The Development of Hindu Iconography c14.4

c14.4

*Hastas* and *mudrās* thus usually indicate some action which the god or his attendant is shown to be engaged in. The action consists in the expression of an idea by means of a particular gesture. Man, himself a rational being, gifted with the power of speech, often finds it necessary to use such gestures to express completely his ideas; sometimes, a mere gesture of the hand or any other limb will contain a volume of ideas which would otherwise be only imperfectly expressed.¹ How absolutely necessary will it be for him to endow his mute gods with such suggestive action-poses in order that the idea or ideas which he wants to be symbolised by his deities may be correctly explained! Herein — in this very act of showing the images belonging to the various Indian religious creeds with the different gestures — lay one of the marked and significant differences between the fetish of a Polynesian tribe and the developed image worshipped by the highly civilised Indians. In India of the pre-historic times, a few of the expressive poses were used to characterise the representation of the divinities on seals, amulets and figurines. Some of the conventional hand-poses, that were common in early and late mediaeval iconographic art of India, can be definitely recognised in the Central Indian art of the Śuṅga period.