indian art

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Columnshttp://www.newindpress.com/sunday/sundayitems.asp?id=SEC20020913062144&eTitle=Columns&rLink=0CreationsAnimals

in Indian artNanditha KrishnaThe response to my previous article ‘Are we

civilized?’ (NSE, September1) was overwhelming. I am thrilled that so many

people are concernedabout animals, and relate the growing social violence to

the generallackadaisical attitude towards cruelty and violence. One letter

saidthat kindness to people came first and would automatically ensurekindness

to animals. Of course. Neither precedes or succeeds the other.A humane person

is always humane.Ancient India protected animals in the same way it protected

all ofnature, by creating an aura of sanctity around them and celebratingtheir

dignity. Some animals were the vehicles of the gods. Others, suchas the

elephant-headed Ganesha and Hanuman, the monkey devotee of Rama,became gods

themselves. There is probably no other culture in the worldthat has been so

consistently associated with plant and animal life asthe Hindu, Buddhist and

Jain traditions of India.So, we were taught to treat animals well. I remember

when I sat with myfeet on the warm fur of my Alsatian dog; my grandmother would

scold me,saying I was stepping on Lord Bhairava himself! At every meal a

smallbowl of boiled rice was kept out for the birds. And the kolam had to

bedrawn outside the house every day, in rice flour, for the ants had to befed.

