A Handbook of Indian Art/Section 2/Chapter 2

by Ernest Binfield Havell

CHAPTER II

BRAHMĀ, VISHNU, AND SIVA, AND THEIR SAKTIS

We must now pass on to consider the divine ideal represented by the Brahmanical deities, Brahmā, Vishnu, and Siva, who are worshipped separately and also jointly as the Three in One. The Silpa-Sāstras, as already mentioned, ordain that Brahmā's shrine shall be open on all four sides, that Vishnu's shall face the east, and Siva's the west. Brahmā, the personification of prayer, is the Creator symbolised by the rising sun, which gives the signal for morning prayer. Brahmā's sakti, or active principle in nature, is Sarasvati, the lady of the lotus-pool, goddess of speech and learning. Her flower, the pink or red lotus, whose petals unfold at the magic touch of the sun's first rays, is the symbol of the womb of the universe, Hiranya-garbha, hidden in the depths of the cosmic waters from which Brahmā, self-created, sprang. In Indian art Brahmā is often shown seated in Yogi fashion as the Great Magician upon the mystic lotus which springs from the navel of Vishnu Nārāyana, the Eternal Spirit. He also appears riding on the swan or wild goose, the king of the lotus-pool, whose Sanskrit name, hamsa, is convertible into the mystic formula SA-HAM—I AM HE, that is Brahmā.

Brahmā's four heads are said to symbolise the four Vedas, but as the Vedas were originally only three in number, a different meaning must be sought. It was

Plate LVIXa

BRAHMĀ, JAVA

Plate LVIXb

SIVA AS BRAHMĀ, ELEPHANTA

more likely an iconic equivalent of the royal title, "King of the Four Quarters," adopted by all Egyptian kings from about 2,000 b.c., and brought to India by the Aryans from Mesopotamia. The Indo-Aryan kings used the term Chakra-vartin as an equivalent, implying that the world was a round plane, whereas in Egypt it was thought to be square.

Temples of Brahmā are now very rare, but in every Siva temple the Creator is worshipped in the ancient Mesopotamian solar symbol of the bull and in the lingam. At the great temple of Elephanta, dating from about the seventh century a.d., the cubical shrine with four doors guarded by the eight regents of the quarters is a Brahmā shrine. It was originally occupied by the superb sculpture shown in Pl. LIX, b. The lingam is here metamorphosed into an image of Brahmā^[1] as King of the Four Quarters, the top of the lingam which surmounted the fourfold royal tiara being broken. The Buddhist had an equivalent symbol in a cubical shrine surmounted by a stūpa to represent the Adi-Buddha, the Creator, whose consort, or sakti, was Prajnāpāramitā, transcendental wisdom, an idea evidently borrowed from the Vedic idea of Brahmā. It is probable that the Saiva lingam very frequently took this form of a Brahmā image before Muhammadan iconoclasm compelled Hindu sculptors to content themselves with the plain lingam now used as a symbol of the Creator.

A fine statue of Brahmā from Java (Pl. LIX, a), now in the Ethnographic Museum at Leyden, gives a different but very dignified conception of the Grandsire of the human race, and more complete than the mutilated sculpture of Elephanta. Here the faces are bearded, as in all the Java representations of Brahman sages. The clasped hands in front of the body hold a vessel in the form of a lotus bud containing the elixir of life. His other attributes appearing in the sculpture are the hermit's jar for the holy water which gives life to the earth, the lotus flower, and the royal swan. Those which are missing are the Brahman hermit's sacrificial ladle and his rosary.

Brahmā, originally the Supreme God of the Brahmans, has now been merged in the two chief cults of modern Hinduism, centred in the worship of Vishnu and Siva. Vishnu, as his name signifies, is said to pervade all space: he is Ākāsha-garbha, the Container of Ether. But as distinguished from Brahma he is the sun at noon supporting the heavens (Vishnu-Sūrya), or the sun at midnight under the earth reposing on the coils of the serpent of eternity (Ananta or Sēsha), the Milky Way. In this aspect he is known as Vishnu-Nārāyana. His colour is blue, the deep transparent blue of the Himālayan sky after the monsoon rains, and his flower, as we have seen, is the blue lotus, or water-lily. His shrine should face the east, so that Lakshmi, the Day-goddess, his bride, may enter as she rises from the cosmic ocean every morning to greet her spouse. He rides on Garuda, the Himālayan eagle. In his universal form as the all-pervading, everlasting Cause he is described in the Bhagavad Gītā as too terrible for ordinary mortal vision.^[2] But as the supporter of the heavens, and as the midnight sun slumbering under the cosmic ocean, he is represented as the Aryan warrior king armed with the terrific weapon, the Chakra or discus, besides the sword, bow,

Plate LXa

VISHNU, MĀMALLAPURAM

Plate LXb

VISHNU-NĀRĀYANA, MĀMALLAPURAM

and mace. His sakti, Lakshmi, the bringer of prosperity, seems to be identical with the Dawn Maiden Ushas, who, clad in robes of saffron and rose-colour, like the Brahmā lotus flower, flings open the doors of the sky. To her many of the songs of the Rig-Veda are addressed, especially the immortal inspired hymn I. 113, which invokes her thus:

The heaven-born Ushas in days gone by continually hath dawned. Giver of wealth, may she shine forth to-day; thus may she give light hereafter, undiminished and undying continuing in her glory.

