The principal aim of traditional art is to give form to the religious vision while at the same time aspiring to transcend that form. Architecture is a sacred form of expression, an allusion to the divine activity which freely delimits itself in time and space to reveal the universe. It is through this delimitation that existence comes into being: for this reason, the artistic creativity implies discipline and sacrifice, the only virtues able to liberate art from the will of the ego and make of it the deepest expression of the Self. A work of art is less the realisation of the genius of a single artist than the embodiment of a burst of song from a divine choir filtered through the individual sensibility.

Spiritual preparation is thus essential prior to creation. Such preparation includes ascetic practices, the study of holy texts, meditation and interiorisation and visualisation of the truth to be transmitted. In nearly all cases, the architect is a Brahman, a member of the highest caste in Hindu society, the caste of priests responsible for the passing on of knowledge. The function of the artist is imbued with a certain holiness as it invites the divinity to "incarnate" itself in the stone. The temple is therefore an orator (descent to earth) and tangible apparition of the sacred, evoked by the faith of the patrons and by the esoteric knowledge of the executors. All architectural operations aim at the transfiguration of the profane - the materials used and the process of construction - into the sacred, in which the temple built according to the rules becomes the mystical cosmic body of the Divine.

Architecture is, therefore, essentially the expression of the metaphysical contents of the Hindu culture: the Indian temple is a darshana (a sacred vision) in which every tiny detail represents a part of the Divine and must therefore follow precise religious and symbolic dictates. The nearby presence of water is fundamental, better still if in front of or to the left of the building. Before starting construction, the land must be ploughed by twelve bulls pulling twelve ploughs; this act has acosmic nature alluding to the path of the sun through the twelve signs of the zodiac. Once the land has been seeded and the crops are ripe, cows and calves are allowed to graze there so that they can purify the soil with their auspicious presence. As a symbol of provident and benevolent nature, the cow is particularly holy and its five products - milk, butter, ghee (clarified butter), urine and dung - are basic elements in ritual and everyday life: milk and butter in offerings, dried dung as fuel and urine to disinfect and exorcise the environment.

Complicated mathematical divisions centred more on the remainders in the calculations than the answers govern the dimensions of the construction and ensure its positiveness. It is the remainder that produces existence: if nothing remains, nothing can be produced. When the universe has ended its cycle and, suspended in an inert cosmic night, it waits to create itself once more, it is not by chance that the god Vishnu, the providential face of the Divine and Lord of the preservation of life, sleeps on the primordial serpent named Sesha (Remainder), symbol of the vital energy of nature left over from the previous cycle waiting to be activated in a new dawn of being.
 

THE ALTAR OF FIRE
India's most ancient archaeological sites are situated along the course of the river Indus and show the existence of an
advanced civilisation that, because of its position, the archaeologists named "the Indus Valley civilisation". Already established before 2800 BC, the Indus valley civilisation reached its apogee around 2500 BC with the large twin cities of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, now in Pakistan, and of Kalibangan and Lothal in Gujarat. Around 2000-1900 BC, the civilisation began to decline due to natural and climatic causes and to internal socio-economic processes, although the arrival of the Aryans hastened its end. The provenance of this nomadic tribe is controversial and still under debate. They settled over a period of centuries but left too few articles in their wake to allow us to reconstruct their development with certainty. They seemed to flow into India from around 1800 BC (although many doubts surround that date) until the 3rd century AD but no significant traces of their places of worship have been found. On the other hand, this is perhaps not surprising given that they were a nomadic tribe. What is known about the Aryans has been discovered from literature: the four "Veda", texts centering on the sacrificial liturgy, form the basis of the social, philosophic, and religious development of India. The vastuvidya (science of architecture) is also dealt with in the "Shulvasutra", part of the works of the "Vedanga", six supplements to the "Veda". The "Shulvasutra" were probably written between 500 and 200 BC. They state the measurements to be carried out in the construction of the Altar of Fire, fulcrum of the ritual prescribed by the "Veda", and contain wide knowledge of geometry. The altar is the most ancient element of sacred Hindu architecture and its symbolism inspires the construction of the temple. According to the Vedic conception, the existence of the cosmos is ensured by the interaction of innumerable forces and man is able to catalyse the positive energy or exorcise the negative energy by means of ritual. This consisted of the sacrifice of animals in the past but in the presentation of offerings in temples in more recent times.

Once the ritual area Has been bounded by a plough or a palisade, the pole to which the sacrificial animals are tied is raised. The pole symbolises the centre of the cosmos, the axis mundi around which the universes are harmoniously structured: it is therefore a representation of the presence of the Divine in the sense of order of the Whole. Symbolising the connection between earth and heaven, it is fitted with rungs and climbed by the officiant and patron in a ritual allusion to the passage from the profane to the sacred, made possible by understanding and the exact execution of the rite. The memory of this initiatory rite, that has today lost its meaning, lives on in the folklore of the climbing of the greasy pole in which the prizes to be claimed by those competitors successfully reaching the top hark back to the spiritual treasure of understanding that liberates and saves.

