The Dance of Shiva · 7 of 14

Indian Images with Many Arms

Certain writers, speaking of the many-armed images of Indian art, have treated this peculiarity as an unpardonable defect. "After 300 A.D.," says Mr. Vincent Smith, "Indian sculpture properly so-called hardly deserves to be reckoned as art. The figures both of men and animals become stiff and formal, and the idea of power is clumsily expressed by the multiplication of members. The many-headed, many-armed gods and goddesses whose images crowd the walls and roofs of madiceval temples have no pretentions to beauty, and are frequently hideous and grotesque." 1 Mr. Maskell speaks of "these hideous deities with animals' heads and innumerable arms." 2 Sir George Birdwood considers that "the monstrous shapes of the Puranic deities are unsuitable for the higher forms of artistic representation; and this is possibly why sculpture and painting are unknown as fine arts in India." 3 Quotations of this kind could be multiplied, bur enough has been given to show that for a certain class of critics there exists the underlying assumption that in Indian art the multiplications of limbs or heads, or addition of any animal at- tributes, is in itself a very grave defect, and fatal to any claim for merit in the works concerned. In reply to criticisms of this kind it would be useless to cite examples of Greek art such as the Victory of Samothrace or the head of Hypnos: of Egyptian, such as the figures of Sekhet or other animal divinities: of Byzantine or mediaeval angels: or modern works such as some of M. Rodin's. For it is clear that all these, if the critics be consistent, must suffer equal condem- nation. Let me digress at this point to class the critics: for I fear that 1 Imperial Gazetteer of India, 1910, vol. II. 2 Ivories, 1915. p. 332. 8 Industrial Arts of India, 1880, p. 125. If the fine arts were until recently "unknown in India," perhaps this can be explained by the remark of B. H. Baden-Powell, who says that "In a country like this we must not expect to find anything that appeals to mind or deep feeling." For "unknown" to Sir George Birdwood or Mr. Baden- Powell need not imply anything more than "unrecognized." It is fair to say that Mr. Vincent Smith's opinions have been con- siderably modified since 1910. I ought to apologise for putting forward in this chapter what is obvious. The difficulty is one that has been raised exclusively by philologists and historians: in a considerable experience I have never heard these objections raised by artists or by connoisseurs. These notes are dedicated, then, only to the philologist and the historian, and may be neglected by all others.* The condemnations quoted are certainly to be justified if we are to agree to find the final aim of art in representation: then let us seek the most attractive models and carefully copy them. But this test of verisimilitude has never been anything more than the result of a popular misunderstanding. Let us submit the Indian, Greek or Egyptian figures to recognized standards, and to criticism a little more penetrating than is involved in merely counting heads or arms. Leonardo says that that figure is most worthy of praise which by its action best expresses the passion that animates it. Hsieh Ho demands that the work of art should exhibit the fusion of the rhythm of the spirit with the movement of living things. Mr. Holmes suggests that a work of art must possess in some degree the four qualities of Unity, Vitality, Infinity and Repose. In other words, a work of art is great in so far as it expresses its own theme in a form at once rhythmic and impassioned: through a definite pattern it must express a motif deeply felt. From this point of view it would seem that we must take each work of art upon its own merits. To apply the simplest tests just quoted — I wish to speak with the greatest possible simplicity — an image with many arms or heads may be called an inferior work of art, or inartistic, if it lacks any one of the four qualities demanded by Mr. Holmes, or as we may say, if it is not ' felt/ But if it has such qualities, if it is felt, need we further concern ourselves with arithmetic? The artist does not choose his own problems: he finds in the canon instruction to make such and such images in such and such a fashion — for example, an image of Nataraja with four arms (Frontispiece), of Brahma with four heads, Plate XII, of Mahisha-mardini with ten arms, Plate XIII, or of Ganesa with an elephant's head. Our critics are bold enough to assert that in obeying these instructions he cannot create a work of art. It would have been fairer and more moderate to suggest that the IMAGES WITH MANY ARMS. » problems propounded are often very difficult; this would have left open the way to recognize a successful effort, if such could be found. To have overcome the difficulties would then be a proof of artistic capacity — and I suppose it should be the aim of the historian of art to discover such proofs. The accompanying illustration, Plate XIII, shows a Javanese figure of Mahisha-mardim with ten arms, slaying the demon Ma- hisha. She is here an dread avenging power: yet she is neither cruel nor angry, but rather sad with the sadness of those who are wise, playing an inevitable part, though at heart no more than the spectator of a drama. This entire figure, damaged as it is, shows what tenderness may be expressed, even in rajasic images. And this peace and tenderness find expression in the movement of the whole figure, and not by any arbitrary means: no part of the whole is at war with any other, and this is what we mean by unity. It would indeed be futile to condemn an image such as this because it has ten arms. Or take the Nataraja image of the primal rhythmic energy underlying all phenomenal appear- ances and activity: here is perpetual movement, perpetually poised — the rhythm of the spirit. The death of Hiranyakasipu, Plate XIV, is a work that may be called grotesque. We have long learnt however that this cannot be used as a mere term of abuse. It would be difficult to imagine a more splendid rendering of the well known theme of the impious king who met his death at the hands of the avenging deity in man- lion form. The hand upon the shoulder, the shrinking figure with the mocking smile that has had no time to fade — what could be more terrible? These are figures expressing by their action their animating passions: or if not so, then none have ever been. It would be unkind to contrast a work such as this with the 'truth to nature* of the Laokoon. In these figures we cannot speak of the many arms as 'addi- tional members' because in a human being they might appear to be such. We have here a work of art which is, or is not a unity. If the work is a unity we can no more speak of added elements, than we can speak of ornament in a work of art as something added to an expression that would not otherwise be beautiful. It is not by addition or removal that we create. Before these works we can only ask, are these, or are they not, clear and im- passioned expressions af their subject matter? All unprejudiced 7o and competent observers would then agree that amongst Indian images there are some of which we can say that they are such adequate expressions, and of others that they are not: but to recognize those and these requires a rather more subtle approach than that involved in the arithmetical process of counting arms or heads. Certain developments in the most modern art could be quoted in comparison with the Indian complex figures, and, indeed, the method of these is more than modern. Some painters of the present day have sought by many strange devices to create a synthetic and symphonic art representing a continuity of thought or action, and an interpretation of ideas belonging to more than a single phase of personality — an art of interpretation. And if, as we now realise, even the human personality is compound, we should understand that this must be even more true of a cosmic divinity, who is, indeed, able by a division of upadhis, to func- tion in many places at one time. To reflect such conceptions in art demands a synthetic rather than a representative language. It might well be claimed, then, that this method adopted some- times in India, sometimes in Egypt, sometimes in Greece, and still employed, has proved successful from the practical point of view, of pure expression, the getting said what had to be said: and this is after all the sure and safe foundation of art. These forms remain potentially equally satisfactory, too, whether as philosophers we regard them as purely abstract ex- pressions, or with the artists themselves regard them as realistic presentations of another order of life than our own, deriving from a deva-loka, other than the world we are familiar with, but not necessarily unknowable or always invisible. The distinc- tion in any case is slight, for the images equally belong to a world of their own, however we regard them. The criticism of the philologists ultimately resolves itself into a complaint that the art is not always representative ('true to nature'). I have tried to show that it is true to experience and feeling. But aside from that, whatever in a work of art is ostensibly representative must be judged according to the logic of the world it represents — even if that world be no other than the idea-world of the sadhanas and dhydna mantrams. All worlds are idea-worlds of one kind or another, and we should also remem- ber that 'recognition' does not necessarily imply any real knowl- IMAGES WITH MANY ARMS. Death of Hiranyakasipu. Brahmanical stone, sculpture. Elura, 8th Century. edge of things in themselves — we do not know that men have really two arms, that is merely an 'intelligible representation/ It is no criticism of a fairy tale to say that in our world we meet no fairies: we should rather, and do actually, condemn on the score of insincerity, a fairy tale which should be so made as to suggest that in the writer's world there were no fairies. It is no criticism of a beast-fable to say that after all animals do not talk English or Sanskrit. Nor is it a criticism of an Indian icon to point out that we know no human beings with more than two arms. To appreciate any art, moreover, we ought not to concentrate our attention upon its peculiarities — ethical or formal — but should endeavour to take for granted whatever the artist takes for granted. No motif appears bizarre to those who have been familiar with it for generations: and in the last analysis it must remain beyond the reach of all others so long as it remains in their eyes primarily bizarre. If circumstances then compel the philologist and the historian to classify the extant materials for the study of Indian art, their studies will be the more valuable the more strictly they are con- fined to the archaeological point of view. For those should not air their likes and dislikes in Oriental art, who when they speak of art mean mere illustration: for there they will rarely meet with what they seek, and the expression of their disappointment be- comes wearisome.