Ushas, child of heaven, illumineth with her beams the whole expanse of sky. Throwing off the robes of night and awakening the world, she cometh in her car by ruddy horses drawn.

Arise! the breath of our life hath come back to us! The darkness hath gone, the light approacheth! She leaveth a pathway for the sun to travel, so that now our days will be lengthened.

Chanting the praises of the brightening Dawn, the singer invoking thee stretcheth the web of his hymn. Bounteous Ushas! Shine upon him who praiseth thee! Grant us the blessing of food and offspring. ····· Mother of the Devas! Aditi's^[3] rival, Banner of Sacrifice, magnificent Ushas, arise! Beloved of all, shine upon us, bless our prayers and make us chief among the people.

The famous monolithic granite sculptures at Māmallapuram include two fine reliefs, given in Pl. LX, which show Vishnu in his active and passive aspects. In Fig. A he is an eight-armed warrior-king upholding the heavens with one hand and holding his discus, mace, sword, and shield, and his war-trumpet, the conch, in others.^[4] The ascent of the sun towards its zenith is symbolised by the image of Brahma on his right hand seated on his lotus throne and carried up by the sun's disc personified. The descent is shown on the other side by the falling disc partly covered by Vishnu's shield and by the image of Siva, whom Vishnu is touching with one finger and one toe, an allusion to the three strides in which the sun is said to complete his daily round. On the right of Vishnu's head is his Boar incarnation, Vāraha, the form which he is said to have taken when he raised the earth from the depths of the ocean, whither she had been carried by a demon, Hiranyaksha. The four figures grouped at his feet are the guardians of the four quarters. The panel in Pl. LX, a, shows Nārāyanain his cosmic slumber, the coils of Ananta forming his couch. The figures on the right refer to a solar myth regarding a demon who, evading the doorkeeper of Vaikuntha, Vishnu's palace, attempted to steal the sleeping god's mace. It will be noticed that Vishnu as the night sun only possesses the normal number of arms: the multiple arms of Vishnu-Sūrya are probably intended to suggest the rays of the midday sun.

The wonderfully fine relief given in Pl. LXI is an unusual representation of Nārāyana as King of the Nāgas in the snake world of the cosmic ocean, seated in the pose of "royal ease" on the coils of Ananta, but with four arms bearing only the Chakra and war trumpet. Two graceful Nāginis, the snake-goddesses whose magic powers and seductive charms play a great part in Indian folk-lore, together with two male genii, flit lightly as butterflies round the deity bringing their offerings. The playful rhythm of their sinuous serpentine bodies, drawn by a most accomplished hand, fill the whole sculpture with the sense of supreme delight which is said to belong to Vishnu's paradise. It is carved on the ceiling of an old temple at Aihole, dated about the seventh or eighth century a.d., near Bādāmi, the ancient capital of

Plate LXI

VISHNU-NĀRĀYANA, AIHOLE

the Chalukyan kings, and the great art centre which created the Kailāsa at Ellora.

Vishnu as the Pillar of the Universe or personification of the sacred mountain Meru,^[5] which stands in the centre of the world, is finely given in the monumental statue from Java (Pl. LXII, a). Here he has the usual four arms holding the discus, mace, war-trumpet, and sword. One of the ten Avatars, or incarnations of Vishnu, the Vāraha or Boar Avatar, has been alluded to above. This is the subject of a very powerful rock-sculpture at Udayagiri, in the Bhopal State (Pl. LXII, b), which shows a colossal figure of the Avatar standing upon the serpent of eternity and lifting up the earth, a small female figure, from the depths of ocean, while the assembled gods and sages stand by to welcome her.

The ten Avatars of Vishnu are, first, the Fish which saved the progenitor of the human race, Manu, from the Flood. Second, the Tortoise, the dome of heaven which he placed at the bottom of the cosmic ocean to serve as a pivot for the great churning which brought to earth the lovely goddess Lakshmi, or Srī. Third, the Boar. Fourth, the Man-lion, Narasimha, who rescued Vishnu's faithful worshipper, Prahlāda, from the persecution of his impious father, the King of the Asuras, who attempted to usurp the sovereignty of the Lord of the Universe. This is the subject of a fine sculpture at Ellora. Fifth, the dwarf Vāmana, a form Vishnu assumed when he appeared before another demon king, Bali, who, like Prahlāda's father, tried to usurp Vishnu's throne, and begged of him as much land as he could cover in three steps. When Bali agreed, Vishnu in his real form strode across the whole earth. Sixth, under the name of a Brahman warrior king, Parasu-Rāma, who is said to have destroyed the whole race of Kshatriyas twenty-one times. Seventh, when he appeared as Rāma, the ideal Indian king, the hero of the Rāmāyana. Eighth, as Krishna, whose religious doctrine forming the philosophical basis of the Vaishnava cult is expounded in the Bhagavad Gīta. Ninth, as the Buddha, a Brahmanical commentary stating that this was the Avatar which Vishnu assumed to lead demons and sinners to their own destruction. Lastly, Vishnu's tenth incarnation, not yet consummated, will be that of Kalkin, who will come riding on a white horse, sword in hand, to restore the Aryan law of righteousness and rule the earth.

