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Studies in Indian Art c7.s1: 1. Alphabet of Indian Art Symbolism

Studies in Indian Art c7.s1

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English

Contents

1. Alphabet of Indian Art Symbolism

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Indian art representing life through the ages speaks an eloquent language of vast and varied symbolism. Art in India is not factual record of life in various forms, but from the outset it was intended to become a vehicle of the forms of thought, which enriched culture, religion, philosophy and literature. In India art has been employed to convey through its symbolical language—the ideas of the mind. Human speech has a limited appeal, but the language of art presents a universal approach to ideas. It was an open book for all, speaking a language which was the outcome of spiritual experience of ideas, or in other words, of religion. The feeling of art was dictated by man's devotional approach to such experience. This was the higher purpose of art; higher only in the sense that its theme was of a sublime world, not that art was in any way the preserve of the select few only, and inaccessible to the masses of people, or deliberately kept back from them.

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It was realised that art had a mission and a purpose which must be expressed through forms, whose appeal was irresistible and meaning unmistakable. Such language was devised in the form of symbols which played such an important part in Indian art. The symbols sometimes occupy the centre of the picture in the form of the images of divine beings, saints and seers who themselves typify certain great ideas accepted as truth through ages by a devout humanity. The symbols also served the purpose of decoration, adornment and space-filling. Even here, they have their values and are linked to a predominant common purpose, namely, expression of ideas through an aesthetic medium, with a charm that enhances their appeal and in a manner that contributes to the enrichment of the outer forms of life in relation to the inner growth of the mind.

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In the Vedic period forms of thought and of art were taking shape. It was the period of land settlement. Vast unmapped horizons stretched before man's vision, and the mind was grappling in all its fresh vigour and joy to understand nature, and to evolve an alphabet adequate for expressing that experience in tangible word and form. Such is the nature of Vedic art conception. Everywhere it is a new world of symbols. Forms of deities are in the making. Ideas surge, are understood, analysed, clarified, and robed in tangible imagery, half revealed and half concealed. As the Vedic seer put it: "The daughters of Heaven are neither fully nude nor fully robed." Similar is the case with the symbols of Vedic thought. Sometimes there are distinct indications of meanings firmly grasped; at others there is something which eludes from expression; at others there are only dim intimations of thought and part glimpses of reality.

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The gods and goddesses flit across like the sons and daughters of Heaven and Earth, those Eternal Parents. Spirits presiding over forests and trees, brooks and ponds, spring up into existence as symbols of ideas in the animistic consciousness and the earth-bound feeling of the primitive settlers of the soil. These deities crystalised as time elapsed and as later influences and ramifications of thought were captured and cast into forms as gods and goddesses of the Brahmanical pantheon. A figure of Vishnu in the Vedio period is only a thought form, a conglomerate of several ideas not yet cast distinctly. The idea was of the whole world, not yet pinned to a particular form. We find it as a mirror of the myth of the solar god at one place; at another of the human soul passing through birth and death in relation to the physical form in which it is embodied. The germs of the legend of Vishnu assuming a dwarfish form (Vāmana) and later on cosmic one (Virāṭ) are present in the Rigveda. We find it in an honest attempt to give expression to an idea of how the macrocosm (Brahmāṇḍa) and the microcosm (Piṇḍa) are related to each other, the one reflecting the working of its counter-part, and the two being essentially similar in their nature and purpose. It is like the point expanding into its circumference, or the child growing into the stature of its parent, or the human mind outgrowing its petty limitations evolving into the cosmic consciousness, or the seed developing into a mighty tree. The pattern of Vāmana and Vishnu is symbol of thought and suits all the above phenomena, being the motif par excellence of the relationship of the microcosm and macrocosm found in nature.

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The Devas and the Asuras engaged in an eternal conflict represent another symbol of Vedic thought. As Dr. Coomaraswamy interpreted it: "The Angles and the Titans represent the heavenly powers of light and the subterranean forces of darkness." They are also spoken of as denizens of a non-human world, e.g. Garuḍas representing solar light of the ethereal regions, and Nāgas the crawling forces of the dark under-world.

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All religions and arts flourishing on the Indian soil have accepted these motifs as vehicle of valuable religious ideas. Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism together with their sects of Hinayāna and Mahāyāna, Digambara and Śvetāmbara, Śaiva and Vaishṇava, as well as hundreds of subsidiary cults—all pay homage to these motifs without which none of them would be able to exist. Such mythology was the life-breath of these religious systems, which vitalised and inspired them and explained adequately all that they wanted to convey, of the moral and the spiritual worlds. Myths are indispensable to religion and life. Without myths and legends, Indian art and literature would hardly be able to stand. It is necessary that myths should be properly understood. They should be approached from the point of view of those for whom they were meant. For the critique of pure reason, myths are like meaningless chaff, but from the scientific point of view, where science represents an attempt to understand human thought in that proper environment of time and space when the myths were cast, myths and legends have great value and represent in a real manner the language that gives access to the creative activity and minds of men in the sphere of art, religion and literature.

