Learning to See the Goddess Once Again: Male and Female in Balance at the Kailasanath Temple in Kancipuram

Abstract

All scholarship on the famous Kailāsanāth temple, a stone complex built by a king of the Pallava dynasty during the early eighth century at his capital city in southeastern India, assumes that it was dedicated to Śiva alone. Surveys of Indic art presume that most Hindu temples—and all of those built of stone, in cities, by royal patrons—were built for male deites. I propose that the Kailāsanāth is instead two conjoined temples of equal significance, one to Śiva and one to goddesses. The architectural and sculptural signs of goddess worship at the Kailāsanāth are, furthermore, present at other temples, temples central to the art historical canon, temples we thought we knew well when we knew them simply as dedications to male deities. The Kailāsanāth temple teaches us to recognize the substantial presence of goddesses in Indic temple architecture, and to begin understanding cultural assumptions that have prevented us from seeing this before.