As might be supposed, the coming of the Day-goddess, Vishnu's bride, over the Himālayan peaks has often inspired the Indian poet and artist; and this appears to be the foundation of the well-known myth of Vishnu's second Avatar, the Kūrma, or Tortoise, in which form he assisted at the Churning of the Ocean, as told in the Mahābhārata, the Rāmāyana, and the Vishnu Purāna. In order to restore to the three regions of earth, air, and heaven their lost prosperity, Vishnu, it is said, instructed the Devas, the Shining Ones, to join with the demons of darkness, the Asuras, in churning the cosmic ocean, the Sea of Milk, for the nectar of life of immortality, amrita. So the Devas came to the shores of that sea, which shone like the shining clouds of autumn, and with Vishnu's help upturned the holy mountain, Mandara, to serve as a churning-stick, while the great serpent Ananta, whose coils encircle the earth, was used as a cord. Vishnu himself, in the form of a

Plate LXIIa

VISHNU AS THE UNIVERSAL PILLAR, JAVA

Plate LXIIb

VISHNU'S RAISING THE WORLD FROM THE FLOOD
(BOAR-INCARNATION)

mighty tortoise, made a pivot for the stick. The Devas seized the tail of the serpent and the Asuras the head—and the churning began.

The first product of the churning was the divine cow, Surabhi, the fountain of milk, a metaphor often used in the Vedas for the rain-cloud which dispelled drought; then Vārunī, Vishnu's own embodied radiance^[6]; next the tree, Pārijāta, which bears all kinds of celestial fruits; then the moon rose and was seized by Siva as his own. At this point fires and poisonous fumes engendered by the churning overspread the earth and threatened the whole universe, so the Creator, Brahmā, intervened and begged Siva to use his power. The latter then swallowed the poison and so became Nila-kantha, blue-necked.

The climax is the appearance of the physician of the Gods, Dhanwantāri, bearing the treasure sought for, the precious cup of amrita, in his hands, followed by the goddess Lakshmi herself, radiant with beauty and attended by a choir of celestial nymphs, while the elephants of the skies, the rain-clouds, pour water over her from golden vases. The Devas and Asuras began now to struggle for the possession of the amrita, but the demons were quickly vanquished and driven down to Pātāla below the earth. So the cosmic drama ends with the return of prosperity to all the three worlds, and the general rejoicing of gods and men.

The myth has been given a spiritual interpretation as the struggle which takes place within the soul of man between the powers of good and evil; but it has not been observed by Oriental scholars that the original naturalistic foundation of it is to be found in the wonderful effects which may be witnessed on any still autumn starlit night in the Himālayas, at Darjeeling or elsewhere. Climbing a high hill commanding a wide prospect over the distant snowy range, the meaning of the poet's comparison of the Sea of Milk to the "thin shining clouds of autumn" can be realised; for one looks down upon a vast motionless sea of milk-white clouds stretching out to the far horizon, and dotted here and there with islands formed by the highest mountain peaks. Stretching across the deep blue vault of heaven, the Milky Way, the Great Serpent of Eternity, encircling the earth, is seen, the planets glittering like jewels in his many heads. In the solemn stillness of the night Sēsha watches ceaselessly while Nārāyana sleeps upon his coils. No wonder that the Indian mystic meditating on the marvellous prospect in front of him feels himself transported to the shores of the cosmic ocean, to the edge of that limitless expanse of ākāsha in which all the worlds lie floating.

Then towards morning, before it is yet dawn, there is a sudden stirring in the air and the Sea of Milk begins to be agitated. The Dēvas, the bright spirits of the day, as yet invisible, have seized the tail of the Serpent and the churning of the cosmic ocean has begun. The clouds begin to break up into whirling wreaths of evaporation, and it seems as if the depths of the valleys below formed a vast cauldron wherein gods and demons are brewing some mysterious potion. Or is it the smoke of the sacred fire-drill they are turning for the worship of the coming day? A faint reflection on the horizon of Vārunī, the radiance of day, now heralds the approach of the Sun-god's seven-horsed car. The crescent moon which had risen some hours before begins to set on Kinchinjunga's mighty crest. Siva has seized it as his own.

