HOMPEE INDIA Here lie the ancient ruins of Vijayanagara, believed to have been constructed between the 14th and 16th centuries AD. At its center stands the Vidala Temple Complex, a masterpiece of Indian architecture and the largest and most revered temple in the city. Vittala temple was built with the mind of creating a celestial palace here on earth.
With that in mind, the king assembled the great the architects and great engineers and then great craftsmen to create this wonderful building that can also have a wonderful sound that will please God. Attached directly to the temple is what is called the Rangamandapa, or the stage pavilion. Here, there are many pillars, some reaching to a height of nearly 12 feet. There's a series of what are called compound pillars, where you have a central pillar surrounded on all sides with smaller colonnettes.
These colonnettes are famous because when they're struck, they emit beautiful and haunting sounds. According to the local guides at the temple, the 56 pillars are individually tuned to one of the seven notes of the Sarigama, an ancient Sanskrit musical scale dating back thousands of years that is still predominant in Hindi music today. Certain groups of these pillars have been crafted to represent the tonal vibrations of the scale for different instruments.
Some being crafted to represent woodwinds. Some being crafted to represent percussion instruments, etc. The British, when they were in charge of India, were mystified by this amazing quality and actually cut one of the pillars to see how it was done. But it was just granite, and it was just very careful workmanship. While the stone pillars themselves seem like simple technology.
Recent analyses have revealed they may be comprised of an advanced geopolymer blend of granite with silicate particles and metallic alloys. But what continues to puzzle scientists is that the first basic geopolymers were invented in the Soviet Union during the 1950s, hundreds of years after these pillars were crafted. As a geologist, How this was done is really baffling and amazing.
I've heard reports of people trying to mimic it in modern times, to try to just do a little section of it, even one pillar. And people just haven't been successful. So what were they doing back then? We just don't know. According to Hindu priests, each of these pillars was specifically...
tuned harmonically in order to communicate with the gods. So you have to wonder, did extraterrestrial beings come down and give instructions on creating these specific frequencies?