Built heritage is as important to preserving our historical legacy as works of art and folklore. Vipul B Varshneya, author and founder, director and principal architect of STHAPATI has made it her mission to record India’s built heritage from ancient times through her books. Sunday Guardian speaks to her about her chosen field and her latest project. Excerpts from an edited interview:
Q. Why did you choose to focus your work on heritage cities?
A: I have been writing on heritage cities since 2009. With a passion for heritage, I have authored four coffee table books on Lucknow’s heritage including ‘Lucknow – A Treasure’ encompassing the grandeur and heritage of Lucknow and ‘Cultural Legacy of Lucknow’. Other books, ‘Lucknow – A City of Heritage and Culture’, and ‘Shaam-e-Awadh’, were published in 2017. I’ve also written one on Kashi, which is another city of living heritage. It’s called ‘Musings in Benares’ and was published in 2021. As an architectural consultant, our project on designing the airport in Ayodhya made me learn about the rich cultural heritage of the city. That’s also when I began researching the temples of Awadh. My latest offering is on Ayodhya and it’s called ‘Ayodhya: A Walk Through the Living Heritage’.
Q. What was the process of your research?
A: When I started studying the city in-depth by visiting Ayodhya, I learnt that it was the first city or Adipuri of Vishnu. It is the first among Saptapuri – the seven Mokshadayini or salvation-giving cities around India and is therefore the base for the great epic Ramayana.
In popular discourse, it is the place where the seventh avatar of Vishnu, Sri Ram took birth in Treta Yug. This is the city that he returned to rule after his fourteen years of exile that took him across the country and to Lanka. However, Ayodhya has many more stories to tell as well. It has been a witness to a long line of illustrious kings of Suryavansh, or the solar dynasty, who ruled here.
Meanwhile, I met many saints and mahants of Ayodhya over the two years I spent there and came across the Ayodhya Mahatamya of Skand Puran in English. It was a scripture totally devoted to the importance of Ayodhya. Poets like Valmiki, Tulsidas, and Kalidas have written glorious accounts of Ayodhya, as have poets and storytellers in every language in India.
Q. What are some of the challenges you faced while writing this book? And how did you overcome them?
A: As we all know, the city of Ayodhya is going through change with tremendous infrastructure development, and the physical conditions of the city were not very comfortable to work in during my research, but I was adamant and also resilient in my approach.
Q. What are you working on next?
A: The glory of Kaushal, which is the ancient name of Awadh, has been marvellously described by poets and authors like Kalidas and Tulsidas. This has inspired me to write my next book on the temples of Awadh – a subject that has hardly been touched by authors and writers. There are some very picturesque temples and some humble ones found all over Awadh due to this region’s vagaries of time and invasions. Many of them have associations with the great epics Ramayana and Mahabharat.
Q. What would you say was your most interesting learning while researching your new book?
A: I came across very interesting findings during the course of my research. One such was about the Pushpak Vimana. I found out from various literature studies that the Pushpak Vimana of Ravana, in which Rama returned to Ayodhya from Lanka after his victory over Ravana, was just one among many vimanas.
The word vimana means ‘the sky’ and ‘measure’. Hence, a vimana is a thing that measures the sky as it traverses through it. There are many stories in the Purana and in the epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata, that speak about vimanas. Separate technical literature is available, such as the Vaimanika Shastra by Maharishi Bharadwaja, which discusses the vimana from a technical perspective. It explains the Pushpak Vimana’s special capacity to contract (sankocha) or expand (vistrita) in size. Maharishi Bharadwaj mentions about 120 different vimanas that were present at different times in different lands. He also gives glimpses of fuels used, aeronautics, avionics, metallurgy and other manoeuvres that were deployed in flying these vimanas.
I was very fascinated to read about this feat of engineering recorded in ancient times and I hope my readers will enjoy it too.
Noor Anand Chawla pens lifestyle articles for various publications and her blog www. Nooranandchawla.com.