Suddenly upon some of the highest snow-peaks in the far distance there are flashes of crimson light—all creation seems to be ablaze and threatened with destruction. The clouds gather together in a thick clammy mist which quickly envelops mountain and valley, and covers the whole prospect with a dull pall of grey. It might seem for a moment as if the powers of darkness were gaining strength, and that the Dēvas were being worsted in the struggle. But presently the mist which enshrouds the mountains is parted in front of you as if by a magician's wand, and Kinchinjunga is revealed, glittering like silver in the morning sunshine, with a band of exquisite violet blue. Siva has drunk the poison which threatened the world's dissolution and become "blue-necked." Lakshmi has at last risen from the depths of darkness, bringing the divine nectar with her: the morning showers which greet her coming have cleared the air, and all nature rejoices once more at the defeat of the evil spirits of night, who disappear into the nether world.

Lakshmi in the myth is clearly the Vedic Ushas under another name. Vishnu's twofold aspect is distinctly drawn. At the beginning he is Nārāyana, the Eternal Being under the cosmic waters; at the end he is the Sun-god at whose bidding the lovely goddess of the day rises from the depths of darkness. The subject is often treated in Indian sculpture. In the monuments of the classic period now extant it is not often found, but at Sānchi we have seen Lakshmi transformed into Māyā, the mother of the Buddha. The rising of Lakshmi from the cosmic waves is very finely given in one of the superb granite sculptures of Māmallapuram (Pl. LXIII, a). Here the goddess is enthroned on the Brahmā lotus with turned-down petals; four river-goddesses are in attendance bringing water for her morning bath, assisted by the Elephants of the Skies, which form a canopy over her head.

The actual churning is rendered on a grand scale in the bas-reliefs of the procession path of the great temple of Augkor Vat in Cambodia, built about the twelfth century by Sūrya-Varman II, one of the last of the Hindu kings who ruled over the Indian colony in the Far East. Pl. LXIII, b, shows the central portion where Vishnu, manifesting himself in several Avatars, is directing the churning. Below he is the Great Tortoise. In the middle he appears in his four-armed form joining hands with the Devas and Asuras. At the top he is holding the churning-stick in its place.

The legends of Rāma and of Krishna, the seventh and eighth Avatars, fill a great part in Vaishnava poetry and painting, but they do not take a very prominent place in classical Indian sculpture now extant. Rāma in temple images and as a household god is the typical Indo-Aryan king. His faithful ally, Hanuman, the monkey-king whose devoted service enabled him to rescue Sītā from the stronghold of the demon-king, Rāvana, is often rendered with the sympathy and keen observation of animal life characteristic of the best Indian art (Pl. LXX, b). Krishna is commonly represented either as an infant cradled on a lotus leaf and floating upon the cosmic waters—a counterpart of Nārāyana—or as a child-hero dancing upon the serpent Kaliya, which infested a whirlpool in the Jumna.

The cult of Vishnu, centred in the idea of bhakti, the loyal devotion, as of the soldier to his chief (as in the

Plate LXIIIa

LAKSHMĪ RISING FROM THE OCEAN

Plate LXIIIb

THE CHURNING OF THE OCEAN

Mahābhārata); or of the wife to her husband (as in the Rāmāyana); or of two lovers to each other (as in later Vaishnava poetry), belongs essentially to the Kshatriya religious tradition embodied in the epics of ancient Aryan royalty, like the sikhara which formed the spire of the royal chapel and bore upon its summit the Kshatriya king's ensign of universal sovereignty. The Saiva cult borrowed the bhakti idea, but took the Brahmanical standpoint that the nearest way to salvation was the jnāna-marga, the way of knowledge. In this respect, as well as in its ascetic tendencies, it is closely allied to Hīnayāna Buddhism. Siva, as distinguished from Brahmā and Vishnu, represents the tāmasic or destructive power of the cosmos, and has the setting sun and the waning moon as his emblems. But Siva's followers do not always observe the rule of the Silpa-Sāstrās that his shrine shall face the west, but give it the benign aspect towards the rising sun, because he is regarded by them as representing all three of the cosmic gunas. Image-worship on the whole, with all its elaborate temple ritual, was the almost inevitable concomitant of the bhakti-marga, a response to the human impulse which craves for the sight of the object of hero-worship, whether it be human or divine. Only the philosopher, or those who are under the compulsion of a stern hierarchical decree, can resist the craving. Vedic religion tried to satisfy it by using the sun and moon and nature elements as its symbols, but the Rishis who taught divine wisdom were worshipped as equal to or sometimes even greater than the gods. Vaishnavism made the person of the king, the son and representative of the deity, the object of devotion. The early Buddhists, forbidden to worship the graven image,^[7] paid homage to their living and dead saints—those who had reached Nirvāna. But when Buddhism entered upon the bhakti-marga, the popular craving could not be resisted. Similarly the philosophic Brahman, when he tried to gain converts to the jnāna-marga among the masses, was forced to show them the image of the Great Yogi and the place where He dwelt on earth. The comparative lateness of the appearance of Saiva temples and images should not, however, be taken as evidence of the late origin of the cult. The way of knowledge is always the most difficult to find, and the abstruse philosophic ideas which form the basis of Vedic wisdom are not those which appeal directly to popular imagination. Moreover, the Brahmans, as the special custodians of the Vedic tradition, would naturally be the last to sanction any deviation from the Vedic forest ritual, in which wood, thatch, and clay were deliberately chosen for the temple service in preference to more permanent and costly materials. Siva's abode is placed in the Himālayas, and the cult which is so distinctively Brahmanical had its original Indian home in the north, though its early ideals and symbols may have been brought by the first Aryan invaders from Iran or Mesopotamia. But at the present time the Saivas predominate in the south, and the best of the Saiva sculpture now extant mostly belongs to the period of the Chola Empire, or from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries a.d., when the disturbed

