Studies in Indian Art c9.s2.1

c9.s2.1

The Pūrṇa-Kumbha or the Full Vase is one of the most beautiful decorative symbols of early Indian art. It is the emblem *par excellence* of fullness, and prosperity, of life endowed with all its gifts, moral, material and spiritual. The full blooming, overflowing contents of life are comparable to the plants and foliage luxuriating from the mouth of a jar filled with the life-giving fluid. The potent contents of life must seek their inevitable expression. Just as from a well-planted seed springs into manifest form the plant with its beautiful leaves and charming flowers, so does human life manifest itself as a visible symbol of the most mysterious and attractive force enshrined in Nature. In one word it is the Pūrṇam or the *Plenum* that is life; the rest is its negation. Fullness that is within and that is without, Fullness that is in the cause and that is in the effect—it is this the most loving and assuring thing that we know of on this side of Life. The Upanishads declare the truth as follows—