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Of Yupas and Kutub Minar

I don’t usually get into the debate if Tajmahal was Tejo Mahalaya before the Mughal conquest or on other similar structures. Some like the ones in Varanasi are self-evident and more of recent history hence no debate is necessary. Nor am I enrolled in WhatsApp University which keeps flooding with unverified opinions. I prefer physical books, in a few cases, googling helps me to get varied texts on the topic I am researching.

While reading the first few introductory chapters (which are not part of the original ancient text) of Yajurveda Samhita, an English translation by R.T.H. Griffith, I stumbled upon something interesting. For people who don’t know, Yajurveda is part of the four Vedas and it tells about types of Yagna (sacrificial fires), the way to the chants to be used, the selection and design of a plot of land for the sacrificial altar down to offering oblations to the sacred fires. In this text, there is an explanation of the word ‘Yüpa’ (pronounced as यूप in Hindi). Yupa was a Vedic sacrificial (sacrifice as in Yagna) stake. These fire altars were always furnished with a sacrificial stake or Yupa. The stake was a ‘gnomon’, which means the projecting piece of a sundial that shows the time by the position of the shadows.

The Yagna or the sacrificial fires had a significant importance to the time when particular chants were uttered and the time of the day the sacrifice was made. The moving shadows of the stake helped the presiding priest to keep the timings for the Yagna. Generally, near the site of a Yupa, sacrificial material was used to be stored in a Yupastambh.

Kutubminar in Delhi is an example of such a Yupa / Yupastambh. Which also has an iron pillar in front of it, which was a Yupa as well. “Kutub Yupastambh” was constructed by Varahmihira at Mihiravali (modern-day Mehrauli). This Yupa pointed to the pole star. It was surrounded by 27 temples, each temple representing one of the 27 constellations. Thus it was installed as an observatory to reckon the time. Many Yagna were performed on the site where this Yupa was used for calculating time.

Check the meaning of ‘Kutub’ in Hindi. The meaning is the Pole star or ‘Dhruv Tara’. Unfortunately, our history textbooks have been feeding us the wrong information. We were taught Kutub Minar is made by Qutb-uddin-Aibak as a victory Minaret after defeating the last Hindu King in that region. That it is named ‘Kutub’ from ‘Qutb’ — which is totally misleading. After the Hindu king was defeated, the surrounding 27 temples (Jain temples) were destroyed and the Yupa was converted into a Minaret. Aibak’s son-in-law, Iltumish continued working on it. The remains of the temple could still be traced. The Kutub Yupa dated before the conquest of Aibak in Delhi region.

Some texts on the internet say it was a Vishnu temple and that is not right either, since Hindu temples were not made in Conical shapes. The north Indian temple architecture generally followed ‘Nagara’ style which has an inner sanctum and ‘shikhara’ (the dome). Some say it was built by Prithviraj Chauhan for his daughter so that she can have a view of the beautiful Yamuna River, but that cannot be true as well for multiple reasons one of them being most of Prithviraj’s construction was around Ajmer, for him to be in Delhi and make something like that for his daughter does not seem real. The Hindu motifs on the lower floors indicate that it was a Hindu monument. But it was neither a temple nor a structure to look over the river, it was a purposeful ‘Yupa’, constructed for sacrificial fires.

The point of this article is not about it being Hindu or Mughal construction, it is about understanding what it was originally and the purpose of it.