnu and after a long and happy life together as rulers of the

town they assumed divine form and she became the deity of this temple.

There may seem to be an element of mystical pantomime here,

an elaborate masque in which the divine couple make

out behind closed doors, but their mortal followers are being

shown an activity that they can relate to their own lives.

The veil of illusion becomes translucent.

The marriage of Shiva and Meenakshi is consummated anew

every night, and at dawn Shiva slips away, back to his own shrine.

Madurai is in the deep south of Tamil Nadu.

It's over 2,500 years old and was mentioned by Greek travellers

when the paint was still wet on the Parthenon.

The sprawling complex of halls

and courtyards that make up its labyrinthine temple cover an

area the size of 25 football pitches and it has no less than 14 gopurams.

The gopura came into its own at the great temple of Madurai

and it was here that it became a defining feature of temple

architecture of the south.

The vimana underwent a corresponding shrinking process

and was now barely visible from the ground level.

The other very visible feature is the colourful

riot of sculpture on the towers.

These plaster figures proclaim to the faithful just what

an army of deities are working away on behalf of their soul,

but the lurid choice of colours is a fairly recent addition.

The custodians of the temple,

the priestly class who manage the building and its day-to-day

affairs, are Brahmins - the top rung of the Indian caste system.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, are "untouchables",

not considered worthy to enter the temple shrine, but they too need the

opportunity to experience darshan.

The city of Madurai developed

according to a division of labour and the model on which it is based

is said to be like the unfurling petals of a lotus flower.

At its centre is the temple where the Brahmins officiate.

In the surrounding streets the warrior caste,

the Kshatriyas are found.

The next layer is for merchants and landowners, the Vaishya.

And in the outlying districts live the Sudra, commoners or peasants.

On the fringes of the city are those without a caste.

There are 160 Brahmin priests working at this temple

and it is through their good offices that access to the main

shrine is regulated.

In theory they minister to all without fear or favour.

Rich, poor, able, disabled, there is

no discrimination among the people to worship

those who are coming.

'Things get slightly uncomfortable

'when it comes to equal access to all areas.'

How about people who want to go to the inner sanctum?

Can anybody go?

Not anybody, because we are the medium for them you know.

So you're saying there's a system.

There is a system, a principle, all cannot easily go in.

For the untouchables who are not permitted to enter the shrine,

and for those who simply feel they can navigate life without

the guiding hand of a Brahmin priest, there are alternatives.

In a corner of the main temple courtyard,

genuinely accessible to all, there is a small shrine to Ganesh,

the remover of obstacles, which is extremely busy.

These worshippers are allowed to touch the deity,

to make their own offerings and to conduct their own personal

rituals but by doing so they remain very much part of Hindu practices.

Familiar religious images are now emerging from the temples

and becoming part of mainstream Indian life, a process that began

with the advent of cheap colour printing in the late 19th century.

The painter Raja Ravi Varma became hugely popular by portraying

the deities in a contemporary western style using oil paint.

The performance artist Pushpamala has recreated his familiar

image of the goddess Lakshmi, casting herself as the deity.

Lakshmi is of course the goddess of wealth

but Ravi Varma also created this kind of fair-skinned

aristocratic ideal Indian woman.

Pushpamala has also made work based on a series of photographs

taken by British ethnographers in the 19th century that sought

to categorise the races of India.

These images, being regarded as scientific,

are not concerned to disguise the darker skin of their subjects.

In fact the Andamanese Islander picture comes

from a very famous study and they were doing it in all the colonies

and that was in the sense to control and understand, so that was to kind

of really, you know, get a grasp on the world

which was rapidly expanding.

In fact, the term Hindu only came into widespread

use during the British Raj and these religious and ethnic classifications

certainly contributed to the rigidity of the Indian caste system.

But once these religious stratifications had been

formulated they became a welcome badge for those they labelled.

The temple is still the focus for the religious

life of Hindu communities, but the younger generation are

growing up in a country where their government now wears this religious

badge and religion is more present in everyday culture than ever.

The intensely expressive sculptures that adorn

the temple gopurams now appear in a new guise.

The Hindu legends are retold in comic book form

and these graphic novels have become immensely popular.

But for a group of young comic book enthusiasts,

working in a small apartment, these home-grown efforts retelling

the familiar stories of Shiva need a bit of updating.

Here's their take on the marriage of Shiva

and Meenakshi that inspired the night ceremony in Madurai,

but the scene has now become a mash up of Gotham City and Middle Earth.

I used to read comics, you know, Superman, Batman.

I love the graphics in those comics.

Then I read a few comics from Indian publishing houses, the stories

were good, but the graphics were a little bit obsolete basically.

I just see Marvel and

I see the difference, so I said why not bring these three

together where I have graphics which are universal and bring in stories

which touch our Hindu legends and bring in the art of narration

from Tolkien and make graphic novels with these three elements.

