Download Chapter 6 Paths to Enlightenment Notes

Chapter 6 Paths to Enlightenment: The Art of India
In the Third Millennium BC, the Sumerians were burying their dead in the
royal cemetery of Ur, the Egyptians were building the Great Pyramids at
Giza, and the Aegean sculptors in the Cyclades were carving abstract statues
of women and musicians. At the same time a great civilization arose over a
wide area that included parts of present day India and Pakistan. This has
been called the Indus Civilization. There is evidence of trade with the
peoples of the near east. One of the intriguing characteristics of the Indus
Civilization is that no surviving structures have been identified as either
palaces or temples. This marks a sharp contrast to the contemporaneous
civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt.
Very little art has been discovered and all the objects are small. The most
impressive is a robed male figure made of a soft local soap stone called
steatite. The figures eyes are half clothed and he has a closely trimmed
beard with shaved upper lip. The elegant robe displays a Trefoil pattern
(clover like designs with three stylized leaves.) Does this figure remind us
of any previous figures? (Sumerian Votive figures) What ever the purpose,
the figure is an elite individual because of the precious material it is made of
and the elaborate costume.
The most common Indus art objects are steatite seals with incised designs.
They are very similar to the Mesopotamian seals. This seal depicts a figure
in a yogic posture. Yoga (literally “to yoke”) is a method for controlling
the body and relaxing the mind as a way of uniting with the divine. This
seal shows that this important meditative practice began as early as the Indus
Civilization.
Veldic and Upanishadic Period
By 1700 BCE, the urban phase of Indus Civilization ended and was replaced
by village life, as a result art production gradually ceased for the nest 1000
years. However the religious foundations laid during this time were very
important. The religious views were based on the oral hymns a group of
people called the Aryans brought with them to India from Central Asia.
These views defined most of the art that was later created. They called
themselves Aryas (Noble Ones) and spoke Sanskrit, the earliest language
yet identified in South Asia.
Around 1500 BCE, the Ayrans composed the first of four Vedas (which
means “knowledge”.) The compilations of religious learning, written in
Sanskrit, included hymns written for priests (called Brahmins) to chant or
sing. The Aryan priest headed a social hierarchy that has come to be called
the caste system which still forms the basis of Indian society today. Below
the priests were the warriors, traders, and manual laborers (including artists
and architects). The Aryan religion centered on sacrifice, the ritual
enactment of highly intricate and lengthy ceremonies in which the priests
placed materials such as milk and soma (sacrificial brew) in to a fire that
took the sacrifices to the gods in the heavens. If the priests performed these
rituals accurately the gods would fulfill the prayers of the sponsers. These
gods were mainly male and represented the rains, the ocean, the sun, and
fire. They apparently did not make images of these Gods.
From 800-500 BCE, religious thinkers east of the Aryans composed a
variety of texts called the Upanishads. Among the contributions to the
religious beliefs of the people were samsara, karma, and moksha (or
nirvana). Samsara is the belief in reincarnation, that individuals are born
again after death in a almost endless round rebirths in various forms. An
individuals past actions (karma), either good or bad determine the nature of
future rebirths. The ultimate goal of a person’s religious life is to escape
from the cycle of birth and death by merging the individual self into the vital
force of the universe. This escape is called either moksha (liberation, for
Hindus) or nirvana (cessation for the Buddhists).
Hinduism had it origins in Aryan religion, while Buddha was an historical
figure who advocated the path of asceticism or self-discipline and self
denial, as the means to free ones self from attachments to people and
possessions.
Maurya Dynasty
When Alexander the Great reached the Indus River in 326 BC, his troops
refused to go further dashing Alexander’s dream of conquering India. After
his death, the Empire was divided among his four generals. Seleucus
Nicator was his general that re-invaded India but was defeated by
Chandragupta Maurya (323-398) the founder of the Maurya dynasty that
consolidated most of present day India.
The greatest ruler of this Dynasty was Ashoka (r.272-231 BCE) who
converted to Buddhism and was responsible for spreading Buddha’s
teaching throughout India and beyond. Ashoka formulated a legal code
based on Buddha’s dharma (basic principles of cosmic or individual
existence; divine law). He had these laws inscribed on enormous
monolithic stone columns erected throughout the kingdom. The pillars
reached 30-40 feet in height and where the first monumental stone artworks
in India. The pillars were penetrated deep into the ground connecting earth
and sky, forming an “axis of the universe,” an important motif in Buddhist
architecture. In our example of a lion capital, we clearly see a stylistic
relationship to the pillars at Persepolis, but the iconography is Buddhist.
