WHEN A MANDAPAM WITH ALL ITS PARTS WAS SOLD MADANAGOPALASWAMY TEMPLE- MADURAI

Some facts are stranger than fiction. It is hard to
believe that parts of a Madurai temple mandapam could be sold to an American
lady in 1912. Adeline Pepper Gibson of Philadelphia, who served as a military
nurse, while travelling in India, liked the parts lying about. She purchased the
pillars and stone articles of the Madanagopalaswamy temple and shipped them to
the U.S.

Unfortunately she died, while in service, at Nantes,
France, on January 10, 1919. When the consignment reached the U.S., it was
cleared by her relatives presented to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in August
1919 in Adelaine’s memory.

When researching on Madurai, the Madanagopalaswamy
temple. An elderly priest told that there was a mandapam in front of the Andal
shrine that was taken away by an American lady. Then that the components of a
mandapam were indeed sold to an American lady and they were assembled and
exhibited at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

In the monograph, he says the
temple was in existence before 1599 as found from an inscription in Tamil of that
year. Another inscription is also dated to 1596. It is likely that the
construction was undertaken during the 16th Century under Viswanatha Nayakar
(1529-1564). He believes the mandapam could have been razed by a Mohammedan
conqueror in the 16th Century. He also found some frieze slabs lying around in the
temple and they were similar to the ones in the museum.

 According to the museum’s
pamphlet, the hall consists of 12 monolithic composite pillars with large
sculpted figures, 16 square-based pillars carved with 10 lion brackets, 10 drop
brackets, two non-figural cluster pillars and eight slabs carved with scenes
from the Ramayana. Between 1935 and 1940, the pillars were installed at the
museum to resemble the temple’s entry hall known as the Artha Mandapam. The
pamphlet states this is the only example of Indian stone architecture to be
found in any American museum. “It is also the only place outside of South Asia
where visitors can experience, from original pre-modern elements, the
monumental synthesis of sculpture, structure, symbolism and story that make
Hindu temple architecture one of the world’s greatest artistic legacies.”

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