Abstract
This book evaluates the study of the Citrasūtras (from Sanskrit citra, a picture, sketch, delineation, and sūtra, an aphoristic rule) through a deconstruction of the scholarly metanarratives that have arisen around their interpretations. Scholarly narratives have created a hegemony which has inhibited an exhaustive correlation among Indian painting and texts (p. 15). The originality of Nardi’s argument lies in the re-examination of the application of the Citrasūtras by contemporary Indian painters (p. 16), who highlight ‘the living nature of the texts’ (p. 156). In the process, this particular method of analysis also provides a view of Indian painting ‘from an Indian perspective’ (p. 16).
To grasp Nardi’s challenge, it is necessary to analyse the traditional scholarly approaches to reading the Citrasūtras, which can be divided into earliest and later texts. While the latter have an encyclopaedic nature and can be dated from 1000 CE to the sixteenth century (p. 7), the earliest treatises go back to the early Gupta period (p. 6). These texts share a common understanding of art as divine creation (p. 17). In the earliest treatise, namely, the Citralakṣaṇa of Nagnajit, a myth tells of a wise king who had to face the problem posed by the death of a Brahman’s son (p. 18). In order to avoid the destruction of the whole creation through a fight between the king and Yama, the God of Death, Brahmā went to Earth and ordered the king to paint a picture of the dead person (p. 19). On another occasion, the king, the same Nagnajit, asked Brahmā how he could achieve the skill of painting the human body in proportion. Not only did Brahmā reveal that painting was created by him for worshipping, but also that proportion is a fundamental knowledge for giving welfare to creatures (p. 19).
Due to the difficult technical language, these specialised texts have been conceptualised as prescriptive manuals (p. 14). Besides, scholars have romantically expected that Citrasūtras contain ‘a hidden truth of Indian painting’ (p. 13) or some kind of ‘revelation’ (p. 10), which could be unlocked by translating the verses (p. 14). This view of the texts has also resulted in the use of these same treatises to demonstrate scholarly theories on Indian sculptures (p. 88) or mural and miniature painting (p. 132), with little textual evidence (p. 88). Furthermore, concepts of proportion contained in the Citrasūtras have been subjected to ‘conceptual boundaries between disciplines’ (p. 155), considered as notions related to sculpture and not to the theory of painting.
Nardi argues that the Citrasūtras are, instead, conceptual states (p. 24) which can be adapted and intertwined with a painter’s own idiosyncrasies (p. 36). The word citra also means, after all, a mental image (p. 24). Moving from a macroscopic to a microscopic perspective, this idea is fundamental in theories of proportion, described in Chapter 3, symmetries (Chapter 4) and stances and postures (Chapter 5). In each of these technical aspects, the painter is supposed to have in mind a standard male model (p. 56) which can be rotated (p. 88) in his imagination according to his own perception of the body. Nardi observes that the theory of proportion is characterised by stereotypes (p. 45), for instance ‘arms like an elephant’ (p. 57), with a symbolic meaning, as these features are related to representation of the gods (p. 56). This is the reason why Chapter 6 is dedicated to the gods’ iconography. In the last chapter, the complex theory of rasa is explained as a basic instrument for expressing and communicating sentiments in the whole arena of Indian art (p. 143). Therefore, the painter has to know the theory of rasa to complete his ‘working knowledge’ (p. 153). This ‘interpretative multiplicity’ (p. 104) was emphasised, in Chapter 2, through the link between painting and the other arts, that is, dancing, provided in Vis.n.udharmottara Purān.a (p. 23).
Despite this holistic reading of Citrasūtras, Nardi admits that transposing a mental image into contemporary practice could be critical. Indeed, she identifies a general trend among contemporary Indian painters to move away from texts, denigrating them as repetitive (p. 158), whereas they continue to have their own aesthetic ideals of perfection (p. 58). The climax of this trend occurs in Chapter 7, which is concerned with the painting process. The painters of Nathdvara, Rajasthan, after being unhooked from the patronage of the Srī Nāthjī temple, have started to use chemical colour and factory-made paper in order to attract pilgrims (p. 140). Even in the more traditional artistic environment of Udaipur, authority is given to the previous generation of artisans, instead of relying on authority derived from texts (p. 141). What results from the author’s ethnographic accounts is thus a heterogeneous repertoire of artistic sources. For instance, a Rajasthani sculptor explains his ideal of perfection through a comparison with Giovanni Bellini’s portrait of a young woman (p. 60).
Although the author concludes that texts and practice are independent (p. 63), as two different authoritative views on painting (p. 141), it is undeniable that she herself remains trapped in the same logic of previous scholars. Nardi’s ethnographic accounts are always presented in the conclusions of each chapter rather than explored in depth throughout. Because of this, the reader gains the impression that the informants are treated merely as counter-arguments of the old metanarrative, rather than constituting a fully parallel narration of the Citrasūtras.
Scholars continue to experience difficulties in handling practical skills, due to what Bourdieu (2003: 130) called ‘epistemocentric fallacy’, namely the tendency to consider the study object as a concluded creation, or opus operatum. Nardi’s work represents an excellent starting point for those who have the intention of going further in their studies of material culture.