South Indian Bronzes: A Historical Survey of South Indian Sculpture with Iconographical Notes Based on Original Sources c9.1

c9.1

IN order to trace the history and evolution of Chola Art of which the bronzes the subject-matter of this volume, form such an interesting ramification, it will be necessary to consider the earlier forms of Saivaite art which preceded the advent of the Cholas and in what way the later school is related to the earlier ones. The existing examples of the older Saivaite scuplture, however, do not carry us back very far, as the history of Saivaism would lead one to believe. If it is assumed that the different conceptions of Siva as enumerated in the *Sakaladhikār* of Agastya and in the *Kāsyapiya* had taken definite sculptural forms and were practised in the South by the sculptors who lived about the time of these Aryan immigrants from the North it would be difficult to support such a hypothesis by evidence of actual specimens which could be attributed to the time about which Agastya or his followers could be said to have lived. Both the works of Agastya and Kasyapa give the iconography of various Saivaite images, the most important of which are Natarāja, Ardhanāriswara, Kālsanhāra, Tripurāntaka, Gangādhara, Virāteswara, Gaj-hāmurti, some of these conceptions being the special features of South Indian Saivaism. The worship of Siva as Natarāja, for example, is a special cult peculiar to South India. The innumerable shrines and images connected with its worship which are still existing there prove the pre-eminence and popularity of this form of Siva in the South. The bronze-workers in the employ of the Chola princes have devoted their best skill in casting the image of the "Dancing Lord," and from the numerous examples of this image made during the Chola supremacy one is led to suppose that its form and peculiar pose though based on and illustrating the original *dhyana mantra* of the Brahmin iconographer was originated by the Chola sculptors. As we shall presently find that such a supposition would be erroneous as the subject has been already treated by the artists of the earlier Saivaite schools.¹