The Development of Hindu Iconography c3.4

c3.4

In the selection of specimens for illustrations, I have been guided more by their iconographic features, than by their artistic excellence, though a good many of the images illustrated here are also of a high order from the art point of view. Some of the best examples of Orissan sculptural art, notably those from Khiching (Mayurbhanj), have been reproduced here; many of them were not given their proper share of recognition by previous scholars. Images selected for illustration hail mostly from Northern, Eastern and Southern India, though images belonging to Central and Western India do not go unrepresented. It is true that many of the images selected belong to the category of the oft-reproduced ones; but I found it necessary to select them for demonstrating my own interpretation about them with the help of textual and archaeological data. The attention of the readers may be drawn to one only among them in this connection. None of the early mediaeval reliefs of India possessing artistic merit of a very high order has been reproduced oftener than the so-called Trimūrti of Elephanta. But I have illustrated it again for substantiating my own suggestion about its true import (cf. pp. 476-77). I would have been happy to include in the illustrations many images that have been least reproduced or that still remain unreproduced. But the acquisition of good photographs of them has not been easy, and for dealing with the developmental aspect of the cult icons many of the well-known ones have been very useful. It may also be noted here that iconography is such a vast subject that it is impossible for any one scholar to do full justice to it. It requires a band of earnest workers in the field to devote their energy and scholarship to the general as well as regional studies of this fascinating branch of Indology in order that many facets of the composite culture of India may be correctly interpreted.