Abstract
The book under review moves beyond conventional approaches to art historical studies in Early India, undertaking a combined method of study. This is an important academic departure which will attract scholars of Indian history and general readers of Indian art. The concept and coinage of the expression ‘combined method’ is based on D.D. Kosambi’s pioneering work. Art, especially in early Indian history, occupies a very significant position from the points of view of interpretation and reconstruction, and scholars in the past have brought out varied facets of this genre. Edited by R. Mahalakshmi, this is a collection of essays by fifteen scholars with themes that blend art and history. The authors have analysed the intersection between these two fields through multiple lenses of textual descriptions, contextualizing textual data, and visual representations in the time bracket of the ancient and early medieval periods in Indian history.
In the introductory portion, the editor has discussed the pioneers of Indian histories of art, addressing the question of spirituality and art, as well as the very important issues of artistic prescription and execution, artists and patronage. These issues are reflected in the central themes of the book around which all the essays have been woven: texts, contexts, and visual representations. All the essays in this collection highlight the visual element, strengthening their arguments through additional information from varied genres of texts and contextualizing data to give a better picture of the historical context.
The first set of four essays revolves around the theme ‘Visualizing Power: Sacred and Temporal’, with two essays focusing on numismatic sources by Suchandra Ghosh and Dev Kumar Jhanjh, and the other two by Niharika K. Sankrityayan and Mahalakshmi, focusing on iconography with an emphasis on thematic issues. Ghosh, in her essay ‘Power of Image and Image of Power in the Indo-Iranian Borderland: Case Studies of Bactrian Greeks and the Indo-Greeks’, focuses on the period between the second century
The next segment is titled ‘Conceptualizing the Divine Feminine: Forms, Meanings and Symbols’. This portion includes three essays. The first one, by Sneha Ganguly, entitled ‘Giving Ākāra to the Goddess: Kālī in Textual and Visual Traditions’ focuses on visual representations of Kālī, intertwining them with textual data from Puranic sources. Anthropomorphism, Kālī’s dark texture and its connotations, Puranic myths regarding Kālī, and the shaping of Kālī’s iconography are discussed. The next paper by Megha Yadav moves in time and addresses a different religious genre: ‘Prajñāpāramitā: The Making of the First Buddhist Goddess’. It shows that by the end of fifth century
The book moves on to the next theme,which focuses on ‘Religious Traditions, Visual Representations and Regional Contexts’. It opens with a brilliant essay by V. Selvakumar entitled ‘Icons and Patterns of Worship from the Fringes of South India: The Religious Landscape of Northern Tamil Nadu’. The essay focuses on the images outside the main settlement in frontier/border areas, or along the water tanks which the author terms ‘fringe’. These sculptures range from local deities to Puranic gods and goddesses, hero stones, rock art sites, shrines under trees and natural forms. Shrines, temples, megalithic burials, and memorials form a composite religious landscape. He draws our attention to the continuity of the sacred spaces of the early pre-agrarian societies centering around natural forces, which feature even in the medieval and modern periods. Along with the deities, he also discusses the saints from these fringes and their association with religious complexes within and outside the ‘fringe’. The author finally proceeds to discuss the religious context of hills and caves and shows how hills gained importance due to their water resources and locational command over their surroundings. Interestingly, the author argues that the concept of divinities gained cognate form in the period between the prehistoric to the early historic, whereas these divinities gained a proper iconographic form in the early medieval period, when ideas and concepts from North India also blended, and the evolution can be traced. The archaeology of early medieval Tamil Nadu has been largely neglected in comparison to epigraphic and architectural studies. Based on an onomastic chrono-cultural study, he demonstrates that in the early historic period, villages were named after natural markers such as hills, flora, and fauna from the locality or vicinity. However, from the time of the Pallavas, the kings made an organized effort to create religio-cultural landscapes by naming temples cities and tanks after the ruler. Selvakumar shows how temples became powerful mediums for asserting the king’s authority on landscapes. Finally, the essay discusses the integration of the non-brāhmaṇa and marginalized social groups, and the role of the Bhakti Movement in the early medieval phase.
The next essay is by Umakanta Mishra, titled ‘From Virajᾱ Tīrtha to “Allegorical” Nᾱbhi Gayᾱ: Exploring the Changing Religious Landscape of Jajpur (Sixth to Fourteenth Centuries
The next theme is ‘Social Imaginaries and the Ocular’, which includes three essays. ‘The Marriage Rite of Śiva-Pᾱrvati: Specimens of Early Medieval Indian Temple Art’ by Neha Singh addresses the issues of marriage, monogamy,and childbirth from social perspectives. In this context, the author brings in the myths and depictions of Śiva, Satī, Pārvatī, and the birth of Skanda, Harihara and Ardhanārīśvara. This essay focuses on the representation of Kalyāṇasundara in sculptures and the ritual of Pāṇigrahaṇa. Singh discusses the institution of marriage and attestation of the ideal forms of marriage through prescriptive texts and visual representations. The second essay, by Sujata Rakshit, is titled ‘Imagery of Lovemaking: Representation of the Erotic Body in the Temples of Early Medieval Odisha’. Rakshit discusses eroticism and beauty through an in-depth analysis of the erotic art in the religious architecture of early medieval Odisha. The last essay in this segment is by Malavika Binny, ‘Of Men, Stones and Stories: Revisiting the Vīrakals of South India’and begins with a brief survey of secondary literature on hero stones. Binny uses literary sources to discuss the social and occupational aspects of the dead persons whose memorials had been raised. The author very interestingly brings in forests and hills, where there is a profusion of such hero stones, and discusses the locations, iconographic aspects, and varied functionalities of these stones or stone monuments even beyond their sepulchral and commemorative angles. This essay gives us a glimpse into the early historic society of South India and helps us to read the psyche, approach, perception and understanding of the people who raised these stones. The author also touches upon late medieval and early modern hero stones. She critically analyses these so-called hero stones and Satī stones to show that even death can be read from a gendered perspective.
The last thematic segment is on ‘Prescriptions and Representations’ and includes two essays by Anisha Saxena and Y. S. Alone. The former gives a very interesting title to her essay: ‘The Gaṇa Who Consumed Himself: Kīrtimukha in North Indian Literature and Art, 400
This book is a welcome addition to the field of historical analysis of art as it succeeds in capturing different types of creative expressions in varied contexts. The diversity of sources converges in the integrated approach of taking visual representations not merely as a supplement but as a recognized element of interpretation. This approach makes the book interesting and refreshing.
