The Development of Hindu Iconography c9.4

c9.4

Even when such words as *vimba*, *pratikṛti*, etc., came to be used in their secondary sense, they retained their former usage in comparatively late texts. In the *Pratimā-nāṭaka* of Bhāsa, mention is made of the statues (*pratimā*) of the departed royalties, which, though objects of respect, were not certainly meant for regular worship. The iron figure of Bhīma, which was crushed by the blind old Kuru king Dhṛtarāṣṭra by being hugged close to his body, is described by Kṛṣṇa as ‘*āyasī pratimā*’.¹ The golden image of Sītā served as her substitute during the performance of the Aśvamedha sacrifice by Rāma, when she herself was in exile in Vālmīki’s hermitage.² The word *pratikṛti* meaning ‘likeness’ occurs in the *Sūtra* (V. 3.96) of Pāṇini, which reads *ive pratikṛtau* and which can be explained thus,—the affix *kan* means also ‘like this,’ ‘in imitation of this,’ when imitation or likeness of a person or thing is meant. That images of human beings were made in ancient India is fully proved by many other texts, one of which may be mentioned here. The *Śukranītisāra* says that “images of divinities, even if they are without the characteristic signs, are beneficial to men; those of mortals, on the other hand, even if they are endowed with them, are never so.”³ The free-standing sculptures discovered in Patna and Parkham were identified by K. P. Jayaswal as royal statuaries of the Śaiśunāga dynasty; few scholars, if any, accept this suggestion now, and they are almost unanimously described as Yakṣa figures. But numerous references to images of kings and great men are to be found in Indian literature, which, though of special veneration, were certainly not objects of worship. The red sandstone sculptures representing some of the Kushan kings like Wema Kadphises and Kanishka and the Saka satrap Caṣṭana discovered near Mathura are a few of the extant figures testifying to the prevailing practice in those remote times. The Kushan emperors no doubt assumed some amount of divine character which is borne out by their adoption of the title devaputra (possibly in imitation of the Chinese royal practice), by such features as ‘a halo round the head’, flames issuing from the shoulders, ‘the royal bust rising from the clouds’, etc., characterising their portraits appearing on coins, and by the glorious title such as Iśvara used by one of them, viz., Wema Kadphises in his coin legends.¹ Still it must be wrong to suppose that their figures commanded the same amount of religious fervour culminating in their ritualistic worship with deep devotion as was roused by the images of the cult-deities which had much earlier made their appearance in India. These royal statuaries were in all probability housed in structures of a funerary character and regarded by their living relations and subjects with great veneration, just as pictorial representations and statues of mediaeval and modern Rajput kings and potentates used to be enshrined in chatris or funerary monuments and highly venerated; but, the service and attention offered to them must have been done through the media of divine images which were the objects of proper veneration, as was the custom and is still the custom with the Rajput kings. In the case of the latter, the phallic emblems of Śiva usually served this purpose. Under no circumstances, however, could they have enjoyed the same position as was done by the images of cult deities, some of whom, as we shall see later on, were apotheosised human beings.