The Development of Hindu Iconography c14.2

c14.2

One studying Indian Iconography should know the meaning of certain technical terms in order to understand correctly the images of divinities and their accessories. The images are mostly depicted in an anthropomorphic fashion. The dress, ornaments, weapons, implements, etc., as shown on them are mostly identical with what are used by men. I have already laid stress on Varāhamihira’s dictum about the close similarity between the dress and ornaments worn by the people of a country and the same shown on the bodies of the gods worshipped there (*Deśānurūpabhūṣaṇaveśālaṅkāra-mūrttibhiḥ kāryā*). I have also suggested in the first chapter how an intensive study of images current in a particular locality will help one to throw much light on its social history. I now propose to explain the nature of some of these technical terms which are used to denote one or other of these various forms of dress, ornaments, weapons and implements; the various poses in which the different limbs of the images are shown by the artist will also be explained. These terms are very often used in the iconographic texts which, as every student of this subject knows, serve as the guide-books of the iconographer. While explaining some of them, I shall refer to their early and late forms of representation in art, whenever possible. T. A. G. Rao, in giving a fair account of these technicalities, hardly ever touched on this point.