The Development of Hindu Iconography c13.71

Language: English

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The evolution of the tantras and the gradual canonisation of the modes for icon-making were also important factors conducive to the development of Indian icono-plastic art. Mention has already been made, in the first chapter, of the Pāñcarātra, Śaiva and Śākta saṃhitās, āgamas and tantras incorporating elaborate instructions for the use of the temple-builder and the image-maker. It would be doing an injustice to the compilers of these practical guidances actually based on the experience of generations of artists, if we remark that ‘the most potent cause that injuriously affected Indian icono-plastic art is the hard and fast rules laid down in the Āgamas and the Tantras for the making of images’ (Rao, op. cit., Vol. I., Introduction, p. 31). It is like suggesting that the canonisation of the rules of speech and writing would adversely affect the language of a people. In the hands of an expert worker these rules, even if they were meticulously followed, would, instead of being so many impediments, serve as useful guides. The far-famed artists of Hellas had also certain stereotyped canons before them which were really derived from the works of the early masters. Greek sculptors closely followed these canons, and we have statues of various schools which are distinguished by fixed proportions of limbs, such as the Old Attic, Old Argive, Polyclitan, Argive-Sicyonian or Lysippan, etc.

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'An oft-quoted saying of Polyclitus is to this effect that, 'successful attainment in art is the result of minute accuracy in a multitude of arithmetical proportions.........' Polyclitus not only published his theory of sculpture in a work called 'The Canon,' but also having taught in that treatise all the proportions of the body, carried his theory into practice by constructing a statue according to the prescriptions in the treatise.'¹ That is the attitude of the compilers of these Indian iconographic and iconometric texts, which is summed up in a very characteristic manner by the author of the *Śukranītisāra*. He writes: 'That image is called beautiful which is neither in excess of correct proportions nor short of them...... The limbs of those images which have been praised by sages (i.e., experts in iconography) never exceed or fall short of the correct proportions and thus are to be regarded as beautiful. All the limbs that are neither too fat nor too lean are pleasing from all points of view. One in one hundred thousand images is excellent in all its parts; so that image which is so according to the śāstric proportions is really beautiful, others are not. Those images which go against the above are not good to the sages.'² In this view of the case, Rao's statement about the 'Handicap of the artist' and about his 'losing freedom of action' requires modification. The icons no doubt became to a certain extent stereotyped;

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but it should never be forgotten that they were not being made for art connoisseurs' criticism, their primary purpose being to serve as so many aids to the religious efforts (*sādhanā*) of the innumerable devotees (*bhaktas*) and not as drawing-room or museum specimens to be judged chiefly for their artistic merits or demerits. Rao himself says, ‘Like all art, the Indian icono-plastic art also has to be judged from the standpoint of its motive. To those who cannot appreciate this motive, the very ideal of the art remains hidden and inexplicable.’ These rules, therefore, facilitated to a very great extent the work of the image-maker and helped immensely the development of the icono-plastic art in this country. There are good and indifferent artists in every country and in different periods the artistic activities of its inhabitants seem for various reasons to reach a very high level or in other times sink down to a low one; but to make these injunctions mainly responsible for the latter condition is not scientifically correct. We should never minimise the very common advice to be met with in such compilations that the *śilpin*, though he should closely follow the rules, must try to make the image as beautiful as possible, for have not the gods a special liking for beautiful images (*ābhirūpyācca vimbānām devaḥ sännidhyamṛcchati*)?

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The reputed art centres of ancient India, such as Mathura, Gandhāra, Sarnath, Amaravati, etc., were the homelands of the master artists whose works served as standards on which these canons appear to have been based. The images fashioned by their chisel were in great demand in various other parts of India; this is proved by early epigraphic and monumental evidence. It is unfortunate that we know so little about them, as they generally hid themselves behind the names of such mythical artists as Viśvakarmā, Maya and others. We have no means of identifying an Indian Phidias, a Polyclitus or a Lysippas. It is quite accidentally that we light upon the names of a few individual artists from some inscribed sculptural and architectural fragments of early period. The ivory-carvers of Vidiśā might or might not have been responsible for the actual carving of a section of the railing of the Great Sanchi Stupa, which was their gift;

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but a Nāka, pupil of Kunika, was the maker of the so-called statue of Manasā Devī at Mathura (really the image of Yakṣī Layava, as the inscription on the pedestal informs us), the stone mason (*śilārūpakāra*) Śivamitra was responsible for the early Kushan image of a Bodhisattva discovered in 1908-09 at Śrāvastī by Marshall (only the lower portion of the statue with the inscription was found) and Dinna, a resident of Mathura, fashioned a statuette of the Gupta period as also the famous Nirvāṇa statue, both discovered at Kasia (the former was found by Vögel).¹ One of the two Sūrya images of the Gauḍian school in the collection of the British Museum bears on its pedestal an inscription in very corrupt Sanskrit in Nāgarī characters of the tenth century A.D. It reads ‘*Om Indranīlamaṇiśiṣyaḥ śilāya buddhiḥ sālinā l ghaṭitāya kṛtajñena Amṛtena suśi(l)pinā*. It has been translated thus by R. P. Chanda : ‘(This image) has been carved in stone by the wise, grateful, and good artist Amṛta, pupil of Indranīlamaṇi’ (R. P. Chanda, *Mediaeval Indian Sculptures in the British Museum*, p. 66, Pl. XX). Here we get the names of two good sculptors of eastern India, viz., Amṛta and Indranīlamaṇi ; the work of the former bears undoubtedly the stamp of an artist of consummate skill and ability, who can well claim to be designated as a *suśilpin*.

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One other interesting fact to be noted in the above inscription is this : Amṛta does not fail to express his gratitude for the artistic ability which he acquired from his preceptor. More of such inscriptions on the extant images would have been of great use to students of Indian icono-plastic art. We wish we could get many such personal names and had an Indian Pausanias who could have given us a systematic record of the activities of such Nākas, Kunikas, Śivamitras, Dinnas, Amṛtas and Indranīlamaṇis of the remote past.