For medieval European builders who used temple rubble in their churches, the older Pagan faith was totally snuffed out in the former Roman Empire, so no one was left to protest against the deliberate insult to the ancient Gods. But in India there are many left to seethe about temple ‘spolia’ in mosques. – Reshmi Dasgupta

‘Spolia’ is an interesting word. Taken from Latin, it means “spoils” (of war) but archaeologists and academics use it to describe stones and architectural elements retrieved from older structures and re-used in new constructions, as masonry or decoration, either in the same place or elsewhere. Many of those who use the word prefer it because ‘spolia‘ sounds passive, because most people do not know the real meaning, with its vivid allusions to violence and destruction.

Debris and rubble are the better known words that imply destruction and hence are less used as they give rise to uncomfortable questions. More so when certain sections of them are reused intact, so that their original purpose juxtaposed with their new ‘repurposed’ existence remains clear to those looking at it. Hindu and Jain temple ‘spolia’—pillars—used in the cloisters of the 12th century Quwwat-ul-Islam Mosque in New Delhi’s Mehrauli is one such example in India.

Of course, an entire wall of an older structure retained intact in a subsequent construction—one example of which is currently in the news here—cannot be called ‘spolia’ in the classical sense as technically, it is not in bits and pieces. But its impact on those who see it is far sharper than, say, statues of Pagan or forbidden gods embedded in walls or on stairs, of which there are many examples in the areas of the erstwhile Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman empires.

In this connection, it may be remembered that remains of old statues and columns which were used in later constructions in the Acropolis in Athens have been widely interpreted as a deliberate device to forever remind Athenians about the destruction wrought by Persian emperor Xerxes I in 480 BCE after the battle of Thermopylae. Only certain spolia were used, so as to ensure Athenians resolve to never let it happen again. This is called ‘purposeful memorialisation’.

The ‘spoliate colonnades’ of Rome, however, are even more apt in the context of Mehrauli as intact pre-Christian Roman pillars were deliberately re-used in churches. In Spolia Churches of Rome: Recycling Antiquity in the Middle Ages, Maria Fabricius Hansen writes how from the 4th century CE to the 13th century CE, Christians “re-used” columns, pediments and other spolia of ancient (Pagan) Rome prominently in churches. It even became an architectural style.

The assertion of Christianity over the earlier faith prevalent there was implicit in this exercise since the new churches not only used old material but were also eventually built on the very sites of Roman temples. Fortunately for those medieval church builders, the older faith was totally snuffed out in the former Roman Empire, so no one was left to protest against the deliberate insult to their ancient gods. But in India there are many left to seethe about ‘spolia’.

The term ‘purposeful memorialisation’ can be used to describe the use of ‘spolia’ in India too, but the intention was rather different. Although contemporary left-leaning historians have tried hard to find a continuity in terms of violence and destruction in India before and after the advent of Islamic rulers, there is little proof of wilful debasing. There is no evidence of Buddhist ‘spolia’, for example, being deliberately used in Hindu temples to humiliate and disparage.

On the contrary, the great Buddhist university or mahavihara at Nalanda (then in Magadha and now Bihar) was built by the Hindu emperor Kumaragupta in the 5th century and flourished under successive Hindu rulers and non-royal Hindu donors. It was destroyed in the 12th century by ‘Turks’ (almost certainly Bakhtiyar Khilji’s army) corroborated by contemporary accounts of monks. The site of another mahavihara Odantapur that Khilji razed became Bihar Sharif.

Many reused ‘older’ building materials in India without any idea of what the original structures were, of course. Bricks and pillars of the 2nd century BCE Amaravati mahachaitya buried for more than a millennia were reused by a local zamindar Raja Vesireddy Nayudu to build his new capital in the late 18th century. Bricks from the then-undiscovered Harappa were also used by the British as track ballast for the Lahore-Multan railway in the late 19th century.

The Indus-Saraswati civilisation was still unknown when the railway was being built and Amaravati was just a grassy mound of bricks. They both could just as well have belonged to abandoned settlements of relatively recent provenance, that too not of known importance. So, whether knowing the origin of the bricks and ‘spolia’ would have really made a difference in these two cases remains moot. But all use of ‘spolia’ in India has not been that unwitting.

Which explains why there has been a concerted effort to project that destruction of places of worship and use of ‘spolia’ in India predated the Islamic period. One example cited is of the Pallava king Narasimhavarman I’s Brahmin general Paranjothi who took away a Ganesha idol from the Chalukyan capital Vatapi (now Badami in Karnataka) after the defeat of Pulakeshin II in 642 AD and installed it in his village Tiruchenkattankudi in Tiruvarur district of Tamil Nadu. But those who cite it omit the fact that the razing of Vatapi exempted temples.

Not only did Paranjothi install the Ganesha idol with great devotion and respect in his village but there is an inscription by Narasimhavarman I in the Mallikarjuna Temple at Vatapi, proving that destruction of Chalukyan temples—much less raising another structure on the site to rub it in—was not on the agenda. Carrying away idols did not indicate contempt as they were not melted down, unlike those taken from southern temples by Alauddin Khilji’s general Malik Kafur.

Another example given is of Rajadhiraja Chola who defeated the Chalukyas and plundered their capital Kalyani, taking away a large black stone dwarapala. But the inscription on that dwarapala, now installed at the Darasuram Temple in Kumbakonam, attributing its presence there to Rajadhiraja, proves it was not demeaned or destroyed but respectfully given place in another temple. If this could be called ‘spolia’ at all, it had been given a dignified new home.

The actions of warring southern Hindu rulers were a marked contrast to the attitude of the invading Islamic armies from the north, especially the expeditions of Alauddin Khilji’s favourite general Malik Kafur. The many stories of idols hidden to prevent destruction and mutilated stone carvings of figures in the great temples of south India bear witness to the fury and intentions of these invaders, going beyond just plundering their gold, gems, horses and elephants.

This is conveyed in almost fawning detail by the admired 14th century bard Amir Khusrau (who was witness to many of those pillaging wars) in Tarikh-i-Alai. One description goes: “The holy places of the Hindus, which the Malik Kafur dug up from its foundations with the greatest care. … The stone idols called ling, which had existed for a long time and until now, the kick of the horse of Islam hadn’t attempted to break … the Mussalmans destroyed all the idols”.

In most cases though, the ‘spolia’ used by idol-breaking armies are not as evident as, say, at the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque and certainly Gyanvapi. But the question is when (if at all) will India’s historians and intelligentsia take a cue from their counterparts (who have noted the same phenomenon around the Mediterranean) face up to the truth? They need to not only call a spade a spade but also disseminate the real meaning and purpose of ‘spolia’ in history. – FirstPost, 14 August 2023

› Reshmi Dasgupta is an editor at the Times of India, New Delhi.