Soaring architecture: The dizzying heights of places of worship tell a story

Ancient humans, and we are talking about Homo Sapiens, the species that separated from the apes to evolve into the human race, did so barely 2,00,000 years ago. The subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens, that is us, have been around on the surface of this  4.543 billion-year-old earth for barely 70,000 years. 

In other words, if the life of the earth today was 24 hours, then Homo Sapiens appeared barely a minute and 13 seconds ago. This alone should be enough for us to pause and think about the havoc, we, the Johnnies, having arrived lately, have wrought upon the world. 

While we pause and wonder at our collective capacity to destroy, there are a couple of other issues that we might also think about while we are at it. One of them is the question of faith and how it has reshaped the world we live in.

Ancient humans spent a lot of time contemplating their surroundings, trying to comprehend things. They did this because their highly evolved brains were intrigued by things that they did not understand. Things not understood were given imaginative explanations, and much of what remained unexplained had to do with nature, childbirth, death, disease, rain, thunder, bolts of lighting, snowfall, dust storms, floods, the sun, the moon and the millions of shining dots overhead at night.

Since a lot of what they did not understand was linked to events that happened way beyond their reach, higher than the tallest trees and the highest mountains, so the idea of a superpower beyond everybody’s reach and comprehension, living beyond the skies began to gradually take shape. This idea was to eventually develop into monotheism, when all these phenomena were placed within the control of one overarching God and into polytheism when different unexplained phenomena were assigned to different gods.

The idea of God or gods living in heavens, up above the world, soon took firm roots in human imagination, and people began to locate their places of worship atop natural prominences to be closer to the objects of their prayers. Just think of the old temples, churches, mosques, shrines of Sufis and of mendicants, and think of the large numbers who went into the mountains in search of God.

There were a few problems in locating places of worship on top of hills. One was a problem of accessibility, but that was solved by telling the devotees they had to make an effort to reach God, and so suffering became a part of seeking an audience with God. The other problem was that once they had reached the top of the hill, the heavens had receded further, and that the abode of God was still beyond reach.

In most cases, the intention to build atop the hill or atop a preexisting pagan site was already public knowledge, and, therefore, there was little possibility of returning to the plains below even after the builders had realised the futility of trying to reach the abode of gods. So they went ahead and started building, they tried to go as high as they could and buildings kept getting taller and taller and the roofs began to go very high. But there was a limit to which any structure could rise before toppling upon itself. Very soon, the builders realised that the entire building could not rise indefinitely. The architects now began working on selected parts of the building that could rise and this was the beginning of an absolutely unique trend in architecture leading to the development of architectural forms that we know today as the bell towers, the steeple, the minaret, the shikhar and the gopuram.

These high-rising structures added to the visibility of places of worship; builders of medieval cities chose the most prominent location on the site to locate a place of worship and thus you have ancient and medieval cities all over the world dotted with exceedingly tall and humongous places of worship placed on top of natural rises, and in many cases atop places of worship of earlier civilisations — temples atop monasteries, monasteries atop tribal totem sites, mosques above temples, and churches atop pagan temples. All this was triggered by the belief that gods lived above us, and the tradition continues even now when we know that the earth is suspended in space and there is nothing above or below. 

The author is a historian and organises the Delhi Heritage Walks for children and adults