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Mediaeval Sinhalese Art c18.s2: Sāriputra, Part I

Mediaeval Sinhalese Art c18.s2

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English

Sāriputra, Part I

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The first part of Sāriputra treats of images in general, not as above, exclusively of images of Buddha. Here the *mukha* or ‘face’ consists of 12 *aṅgal* only, instead of 13½, and the *bhaga* of 4 *aṅgal* instead of 4½. The other units are unchanged.

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Verses 1—30 give very detailed measurements of the head and features, body and limbs, hands and feet. The dimensions are slightly less than those above detailed: thus the breadth of the back between the armpits is two faces (of twelve *aṅgal* each only), the middle finger six *aṅgal* long instead of six *aṅgal* and four barleycorns, and so on. Verse 30 concludes: “all the rest not described may be suitably supplied.” Verses 30—43 treat of the plumb lines and measurements to be made thereby. Reference is made to the part ‘slightly slanting,’ this seems to refer to a slight bend in the waist, which, like the ‘sway’ in thirteenth-century Gothic work, gives grace and delicacy. I do not think that reference is here intended to the markedly curved figures known as *trivaṅka** (triple-curved).

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31. “Of images of which a part is erect, and a part slightly slanting, we give dimensions of the part slightly slanting, between the *Brahma sūtra* [=medial plumb line, above] and the *lalāṭa sūtra* not previously mentioned.

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32. “The dimensions of the images of gods and men are nine *tala* [=nine *mukha*, or faces] less by two *aṅgal* from the crown of the head. From the termination of the hair down to the foot the *Brahma sūtra* should be hung.

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33. “The space between the two toes is one *tala*. The image should be erect and firmly fixed. The part slanting should be measured by a curved line.

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34. “In the part slightly slanting, from the *Brahma sūtra* to the *lalāṭa sūtra* is two *kala* and one *aṅgala* [five *aṅgal*].

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36. “. . . From the *Brahma sūtra* to the face is three *kala* and half an *aṅgala* [6½ *aṅgal*; can this be a mistake?].

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37. “From the [*Brahma*] *sūtra* to the chin is one *aṅgala*; thus the measurement regarding the face.

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43. “From the first toe of the foot over the base of the throat and the forehead, also from the eyebrow eye end of the nostrils and base of the throat and also over the breast and side and the centre and beginning of the thigh, three lines must be drawn. . . [Figure:] Next follow measurements given in Sinhalese in the original copy, without any mention of its being, like the foregoing, a gloss (*sannaya*) and without any *śloka* as its basis. A part of this is quoted].

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“The length of an image is 124 *aṅgal*, when it is divided by four, 31 *aṅgal* will be the resultant. . . When a line is drawn horizontally through the navel, the portion of the elbow below it will be two *aṅgal*, and the loins below, four *aṅgal*; below that is the hip, and below that the private part.” [The prose next refers to many other lines, such as the *purva* and *pṛṣṭha*; *hikka* (=*Brahma*?); and lines drawn horizontally 1½ inches above the navel, across the navel, the centre of the private part (six inches below the last), and across the calf of the leg (eight inches below the last). It would appear that these notes are with regard to a seated image of Buddha. Much that appears very vague in the prose would no doubt be quite clear to the expert imager. I have quoted only so much as *Sāriputra* appears to be important or quite clear.]

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∗ Not ‘three sided’ as suggested by the translation in the Mahāvamsa, footnote on p. 256, ed. 1889. The images in low relief within the porch at Laṅkatilaka have been pointed out to me as ‘trivaṅka.’

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Comparison with other canons.

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Of the great series of works composing collectively the *Silpa Śastra*, or Science of the Arts, very little is at present known. The measurements given in the second part of Sāriputra are those usually met with in the parts of these works which deal with images. To illustrate this point, and to present more clearly the chief peculiarities of the canon, the following table of some of the principal measurements is prepared, the numbers being given in ‘inches’ (*aṅgal*):

