The Development of Hindu Iconography c14.85

Language: English

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The early Indian artists attained a great deal of success in the treatment of the drapery which, in the case of male figures, is made up of a loin-cloth (*dhoti*) whose folds are very tastefully arranged in parallel rows in the early and mediæval period and a long scarf thrown loosely on the upper part of the body. In the early figures of the Maurya-Śuṅga period and even sometimes afterwards, the excess of the long loin-cloth is gathered together and shown hanging in a long tapering fold or folds in front. This form is common to both the male or female figures (*cf.* the figures of Parkham Yakṣa and Besnagar Yakṣiṇī, shown side by side in *H.I.I.A.*, Pl. III, Figs. 8 and 9). Thus there is not much difference in the dressing of male and female figures in early Indian art, especially in the lower part of the body. But the long scarf shown on the upper half of the male figures is usually absent in the female, the upper part of the latter remaining mostly uncovered. The torso of the male body is also shown bare (excepting the scarf mentioned above), the modern jacket-like garment (*aṅgiyā, āṅrākhā*) being nowhere present.

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It is in the types of figures, undoubtedly representing people foreign to India, a few of which are met with in the early art of Sanchi and Bharhut, that we find the close covering of the whole of the body, from the neck to the feet.¹ This is one method of representing the udīyaveśa named by the authors of the iconographic texts while describing such figures as Sūrya, Citragupta and Dhanada (cf. Hemādri's Caturvargacintāmaṇi, Bibliotheca Indica Edition, Vratakhaṇḍa, Vol. II, Pt. I, pp. 145-46); Varāhamihira characterises it fully as gūḍhaṃ pādāduro yāvat in his description of the Sūrya figures. In the extant images of Sūrya of an earlier date, the costume worn by the God is exactly similar to the dress worn by the Kushan kings like Wema Kadphises and Kanishka (cf. the sculptural and numismatic representations of these kings with the Sūrya relief at Bhumara). The mode of presentation of the costume changes in the later sculptures and varies mostly in details according to the different localities to which they belong. In the case of some late mediæval figures, great care is bestowed by the artist on the carving of the garment; thus, the śārī, i.e., the cloth worn by women, which is shown round the body of the figure of Pārvatī, one of the Pārśvadevatās (deities shown on the side niches) of the Liṅgarāja temple at Bhuvanesvar, Orissa, is an example of the highest skill in carving.

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A few remarks about the dress shown on the body of the Buddha figures will not be out of place here; this is the dress of a Buddhist monk. It is made up of three pieces, viz., the lower garment (antaravāsaka) which hangs down to the ankles and is gathered round the loins with a girdle; secondly, the upper garment (uttarāsaṅga) which covers the breast and shoulders and reaches below the knees; and thirdly, the cloak (saṅghāṭi) worn over the two under-garments (M.M.C., p. 35). Of these three pieces, the last is most prominently displayed in sculptures, though the artist does seldom fail to suggest one or other of the under-garments. Grünwedel and Vögel suggest that the treatment of the drapery was entirely derived from classical art. This is acceptable to a certain extent, though the motif represented, as Vögel himself suggests, is entirely Indian. But the remark of the latter scholar that 'the indication of the drapery is indeed foreign to Indian art' (ibid, p. 35) does not bear scrutiny. In its support he has compared the presentation of the drapery on the Buddha images of Gandhāra and Mathura with the same on those of the Gupta and the mediæval periods. But as I have just shown, the central Indian artists of the pre-Christian period indicate the garments worn in those days in diverse ways, and in many figures of the Gupta and mediæval period, dress is represented with great care.

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The diaphanousness of the drapery on the Buddha figures of Sarnath and afterwards is very effectively suggested by the artists, and it certainly does not testify to their inability in indicating the garments. This brings in the question of the representation of nudity in Indian art. The Greek sculptures, in the figures of the athletes and the mythological beings very often went in for the representation of the nude human body; in this they had the free scope to reveal the beauty of the physical form. But this in itself seems hardly to have been the aim and intention of the Indian artists; whenever rarely they represented the uncovered body, they were either actuated by a purpose of making the nudity repugnant to cultured taste or by mythological requirements. Thus, some of the Mathura Yakṣiṇīs who appear to be nude or just about to divest themselves of their garments (most of these Yakṣiṇīs are not depicted nude at all, but are presented by the artists as clothed in the most transparent of garments), or the nude female figures in the mediæval art of Orissa and central India emphasise the carnal character of nakedness. Mythology again necessitated the representation of nude body, where, however, the voluptuous element was entirely absent; we may refer, for instance, to the figure of a Jina or a Tīrthaṃkara of the Digamvara Jaina creed or of a Bhikṣāṭanamūrti of Śiva.

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Again, the idea which underlies the representation of the nude mother goddess found in India from the earliest times onwards is much the same as is evident in the so many realistic phalli, ring-stones of pre-historic India and Śiva-liṅgas of the historic period. But attempts to symbolise and sanctify the principles of virility and fecundity were not peculiar to India alone and many other nations of the world did the same thing in diverse ways.¹