The Development of Hindu Iconography c8.39

c8.39

It is not an easy task to ascertain the respective dates of the bulk of the iconographic literature referred to above. One can find little difficulty, however, in dating some among them—especially those collected in the works of authors whose dates are otherwise known. Thus, the age of the texts of an iconographic and iconometric character appearing in the Bṛhatsaṃhitā can be definitely fixed in the 6th century A.D., as Kern has very effectively settled the age of the work at that period. Similarly, we can ascertain the dates of the compilations of Hemādri, Maṇḍana and Gopāla Bhaṭṭa. Hemādri flourished in the 13th century A.D. and the other two in the 15th century (Gopāla Bhaṭṭa was a contemporary of Śrī-Caitanya, while Maṇḍana, as we have seen above, was the court architect and sculptor of Mahārāṇā Kumbha of Mewar). But we find ourselves in difficulty when we take up the question of the age of those texts which originally formed part of the Pāñcarātra Saṃhitās, the Śaiva Āgamas, the Śākta Tantras and some Purāṇic literature which were the sources of these late compilations. The dates of most of these source books are not definitely known, and it is likely that many of them were composed at different periods, being added to from time to time. Schrader has fixed the age, the 8th century A.D., by the terminus ad quem, in which date possibly some of the most authoritative Pāñcarātra Saṃhitās were composed; he, however, enumerated only a few, about 14 or 15 in number, which belonged to this category.¹ But the few Pāñcarātra texts which contain iconographic and allied matter, for example, the Hayaśīrṣa and the Vaikhānasa, are impossible to be dated with certainty. Gopinath Rao remarks, on what authority we do not know, that the prose recension of the Vaikhānāsāgama is perhaps the oldest among the Āgamas of the Vaiṣṇavas, assigning a much later date to the metrical form of the same work. It must be observed here that the descriptions of Viṣṇuite images given in the former tally in a remarkable manner with the extant Vaiṣṇava images of southern India of the 6th to 8th centuries A.D. The latter, *i.e.*, the metrical version of the same work, as it refers to the Drāviḍa-vedas, *i.e.*, the Prabandhas of the Ālvārs, cannot certainly be older than the 9th century A.D. But if we compare the iconographic portion of the prose version of Vaikhānāsāgama with the same of the Hayaśīrṣa Pāñcarātra, we are struck by the fact that the latter lays down the general outlines of the various images of Viṣṇu in a much less stereotyped manner than is done by the author of the former. Stereotyped divisions and subdivisions, as many as thirty-six in number, of the *Dhruva-beras* or the immovable images of Viṣṇu, are scrupulously described in the Vaikhānāsāgama.² This would suggest probably a later date for it than the Hayaśīrṣa, but we cannot be definite on this point. As for the Śaivāgamas, Gopinath Rao is of opinion that the Kāmikāgama is the oldest among them; and as in many of the other ones, including the Kāraṇāgama, reference to the Devāram hymns composed by the Nāyanmārs or the Sivabhaktas is to be found, they are to be dated later than the 9th century A.D.¹ The Sākta Tantra works, as we have them at present and which contain iconographic and iconometric data, are mostly much later in date than the 9th or 10th century A.D. None can at all be certain about the respective dates of the Purāṇas, when their heterogeneous character is taken into consideration. We can ascertain, however, their relative age from internal evidence. But a comparison of some of the iconographic texts given in several of the Purāṇas with those given in some of the Pāñcarātra literature will fully prove the indebtedness of the former to the latter (*cf.* my remarks about the borrowing of iconographic matter by the author of the Agnipurāṇa from the Hayaśīrṣa text).