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| | Sāriputra [figures of Buddha.] | Sāriputra [other figures.] | Sukrācarya.* | Bṛihad Samhita.† |
| Whole figure to top of forehead ... | 9 faces | 9 faces | 9 faces | 9 faces. |
| Face ... ... ... | 13½ | 12 | 12 | 12 |
| Crown of head ... ... | 3½ | 3 ? | 3 | 3 ? |
| Three parts of face ... | 4½ each | 4 each | 4 each | 4 each |
| Neck ... ... ... | 3½ | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| Neck to breast ... ... | 13½ | 12 | 12 | 12 |
| Breast to navel ... ... | 13½ | 12 | 12 | 12 |
| Navel to penis ... ... | 13½ | 12 | 12 | 12 |
| Thigh ... ... ... | 27 | 24 | 24 | 24 |
| Knee ... ... ... | 4½ | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| Shank ... ... ... | 27 | 24 | 24 | 24 |
| Foot, height ... ... | 4½ | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| ” length... ... | 13½ | 12 | 14 | 12 |
| Hand ... ... ... | 13½ | 12 | 12 | 12 |
| Palm ... ... ... | 7 | 7 | 7 | 7 |
| Middle finger ... ... | 6½ | 6 | 5 | 5 |

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† *Brihat Samhita of Varaha Mihira, English Trans. by N. Chidambaram Iyer, Madura, 1884, Pt. II., Ch. XI.*

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It is evident that the universal Indian standard is one of nine ‘faces,’ which in the terminology of European canons of proportion would be just over seven ‘heads.’ The figure of Buddha is made only relatively ‘heroic’ by increasing the unit, without altering the proportions to any appreciable extent. But there appears to have been some variation in the standards; the Rūpāvaliya (pp. 112, 113, above), for instance, gives the height of a man or a woman at eight, and an Asura at nine, Devas and Buddhas at ten ‘faces’; but verse 129 gives proportions agreeing with those prescribed in Sāriputra for figures of the Buddha. Slightly conflicting statements are also made by craftsmen; as ten for Buddha, nine for gods, eight for men, and seven for women. One craftsman reversed the last, explaining this on the ground that tall women were considered beautiful.

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Age of the canon, and the Silpa Śastra generally.

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Owing to the systematic neglect of the Silpa Śastra by English and Indian Sanskritists, it is difficult to give any adequate account of the technical literature of Art and Craft in India. This literature has evidently remained for centuries in the hands of craftsmen, *Age of the* *Silpa* *Sastras*

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∗ *Sukranitisāra, or Elements of Polity, by Sukrācarya, ed. Calcutta, 1890.*

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whose knowledge of Sanskrit as a language was usually slight, though they might know the text by heart. They relied on verbal glosses in the various vernaculars, Tamil and Telugu in Southern India, and Sinhalese in Ceylon. It is quite clear that the Silpa Sastras are the remains of a very carefully systematised and complete literature, and it is certain that it must have taken many centuries for them to have become so imperfect and corrupt as they now are.*

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The golden age of Indian art and literature, when India was most herself, I conceive to have been the period dating from the time of the Upanishads and of Buddha, to the close of the fifth and sixth centuries A.D. The civilisation of this time found its ultimate literary expression in the Rāmāyaṇa (about 300 A.D.) and the Mahābhārata (about 400 A.D.) and is in popular tradition centred round the court of Vikramāditya (about 375 A.D.).

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I have above (p. 63) referred to the now isolated occurrence of special crafts widely scattered in different parts of India, and suggested that this indicates a once more universal distribution. The study of Indian Art and Craft, in its profound unity in variety, suggest that its present remains are but the wreck of its former grandeur. If so, this must have been the case long ago, before the Hindu culture of the North was overrun by the Muhammadans. It may well have been in the brilliant era of the Gupta rulers, culminating in the rule of Vikramāditya. The great iron pillar at Delhi, erected in his reign, witnesses still to a knowledge of metallurgy enabling the craftsmen of that day to forge a bar of iron larger than any that could have been forged in Europe before the end of the nineteenth century. It is probable that the Silpa Sastras were written down towards the close of this period. They had previously been handed down orally by the hereditary craftsmen, amongst whom their secret was jealously guarded. The brevity of the memory verses and their technical language further preserved their meaning from common comprehension. The craftsmen are reluctant to allow their technical books to be made public.

