A Handbook of Indian Art/Section 2/Chapter 1

by Ernest Binfield Havell

 

SECTION II
SCULPTURE

CHAPTER I

THE BUDDHA AS GURU AND AS KING

Fergusson's dictum that the Aryans of Vedic India had no temples needs some qualification, but it seems certain that Vedic ritual on the whole was not idolatrous. Aryan society even in Vedic times included many foreign elements, and the respect shown to the idols of foreigners is shown by the incident of King Dasaratha of Mitanni sending an image of the Assyrian goddess Ishtar to his brother-in-law, the King of Egypt, already referred to.^[1] There is one passage in the Mahābhārata which alludes to the idols in the temples of the Kurus, but so far no Aryan images of pre-Buddhist times, or representations of them, have been discovered.

The Buddha maintained the aniconic character of Vedic religion for the very good reason that his teaching was altogether agnostic. The members of the early Buddhist Sangha were as strict in excluding any picture or image of the Blessed One from their stūpas and stūpa-houses as the early Muhammadans were in obeying the injunctions of the Prophet in regard to painting and sculpture. It is not at all probable, however, that this rule was observed as strictly by Buddhist laymen who did not take the vows of the Order. An early legend refers to the Buddha allowing his own portrait to be drawn in silhouette by one of his disciples; and long before the Mahāyānist school broke away from the primitive traditions of Buddhism, and sanctioned the worship of the Great Teacher as the Divine Ruler of the universe, Indian idealism must have formed the impression which the painters and sculptors of the Kushān court in Gandhara, about the beginning of the Christian era, tried to shape. Their Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are obviously the gods of the Greek and Roman pantheon adapted to an Indian nivran. The Gandharan sculptures in modern museums show how imperfectly these Hellenistic artists realised the true Buddhist ideal. It was left to the Indian mystics who followed them to put into artistic form what they saw in their visions of the Blessed One in the Tushitā heavens, or when He deigned to listen to their prayers and descended to earth to show His divine form to them, as the Devas of old revealed themselves to the Vedic Rishis.

For the two central ideas which run through all Buddhist iconography are as certainly derived from an ancient Indo-Aryan tradition as are the stūpa and the sikhara, to which they are closely related. In the first the Buddha is conceived as the Great Guru, the Muni^[2] who by the power of Yoga has obtained full insight into all the mysteries of the universe and has become the teacher of the law. He is the Buddhist counterpart of the Brahman Mahā-Yogi, Siva, worshipped through the jnāna-marga, the Path of Knowledge. In the second he is a King, the Supreme Head of the Sangha regarded as a universal Church. The Bodhisattva is the ideal Kshatriya King of the Mahābhārata who has learnt to subdue himself, so that he may dispense divine justice and become God's Vicegerent on earth. But he fights only with spiritual weapons which, like those of the great Aryan heroes, are personified and made to take places in the Buddhist pantheon as various manifestations of the Bodhisattva, e.g. Divine Love, Avalokitēshvara, and Divine Wisdom, Manjusri.

The type of head conforms to fixed tradition regarding marks of identity (lakshanas)—e.g., eyebrows joined together; a bump of wisdom on the top of the head (ushnisha), covered in the case of the Bodhisattva by the high-peaked tiara; three lucky lines on the neck; the lobes of the ears split and elongated in a fashion still prevalent in Southern India; a mark in the centre of the forehead (urnā) symbolising the third eye of spiritual vision. But every school of sculptors impressed its own racial type upon the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas it created. A Gandharan Buddha is unmistakably one of the race to which the Kushan dynasty belonged; an Indian image is of some Indian race. A Chinese image has a Mongolian character. Yet it is very rarely the case that any attempt at portraiture is made, as often happens in Western sacred art: it is an ideal racial type rather than an individual that is represented.

This was also the case in the gods of the pantheon which Greek artists created. The difference between the Indian and Greek ideal lies in the metaphysical outlook. The Indian idea was that Yoga, through which divine wisdom was attained, not only gave the body eternal youth and superhuman strength, but purified it of its physical dross and gave it a finer texture than the common mortal clay. The Buddha sitting under the Bodhi tree at Gāyā, reduced to a living skeleton by mental agony and prolonged fasting, was at once supernaturally transformed when the Great Truth of the cause of human suffering flashed upon his mind. He appeared then like the Devas, the Shining Ones, who thronged to hail him as their Lord, with a body like a lion—that is, with massive neck and shoulders; a narrow waist, and a golden or tawny skin; the veins and bones hidden, supple rounded limbs smooth as a woman's—a superman whose body combined the perfections of either sex but transcended all of them. This was the antithesis of the athletic ideal of classical Greek art based upon earthly notions of a mens sana in corpore sano. It was the symbol of spiritual rebirth by which mankind could become even as the gods.