Plate LXIVa

SIVA AS CONQUEROR OF DEATH

Plate LXIVb

DŪRGĀ

condition of Northern India must have driven many Brahmans and craftsmen from Aryāvarta to take service under the powerful Hindu monarchs of the south. The few classic examples at Elephanta, Ellora, and elsewhere are several centuries earlier. In the south, also, the traditions of the Saiva temple images survive to the present day, whereas in Northern India the Saivas, probably under the compulsion of Muhammadan rulers, generally substituted the lingam for iconic symbols of Siva. It should be remembered, however, that the traditions of Saiva art in the south are attributed, even by the craftsmen of the present day, to the teaching of Indo-Aryans from the north.

We have already observed that the principle of the design of Saiva or Dravidian temples is derived from the stūpa. The two leading types of Buddhist imagery, the Yogi and the Bodhisattva king, also appear in Saiva sculpture, with this difference, that, even when absorbed in meditation, Siva is never shown in temple images without the royal tiara. The Great Yogi is represented in the sculptures at Elephanta, and is thus shown as a crowned king; but in Saiva sacred literature he often appears in the ordinary guise of a Brahman ascetic.

The Bodhisattva types already given will be recognised again in the fine bronze figure of Kālāri-mūrti, or Siva as the Conqueror of Death (Pl. LXIV, a), from the great temple of Tanjore, representing the perfection of Chola art in the tenth and eleventh centuries. A touching legend is told in explanation of this conception of Siva. A famous Rishi who was childless prayed to the Great God that he might be blessed with a son. Siva appeared to him and gave him the choice of having many stupid sons who would live long, or one exceedingly clever who would die in his sixteenth year. The Rishi craved the latter boon, and his wife in due course bore him a son who was called Mārkandēya. As the child grew up and showed wonderful genius, the father's heart grew sad at the prospect of his impending fate, and revealed the secret to Mārkandēya, who forthwith set out on a pilgrimage to all of Siva's tirths, and while he was worshipping the lingam at Tirukkadanur in the Tanjore district, Kāla, the Lord of Death, sent his messengers to take him. They tried to bind the boy's soul with the fatal noose, but failed to do so, and went back to report the case to their master. Kāla, who then came in person, was at the point of taking the young Brahman as he still prayed when Siva Himself in wrath burst out of the lingam and with his lotus foot struck Kāla senseless to the ground. As a reward for Mārkandēya's devotion Siva then bestowed upon him the gift of eternal youth, so that he is still believed to live as one of the blessed saints.

Another aspect of Siva is that of Dakshinā-mūrti, which represents the gracious Lord of Knowledge who taught the Rishis philosophy, music, and art. These attributes are also transferred to Siva's sakti, Dūrgā or Devi, who in the beautiful bronze from the Madras Museum (Pl. LXIV, b) closely resembles the Java sculpture of Avalokītēshvara given in Pl. LVII, a.

But the most characteristic conception of Saiva sculpture, and the one to which no parallel is found in early Buddhist art, is that of Nātārāja, "the Lord of the Dance." It is useless to look for the inception of this motif in the earliest stone and metal images of it, by which we can trace it back to about the sixth century a.d., for we have to reckon with a period of unknown antiquity when it must have been carved in wood, and with a still more remote

Plate LXVa

SIVA AS NĀTĀRĀJA

Plate LXVb

SIVA AS SANDHYĀ-NRITTA-MŪRTI

period when the idea itself was existing, but had not yet been expressed in the forms of art. Probably the germ of it, and the origin of the Saiva cult itself, is to be looked for in remote Vedic times when the phenomena and elements of nature which the Aryans worshipped were the subject of keen observation and study. What was the meaning of the quivering of the sun's orb as it touched the horizon morning and evening? they asked. They have given their answer to the question in the image of the Lord of the Universe (Pl. LXV) dancing as He enters the halls of the world-temple through its "arch of radiance" (pravā-torana),^[8] rejoicing always, even in His work of dissolution which is the gateway to eternal bliss. The idea of the sun dancing is current in Europe at the present day: in Scandinavia it is still a popular custom to rise early on Whit-Sunday and climb the nearest hill to see the sun dance. Dr. Barnett, in his Antiquities of India (p. 27), explains the motive of the Nātārāja as a "devil-dance"; but dancing as an expression of religious devotion is not confined to the ritual of devil-worship, and the fact that Siva is represented dancing upon a dwarf devil sufficiently indicates that he is here invoked as the Spirit of Goodness.

