South Indian Bronzes: A Historical Survey of South Indian Sculpture with Iconographical Notes Based on Original Sources c7.47

c7.47

Sthapathis. It is apparent that under conditions such as these when princes and peasants combined to load the temples with such numerous gifts the demand for images should be great. The demand had its supply and had kept alive with unstinted patronage, a school of sculpture and bronze workers who are commonly known as *Sthapathis*. No doubt they existed long before the Chola ascendency, but the work which the religious patronage of this period thrust upon them gave an impetus to their art which undoubtedly attained their highest water-mark between the 10th and 13th centuries. These sculptors generally associated themselves in villages solely populated by them. During the earlier times many such villages existed in the District of Tanjore, one of which has survived to this day. In the village of Swamimalai,² on the Cauvery three miles west of Kumbakonam, there still exists a group of families who have been practising the art of image-making in bronze and stones as a hereditary profession for generations past. In fact this little group of artists now form the only remnant of the great school of South Indian bronzes. Most of these artists were experts in casting images in all sorts of materials, but a majority of them specialised in the art of casting images in metals as most of the gifts to the temple consisted of images cast in silver, copper or bronze. It may be supposed that the sculpture of the Chola period was essentially Saivaite in its character. No doubt, it is true, to a certain extent, that Saivaism has contributed some of the artistically fine pieces to the various examples of Indian bronzes. The sculptors were, however, employed as freely by the Vaishnavas as by the Saivaites, and we find, some of the images of Krishna and the Vaishnava saints are as characteristic examples of South Indian bronze sculpture as any Saivaite image. Vaishnavism had been springing into activity in South India about the same time when Saivaism was trying to overthrow the Buddhist and Jain religion. In fact many of the Vaishnava Alawars or saints are contemporaries and some are predecessors of the famous Saivaite saint Manikka-Vasagar and others. In some cases the Vaishnava and Saiva sects combined in their campaigns against the non-Brahmin religions. The religious activity which finally overlapped Jainism in the South about the 8th century was generally Hindu in its character in which the Saivas and the Vaishnavas took equal parts. The schism between the two sects became pronounced during the advent of the Chola kings one of whom is reported to have persecuted Rāmānuja; but a period of toleration followed and there are many references to kings who endowed Saivaite and Vaishnava temples with impartial bounty. In many of the principal temples dedicated to Siva we often meet with, as at Chidambaram, a special shrine with an image of Vishnu in the same enclosure. As Fergusson has noticed, one of the peculiarities of the Tanjore temple is that all the sculptures on the gopuras belong to the religion of Vishnu while everything in the courtyard is dedicated to the worship of Siva. However, Saivaism seems to have been the older and the predominating cult in South India, and many of the mannerisms of Saivaite sculptures have been imitated by the artists of the Vaishnava schools. ' Sivalaya' literally meaning 'the