Though this ideal was not realised in perfect artistic form until Indian sculpture and painting reached their zenith in Northern India about the sixth century a.d., the idea itself was of much greater antiquity. The god-like heroes of the Mahābhārata and Indo-Aryan athletes had long arms; in their shoulders, necks, and waists they were like lions. The same type appears in Minoan art of 3000 b.c., where men are shown with their waists pinched in with leathern girdles. It is also prominent in Egyptian and early Greek art. The prolonged Aryan domination of the Euphrates valley probably accounts for its survival in Indian art, as well as for many other evidences of Babylonian culture in India. It was the doctrine of Yoga, however, which gave the idea its characteristic Indian expression, in which the mystic tries to reveal the divine power of thought which controls all physical manifestations, a power which can only be realised when the mind, immovably fixed and undisturbed by worldly desires, attains to perfect tranquillity and the supreme joy of harmony with the eternal.

The two sculptures in Pl. LIII are classical Indian types of the Buddha as the Monk and Guru. The

Plate LIIIa

THE BUDDHA, ANURĀDHAPŪRA

Plate LIIIb

THE BUDDHA, SARNĀTH

Plate LIVa

THE BUDDHA, AJANTĀ (CAVE IX)

Plate LIVb

THE BUDDHA, MATHURĀ MUSEUM

first (Fig. A) is a colossal statue at Anuradhapura in Ceylon, no doubt one of the great masterpieces of its age which served as a model for the school to which it belonged. The Buddha is just emerging from the Yoga trance, as indicated by the left leg being released from the "adamantine" pose when the two legs are firmly locked together. It shows the same great sweep of line and masterly generalisation of form which distinguish the classic paintings of Ajantā in India and those of the allied Cingalese school of Sigirīya. We may assume that it was the work of some famous sculptor from Northern India.

Its provenance is clearly indicated in the Sarnath Buddha (Pl. LIII, b), which, though of a later date—probably the fifth or sixth century—has exactly the same type of face. In the first half of the fourth century a.d. the King of Ceylon, Meghavarna, was on very friendly terms with the great Gupta Emperor, Samudragupta, who gave him permission to found and endow a monastery at Bodh-Gāyā. The Anuradhapura Buddha may belong to Meghavarna's reign. The Sarnath sculpture, which is about 5 ft. 3 in. in height, belonged to a temple or monastery in the Deer Park where the Buddha began to preach. It represents the Master enthroned and expounding his doctrine, while a band of disciples at his feet worship the Wheel of the Law. Though it belongs to the same great school as the Ceylon sculpture, it is more dry and academic in treatment. The contours lack the beautiful rhythmic flow of the Ceylon image, and the rather woodeny plastic treatment shows the hand of a copyist lacking in original power of expression.

Both of these Buddhas are dressed in the light diaphanous robe which is characteristic of Gupta sculpture, with a slight difference in arrangement. In the Ceylon Buddha the left shoulder is bare, whereas the Sarnath sculpture shows the robe giving the neck. Another type of the Buddha as the Ascetic and Teacher is shown in Pl. LIV, a, a sculpture on the face of the rock outside Cave IX at Ajantā. Here the Buddha is seated on his throne, not as a Yogi, but in European fashion; a pose which indicated the Buddhist Messiah Maitreya,^[3] who is to be the world-teacher in a new dispensation. It is significant that Buddhism should look to the West for its coming saviour. Possibly the iconographic idea came from Gandhara. Maitreya is usually classed as a Bodhisattva, and sometimes wears the Bodhisattva's crown, but here the attendants on either side are crowned as Kings or Devas, the lesser divinities who are the servants of the Great Teacher. This noble sculpture is more vigorous in expression and masterful in technique than the Sarnath Buddha, and may be earlier in date.

