Yali

Walk the pillared hall at Madurai late in the afternoon and the granite starts to move. Beasts twice the height of a man rear out of the columns, forelegs lifted, jaws cracked open around tusks, eyes bulging toward whoever has just come through the door. The carvers left the stone grainy enough to catch the low light, so the flanks read as muscle rather than polish, and a small rider sits high on each shoulder with a sword or a drawn bow. Nothing here is subtle. It was never meant to be.

This is the yali, the composite guardian beast that took over South Indian temple architecture and never gave it back. Tamil calls it yāḷi, Sanskrit calls it vyāla or vidāla, and both words carry the sense of a fierce or savage monster. The basic recipe is a lion’s body with the tusks and trunk of an elephant grafted onto the head, a tail that thins into a serpent, and enough leonine bulk left over to make the whole thing look capable of the violence it advertises. From there the sculptors improvised. An elephant-headed one is a gaja yali, a human-headed one a nara yali, a dog-headed one a svana yali. Give it a tiger’s body and the name changes again, to shardula. Some carry horns. Some have hooves. Some balance on a smaller elephant, or on the crocodilian makara, as though standing on one myth were the natural way to enter another.

Where it came from depends on which century you start in. The word āḷi turns up in the Sangam poems of early Tamil literature, where it names a beast so formidable that the arrival of a single one sends tigers shaking and elephants huddling together in the deep forest. In Akanāṉūṟu 78 a bull elephant pulls his mate close in fear of it. In another poem it comes down out of nowhere and strikes the high forehead of a tall elephant while a striped tiger trembles nearby. Some researchers read those lines as straightforward descriptions of the Asiatic lion, an animal that once ranged far wider across India than it does now. Others, P. L. Samy among them, argue the poems already describe something stranger than a lion, and the argument has never been settled. No bones have turned up to close it.

What is certain is what happened in stone. The earliest sculptures now identified as yalis belong to the Pallava dynasty of northern Tamil Nadu in the seventh and eighth centuries, where they squat at the bases of columns in rock temples and monolithic shrines, compact and heavy rather than theatrical. Buddhist builders used the same creature through the early medieval centuries, calling it a vyalaka and pairing it with the makara. Then came the Vijayanagara and Nayaka builders of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, who let it stand up. The rearing yali of a Nayaka mandapa is two or three metres of granite balanced on its haunches, mouth open, rider armed, chiselled out of the same block as the pillar it appears to be escaping from. Hundreds of them line a single hall. Walking between them, the effect is less decoration than crowd.

At the foot of a temple plinth there is a quieter version. The surul yali lies flat along the short stairways that climb to the shrine, and water runs out through its open mouth. After rain the sound is a thin constant trickle over stone worn smooth by centuries of feet. Pilgrims rinse their hands there in the cool of it and climb past without a glance, which is exactly what a guardian in good working order looks like.

The other scene the sculptors kept returning to is the kill. In the gajasimha motif the lion-beast stands over an elephant, foreleg raised, the elephant’s bulk folded under it. The larger animal is not shown dying so much as already lost, and the yali is not straining. That composition carries the whole idea in one image: the biggest thing in the forest, beaten, and the thing that beat it now working as a doorman.

Its powers follow from that. The yali is credited with supremacy over the animal world, physical and spiritual protection of those who pass it, and the ability to hold a threshold against whatever approaches. It serves as a mount for deities. It has been read as the elemental forces of nature caught, tamed and put to work by being built into a wall. Its grotesquerie is functional rather than decorative, the same logic that produced the sphinx and the lamassu at other doorways in other centuries.

Its limits are unusual, and they are architectural. The yali does not roam, does not court, does not die and come back. It has no story of its own. It exists at the point where two building elements meet, and it cannot leave that point, which means its fate is tied absolutely to whoever maintains the temple. It can be commissioned in ivory small enough to fit in a palm, as a pair of seventeenth-century Tamil brackets in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art demonstrate, or carved at the neck of a Saraswati veena where a musician’s hand rests against it for a lifetime. It can also be prised out, quarried away, or left to weather until the tusks blunt and the rider loses his sword. A guardian made entirely of somebody else’s masonry survives only as long as the masonry does.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a yali?

A yali is a composite guardian creature of South Indian mythology and temple art, usually shown with a lion’s body, the tusks and trunk of an elephant, and a serpentine tail. It is known in Sanskrit as vyāla or vidāla, both meaning fierce monster. Yalis are carved onto pillars, plinths and doorways to guard sacred space.

Where do yalis appear?

Yalis appear throughout South Indian temples, most spectacularly in halls built by the Vijayanagara and Nayaka rulers between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, where they rear two to three metres high from composite pillars. Earlier examples come from Pallava rock temples of the seventh and eighth centuries. Buddhist builders used the same creature under the name vyalaka.

Is the yali based on a real animal?

That is genuinely disputed. Early Tamil Sangam poems describe a beast called āḷi that terrifies tigers and elephants, and some researchers read those passages as descriptions of the Asiatic lion. Others argue the poems already describe a composite creature, and no conclusive evidence has settled the question either way.

What are the different types of yali?

Yalis are named for the head or body they combine with the lion form. A gaja yali has an elephant head, a nara yali a human head, and a svana yali a dog’s head, while a creature with a tiger’s body is called a shardula. The surul yali is a flattened form that lies along temple stairways and spouts water from its mouth.

What is the yali supposed to protect against?

The yali is believed to guard the temple and its worshippers from threats both physical and spiritual, which is why its mouth and eyes are aimed outward at anyone approaching. Its mastery over the lion, tiger and elephant makes it the strongest available doorkeeper. It also stands for the raw forces of nature, subdued by being built into the architecture.

Related Entries

Makara, Sharabha, Narasimha, Airavata, Vahana, Naga, Yaksha, Yakshi, Shiva, Ganesha, Garuda, Griffin (or Gryphon), Sphinx, Lamassu, Manticore