The Development of Hindu Iconography c9.34

c9.34

It has been found necessary to discuss the views of Bollensen and Venkateswara at some length in the above paragraphs, because their hypothesis was adumbrated with great skill and confidence as well as with the hypothetical support of elaborate textual data, their presentation of the case being by far the ablest one. Brindavan Ch. Bhattacharyya, in the long introduction to his work on Indian Images, Part I, did also expound the view sponsored by the above scholars; but the premises laid down by him in support of his conclusion were more or less the same as have been critically estimated and need not be discussed here in detail. The Ṛgvedic verse, X. 130, 3, does not prove the existence of the practice of image worship in early Vedic religion; but as has been pointed out above that the verse, if it is read along with the succeeding ones and if the commentary of Sāyaṇa is properly understood, does not at all justify us in finding in it an allusion to the making of images of the early Vedic gods and worshipping them. The mere use of the word *pratimā* or *pratīka* without the proper context will not be sufficient to demonstrate anything. Venkateswara, as has been pointed above, expressly remarks with reference to *R. V.*, V. 52, 15, "that it shows that there was no idol worship." In this connection, the interesting remark of Bloomfield requires to be noted at length: "The mind of the Vedic poet is the rationalistic mind of the ruminating philosopher, rather than the artistic mind which reproduces the finished product. It is engaged too much in reasoning about and constantly altering the wavering shapes of the gods, so that these remain to the end of Vedic time too uncertain in outline, too fluid in substance for the modelling hand of the artist. On a pinch we could imagine a statue of the most material of the Vedic god Indra; but it is hard to imagine a statue of the god Varuṇa. As a matter of fact there is no record of Vedic ikons, or Vedic temples. In all these senses there is no Vedic Pantheon."' The long extract from Yāska's *Nirukta*, already referred to above, dealing with the anthropomorphism of the Vedic gods, should be noted again in this connection. R. P. Chanda rightly remarks, in regard to it, "This discussion clearly shows that up to the time of Yāska which synchronises with the last phase of the Vedic period the Vedic gods had not been invested with the forms in which they appear in the Epics and the Purāṇas."² Non-existence of images and temples or the absence of the practice of image-worship among the higher section of the Vedic Indo-Aryans was not the characteristic only of this ancient people of the world. Many other nations of the ancient world can be shown to have been aniconists in practice. It is late in the religious history of China and Japan that any tangible traces of image-worship are to be found. Many of the nomadic tribes of the Semites did not practise it. “Among the Jews it appeared only in exceptional cases (e.g., the Golden Calf and the Brazen Serpent). Caesar and Tacitus assert that there were neither temples nor images among the Teutons. In Rome, according to Varro, the Romans lived 170 years without representing their gods by images. Even among the Greeks we find scarcely any traces of idolatry in the time of the Pelasgi.”¹