Taken from within the “dark forest” behind the Rameshwar Prasanna Temple
The Sacred Groves of South India: Ecology, Traditional Communities and Religious Change has beent he most relevant and informative reading I have found myself. So much so I am recommending it to my internship director. This is because it gives a historic account which includes many documentations from the specific area I am in, and makes conclusions that I myself had written noticed, but did not have the complete research to back them up.
First, the reading tells of the Mauryan king Asoka, who in the 3rd century BC send an emissary to Banavasi in Uttara Kannada to spread Buddhism. As a result, Banavasi became a center for powerful kings who gave Brahmins land grants. These Brahmins, spread Hinduism throughout the plains near Banavasi and as a result the local cults relating to sacred groves were absorved into the Hindu religion and sacred groves are no longer seen in the plains, but still remain in the highlands.
The transformation of the grove to the temple can be seen at every stage in Uttara Kannada: a grove with no icon but perhaps a sacred spring and termite mount, a carved relief or statue standing uncovered under the trees, a small temple enclosing the spring or mount, then a larger and more ornate temple, and finally a temple with a sacred tree or two beside it, the grove forgotten. I have documented such cases myself and now can place them confidently on such a timeline.
Lord Shiva, the Hindu god also represents this timeline from his roots as a nature god to his symbolic representation in stone temples. Two of my own temple documentations are of Vishnu and Rameshwar Prasanna, other forms of Shiva. Other gods, such as the serpent (Naga) and the tiger (Hulidevaru) are animal deities that remain from early hunter-gatherer groups but have survived through the agricultural stage. I also a perfect example of this in a Naga temple that now remains within an areca nut field of a Brahmin family I stayed with.
The characteristic image of a sacred grove includes a spring of water, a stream or pool, quite as much as a stand of trees. Most sacred groves in South India contain or are close to perennial water sources and the Kavus of Kerala usually have ponds and wells associated with them. I observed this first hand in the Rameshwar Prasanna Temple who’s well stand out front and who’s back is to the “dark forest”, what once must have been a kan. In this grove also a stone represents the cult deity, the Rameshwar Prasanna, but is now considered Shiva. The stone and cult deity stand as representations of the older religion that has been adopted into the new.
The structure which surrounds it also aligns with this readings conclusion that there were no temples in the earliest Vedic, pre-Buddhist period, and when they began to be built they were of wood. The beams in this temple are made of wood and I can only guess where they came from. Until recently, timber was only used for religious buildings and not for ordinary houses which are of earth grass and palm leaves. This author makes the observation that the wooden structure and the architecture environment similar to the groves was preserved in later stone temples in the dendritic form of their columns. I am hoping to travel to such a temple in Banavasi this Friday.
Source:
1) Chandran, M.D. Subash, and J. Donald Hughes. “The Sacred Groves of South India: Ecology, Traditional Communities and Religious Change.” Social Compass 44.3 (1997): 413-27. Print.