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A certain parallel may be drawn between the writing down of the materials of the Silpa Sastras, and those composing the epics of the Rāmāyaṇa, the Mahābhārata and the Mahāvamsa. There seems to have been a tendency at this time to put into permanent form, traditions and accumulated learning previously transmitted orally in memory verses.† There is a close correspondence between the literary and the artistic phenomena. Compare, for example, a memory verse from the Rūpāvaliya (e.g. vv. 3 and 4, p. 112, above) with this verse from the Dipavamsa, in which the history of the satsatiya is summarised: “The throne, the Animisa (sanctuary), the cloisters, the Gem-court, the Ajapala (tree), and the Mucalinda (tree) together with the Khirapala grove as the seventh.” In both cases we have mnemonic verses of great brevity, evidently adapted to oral transmission; the artist in each case had to fill in the meagre details, and make the story or the image live.

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† See Geiger, ‘Dipavamsa and Mahavamsa,’ Colombo, 1905, for a study of the evolution of the ‘epic of Duttha Gamani,’ forming the main part of the M. as composed in the fifth century.

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I suggest a parallel between the literary impulse which led to the writing down of these mnemonic verses, and their expansion into epic history, and the impulse which led to the writing down of the orally transmitted verses of the Silpa Sastra, and suggest also the probability of these two processes having taken place about the same time.

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∗ “*Mutilated as they invariably are in many important parts, almost every line of them is not only disfigured by gross errors, perpetuated by a succession of ignorant transcribers, but the technical terms and memorial verses with which the whole abounds, are so little understood either by the artists or the pundits of the present day, that it requires no ordinary exertion to comprehend and explain the exact import of even a single section.*”—Ram Raz, ‘Essay on the Architecture of the Hindus,’ London, 1834, p. 3.

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I select, then, the fifth century as a probable date for the writing down of the Silpa Śastras, *Sāriputra*, but in doing so I do not attach, of course, importance to the exact figures, and do not forget that not all the works in question are necessarily contemporaneous.

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It is clear that the artistic canons and memory verses cannot have been formulated at a very early period, for they imply the development of Hinduism from and through Buddhism, such as could hardly have taken place before the close of the second century A.D. They appear to be in the main independent of Buddhism; we cannot suppose that any vital tradition, or one concerned mainly with Hindu representations could have been formulated in connection with the weak and effeminate sculpture of the Gandhāra school, perhaps the least truly Indian and artistically least important of all sculpture in India. There is some indication that the Silpa Śastras date from a time subsequent to the decline of Buddhism as the complete expression of national religion. Thus in the Rūpāvaliya, Buddha appears only as one of the ten avatārs of Viṣṇu; and as Rām Rāz suggests,* there is evidence in other works to show that the worship of the Jainas and Buddhists, though still tolerated and provided for in these works, occupied a position of very minor importance in them. But a purely Buddhist canon like the Sāriputra would not have been preserved in India at all after the complete extinction of Buddhism as a separate cult; and it is not likely to have been composed in Ceylon; so that by this line of reasoning also we are thrown back to the fifth century. Another piece of evidence is afforded by the Sukranītisāra,† or ‘Elements of Polity,’ by Sukrācārya, which was translated into Tibetan in the seventh century A.D., and must therefore have been well known in India for a considerable time previous to this. This work contains important chapters on the measurements of images, summarised in part in the table given above, and also a clear presentation of the artistic ideal of the imager himself.

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† *In this case, and in the Brihad Saṃhita of Varaha Mitra, the artistic canon does not stand by itself as the body of the work, but forms a single chapter or a few chapters in a work of general information, an encyclopædia.*

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The truth is that we have to consider in all probability two stages in the history of the works in question, the first that of their formulation at the close of the fifth century in Northern India, the second that of their subsequent use and final decay in the North, finally completed as the result of Muhammadan conquest and influence. During this second period, the traditions flourished in the South, where most of the remaining works are still to be found; new recensions of them were made, with additions and interpolations relating to representations of local deities and saints. Artistic expression in the South culminated in the sculpture and architecture of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, after which there followed a gradual decline, rapidly accelerated in the nineteenth century, until now there are but few craftsmen who understand their own books, and but few copies of these books procurable, and those imperfect and exceedingly corrupt.

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∗ ‘*Essay on the Architecture of the Hindus,*’ London, 1834. *This valuable book contains the fullest account in English of the Silpa Śastras (so far as they relate to architecture) and some discussion of their age.*

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