The Buddha as Guru is also represented standing erect with the right hand raised in the gesture known as abhaya mudrā, dispelling fear. The splendid statue now in the Birmingham Museum (Pl. LV, a) is of this type. It was excavated from a ruined monastery at Sultanganj, in Bengal, and may be classed with the Anuradhapura Buddha as one of the greatest works of the early Gupta period, testifying to the great skill of North Indian metal founders at this time, for it is about 7½ feet high, of copper cast in sections, probably by the cire perdue process on a core held together by iron bands.^[4] It is probably of the same age as the famous iron pillar of Delhi, a royal standard of the traditional Vishnu type,

Plate LVa

THE BUDDHA AS GURU
(Birmingham Art Museum)

Plate LVb

THE BUDDHA AS GURU (SARNĀTH)

set up about a.d. 415 by Kumāragupta I to celebrate the victories of his father, Vikramādityā, the casting of which was a feat which could not have been achieved in Europe until quite recent times.^[5]

The standing Buddha carved in sandstone, now in the Mathurā Museum (Pl. LIV, b), is of the same type as the Sultanganj statue and of nearly equal size, but the execution is more dry and academic, resembling in this respect the Sarnath Buddha. The colossal headless figure (LV, b) recently dug up at Sarnath shows a variation in the pose and drapery, and also a heaviness in the limbs which does not belong to the Indian ideal. It was probably the work of a foreign sculptor at the Gupta court. In most Gupta sculpture there are clear suggestions of Hellenistic influence visible, manifesting itself mostly as technical mannerisms. The ideas which the artist wishes to realise, the real creative impulse, are deeply rooted in Indian thought and go back to pre-Buddhist times.

The Buddha as the ideal King, or Bodhisattva, is very finely realised in the noble torso now in the Victoria and Albert Museum (Pl. LVI, a). The sway of the lithe, youthful figure, suggesting the swinging gait of the royal elephant, often used in Indian poetry as a simile for the graceful carriage of a young woman, would alone distinguish the sculptor's intention from the studied, self-disciplined immovability of the Yogi who has attained to full Buddhahood, even if the shoulder-straps of deer's hide and the splendid collar and girdle did not proclaim the Kshatriya prince. The figure is said to have crowned one of the royal standards put up near the great stūpa at Sānchī, but I think it is an error to attribute it to Asoka's time. Royal patronage of the Buddhist abbey of Sānchī continued for many centuries after the stūpa was built by Asoka. It is true that in technique it is fully equal to the best craftsmanship of the Mauryan period: it has, moreover, all the freshness and vitality of the early Sānchī school. But Buddhist orthodoxy did not allow a sculptured image of the Buddha, either as a King or a Guru, until long after Asoka's time. It is clearly the work of an early Gupta sculptor: the Gupta royal standards were of the same lotus pattern as those of Asoka, and at that time Mahāyāna Buddhism had sanctioned the worship of the Buddha's image both as the Teacher and as the King. In the earlier Hīnayāna school a Bodhisattva was only the name for one of the Buddha's previous existences as told in the jātakas: the idea of a divine ruler of the Sangha had not arisen, though the Patriarch of the Order was accorded royal honours as the representative of the Founder.

This torso is clearly distinguished from most Gupta sculpture in bearing no trace of Hellenistic or Gandharan influence, and brings fresh evidence to prove that Indian sculpture was not so deeply indebted to the Gandharan school as archæologists have maintained. The fine image of Sūrya, the Sun-god, from the temple of Kanārak, in Orissa (Pl. LVI, b), will enable us to realise what the missing head of the Bodhisattva was like. It also illustrates the wonderful continuity of Indian artistic traditions, for the two sculptures, though separated from each other by a distance of at least nine centuries,^[6] have so many close correspondences that it might almost be thought they were works of the same school. Only the pose differs, for the Sun-god, driving his

Plate LVIa

TORSO FROM SĀNCHĪ

Plate LVIb

SŪRYA, FROM KONĀRAK

seven-horsed car and, like Vishnu, holding up the heavens, has the same static pose of the Buddha as the Teacher of the Universal Law. Sūrya's active pose when he is shooting the arrows which destroy the demons of darkness is finely given in the relief from the Kailāsa temple (Pl. XXV, b).