Although the style of the graphics and the narration are new,

for a true Hindu there is very little room for innovation

when it comes to the stories.

It doesn't make any sense to deviate

because if the story is there, existed, a lot of people,

especially the young ones or the youth of today or the

Y-generation, whatever you may call it, in our country and abroad,

don't know much about the story and the story itself is so interesting.

Why do you want to deviate and rock the boat?

As keen as these guys are on sticking to the authentic

stories, they have some interesting ideas about Hinduism.

Hindu was never a religion, I believe.

My personal view, it is a culture.

It was a way of living.

All of the answers are there in the past.

You know children from all ages look at the graphic novel

and get attracted. "This is such appealing art. I love it.

"It's so awesome. It's so cool." OK and then he starts to read

and that whole process he understands the story.

That's where we come in.

However adroit Hinduism is at adapting

itself to the modern world Hindu philosophy is still difficult

to reconcile with western notions of religious experience.

One of the most fundamental disconnects between eastern

and western thought is represented by Shiva Nataraja,

and his ring of fire.

Time is cyclical and all opposites are reconciled in Shiva.

Today, in many fields India is leading

global technological progress.

So how does it reconcile scientific advances with

ancient myths and legends?

Victorian Christianity was severely tested by the theories

of scientists like Charles Darwin and many evangelical

Christians still cannot accept the scientific truth of evolution.

Hinduism, it seems, has no such issues.

Outside the CERN Particle Research Centre in Geneva

a Shiva Nataraja, donated by the Indian Government, celebrates

the involvement of many Indian tech companies in the project.

Whether you call it the

Large Hadron Collider or Shiva Nataraja,

the fact that the origins of the universe lie in a ring of

cosmic energy is just confirmation of something Hindus already knew.

What took science so long to catch up?

Does being a Hindu allows you a certain

freedom of enquiry?

It does

because I can be a Hindu without having to subscribe to a particular

god, to a particular book or to a particular religious practice.

Which means that I can be completely independent,

I can have my own view of the world, I can have my own

view of the universe and I can accommodate different

views from different systems and synthesise them in my mind.

For a Hindu the black water, the Indus river or

the Indian Ocean mark the boundaries of their homeland.

In the days before mass travel to cross the black water

and leave India was to cease to be a Hindu

and the rise of Hindu nationalism has reinforced the idea that

to be Indian is to be Hindu, and vice versa.

But Hindu nationalism is directly at odds with its inclusive

tradition and as India emerges as a major economic force

at the forefront of globalisation the role of Hinduism in its

society is becoming incendiary.

It's total chaos here.

This is the festival of Karthikai Deepam,

and since we're in the Tamil heartlands of southern India

we have yet another festival which celebrates the multi-faceted Shiva.

The central story tells how, in a moment of celestial

competitiveness, Shiva appeared to Vishnu and Brahma as an endless

flame of light and challenged them to find his head and his feet.

To cut a long story short, and it is a long story, they fail

and Shiva remains supreme.

Like so many other elements of Hinduism,

this festival offers the devotee a bewildering array of choices.

The basic tale has become freighted with other cargo, competing

traditions that obscure the central meaning with excess baggage.

In one tradition the oil lamps ward off evil forces

and bring prosperity and joy. In another the relationship of

brothers and sisters is remembered and siblings exchange gifts.

Yet another tale is the alignment of six stars at this

point in the year, said to represent the six faces of Murugan,

the Hindu god of war.

The complexity that results from this

amalgamation of myth and celebration makes it impossible to give

a simple answer to the question, "What is this festival for?"

Perhaps there is no answer,

and perhaps there doesn't need to be one.

It means something different to each person,

but everyone can enjoy it together.

And in this simple fact lies the secret to Hinduism's success.

The temples are as busy as they have ever been and as their

traditions spill out into mainstream Indian life once more,

their devotees are still seeking answers to questions

that are eternal.

The many different religions that have vied for the souls of

the faithful over the centuries have left a rich legacy in these lands.

The haunting relics of the Buddhist culture are now just ruins

but their beautiful devotional art reminds us

of their remarkable achievements.

The great mosques and mausoleums of the Mughal

conquest are architectural masterpieces,

venerated around the world and the skill of their painters and their

musical heritage are as cherished today as they have always been.

5,000 years ago,

when the first great urban settlements grew up on the banks

of the Indus River, the citizens had to devise ways of living together

in some of the world's first cities and they face similar problems now.

But as we know, in the Hindu world-view time is cyclical,

not linear.

The cities of these lands today have to find new

strategies to support vast populations but they have a genius

for coping with immense challenges, and as they strive towards solutions

it is perhaps some comfort to know that they have been here before.

In the West, time marches on, but here, what goes around comes around.

MUSIC: I'm Free by The Soup Dragons

# I'm free to do what I want

# Any old time

# I said I'm free

# To do what I want

# Any old time

# Don't be afraid of your freedom. #