Two pairs of back to back lions stand on a round abucus decorated with four
wheels and four animals representing the four quarters of the world. The
lions once carried a large stone wheel on their backs This wheel or chakra
refers to the Wheel of the Law but also indicated Ashoka’s stature as the
“holder of the wheel” a universal king imbued with divine authority.
The Maurya dynasty, as all seem to do, ended and was replaced by other
dynasties. But the one thing that connected all was the patronage of
Buddhism. One of the most important Buddhist monasteries founded during
Ashoka’s reign was at Sanchi, in central India. It consists of many buildings
constructed over the centuries. These included viharas (celled structures
where monks live, large stupas (a monument housing the relics of Buddha),
chaitya halls (hassle with rounded or apsidal ends for housing smaller
stupas), and temples for sheltering images.
The Great Stupa at Sanchi dates to Ashoka’s reign, but its present form is
from 50 BCE to 50 CE. The dome is solid stands 50 feet high and is filled
with dirt and rubble. Worshippers enter through one of the gateways walk
on the circumambulation path, then climb the stairs on the south side to
circumambulate at the second level. Carved into the different parts of the
Great Stupa are more than 600 brief inscriptions of the hundreds of
individual donors, over one third being women. These inscriptions
venerating Buddha are by common lay people hoping to gain merit for
future rebirths by their gifts.
The stupa was not a tomb, but rather a monument housing relics of Buddha.
Buddhas cremated remains where placed in eight reliquaries, or containers,
that were similar to those found in medieval churches, which we will study
later. Unlike their Western equivalents, which were met to be viewed, the
Buddha’s remains were buried in solid earthen mounds (stupas) that could
not be entered. Ashoka opened the original eight Stupas and spread the
Buddha’s relics among thousands of stupas throughout the realm. Buddhists
venerated the Buddha’s remains by circumambulation walking around the
stupa in a clockwise direction, following the path of the sun, bringing the
devotee into harmony with the cosmos. Stupas can vary in size from a
handheld size to giant structures.
The monumental stupas are three-dimensional mandalas, or sacred
diagrams of the universe. The domed stupa represents the world mountain,
with the cardinal points marked by toranas, or gateways. The harmika,
positioned atop the stupa dome, is a stone fence or railing that encloses a
square area symbolizing the sacred domain of the gods. At the harmika’s
center, a yasti, or pole corresponds to the axis of the universe. Three
chatras, or stone discs, assigned various meanings, crown the yasti. Ther
yasti rises from the mountain dome and passes through the harmika, thus
uniting this world with the heavenly paradise. A stone fence often encloses
the entire structure, clearly separating the sacred space containing Buddha’s
relics from the profane outside world.
The four toranus or gateways at Sachi depict the Buddha’s life story and his
past lives. In the reliefs on the gateways, Buddha is never depicted as a
human being. Instead artist’s used symbols, such as footprints, a parasol, or
an empty seat, possibly representing where the Buddha once was, so others
can follow in his footsteps.
Also carved on the eastern gateway is a scantily clad, sensuous woman
called a yakshi. These goddesses, worshiped throughout India, personified
fertility and vegetation. The Sanchi yakshi reaches up to hold on to a mango
tree branch while pressing her left foot against the trunk, an action that has
brought the tree to flower. Buddhists later adopted this pose, with its rich
association with procreation and abundance, for representing Buddha’s
mother.
Chaitya Halls
One great example of a chaitya hall is one carved out of living rock at Karle,
India around 100 CE. The hall has pillared ambulatories (walking paths)
that allow worshippers to circumambulate the stupa placed at the back of a
sacred cave. The hall is nearly 45 feet high and 125 feet long, larger than
the temple of Ramses II. Elaborate capitals atop the rock-cut pillars depict
men and women riding elephants. Outside amorous couples flank the
entrance symbolizing the creative life force. These Sanchi and Karle figures
represent what will become a long tradition of eroticism in Indian religious
art.
Buddhas in Human Form
Originally revered as an enlightened mortal, the Buddha increasingly
became regarded as divine, thus his followers desired images of him to
worship. Many early portrayals of Buddha in human form come from the
Gandhara region of India that is now Pakistan. Sculptures fashioned
representations of Buddha in both freestanding statuary and narrative relief.
