Golden Temple gets a new coat of gold
Posted by Balvinder Singh S Bal
Golden Temple gets a new coat of gold
Posted by Balvinder Singh S Bal on Friday, 4/09/1999 1:46 PM MDT
| Golden Temple gets a new coat of gold By Ajay Bharadwaj The Times of India News Service AMRITSAR: The gigantic task of gilding the domes and cupolas of the Golden Temple here is being completed just in time for the celebrations of the tricentenary of the Khalsa panth, which begin on Baisakhi day, April 13. Though the focus of the tricentenary celebrations is on Anandpur Sahib, 90 km north-west of Chandigarh, the Golden Temple is Sikhism's best known shrine and has been spruced up for the celebrations. Among other things, the sprucing up involves spreading 500 kilos of gold over the top domes of the Temple and the filigreed upper panels of its marble walls. Much of the gold has been donated by pilgrims and visitors, who have for the past few years dropped gold rings, bangles, necklaces and coins into a transparent perspex box placed in the open marble outside the gate which leads into the Golden Temple. The ornaments are taken from the donation box and melted down to 24-karat purity. A team of artisans then places the small pepper-size gold beads between sheets of silk cloth and beats the cloth with wooden mallets till the gold is transformed into a gossamer-thin film called vark. The panels of the Temple dome are then prised off and brought to a small gold smithy which has been set up adjoining the courtyard that separates the Golden Temple from the Akal Takht. Here the panel is heated from below using a blowlamp and the gold leaf is then rubbed onto the hot metal with a thick stone-tipped pencil. Interestingly, this is the same technique which was used in 1830 when Maharaja Ranjit Singh's artisans gave the Temple its first gold-plating. Since then, the Temple that the Sikhs call Amritsar's Harmandir Sahib took on the popular name of Swaran Mandir or Golden Temple. According to historians, it took the Maharaja's work force more than 25 years to goldplate the domes, the inner ceiling and the upper walls of the sanctum sanctorum. This time, it has taken around 95 artisans and masons of the United Kingdom-based Guru Nanak Nishkam Seva Jatha slightly over four years to complete the same task. It was in 1994 that the chairman of the jatha, Bhai Norang Singh, realised that 170 years of exposure to the weather had robbed the gold domes of their sheen and he offered to take on the task of regilding the domes. The Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee agreed and the jatha, currently headed by Baba Mohinder singh, took up the golden kar seva on February 3, 1995, with the target of completing it by April 13, 1999. Bhai Mehnga Singh, who had been supervising the kar seva, explains how the jatha went about retaining the original look: ``We made exact photocopies of the patterns of the existing panels before dismantling them and matched the refurbished panels with the original copies before reassembling the 60 domes.'' In Maharaja Ranjit Singh's time, it took 162 kg of gold, then worth about Rs 65 lakh; this time around, it took 500 kg because of the thickness of the 24-karat gilding, which Bhai Mehnga Singh says, should last 400 years. ``It will not wear off as early as the last gold-plating did,'' he affirms. However long it lasts, the Golden Temple, true to its name, glistens in the noonday sun with the look of solid gold. It takes your breath away. Source: http://www.timesofindia.com/today/10home2.htm |
 | Golden Temple gets a new ... (Balvinder Singh S Bal - 9.Apr.99) |
