Monthly Photos　April 2021

Photos taken by ILCAA staff and associates are posted here once a month; most of them are taken during their field research in Asia and Africa.

(The copyright belongs to the photographers.)

Kāpālīśvara temple

Kāpālīśvara is a compound word of "kāpāla" meaning skull and "īśvara" meaning supreme deity, and is one of the aliases of Shiva. One of the early Shaiva sects that emerged around the 6th century, the Kāpālikas, is said that the practitioners used to paint their bodies with ashes and to use human skulls as alms bowls. In South India, there are Hindu temples. In South India, the front gates of Hindu temples are often decorated with extreme colors, and the gate of the Kāpālīśvara temple also has designs that cannot be seen in North India.

28 February 2020
Chennai, Republic of India
Photograph by Satoshi OGURA