Sūrya was one of the ancient Vedic deities worshipped by the Aryans both in India and in Mesopotamia. In Indian art he appears as the Aryan fighting chief in his war-car, which probably played the same part in the Aryan conquest of India as it did in the conquest of Egypt by the Shepherd Kings.^[7] The horse introduced into Mesopotamia from Irān about 2,000 b.c. replaced the ass in the war-cars of Babylonia, an innovation which for a time made these early engines of war as irresistible as the tank in modern warfare.

The ideas of Vedic India manifest themselves in Buddhist sculpture and painting as clearly as they do in Buddhist architectural designs. The Buddha as the Guru represents the Brahman or Indo-Aryan thinker who found salvation by the path of knowledge; the Bodhisattva, the Kshatriya or Indo-Aryan hero and leader of men who was the central figure of bhakti worship, the path of loyalty or devotion. The reason why there are so many missing links in the chain connecting Indian sculpture and painting with pre-Buddhist times is no doubt the same as that which has prevented the explorer from tracing the evolution of the stūpa and the sikhara. As in ancient Egypt, the houses and palaces of Indo-Aryan nobility were of clay or sun-dried bricks. They were adorned with paintings and carvings, and in spite of the prohibitions of the Vedic Rishis, there were probably icons of household and tribal deities in them long before Mahāyāna Buddhism gave them its sanction. But Aryan sculpture of the pure Vedic tradition was perhaps almost exclusively made of the various sacrificial woods particularised in the Ramayana,^[8] which could not long resist the attacks of insects and other destructive influences of the Indian climate. In the land of the five rivers, the Panjab, where the first Aryan settlements were located, the constant shifting of the river beds would in course of time completely obliterate the towns and villages built upon their banks; and as bathing was an indispensable part of Aryan religious ritual, we may assume that the earliest settlements were always located on the banks of the sacred rivers. Fresco-painting on mud wall and sculpture in wood are the most fugitive of historical records in India, so it is not surprising that no vestiges of their existence before Asoka's time have been discovered. But there is no good reason for supposing that the Indo-Aryans were less proficient in the fine arts than any other section of the Aryan family.

Fragmentary though the record is, it would take many volumes to illustrate fully the variations in the two original types of Buddha images, for Buddhist culture spread itself all over Asia, bringing with it wherever it went the traditions of Indian sculpture and painting. In Java, which was colonised from India early in the Christian era, the best period of Indian sculpture is very fully represented, both in its Buddhist and Brahmanical aspect, for the island escaped the iconoclastic rage of the Muhammadans which desolated the temples and monasteries of India. Two fine examples of the Bodhisattva type from Java are given in Pl. LVII. The first is a finely inspired

Plate LVIIa

BODHĪSATTVA, JAVA

Plate LVIIb

BODHĪSATTVA FROM PRAMBĀNAM, JAVA

Plate LVIIIa

HEAD OF THE BUDDHA, JAVA

Plate LVIIIb

HEAD OF THE BODHĪSATTVA, JAVA

conception of Avalokitēshvara, or Padmapāni, the Bodhisattva of divine love and pity, seated on his lotus throne, the up and down turned petals of which are symbols of the heavenly and earthly spheres. He is in the pose of "royal ease," i.e., with the right leg completely released from the meditative position. His right hand, with the palm turned upwards, makes the gesture of charity (vara-mudrā), the left expounds a point of the Law. The similarity between the royal insignia worn on the body, the jewelled collar, shoulder-band, and girdle, and those on the Sānchī torso (Pl. LVI, a), will be noticed. Borobudūr was built about the second half of the ninth century a.d., and this sculpture may be a century or two later. The graceful standing figure b of the same plate belongs to the temple of Chandi Sewa at Prambānam, which is supposed to have been built about the end of the eleventh century. A cast of it is in the Trocadéro in Paris.

The two beautiful heads illustrated in Pl. LVIII are also from Java. The Buddha type, Fig. A, is now in the Ethnological Museum at Leyden. The Bodhisattva, Fig. B, is in the Glyptotek at Copenhagen.

1. Supra, p. 59.
2. Monk.
3. See Waddell's Lamaism in Tibe.
4. The statement of Rajendra Lai Mitrā that it was cast in two layers calls for expert corroboration.
5. The height of the pillar is about 24 feet, the diameter varying from 16·4 to 12·05 inches.
6. The Kanārak temple was built between a.d. 1240 and 1280.
7. See Ancient History of the Near East. H. R. Hall, p. 213.
8. See Ideals of Indian Art, by the Author, p. 10.