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Myths originate in the hearts of men, that fertile soil which receives, assimilates and recreates all the diverse reactions and influences. Myths are more real in moulding the lives of men than other worldly things. So far as Indian religions are concerned, no factual accounts of the lives of particular prophets and saints were tolerated until they had been transformed into myths, this transformations being in accordance with certain laws on a cosmic model.

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Buddha, for example, is born as the son of Māyādevī, not as nature would have it, but through the right side of the womb of his mother. As a new-born babe, it would not cry, but walk the Seven Steps, and be washed not with ordinary water, but with two miraculous streams issuing from the ground under the influence of the two Nāga kings, Nanda and Upananda. The two streams of hot and cold water conform to the two world forces of peace and activity, rest and motion, *Soma* and *Agni* in Vedic language. At every stage in the life of the Enlightened One, the myths impart to it its devout religious character. If we wish to understand the religious life of the Buddha, and not merely Gautama the Man, the myths and legends hold the key. Their meanings alone reveal to us the rich treasures of Buddhistic thought as symbolised in the life of the Master.

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The ancient myth of the conflict between the gods and the demons assumes new forms in the life of the Buddha. The victory over Māra, the Genius of Evil, is only the new commentary of an old motif. Unless we have understood the spiritual significance of the *Daivāsuram* and the related mysteries of Yogic *samādhi* and contemplation, the victory of the Enlightened One over the forces of passion and darkness does not reveal its true secret to our understanding. We miss its true significance in the making of the Buddha, who had become awakened or obtained perfect enlightenment, for whom the coveted portals of wisdom had been flung open, and who marching as a spiritual pilgrim from stage to stage had attained the end of journey and a triumph which could not be shaken by any later upheavals. The Buddha of real value for the Buddhists was not the prince walking the streets of Kapilavastu in flesh and blood, but the Buddha who had attained his spiritual rebirth in an ideal world. The Supramundanist thinkers of Buddhism (*Lokottaravādins*) perfected this conception of the Buddha slowly working in accordance with the accepted traditional motifs.

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The picture is equally true for the Jainas and the Hindus, Mahāvīra represented in his victory over the serpent symbolising death, and Kṛṣṇa defeating the all-consuming poisonous fumes of a deadly serpent and dancing over its hoods and wresting from its clutches the Lotuses—these are motifs in the same tradition symbolising a common pattern of thought. A systematic study of these mythical and legendary lives of the founders of religions reveals the axis of their spiritual make-up. There would be many details which are merely excrescences, but one can not miss the grain in the chaff.

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The supreme problem of Indian art, which in all stages was linked with religion, therefore relates to the right interpretation of symbols. The myths could not be represented except through symbols e.g. the cosmic Aśvattha, or World-Tree, the Ash Tree of Existence, the Yggdrasil of Nordic mythology, whose root is up in heaven and whose branches are spread down below, which lives through past, present and future; or the Kalpa-Vṛiksha and the Kalpalatā, the Wish-fulfilling Tree and Wish-fulfilling Creeper, which are but the symbols of the mind, under which each individual takes his seat and rushes through life; or the Pūrṇa Ghaṭa, the Full Vase, which is verily the human body which contains everything and which overflows with plenty so long as there are waters of life in it; or the Kāmadhenu, the Wish-fulfilling Cow of plenty symbolising word or Speech; or Samudra, the Milky Ocean of human aspirations, the deep Sea of all potentialities, which the Devas and the Asuras tried with combined effort to churn and produce the Fourteen Jewels of idealised possessions that human beings desire, most coveted of them all being Amṛita, the Immortal Drink, which bestows eternal life and youth on mortal beings; or Svastika, a dynamic pattern whose four arms rotate round a focal point and generate the life-force; or Chakra, the Wheel which represents Time, the one-wheeled chariot of the sun, and also all the attributes of things, the various Dharmas that distinguish all created things;

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or the Aṣṭa-maṅgalika-chihna, the Eight Auspicious Signs; or the Chaturdaśa Svapna, the Fourteen Lucky Dreams, each constituting an imago of thought to symbolise some phenomenon either of the cosmos or of the individual's life. These with many more constitute alphabet of Indian symbolism representing religious ideas through art. With the march of civilisation when the contents of both life and mind become more elaborate in succeeding generations, the symbols also multiplied and sometimes changed their form. New themes were attempted by the side of old ones; e.g. the number of Mother Goddesses together with their forms and names was an ever evolving conception. The sports of Rādhā and Kṛiṣhṇa were perfected as the arche-type of love symbolism in all its nuances, imbued with hot passion and the fire of the Indian wind and the Indian sky, but always true to its spiritual background and being vitalised by it. Rādhā as the human soul passes through all experiences in her quest for union with the Divine Puruṣha symbolised by Kṛiṣhṇa. As Dr. Coōmaraswamy interprets it: "In the Vaiṣhṇava devotional approach and its poetry human love is conceived as the means and symbol of all union. Lovers represented are always Rādhā and Kṛiṣhṇa, typifying the eternal motif of Man and Woman and revealing in every day events their heavenly image.

