The late Ganapati Sthapati had made a beautiful statue of Sri Ranganatha at the request of the Sri Lankan Government. “He was handsomely rewarded but money was always secondary to him. It was the joy of creation that mattered to him,” says Selvanathan Sthapati, nephew and adopted son of Ganapati Sthapati.
A chat with Selvanathan, just a week after the demise of the great sculptor, threw light on the multi-faceted genius of Ganapati Sthapati. The mantle has fallen on Selvanathan and his brother Shanmugavelan, nephews of the late Shilpguru, who had no offspring. He took the siblings under his wing and trained them in the art that he worshipped. The two are established sthapatis with several projects to their account.
Aiding them in their efforts are wives Ponni and Gayathri. With the two men engaged in projects, it was left to the women to assist the senior Sthapati in his research. “We were constantly taking down notes, typing out his lectures and finding the reference material that he wanted,” they say. They also shared the responsibility of getting the books and papers authored by the sthapati published by his Dakshinaa Publishing House.
“He was so liberal in outlook that he made sure we were not weighed down by household chores. ‘Your education should be put to use,’ he would say.” And the girls he had handpicked to be his sons’ spouses did not let him down. They have facts on their finger tips and show deep knowledge of the veteran’s work that spanned many areas – architecture, vaastu, sculpture and so on.
For Ganapati Sthapati, Sthapatyam was the fifth Veda. “It was he who got us recognition as sthapatis. We were referred to as shilpis until then,” says Selvanathan. “Vaastu shastras define the term sthapati and put him meaningfully at the highest pedestal of Director General of Architectural Establishment,” the Sthapati says in his book, “Sthapatya Veda.” He speaks of two OMs – OM sound and OM light.
A biographical sketch of the Sthapati reveals that he inherited the interest and acumen from his illustrious father Vaidyanatha Sthapati, an expert in vaastu sastra, agama, astronomy, astrology and so on. Awards, including Padma Bhushan, and accolades sat lightly on Ganapati Sthapati as his journey acquired spiritual and metaphysical proportions, the two aspects that made him a class apart.
“He studied vaastu as a science and regretted that it was not given due importance. He was sad about the casual way the word was used by people, who had no clue to the science behind it,” says Selvanathan. “The principles of Vaastu Shastra are based on a unique science of ‘energy and matter,’” Ganapati Sthapati says in his prologue to the book, an amazing compendium of facts presented after painstaking research and analysis.
Ganapati Sthapati’s favourite subject was indeed Mayan, the divine architect, progenitor of Vaastu. He held that Mayan lived thousands of years ago and laid down the norms of construction, of temples and the abodes of mortals. The sthapati spent years researching the subject, travelled across the globe and came up with path breaking findings. He pored over palm leaf manuscripts, the contents of which he meticulously documented. “Uncle started building a temple (near Mahabalipuram) for Mayan and it is almost complete,” says Selvanathan.
Chiselled to perfection
Dr. Ganapati Sthapati was commissioned to build a replica of the Srirangam Ranaganatha temple in Colombo by the then President Chandrika Kumaratunga.
The work included an 18-ft long and 6-ft Vishnu reclining on Adisesha. Black granite was sourced from Pattumalaikuppam quarry. “The objective was to usher in peace to the strife-torn island nation and periappa was only too happy to be part of the effort,” says Selvanathan.
The job is complete, payment given and the idol, said to be one of his masterpieces, awaits shipment.
Although all his works bear the stamp of a master, a few stand out. Among them are the 133-ft tall Tiruvalluvar statue, the statue of Samaneedi Kanda Cholan on the Madras High Court premises, the Tamizhthai statue at the Damukkam ground in Madurai and the statue of Mayan. The last mentioned has hitherto not been attempted by a sculptor.
When misgivings were expressed about the Tiruvalluvar statue regarding its location at the confluence of three seas in Kanyakumari, the Sthapati simply said that it would last, as long as the mountains and oceans existed. He was proved right. The monolith survived the tsunami that played havoc with the coast of Tamil Nadu.
