Thursday, February 7, 2013
Thursday, February 7, 2013
I am standing on a boulder-strewn hilltop above the small town of Hampi with the gopuram of the local temple, built in the 1500’s, in the background. Our intense one-day journey through Hampi started for me with an early morning walk along the Tungabhadra River where a good percentage of the male population of this small town takes its morning bath and the mahout bathes the temple elephant. Beth and I have breakfast at a rooftop restaurant, one of many, and we meet our guide who takes us in and around the many beautiful remains of temples and royal buildings that were once part of the great Hindu Vijayanagar empire.
The Archeology Survey of India is attempting to relocate all the villagers out of the historical district to nearby locations in order to better preserve this world heritage site. I can understand why as there is a great deal of garbage on the ground from the visitors, mainly Indian, who come to this small town whose only industry is tourism. A wide swathe of the old town has already been evacuated and partially demolished and further changes are coming.
This large 27-kilometer wide site is strewn with the remains of temples and marketplaces from about 1300-1585 at which time it was destroyed by its jealous neighbors. Many of the Stonehenge looking structures, pillars with cross beans, are crooked and look like they are balancing precariously on one another but visitors are allowed to walk right up to and in them despite the possible danger. Some of the earlier temples and buildings have an angular South Indian aesthetic while newer buildings are Indo-Saracen in design, with much Muslim influence.
We take a short boat ride across the river on a small motorized boat with many motorcycles and people piled up in the back and it is a little worrisome as we seem very heavy and low in the water and we realize if the boat sinks, although we can swim, the crashing motorcycles would be a death knell. This concern for accidents that could be avoided with more safety precautions, or inspections, is not unreasonable as the reason this boat is the only means across to Anegonda, the original capital of the Vijayanagar Empire, is because the new bridge right next us collapsed a few years ago, killing 16 people who just happened to be on it at the wrong moment. The cause, our guide says, was political incompetence because the bridge was started and stopped so many times that different kinds of concrete were used, some of which failed. Below, the failed bridge, and a visitor with a motorcycle on the boat.
In Anegonda, we visit a women’s weaving coop attempting to provide a living for the village women by charging a fair trade price for their crafts made out of banana fibre. In order to support these women, Beth and I each buy a hand bag and Beth is able to photograph them at work.
We also visit a temple with intricately carved pillars which play, when struck by sticks, different notes replicating the timbre of different classical instruments. In the height of this civilization, 38 musicians played the columns, while dancers performed in the center courtyard. Sitting on the steps of a smaller nearby temple, looking at the space where this event occurred, I think about the fact that I am only a second generation American, and there are such short notes of historical culture where I live. The people in this region have thousands of years of an artistic and musical culture underneath them which waxed and waned and has transformed over time but must still provide some sense of roots in the earth.
I realize that many of the sites I have seen today were excavated after my friends Thelma and Foster visited Hampi in 1966, which is when I first heard of this place which was outside of any tourists books at the time. Some of the major sections were dug in 1980-1990 by an American and British archaeologist. I imagine in another 40 years, there will be further additions to this world heritage collection.
Beth and I climb to a hilltop to watch the sunset over the ruins and the Hampi temple and bask in the beauty of the boulders and the pink sky over the palm studded landscape.
One memory of the day: young men playing cricket with their cell phones held to their ears!