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The whole land of Rādhā and Kṛiṣhṇa is the land of our own experience where Beauty and Love are sublimated and transformed into the purest divine experience of the heart of the human soul". (Rajput Painting). In the words of Grierson: "The young Kṛiṣhṇa represented to the Vaiṣhṇavas the Supreme Deity, the Creator, from whom all Creation was but a sportive emanation, and full of love, passing the love of a father, to his devotees. Rādhā on the other hand was the human soul, led by religion to offer not of her own, but her own, whole-self to God. That religion taught just as our Christian doctors teach, the necessity of our entire self-surrender to God which it adorned, and so, too, imaged that devotion by human love. But the Christians chose filial love as the model of the soul's devotion, and parental love as that of the Creator's for his creatures. India took a different interpretation. The soul's devotion to the deity is pictured by Rādhā's self-abandonment to her beloved Kṛiṣhṇa and all the hot blood of oriental passion is encouraged to pour forth one mighty flood of praise and prayer to the Infinite Creator, who waits with loving outstretched arms to receive the worshipper into his bosom and to convey him safely to an eternal rest across the seemingly shoreless Ocean of Existence. This passion is that of a child of nature.... I am persuaded that no indecent thought entered their minds when they wrote these burning words." (Introduction to the Satsaiya of Bihari, 1896, p.

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8). As language of symbolism Rādhā and Kṛiṣhṇa almost occupy the entire field of the medieval Indian religious poetry and the pictorial arts of the Rajasthani and Pahari schools. Art, religion and symbolism are all inter-related. The one serves the needs of the other, justifying its own purpose by imparting richness to life and fostering creative activity in different fields. A true history of Indian art is rooted in a sympathetic approach to the language of its symbolism. Indian art was conceived not to serve an intellectual purpose but to fulfil a spiritual urge and to meet the religious needs of the people in a very real sense.

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Religion provided food for the soul. It opened the gates of human heart for a tide-like flow of human emotions. Religion also provided zest to life and gave to it its most valuable motive-forces. Inspired by Religion, art retained its purity. It was utilitarian from the worldly point of view, but was worshipped for its own sake, i.e. for the sake of a higher spiritual purpose. Its function was not to please the eye, but to satisfy the spirit. There was no compromise on this vital point. Although portraits also received some attention in the Hindu paintings of Rajasthan and Kangra, but portraiture was a very small part of the total creative activity of these schools. They gain their excellence not as perfect portraits, but as figures in which the factual treatment of the human body is the least part. It is the emphasis on the symbolic character of the scene which gives to the paintings their true value. Indian art, except for the brief interlude of Mughal art, did not interest itself in portraiture. In the words of the Śukranīti, portrait painting is unheavenly (asvargiya). At another time, viz. in the Gandhara school of the North-West, the artists were working with consciousness of the human element in art, the figures being conceived as true to human anatomy rather than as the idealised products of the mind. It was the fatal weakness of Gandhara art that it conceived the Buddha in terms of the human body rather than in terms of the ideal Yogī. The more it succeeds in its anatomical representation, the poorer it becomes on the spiritual side. No human figure, as it is, carries with it any attention unless it undergoes a spiritual transformation. To the extent that the image seeks direct representation, it becomes weakened in its symbolism.

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Indian art does not seek to create men and women true to life, but types true to the mind. They are like alphabets to convey ideas which can be handled as distinctly as ordinary letters. The Yakshas and Yakshīs, the Nāgas and Nāgīs, and a host of other Water and Tree Spirits representing the symbols of fertility, have been handled by the Indian artists with amazing mastery and clarity as vehicles of cult ideas, which no human language could possibly have conveyed with such effectiveness and charm. Their language is elevated to the rank of a universal code which becomes intelligible with least possible effort. Thus Indian art with its extensive repertoire of decorative and iconographic motifs constitutes a virtual dictionary of India's religious thought in its varied systems conceived with extraordinary richness and beauty. The Indian soul rejoices at the sight of symbols in art, and clings to them also in religion and poetry. The pleasure of looking at a purely factual subject is limited and of short duration, where as the symbols grow in meaning according to the capacity of the mind and heart of the devoted on-looker.

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The problem of symbols should be approached with sympathy and understanding. Each symbol should be studied in its proper perspective in relation to the earlier motifs of thought and those which followed it. Chronological solutions based on art-objects being assigned to their proper sequence in time are good in so far as they go, but that is not all. We should co-relate art-forms to the ideas of which art was an expression in each period. The language of art-symbols throws light on the history of thought—a very important purpose of art studies, provided the work is undertaken in a strictly scientific manner keeping as close to objective facts as we do for chronological problems. It will then be found that religion and philosophy provide a commentary not only to the increased understanding of art-history, but of its genesis and purpose.

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