In the Rig-Veda one can follow the logical sequence of our Aryan progenitors' deep investigations into the phenomena of life and of the religious theories they based upon them. Fire (Agni), they found, is in the sun; in the air it appears as lightning; in water as soma; it is in the earth; in the trees of the forest it is produced by the fire-drill; and heat, the essential element of fire, is in man, animals, and plants. Heat was therefore, they argued, the primal element of life, and in the grand hymn X. 29 of the Rig Veda the Aryan seers propounded the theory of the first cause and of the nature of the Great Unknown Spirit, which was the starting-point of later philosophical schools:

There was not Existence nor Non-Existence;
The Kingdom of Air nor the Sky beyond.
What was there to contain, to cover in—
Were there but vast unfathom'd depths of Water?

There was no Death there, nor Immortality;
No Sun was there, dividing Day from Night:
Then was there only That resting within Itself;
Apart from It there was not anything.

At first within the Darkness veil'd in Darkness,
Chaos unknowable, the All lay hid:
When sudden from the formless Void emerging,
By the great power of Heat was born that Germ.

Thereafter came Desire, the primal root of Mind;
Being from non-Being sprung, our Rishis tell:
But came the vital pow'r from earth or heav'n?
What hidden force impell'd this parting here? ····· Who knows whence this was born or how it came?
The gods themselves are later than this time—
He only, the Creator, truly knoweth this.
And even He, perhaps, may know it not.

The Buddha took the agnostic attitude indicated in the last lines of the great hymn, and left it to Brahman philosophers to work out the full theory of the first cause propounded in the Vedanta. Their disciples, again, making an apotheosis of the Vedic seer in the person of the hermit-god dwelling among the eternal snows, joined the primitive Aryan sun-worship to this philosophic teaching, so as to make a "way of knowledge" easy for unlearned folk to follow. It is thus that there is so much primitive folk-lore mixed up with the esoteric teaching of the Saiva cult, as indeed is the case in all religions.

The Madras Museum has several very fine Nātārājas of the Chola period,^[9] but the image still worshipped in the great temple of Tanjore is perhaps the most impressive rendering of the Saiva conception of the cosmic dance which the Chola sculptors achieved. The temple was completed about the beginning of the eleventh century: the image may have belonged to an earlier shrine. Mr. O. C. Gangoly, who first published the Tanjore image in his excellent book on South Indian Bronzes, makes it older than any of the Madras Museum Nātārājas; but apart from the evidence of style and technique, the introduction of the crocodile-dragon in the halo, or "arch of radiance," of the Tanjore bronze points to a later date. In the earlier Indian rendering of this sun-symbolism, as seen in the Buddhist "horse-shoe" arches, the crocodile-dragon, the demon of darkness, who swallows the sun at night and releases it in the morning, is not combined with these sun-windows until after the development of the Mahāyāna school.

The Silpa-Sāstrās distinguish between two forms of the dance—the Sādā-nritta, the Dance of Dissolution shown in the Tanjore image, which symbolises Siva's spiritual and material manifestations in the cosmos, and the Sandhyā-nritta, which is much quieter in movement, and is directly associated with the time of the Brahman's evening prayer at sunset. This latter is shown in the bronze from the Colombo Museum (Pl. LXV, b).

A legend told in the Koyil Purānam reads like the attempt of a Brahman littérateur to answer the inquiries of the pilgrim crowd as to the meaning of the image: it need not be taken to indicate the original intention of the artist. Siva, it is said, disguised as a Yogi, came to a public disputation and confounded all the assembled philosophers so that they, in a rage, tried to destroy him by evil mantras. Lighting the sacrificial fires they created a ferocious tiger, which Siva seized and, stripping off its skin with the nail of his little finger, wrapped it round his loins. The disappointed magicians next created a monstrous serpent, which the Great Yogi took and wreathed about his neck. Then he began to dance. At last an evil spirit in the form of a dwarf sprang out of the sacrificial flames and rushed upon him. But Siva trampled it under his feet, and as all the gods assembled he resumed his triumphal dance.

The artistic intention was doubtless more simple and more natural. Siva, as before stated, was the apotheosis of the Brahman ascetic, whose attempts to penetrate into the secrets of the Universe are summed up in the Upanishads. As the supreme deity of the Saivas and the incontrovertible exponent of the jnāna-marga, the way of knowledge, Siva was associated with the Vedic sacrificial cult of Sūrya and Agni, the sun and fire Spirits. When a Brahman artist wished to create an image of the sun-dance, which he witnessed every day at the time of worship, he naturally personified the sun as the Great Ascetic in his mystic universal dance.