Insight · 3

The essay opens with a polemic, and the polemic is worth recognizing for what it is. Vincent Smith, William Maskell, and George Birdwood — the British authorities Coomaraswamy is rebuking — were the Anglo-Indian scholarly establishment of his moment. Their published assessment was that the many-armed gods of Indian sculpture were "hideous" and "grotesque" and disqualified Indian art from serious aesthetic consideration. Coomaraswamy is writing as the first scholar of his generation to refuse this judgment with both archaeological detail and philosophical force. The essay is doing political work as well as art-historical work. It is reclaiming a body of imagery that the colonial gaze had ruled out of bounds, and it is doing so on the colonizer's own terms — by appeal to the Greek and Egyptian and medieval Christian parallels that the colonizer already accepted.Vincent Smith, A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon (1911); for the postcolonial counter-reading, Partha Mitter, Much Maligned Monsters (1977).

Partha Mitter's Much Maligned Monsters (1977) is the major academic study of the European reception of Indian art from the sixteenth through the nineteenth century, and it documents at length the colonial discomfort with many-armed and animal-headed deities. Mitter shows that the rejection of multi-limbed forms was theological rather than aesthetic — Protestant Britain reading polytheistic image-making through the categories of the Reformation iconoclasm and the Anglo-Saxon Protestant horror of "idolatry." Coomaraswamy is fighting the same battle a half-century earlier, without the academic apparatus Mitter would later assemble. His move is to point out that the polemic is inconsistent — that the same observers admire winged Victories and four-faced Roman gods without objection. The deeper question, what an image of God actually does, the essay leaves for the next chapter.Partha Mitter, Much Maligned Monsters (1977).

The principle Coomaraswamy lays down at the end — that the critic should not begin with assumed peculiarities, but should take for granted whatever the artist takes for granted — is the manifesto of his whole comparative method. Read the work on its own terms first. Decide what counts as merit or defect only inside the tradition's own grammar. Bring outside judgments only after the inside has been understood. This is a principle that academic art history would not really institutionalize until the second half of the twentieth century. Erwin Panofsky's iconographic method, the contextual turn in art history, the anthropology-of-art tradition associated with Alfred Gell — all of them depend on the move Coomaraswamy is making here in 1918. The principle is also why he became so important to the next generation of comparative scholars, including Mircea Eliade and Joseph Campbell.Erwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconology (1939); Alfred Gell, Art and Agency (1998).