Thus respect and kindness to animals was ingrained in our dailylives.Indian

art, which was used to allegorise values and moral beliefs,honoured the dignity

of animals. Hermits and saints were always depictedliving in harmony with

nature. Cave paintings express a primeval fear, aneed to subdue and subjugate

as people hunted. Probably, as people movedfrom hunting to food production, the

need to kill for food receded, andthey could sit back and appreciate the

qualities of the animals thatwere once their antagonists. In the Indus Valley

seals, animals such asthe humped bull and elephant were particularly popular,

while therhinoceros, tiger, antelope, eagle and snake appear to have

somesignificance. The Vedas invested gods and animals with divine parentage.In

the ten incarnations of Vishnu we have divine manifestations that areequally

animal and human.Early Indian art portrayed animals with human qualities such

as love,jealousy, sacrifice, resentment and more. They were given a status

ofequality, with scenes of Boddhisattvas preaching to animals and

rishisteaching a multi species audience. The Jataka tales are replete

withstories of the Buddha’s many births in various animal forms. AncientIndia

loved its forests and animals.At Mamallapuram, the scene of the cow licking its

calf in the Govardhanacave and the gentle, loving animal families in the

rock-cut penance ofArjuna are some of the greatest works of sculpture. Scenes

of huntingwere unavoidable, as the patrons were kings, but the artist sent out

hisown silent message when he depicted the pain and agony of the woundeddeer,

the elephant cringing as he was attacked from all sides in themidst of a war

and the desperation of the tiger when it was cornered.‘Is this valour?’, was

their message.The lion capital of Ashoka, with the majestic Asian lions

inPersepolitan style, proclaimed the might of the king, and is now theemblem of

the Government of India. In contrast, at the base of the samecapital, are

frolicking animals, nature at its free and untrammeledbest. Ashoka selected

four animals to represent the Buddha: the elephantsymbolised his birth, the

lion his clan, the horse his renunciation, andthe bull his zodiac sign. The

lion represented might, a symbolism thatcontinued all through Indian art

history, as late as the Pallava andVijayanagara periods. This probably saved

the Asian lion fromextinction.The animal that appears most frequently in Indian

art is the elephant,the mount of kings and heroes. As a sequel to the story of

Maya, motherof the Buddha, who dreamed that an elephant entered her womb before

thebirth of her son, the elephant represented the Buddha and Buddhism

insculpture and painting. The elephant was the mount of Indra in theWestern

Indian rock-cut caves, and is represented in the Jataka tales.He appears in

scenes of Gajendramoksha. Vishnu on his mount Garudaswoops down to rescue the

elephant from the mighty snake Naga. And, ofcourse, he is Ganesha, the

elephant-headed deity who keeps awayobstacles (Vighneshwara).Ungulates are

prolific in art. The bull represented nobility andstature. It was also the

capital of an Ashokan pillar from Rampurva(Bihar). The bull accompanies Shiva,

standing at the entrance toShaivite shrines, while depictions of Uma Maheshvara

(Shiva and Parvati)are prolific in the Maratha paintings of Tanjore. The cow

was, ofcourse, go mata and Kamadhenu, a representative of Goddess

Lakshmi.Unfortunately, the buffalo alone, representing the demon

Mahishadestroyed by Durga, came to represent ignorance, slothfulness and

evil,and became a much maligned and sacrificed animal.The advent of the horse

in India has been the subject of much debate,irrelevant here. Suffice to say

that terracotta horses from Sar-Dheri(2500 BC), Lothal, Rangpur and Kayatha

(Ujjain) indicate its presence inthe proto-historic period. It was in the

Mauryan, Kushana and Guptaperiods that its representation took on dynamism, for

it was associatedboth with royalty and the chakravartin or universal ruler. The

Vedicdescription of the sun with his flying steeds was personified by the

SunGod Surya on a solar chariot driven by seven horses, magnificentlydepicted

in the Sun Temple at Konarak. The deer represented peace andserenity, the meek

and the oppressed, sacrificing its life to saveanother, and appears in

delightful scenes of forests and nature.Birds were used to express human

emotions. The swan represented moralityand clean living, being the vehicle of

Brahma and Sarasvati, while thecrow was a messenger. The eagle-hawk (Garuda)

and similar large birds ofprey symbolised speed, strength and the sun. It was

the enemy of thesnake, feared yet respected and worshipped in the Naga stones

of ruralIndia. Several animals represented the waters, such as the

elephant,snake, crocodile and tortoise, the last two symbolising the rivers

Gangaand Yamuna respectively.The change came after the Sultanate period. The

paintings ofVijayanagara and the Mughal and Rajasthani schools became

morerealistic, and animals were no longer symbols. Akbar commissionedpainters

to reproduce the animals recorded by his grandfather in theBabar Namah, while

Jehangir’s period is known for the remarkablyrealistic paintings, by the artist

Mansur, of rare and common animalsstripped of all spiritual overtones.

Unfortunately, this period also sawthe celebration of scenes of the hunt, a

throwback to prehistoricpainting. Earlier, scenes of hunting were generally

accompanied byscenes of renunciation and remorse.Paintings of Krishnadevaraya

hunting at Lepakshi, Babar’s mass killingof deer and tigers, trapping of birds

and animals and Rajput rulershunting characterise the mores of the age, and set

them apart fromearlier Indian art, although the Ragmala paintings and scenes

ofKrishna’s life still treated them with sympathy. The elephant, tiger

andrhinoceros were hunted to extinction in the Indus Valley, which

hadcelebrated them on its seals. The corollary came in the British period,when

photographs were taken with large numbers of tigers, leopards,cheetah, deer and

elephants killed for sport. In one stroke the newrulers of Hindustan wiped out

what India had cherished for millennia.More important, they changed attitudes.

Hunting became a ‘sport’, deadanimals became ‘trophies’ and destruction became

an ‘entertainment’.Art still carries a message, especially for the illiterate.

The symbolschosen by political parties are a good example. I will never forget

awoman who told me that she voted for the rising sun symbol because

itrepresented the Sun God, giver of life, little realising that the partyit

stood for (DMK) preached atheism. When the AIADMK led by MsJayalalithaa had the

rooster as its symbol, it led to gory instances ofcruelty towards the bird by

the opposing party, till Chief ElectionCommissioner T N Seshan mercifully

banned the use of animals as electionsymbols.In contemporary Pakistan, animals

as election symbols undergo greatcruelty. Advertising is a use of art to

propagate a message, then andnow. Artists of ancient India sent out a message

of kindness and harmonythrough animals, using stories and symbols understood by

the masses. Weneed to revive the use of art as a means of propagating the same

valuestoday.Nanditha Krishna is Director, The C P Ramaswami Aiyar

Foundation,Chennai

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