This second century CE statue is carved in gray schist, a local stone, and
shows Buddha in a monk’s robe seated in a cross legged yogic posture, that
we have seen earlier. The Buddha’s hand gestures are called mudra. This
position depicts Buddha in meditation. The Gandara region was part of the
wide area of the ancient world that reflected the Hellenized culture that was
spread by Alexander the Great. This is seen in our seated Buddha in the
drapery and treatment of body forms.
It is even more clearly seen in the narrative frieze, from Gandhara, depicting
the life of Buddha. While Buddhist in iconography this frieze must have
used Roman reliefs as stylistic models. The distribution of standing and
equestrian figures over the relief ground with those in the first row
seemingly suspended in air is familiar in Roman art of the second and third
centuries CE. The figure of the reclining Buddha parallels the figures on the
lids of Roman sarcophagi. The hierarchical composition placing a large
seated figure between balanced tiers of smaller on lookers can be seen in the
later Arch of Constantine, as well as, earlier Roman art.
Other Buddhist Styles
Contemporary to the Gandharan sculptures, but stylistically different are the
Buddha images from Mathura. The Mathura statues are closely linked to the
Indian portrayals of yakshas, the male equivalents of the yakshis. Indian
artist represented yakshas as strong and powerful, as seen in their broad
shoulders, and open staring eyes. The Mathura Buddhas retain these
characteristics, but wear a monk’s robe, with the right shoulder bare, and a
lack of jewelry and other signs of wealth of the yaksha. The robe appears
almost transparent revealing the full fleshy body underneath. The Buddha
sits in a yogic posture on a lion throne under the Bodhi tree, with attendants
on either side. He raises his right hand palm out as a welcoming guesture to
worshippers that they have no need to fear. His hands and feet bear the
marks of the dharma wheel.
Around 320 CE a new empire arose called the Gupta. Under the Guptas,
artists formulated what became the canonical image of Buddha
combining the Gandharan monastic robe covering both shoulders with
the soft, full bodied Buddha figures with clinging garments of Mathuran
sculptures. These styles are beautifully merged in this fifth century Buddha
from Sarnath, India. Here the robust figure wears the sheer unadorned robe.
His eyes are downcast in meditation and he holds his hands in a Wheelturning gesture, preaching his first sermon. Buddha images such as this
one became so popular that temples housing Buddha statues seem
largely to have displaced stupas as the norm in Buddhist architecture.
Hinduism
Buddhism and Hinduism have many gods and various paths which permits
tolerated differences. In Hinduism, Buddha is one of the ten incarnations of
Vishnu, one of the three principal Hindu deities. Hinduism recognizes no
founder, and has many variations. Mainly there are Brahmin priests who
offer sacrifice to please a deity in order to achieve release moksha
(liberation) from the endless cycle of reincarnation samsara and become
one with the universal spirit.
The three major Hindu deities are Shiva, Vishnu, and the goddess Devi. The
three major sects of Hinduism has each of these deities as Supreme. Shiva is
Shaivism, Vishnu is Vaishnavism, and Devi is Shaktism (Shakti is the
female creative force.)
Shiva is the Destroyer, but, consistent with the multiplicity of Hindu belief,
is also a regenerative force and, in the latter role, can be represented in the
form of a linga (a phallus or cosmic pillar). When Shiva appears in human
form in Hindu art, he frequently has multiple limbs and heads, signs of his
super human nature. He often has matted locks piled on the top of his head,
crowned by a crescent moon. Sometimes he wears a serpent scarf and has a
third eye on his forehead (the emblem of his all seeing nature). Shiva rides
the bull Nandi and often carries a trident. His son is the elephant headed
Ganesha.
Vishnu is the Preserver of the Universe. Artists frequently portray him
with four arms holding various attributes, including a conch shell trumpet
and discus. He sometimes reclines on a serpent floating on the waters of the
cosmic sea. When the evil forces of the universe become too strong, he
descends to the earth to restore balance and assumes different forms,
including a boar, fish, and tortoise, as well as Krishna, the divine lover, and
even Buddha himself.
Devi is the Great goddess who takes many forms and has many names.
Hindus worship her alone or as a consort (wife or lover) of the gods. She
has both benign and horrific forms; she both creates and destroys. In one
form she is Durga, a multi-armed goddess who rides or is accompanied by a
lion.
Vashnu
The earliest Hindu cave temples come 600 years after the earliest Buddhist
ones. The monumental relief sculptures in the Udayagiri temples, near
Sanchi, provide a more sophisticated iconography than one would expect
from their simple exteriors. One of the reliefs carved in a shallow niche of
rock, shows a 13 foot tall Vishnu in his incarnation as the boar Varaha.