The sacrificial stake is also linked to the symbolism of the tree that is so important in Indian culture. The tree is a
symbol of life and fertility and, rooted in the ground and stretching up to heaven, it indicates the spiritual path to be followed. Sacred events, such as divine apparition or attainment of a transcendental state, often take place beneath its foliage. Since the most ancient of times, India has believed trees to be the homes of guardian spirits, the yakshas, and their companions, the yakshinis, and it is no coincidence that Buddha received enlightenment at the foot of a pipal tree. At the back of the temple area, the sacrificial pole has survived as an isolated column overlooking the entrance to the sanctuary and is now used to fly the temple banner. Around the pole there will be one or more altars of different shape and used for different purposes: the circular garhaputya is positioned to the west and connected to the physical world; the square ahavaniya is situated to the east and refers to the blue orb of the sky; the half-moon dakshinagni faces south and is associated with the atmosphere between earth and heaven.

The shape of the circle evokes the undivided unity of the First Principle and its projection as an active, fecundating
Heaven; it is favoured by nomads as it refers to the ceaseless movement at the base of existence. The blue vaults of the sky are boundless so that the centre is only symbolic and may be positioned any and everywhere: the templum is simply a bounded area chosen for "contemplation" of the heavens. When a nomadic tribe settles, the circle becomes a symbol of the future
which, at the macrocosmic level, finds its place in the continuous cycle of conservation and destruction of the universe while, at a microcosmic level, it represents the samsara, the rebirth of man in the ceaseless flow of existence in accordance with the law of karma. This "act" is understood to be cause and effect of all actions: in the universe, as the sum of all actions of all living beings, karma, determines the development of phenomena; in man, representing all actions, karma imprisons the soul in the circle of births and deaths where present existence, nourished by desire and ignorance, is conditioned by past lives and itself conditions future life. In this context, the circle connotes the link to be broken and the limit to be transcended. The square is preferred by settled populations. It is connected with the earth and symbolises eternal Being, universal Law, the divine as opposed to the mundane, the sacred as opposed to the profane. Hindu architecture tends to superimpose shapes and to transform the first into the seconda process apparently "squaring the circle" as it metamorphoses into the square representing existence governed by the canons of the First Principle. Construction of the Altar of Fire - and later the temple - aimed at restoration of the perfection preceding the manifestation of the world and the reconstruction of the One from the multiplicity of fragments to which it was reduced. This architectural liturgy is inspired by the Rigveda, the most important of the four "Veda", and in particular by the myth of the sacrifice of the Purusba, the giant paradigm of man used by the gods as a sacrificial victim. The entire universe and the human species organised in castes originate from this giant's partial dismemberment. On a microcosmic level, the liturgy celebrates the divine macrocosmic rite of the passage from the One to the multiple but it is in this event that the root of cosmic pain and individual suffering lies. The apparition of the world flows from polarity and opposition so that existence is a conflict between life and death while man experiences separation from the Principle, from Cod, as privation and alienation.

It is for this reason that sacrifice and the construction of the holy site are concluded with the reconstitution of the
ineffable Unity that incorporates and transcends opposites and that brings the soul back to its Lord. In the construction of the Altar of Fire from the outside inwards, the assembling of a ritual number of bricks in accordance with a codified procedure evokes the recomposition. The empty space left at the centre of the altar, called the umbilicus, is the symbol of emptiness and the inscrutable Absolute. The solid returns to the void and emerges again: emanation and absorption repeats incessantly. This is how, along with the resolution of the multiplicity into the One, construction also evokes the imposition of divine order on the amorphous, chaotic mass of primordial matter. According to myth when some indefinable forces obstructed the universe the gods hurled themselves down upon it, immobilising the universe, each blocking a portion. The disordered fluctuation of primitive chaos was stabilised as the ordered cosmos thanks to the intervention of the luminous and divine beings, the devas, which gave form
to existence.

The emblem of disorder and the devilish appearance of matter is an asura, a demon represented as a human figure, its face squashed in the vastupurushamandala, the square grill making up the plan of the temple. The asura, subdued by the sthapati, the priest-architect leading the workers, is renamed the vastupurusha, the "giant of existence", the archetype of the construction. Again, the physical act of building has transformation as its aim: in a symbolic "rotation", the demon with the squashed face - symbol of passivity but also the power of plasticity and thus shape -becomes the Purusha, the perfect man, his face turned toward the sky: the divine essence that pervades matter infuses it with sacred shape.

The Purusha pervades the vastupurushamandala like a vital essence; the prana, or "breath" that animates the macro and microcosm, runs through vital points of the temple plan. These "nerve centres" are called mormans, vital but vulnerable points that must not be obstructed by being incorporated in walls, pillars or doorways. If that were the case, potentially lethal falls in energy levels of the bodies of builder and patron would take place. The analogy between the temple, a mystical body composed of five cosmic elements, and the psycho-physical human body is very strong. The square plinth connected to the earth refers to the body between the feet and the knees; the walls, connected with the water element, evoke the portion between the knees and the loins; the covering of the inner sanctum, correlated to fire and the triangle, the part between the loins and heart; the kalasha, the vase of water that completes the inner sanctum, alludes to the element air and the body between the heart and the eye sockets; the pinnacle, symbol of ether and space, equates to the area of the eyebrows and the top of the head. The temple is the body of God and his worshippers.