The demon upon which the Sun-god is trampling is analogous to the powers of darkness which Vishnu defeated in the Churning of the Ocean, or the demon Vrita, whom Indra overcame with his thunderbolt. The tiger-skin is the usual wear of the Brahman ascetic. The drum which he holds in the right upper hand is the usual Indian instrument for beating time in dancing. The little figure of the Ganges goddess upon the wavy braided locks which form a halo round his head shows that the latter symbolises the sacred rivers which flow from Siva's paradise on Mount Kailāsa. The flame held in the left upper hand is a symbol of the Vedic sacrifice and of the Fire-spirit, Agni. The cobra is the natural symbol of the Lord of Death and of the theory of reincarnation which was one of the maxims of Brahman philosophy; its deadly poison suggested the one idea, and its habit of shedding its skin and reappearing with an apparently new body the other. The twofold nature of the divinity, Spirit and Matter, another philosophical doctrine, is suggested by the difference in the ear ornaments—on the right side a man's and on the left a woman's.

The mystical interpretations of this very natural primitive imagery, rendered by the Indian sculptor with consummate artistic power, were probably read into it later, as Brahmanical metaphysics developed partly under the influence of Buddhism. Then the demon of darkness was explained as the threefold snare of the world, the flesh, and the devil. The tiger-skin was the fury of human passion, which Siva subdues and wears as a garment: his necklet was man's deceit and evil-thinking transmuted into pure gold by the alembic of the Divine Spirit. And the dance was the cosmic rhythm made visible as He touched the earth with His lotus-foot, the energy creating and destroying all the worlds, the principle of life and death.

This later phase of Brahmanical thought is beautifully expressed in the Sanskrit Slokas still chanted in the temple service of Nātārāja in South Indian temples:

"O Lord of the Dance, Who calls by beat of drum all who are absorbed in worldly things; and dispels the fear of the humble ^[10] and comforts them with His Love divine: Who points to His uplifted Lotus-foot as the refuge of salvation: Who carries the fire of sacrifice and dances in the Hall of the Universe, do Thou protect us!"

There is a simple and natural reason, apart from philosophy and metaphysics, why the Nātārāja as a symbol of the Universal Lord appealed more to the people of Southern India, who never saw the eternal snows, than the image of the Mahā-Yogi of the Himālayas. In the dawn of Indian civilisation the great mountain chain which stretches along the western coast was to the people of the adjoining low-country what the Himālayas were to the non-Aryan people of the Indus and Ganges valleys. It was up there, in the cool heights overlooking the vast expanse of the Indian Ocean, that their Aryan teachers and lawgivers lived, the Brahmans who taught them the science and art of the Vedas, and the Kshatriya warriors under whose protection peaceful villagers were safe from the savage marauders who had their lairs in the heart of the jungles. And in the pellucid air of the Western Ghats, washed clean by monsoon storms, the Brahman at his evening prayers heard day by day Siva's drum, the time-beat of the ocean, thundering along the shore, and saw the golden sun throbbing on the western horizon as it sank slowly into the jaws of the mysterious dragon of the nether world. So the Brahmanical art of Southern India is a true interpretation of Indian history and, like all true art, holds the mirror up to nature in revealing to us the beatific vision of the Universal Lord in his mystic

Plate LXVIa

SIVA AS BHAIRAVA

Plate LXVIb

DŪRGĀ SLAYING MAHISURA

Dance of Creation and Dissolution. And in like manner the calm serenity of those majestic peaks of the Himālayas in the still moonlit nights, when every sound is hushed and all nature lies asleep, gave to the northern artist his inspiration for the image of the Lord upon His exalted Lotus-throne, the Great Spirit "brooding over the face of the waters" who is the Cause everlasting of the cosmic rhythm.

The Tanjore Nātārāja is distinguished by being the largest of South Indian images yet discovered, the figure being nearly four feet high, excluding the pedestal and the halo of fire.

Siva's dance is also represented on a larger scale and with tremendous vigour in the mutilated sculptures of Elephanta and Ellora. The benign aspect of Siva's cosmic energy is that which is generally worshipped in Southern India, and for that reason Saiva temples there generally face the rising sun. But Siva's place in the Trimūrti, the Three Aspects of the One, represented at Elephanta, is determined by his tāmasic or destructive aspect in which the sculptor, instead of giving him the gracious gesture, dispelling fear, shows him with a boar's tusks and a terrific mien holding a sword and a cup made from a human skull, with other symbols of the dread powers of involution manifested in nature. This is the view which appeals most to the Saiva ascetic, who keeps strictly to the jnāna-marga; it is analogous to the pessimistic attitude of the early Buddhist who followed the path leading to Nirvāna.