Vishnu assumed this form when he rescued the earth, personified by the
goddess Bhudevi clinging to the boars tusk, from being carried to the bottom
of the ocean. Vishnu stands with one foot on the coils of the snake king
(with human head), who represents the conquered demon that attempted to
abduct the earth. Rows of deities and sages witness the event.
This relief also served a political purpose. The patron was a local king who
honored a great Gupta king with an inscription dated to 401. The king
wanted his subjects to see the Gupta king as as saving his kingdom by
ridding it of its enemies much the way Varaha had saved the earth. The
Udayagiri sculptors, acting on their patrons wishes, clothed
contemporary events in mythological disguise, as the Greeks frequently
did.
Shiva
A wonderful relief depicting Shiva comes from a series of wall reliefs in
halls cut into the rock cliffs above the city of Badami in central India. The
Shiva relief dates to the late 6th century and depicts him doing the cosmic
dance with his many arms (how many?) forming a rhythmic arc. Some
hands hold objects and others form mudras. On the right, Shiva’s son, the
elephant headed Ganesha tentatively mimics his father, while Shiva’s bull
mount, Nandi, is on the left. Artists often represented Hindu deities as part
human and part animal. Such composite and multi-limbed forms indicte that
the subjects are not human, but God’s with supernatural powers.
Hindu Architecture
Excavated cave shrines were characteristic of early Hindu architecture, but
temples of quarried stone became more important as Hinduism evolved over
the centuries.
The Hindu temple is the home of the gods on earth and the place where they
make themselves visible to humans. At the core of all Hindu temples is the
garbha griha or “womb chamber” which houses images or symbols of the
deity, for example Shiva’s linga. Only the Brahmin priests can enter the
inner sanctuary to make offerings to the gods. The worshipers can only
stand at the threshold and behold the deity as manifest by his image. In the
elaborate multi-chambered temples that were later developed, the worshipers
and priests progress through a series of evermore sacred spaces, usually on
an east-west axis. Hindu priests and architects attached a great importance
to each temple’s plan and sought to make them conform to the sacred
geometric diagram (mandala) of the universe.
The temple architecture is divided into two major types that are tied to
geography. The northern style or nagara, is characterized by it beehive
like tower or shikhara (mountain Peak), capped by a amalaka, a ribbed
cushionlike form, derived from the shape of the amala fruit (believed to have
medicinal powers). Amalakas appear on the corners of the lower levels of
the shikhara too. Northern temples also have smaller towerlike roofs over
the halls or mandapas, leading to the garbha griha.
Southern or Dravida temples are easily recognized by the flat roofs of their
pillared mandapas or halls and by their shorter towered shrines called
vimanas, which lack the curved profile of of their Nagara counterparts and
resemble multi level pyramids.
Northern or Nagara Style
A great example of a temple constructed in the Nagara style is the
Vishvanatha Temple at Khajuraho, India. Vishvanatha is another or the
many names for Shiva. This temple is one of more than 20 large and
elaborate temples on the site. Dedicated in 1002, the structure has threes
over the mandapas, each rising higher than the preceding one, leading to the
tallest tower at the rear, much the same way the foothills of the Himalayas,
Shiva’s home rise to meet their highest peak. The mountain symbolism is in
the interior also. Under the tallest tower (shikhara) is the garbha griha,
housing the deity. The temple-mountains are not designed to appear like
actual mountains, but rather are perfect mountains designed using ideal
mathematical proportions.
The reliefs on the exterior walls of the Vishvanatha Temple are typical of
northern temples in their many sculptures depicting gods and mortals,
especially pairs of men and women embracing and engaging in many exotic
and gymnastically challenging positions. The use of Yakshis and amorous
couples as motifs on religious buildings has a long history in Indian
architecture both Buddhist and Hindu. These sculptures suggest fertility and
propagation of life and serve to protect the sacred precinet.
Southern or Dravida Style
The Rajarajeshvara Temple at Thanjavur, India, built by the Chola dynasty
is a great example the Dravida Style. Dedicated in 1010 to Shiva as the
Lord of Rajaraja this temple was the largest and tallest in India at the time
(210 feet). The temple stands in a walled precinet. It consists of a stairway
leading to two flat roofed mandapas, the larger one has 36 pilllars, and to the
garbha griha in the base of the gigantic pyramidal vimana. The size of this
temple is as much a testament to the Chola’s secular power as it is to their
devotion to Shiva. The exterior walls on the lower stories are filled with
numerous reliefs depicting the god in various forms.