MURAL PAINTING

Murals are an integral part of architecture. It is a decorative element with thematic communicative value in an architectural set up. Mural paintings have come and gone with the construction and decay of structures. The permanency of a mural has depended on the permanency of the architectural base, which supported it. In rare cases where the structure is permanently retained, or where it has withstood the ravages of time, murals have been lost because of the fragile character of the grounding material and the binding media. In a tropical climatic state like Orissa which is very often visited by floods, fire and cyclones, sweeping off villages and towns to talk of permanent structures is mockery. In the course of centuries wars and conquests also have ruined several edifices, razed to the dust hundreds of forts and palaces. Lastly, religious fanaticism as well as ignorance also has destroyed a number of murals, which could have been retained in a few structures.

Although history records a number of illustrious kings and emperors who have conquered territories, extended kingdoms and built their capitals, left behind grand monuments and temples, surprisingly no civil or military architecture remains to speak of the mural traditions. It is also equally strange that the interiors of the great temples are not painted. Most of the places in Orissa are buildings constructed in imitation of British architecture and the oldest building could be hardly two hundred years old. With the exception of two or three in South Orissa, no other places have murals in the Orisan style. Similarly, not a single fort exists in Orissa which has murals, Even though the picture presented above is rather gloomy, Orissa somehow retains a glorious mural tradition which can be traced from the caves of Western Orissa down to the wall paintings in coastal and Southern Orissa.

A survey of the mural paintings in Orissa reveals a glorious tradition keeping in tune with the evolution of mural paintings in the other parts of India. But the peculiarity with Orissa is that the mural paintings do not occur in the major temples in and around Bhubaneswar and Puri. The Paintings in the Jagannatha temple of Puri are certainly not contemporaneous with the construction of the temple. The same is the case with the paintings in the Srikurmam temple, now in Andhra Pradesh.

The important temples with murals are the Viranchinarayan temple, Buguda, Jagannatha temple, Dharakote, Jagannatha temple, Kanchili, Ramaswamy temple, Sariapalli, Radhakanta matha, Paralkhemandi, Srikalika temple, Jaiyapur, Radhakrishna temple, Meliaput and Srikurmam temple in Srikakulam district of Andhra Pradesh.