A superb fragment among the sculptures of Elephanta shows Siva in his tāmasic aspect as Bhairava, the Terrible (Pl. LXVI, a). From a similar sculpture in the temple of the Ten Incarnations at Ellora, where the subject is treated with great dramatic power but less technical refinement, we can gather that Bhairava is engaged in the destruction of the demon Ratnāsura, assisted by Kālī, who is shown as a grim and gaunt ogress armed with a sacrificial knife: Parvati, Siva's Himālayan bride, looking on worshipfully at the awful manifestation of the Great God's tāmasic powers. The Ellora temple can be approximately dated about the beginning of the eighth century. The Elephanta sculpture is perhaps a century earlier.

Parvati herself, under the name of Dūrgā the Inaccessible, also assists in the constant struggle of the gods with the powers of darkness, her chief opponent being a buffalo-demon, Mahisura, who caused much trouble in the heavenly regions. This is the subject of the great sculpture from Java now in the Ethnographic Museum at Leyden (Pl. LXVI, b), in which Dūrgā striding over the carcass of the dead buffalo is seizing the demon which comes out of its head in the form of a curly-headed dwarf. The same subject is also very powerfully treated in one of the Māmallapuram reliefs (Cave XXXII).

An important chapter in South Indian sculpture is filled with the images representing the bhakti phase of the Saiva cult, by which the Brahmans of the south tried to combat the influence of Mahāyāna Buddhism, Jainism, and Vaishnavism. These are the idealised portrait statuettes of the Saiva teachers who from the sixth to the ninth centuries carried on a great popular propaganda and won as much veneration in the south as the Vedic Rishis or the Arahats of Buddhism. There are many popular legends still current of their devoted lives and of the miracles performed by them. The sculptors of the Chola period made many fine images of these canonised

Plate LXVIIa

A CHILD SAINT

Plate LXVIIb

SUNDARAMŪRTI SWĀMI

teachers which are still worshipped in Saiva temples together with the image of Nātārāja.

Two of such images which will bear comparison with the finest bronzes of the Renaissance in Europe are shown in Pl. LXVII. Fig. A is generally taken for the infant Krishna, but it lacks the royal crown which is almost invariably given to him: it most probably represents one of the Saiva teachers who, according to popular legends, began their mission in infancy.^[11] It has the fine sentiment and masterly plastic technique of the early Chola bronzes, of the period when the sculptor carried his wax model to the fullest point of perfection, and the casting was so skilfully done that very little retouching with the chasing tool was needed. In the later works of the school the casting was less perfect, and the sculptor relied on the metal-worker's tools for most of the surface finishing, so that the modelling is inclined to be more cold and formal.

The elegant pose and finished technique of Pl. LXVII, b, might suggest that the unknown Chola sculptor had been influenced by the art of Europe were it not that he preceded the Italian Renaissance by several centuries. It is one of the images of Saiva Āchāryas, or spiritual teachers, worshipped in the great temple of Tanjore.^[12] The movement of the left arm is accounted for by the fact that the figure is posed as if leaning lightly on a sannyāsin's staff, which the sculptor intended to be wrought separately on account of the great difficulty of casting it in the same mould as the figure.

In some of the later South Indian temple sculpture, during the time when the Hindu kingdoms kept up close commercial intercourse with the Portuguese colony at Goa, the influence of European art can be traced in the direct imitation of classical Greek poses and an elaboration of the muscular system which is opposed to the true Indian ideal. This hybrid school is of more interest to the historian than to the artist.

1. The esoteric teaching of the Saiva-Siddhāntins indicates this image as Sadāsiva-mūrti, the formless, incomprehensible Brahman (see Elements of Hindu Iconography, by T. A. Gopinath Rao, vol. ii, part ii); but as it is obviously impossible for the temple sculptor to render such abstract conceptions, he gives them a popular interpretation.
2. See Ideals of Indian Art, by the Author, pp. 56-7.
3. Aditi, the Universal Mother.
4. For the mystical interpretations of Vishnu's arms given in the Purānas, see Ideals of Indian Art, by the Author, p. 153.
5. The Meru of the human body is said to be the spinal column.
6. See Tantra of the Great Liberation, translated by A. Avalon, p. xxxviii. Vārunī has been incorrectly translated as the "God of Wine."
7. The prohibition of the graven image by the Buddha and later religious reformers was probably directed against its common employment in sorcery and the black art rather than against its use as an aid to religious devotion. The making of the image of an enemy who was to be destroyed was a usual part of the ritual of the sorcerer; and belief in the effect of his spells was at the root of the furious iconoclasm which so often attended popular religious movements.
8. The name of the halo of fire which surrounds the image of Nātāraāja. See South Indian Bronzes, by O. C. Gangoly, p. 48.
9. See Pl. VII and VIII in Ideals of Indian Art, and Pl. XXV in Indian Sculpture and Painting.
10. By the gesture of the right lower hand.
11. See Ideals of Indian Art, by the Author, p. 114.
12. First published by Mr. O. C. Gangoly in his South Indian Bronzes.