South Indian Bronzes: A Historical Survey of South Indian Sculpture with Iconographical Notes Based on Original Sources c9.71

c9.71

Some of the copper images in this temple (Plate LIII) and also in the collection of the Rani of Tanjore testify to their patronage of the art of the bronze images. But the inferior quality of the latter collection can not claim any comparison with the splendid examples of the Chola period. The Nayaks had not the same resources at their command which enabled the Chola princes to make their lavish religious endowments a bye word in South Indian history. Nevertheless the craftsmen of the South who grouped themselves in villages in the principal places where temple building flourished from time to time formed important centres to which people from all parts of the country looked for the supply of accessories for their religious faith and their temple services. For after all the inspiration which called into existence and kept alive the art of the sculptor was not the patronage of the king who bestowed funds to the artists but the religious faith of the people at large which the sculptors shared alike with the prince and the common people. For whether the prince or the bourgeois gave him his living the South Indian sthapati was in the service of the temple, it was a religious employment not a secular patronage. They were not the king's craftsmen but the employees of Siva. The centres of these religious craftsmen changed from place to place and have shifted as far as Ceylon where a Saivite colony was founded about the time of the Chola king Adhirajendra. The principal centres appear to have been in the Districts of Tanjore, Trichinopoly, North and South Arcot, Salem and Ramnad. The only living vestige of these different centres appears to be the small village of Swamimalai where a group of hereditary craftsmen consisting of about ten families are still practising their traditional craft. After the great periods of templebuilding died out the art of the bronze workers was kept in existence by the requirements of private individuals who still continued their faith in the practice of bestowing gifts of images to the temples. Latterly this practice of votive offerings has been invariably confined to the female sex who now are in the South as in the other parts of India, the only custodians of the Hindu religious traditions of ancient times. The bronze workers of Swamimalai still receive, now and then important commissions from various parts of South India and also from Ceylon. But the fashion of presenting or setting up images in temples has waned and the opportunities for the bronze sculptor to practise his art have become limited in the course of the last few years. An attempt was made to find employment for some of these craftsmen from Swamimalai in the Government School of Art in Madras and some of them are still employed as teachers in that institution. The Victoria Technical Institute, Madras, has also entrusted various commissions to them during recent years and has tried to keep up the reminiscences of a very old school of bronze workers.