The Development of Hindu Iconography c10.68

c10.68

The above-mentioned data collected from a somewhat summary study of the extant early Indian monuments lend support to the view that the higher section of the Indo- Aryans,—at the time we are speaking of they have become to all intents and purposes Indians,—adopted the practice of making images and worshipping them after their culture contact with the lower orders of the people and the earlier settlers of India. The evidence of the early Buddhist monuments like Bharhut and Sanchi fully proves that when the higher cult god Buddha was not being represented in an iconic form, these folk gods and goddesses were being iconically represented. It will be shown in the next chapter with the aid of numismatic data that the deities belonging to the orthodox Brahmanical cults, like Śiva and Vāsudeva-Viṣṇu, seem to have already come to be iconically represented in the 1st and 2nd centuries B. C., if not earlier. The iconic representations of these cult objects, however, were probably the direct outcome of the gradual incorporation of most or all of the lower divinities in the ever-expanding Brahmanic pantheon and their association with and absorption into different cults. The Kālīya-damana episode in the mythology of the Vāsudeva cult should be profitably compared in this connection. The other stories connected with this cult, such as the killing of the ass demon Dhenuka, the bull demon Ariṣṭa, the horse demon Keśin, and the destruction of the twin Arjuna trees occurring in the post-Christian Bhāgavata literature and illustrated in art as early as the 4th century A.D. (if not earlier), perhaps portray the mythologists' attempts to refer to the subjugation of some of the lower cults by the higher one which was soon to be accepted as authoritative by the orthodox Vedic section of the people. Coomaraswamy has collected plastic evidence to show how the iconography of the lower gods influenced the iconic types of the higher cult deities; his remark in this connection is worth quoting: 'In early Indian art, so far as cult images are concerned, one iconographic type stands out predominant, that is the standing figure with the right hand raised, the left on the hip. . . Of this type are the early images of Yakṣas and Yakṣīs, whether independent or attendant. And it is also this type which provided the model for the cult images of other deities, such as Śiva or Buddha, when the necessities of Bhakti determined the appearance of all deities in visible forms.¹ We have already seen the etiology of the Yogī motif in some of the cult-images; here, we get a clue to the origin of the other mode. Vögel has also rightly observed that ‘modern idols of Baladeva manufactured here are exact copies of the ancient Nāga figures.’² It may be added that in ancient and mediæval times also, images of Baladeva (Saṃkarṣaṇa, the elder brother of Vāsudeva) were directly copied from the hybrid Nāga figures and this iconographic association has led to the creation of the confused myth that he was an incarnation of the world-snake Ananta Nāga or Śeṣa Nāga.