Indian Sculpture c6.s1: The Image
Indian Sculpture c6.s1
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The Image
c6.s1.1
The mathematical relations that underlie every work of art had begun to be consciously used at that time too. In future they were relied upon as the condition, *sine qua non*, of every image. For the image fulfils the function of a yantra.¹⁴² As such it has to guarantee a definite result. Each image, with its exact measure and attributes, serves as a means or instrument, as limited as the average man, within the sect to which he belongs, can make use of it towards the realisation of an ultimate goal.
c6.s1.2
Mediaeval images, while taking for granted the transubstantiation of the human body achieved in the plastic art of the past, are a meeting ground for anthropomorphic predilections, such as, in the majority of cases, pleasing appearance or elaborate jewellery on the one hand, and for geometrical schemes on the other. Either of these are inducements for the eye to dwell upon. Their manifoldness or regularity attract the eye and invite fixation on every part of the image, which is unfolded before the devotee as a vertical field of concentration. When beheld or known in its entirety, it fills the mind, to the exclusion of everything else, of its own situation at a definite place, as well as of the separate existence of the devotee. When the image has fulfilled its purpose of being an instrument of concentration, it has ceased to exist, for then there is nothing but oneness in infinity.
c6.s1.3
To facilitate concentration and simultaneous fixation, the image has to confront the devotee in its entire presence, condensed into a surface and unbroken in its effect by the third dimension. Itself object and aim, it is so only transitorily, a kind of junction, where the externalised vision is reflected in its own likeness at the place where it originated, that is, within the devotee.
c6.s1.4
If meditation, irrespective of the system that it serves, in all its stages, could be embedded in the form to which myths and images had lent their names in earlier centuries, bhakti (devotion), though in need of an image, had not been able to become the substance of an adequate artistic form as far as images of divinities are concerned (see, however, p. 120). As far as images are intermediaries, they obey strict rules which make them fit for this purpose. As yantras they belong to an ‘applied art,’ where value is not connected with artistic quality; it lies in the service which they render to the devotee during pūjā.
c6.s1.5
Similar to the symbol in early classical art (p. 25), the image from the religious point of view need not be—and frequently is not—born from within the creative genius, and it is not as a maker of images that the mediæval Indian craftsman realises his entire artistic experience. This refers mainly to the most popular types of images. The innumerable mediæval images of Buddha, Viṣṇu, Umā-maheśvara and others are scarcely more than figured yantras. But where the craftsman, himself a yogin, works at the image, the yantra no longer stands midway between devotion and the goal itself; it leaves with him its knowledge, while its mechanism disappears, and he sets forth the image from the all-filling presence of his samādhi.
c6.s1.6
The image, almost exclusively treated as stele, i.e. as a relief slab, carries its symbolic attributes in not more pronounced a manner than its jewellery, although these symbols name the image by confining divinity to its special manifestation. Even when there is no slab and the image is worked in the round, its composition nevertheless is conceived in view of the surface, i.e. of the vertical field of concentration (Figs. 97, 99, 110, etc.).
c6.s1.7
Whatever the positions of the accompanying figures may be, the principle for the main figure of the image is to face the devotee. This it does in the artificial dimness of the garbhagṛha, the inmost sanctuary. The light that filters in through the door comes, already tempered in its strength, from the hall or the porch in front of the sanctuary. The strong light of the day must not penetrate as far, so as not to detract from the magic power of the image. The garbhagṛha is without windows. The artificial dimness in which the image is kept has its natural origin in the cave temples. Even when lit up by the flicker of many lamps, and if not clothed and anointed so that it is hidden almost altogether—for the devotee knows the image; he carries it in his mind and its presence becomes acutely clear to his inner vision, once he has entered the appropriate atmosphere—the radiance around it is enveloped by darkness. However rationalised the method, however meticulous the canon of proportion of the image as a yantra, its setting is replete with its magic and with the concentration of the devotee.
Linked texts (1)
- Yantra — Sanskrit