The Development of Hindu Iconography c9.9

c9.9

Words like *sandṛś*, *pratimā*, etc., might have signified from a comparatively early date symbolical representations of divinities which were not associated with particular cults; such use, in fact, can be found in texts assignable to a period when the cult gods and goddesses had either not made their appearance, or, even if they had done so, had not been assigned any important position in the religious lives of the higher sections of the Indo-Aryans. Thus, the word *sandṛś* occurs in the *Kaṭhaka Upaniṣad*, II. 3, 9—" he has no form visible to the eye; no one sees him with the eye."¹ The word ‘*sandṛśe*’ has been explained by Śaṃkarācārya as ‘*sandarśanaviṣaye*’, i.e., ‘objects visible to the eye’. It has been interpreted as ‘images proper’ by some scholars; but the utmost that it can signify is some sort of sensible representation which could symbolise the god. The same sense is possibly recorded by the word *pratimā* in verse 19, Chapter IV, of the *Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad*, which says that " there is no image of him whose name is great glory."² The word *pratimā* occurs in a verse of the tenth *maṇḍala* of the *Ṛgveda* in which the hymnist asks about the measure and the image of the sacrifice; he answers his own question in the next verse that the symbol of the sacrifice was the sacrificial fire itself. There is very little justification for taking it here in the sense of the image proper of gods.³