On a granite face in the heart of Mamallapuram, in Chengalpattu district, the Pallavas left one of the largest bas-reliefs in the world: a wall of carving measuring about 96 by 43 feet, worked across two adjoining boulders in the 7th century. Crowds of gods, sages, celestial musicians, serpent-spirits and life-sized animals stream toward a natural vertical fissure that splits the rock down the middle. It is a masterpiece with two names, Arjuna's Penance and the Descent of the Ganges, and scholarship has never definitively chosen between them. That ambiguity, it turns out, may be the point.
- About 96 by 43 feet, carved on two granite boulders
- Pallava work of the 7th century, part of the Mahabalipuram group
- A natural cleft down the middle stands in for the river
- Roughly 146 figures, including a famous family of elephants
Two stories, one wall
By tradition the relief carries two readings, and both hinge on a penitent figure shown standing on one leg in fierce austerity. In one reading he is Arjuna, the hero of the Mahabharata, performing penance to win the Pashupata, Shiva's irresistible weapon, an episode drawn from the Kiratarjuniya. In the other he is King Bhagiratha, whose long devotion persuaded the gods to release the celestial river Ganga to flow down to earth, so that its waters could redeem his ancestors and nourish every living creature. Some scholars have suggested the doubleness was deliberate, in the spirit of the classical literary genre of dvisamdhi-kavya, poetry composed to be read two ways at once. On this ancient rock face the sculptors may have written the same kind of double meaning in stone.
The river in the cleft
What binds the two stories together is the rock itself. The natural perpendicular fissure between the two boulders becomes the river, whether Ganga descending or the stream on whose bank Arjuna stands. Tradition holds that water was once channelled from a tank above so that it cascaded down the cleft, animating the whole scene. Down its length glide nagas, serpent deities shown as human figures with cobra hoods, gods and goddesses, kinnaras and gandharvas, apsaras and ascetics, said to number around 146 figures in all, everything drawn toward the descending water in what one description calls a sublime continuity of all living things. The composition turns a flaw in the granite into its narrative spine.
Elephants, and a cat with a secret
The relief is celebrated as much for its warmth as its scale. Toward the base a family of life-sized elephants advances, the great tusked male shielding calves that shelter beneath and around the adults, a passage carvers and travellers have admired for centuries. And then there is the joke the Pallava sculptors buried in the crowd: a cat standing upright on one hind leg, paws raised, imitating the posture of the penitent ascetic. Tradition links it to a Panchatantra fable of a cat that feigned holiness to lull its prey, and the artists caught that sly false-piety in the stone, a mouse or two lingering nearby. In a monument about the highest devotion, the carvers left a wink about devotion faked, and it has been mocking the ascetic quietly for over a thousand years.
Frequently asked questions
Is it Arjuna's Penance or the Descent of the Ganges?
By tradition it is read as both. One interpretation sees Arjuna performing penance to obtain Shiva's Pashupata weapon; the other sees King Bhagiratha in penance to bring the river Ganga down to earth. Scholars present both readings, and some believe the ambiguity was intentional.
What is the cleft in the middle of the relief for?
The natural vertical fissure between the two boulders represents the river. By tradition water was once directed down it from a tank above, so the carved cascade appeared to run with real water past the gods, nagas and sages.
Why is there a cat carved among the sacred figures?
The cat stands on one leg mimicking the penitent ascetic, and tradition connects it to a Panchatantra tale of a cat that feigned piety to deceive its prey. It is read as the sculptors' witty comment on false devotion set against the relief's theme of true penance.