Indian Sculpture c5.s1.t6: Attitude Towards Symbols
Indian Sculpture c5.s1.t6
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Attitude Towards Symbols
c5.s1.t6.1
Symbolic representation, however, is confined to the allusion of the Buddha’s presence.
c5.s1.t6.2
Indian plastic sense is averse to the symbol, which is the substitute for a reality. The un-formed clamours for form, for this is the way in which it shows its reality. Symbols are ready-made and block the approach of the un-formed towards form. They stand in the way of creation. If in ancient Indian sculpture, of the Indus civilisation and in the Mauryan age, animal or plant were represented in lieu of the corresponding divinity, they were meant to be vāhanas, i.e. vehicles of the divinity, and not abstracts or parts of its appearance, such as footprints or hair relics, or of its presence, such as the seat or the walk (caṅkrama), in the case of the Buddha. They were truly vāhanas, of which the artistic treatment in the Indus art ‘conveyed’ divinity. The sacred tree, alone amongst the symbols for the Buddha, has maintained some of these earlier qualities. Non-iconic signs for the Buddha are an exceptional incident within the whole of Indian plastic art and their origins are to be sought for in a mentality which is not that of the Indian craftsman. He had, however, to submit to it.
c5.s1.t6.3
Symbols again play a considerable part in later centuries. But then they are additional attributes to figures of divinities, themselves endowed with form. Wheel, flame, lemon, lotus, etc., held in the hands by various divinities, are part of their apparel, and belong to the same category as crown, scarf or armlet. Nor do they then stand for an entire reality, they support only one of its many qualities, objectified and rationalised.
c5.s1.t6.4
The sacred tree, the seat, the wheel, the stūpa and the footprints are the ever-recurring devices substituted for the accomplished one. Or he may be present even—by not being alluded to at all—in the absence of concrete symbols (Figs. 16, 19). But not only are the symbols worshipped and treated as the centre and origin of an hieratical symmetry of composition (Fig. 18), but they also take part in the narration, and this they do to such an extent that they are divested of unchangeable permanency and are torn asunder. Such are the footprints in Bhārhut, which, apart from each other, climb down, the one on the top-most and the other on the lower-most rung of a ladder, to bring home the Buddha’s descent from the heaven of the thirty-three gods (Fig. 22). In Sāñcī, moreover,44 footprints, tree-motif, wheel and umbrella are combined in vertical succession, alluding in a childish way to the bodily appearance of man. There were definite injunctions in Buddhism against depicting the human form and taking delight in it, and there was felt a general awe of doing so.45 But these were expressions of religious experience and not of the artistic urge. The way in which the inexorably prolific sensuousness of the Indian artist struggled with, and eventually overcame, the scruples of the mind, and succeeded in dragging the symbol into the current of life and form, can be followed from generation to generation in the course of classical sculpture. The narrative reliefs in the second century B.C. select Jātaka stories as their favourite themes; whereas in the first century B.C. events from the actual life of the Buddha and his miracles are preferably chosen.