AESTHETICS OF INDIAN ART

 Motive Power In India's Art 

  Indian Concept of Divine Beauty   Indian Lion   Divine Ideal   Cause as Space 

  Himalaya in Indian Thought and Art   Mansarovar Lake   Mt. Kailasa   Eternal Snow   Spiritual Purity and Strength

  Ultimate Pilgrimage   Sacred Rivers   Difficulty of Access 

  Expressions in New Environments 

  Preserver of Life   Coping Stone  

  Symbolism   Symbols 

  Art Appreciation   FAQ

Home

If you wish to submit your work or related information

Museums

Nicholas Roerich Museum Paintings and Writings. Kulu & Lahul

Related Topics

·GRAND CANYON

·Southern India: The Sacred Dance

·Bengal

·Indian Watercolors

·Indian Literature

·Kashmir

·Influences Beyond and From

Suggested Reading

Lotus and the Kantha

The World of Sankho Chaudhury

Ashoka's sandstone capital at Sarnath. 250 BC. Design of turned down lotus petals, with bull and horse relief visible on abacus.

Melon shaped fruit of White and Blue Lotus. Ellora cave pillars.

Lotus fruit transforms to a water vessel. Ellora.

Symbolic Explanation of the Historical Evolution of Indian Religion

Hindu mythology explains in its own symbolic way the historical evolution of Indian religion.  As illustrated in the story of Shiva’s wife Sati, the embodiment of purity and devotion.  When Sati dies of shame, by inviting death, because of the insults heaped upon her and her husband at Daksha’s marriage feast, Shiva drunk with sorrow, strides about the earth with her dead body on his back. The soil dries up, the plants wither, harvests fail.  All nature shudders at the grief of the Great God.  Then Vishnu, to save mankind, comes up behind Shiva and hurling his discuss time after time, cuts the body of Sati to pieces, till the Great God, conscious that the weight has gone, retires alone to Kailasa to lose himself once more in his eternal meditation. But the body of Sati is hewn in 52 pieces, and wherever a fragment touches the earth a new shrine is established and Siva himself shines before the supplicant as the guardians of that spot.

One of the most celebrated of these 52 Tirths, literally fords, by which the pilgrim can pass over the river or re-birth into the bliss of Nirvana, is at Ellora in Maharashtra.

Other Symbols in Indian Art

Aura, Lotus Leaf, Banyan Leaf

The pointed arch was not unfamiliar to India before the Mohammadan invasion.  At Ajanta the trefoil arch was the purely Indian shape of the aura (flame), the glory of the divine light which shone from the body of the Buddha from the moment he attained Nirvana under the Bodhi tree at Gaya.

The simplest form of the aura was the lotus leaf.  Lotus symbolizes the idea of good luck to India.  The outer curve of the lotus leaf arch took the form of the leaf of the sacred Pipal, the Bodhi tree, associated with enlightenment.

The Banyan tree is associated as a favorite place for yogis. It was an easy transition in design from the leaf to the flame.  In the shape of the Pipal leaf is drawn the glory around Buddha’s head.  The lotus shape aura surrounding his body.  Each intersecting with each other. The Trefoil arch being identified by its point.

The aura elaborated became part of sculpture rather than a builder’s craft.

Wheel or Half Wheel

It is a common decorative motif in ceilings and interior of domes.

Several of the finials from Persian and Arabian mosques are surmounted, not by the ensigns of Islam, but by the Chakra, the wheel of the law.

The Datura Flower

But in the Vayu Purana, which is a later one, another floral symbol is used in describing the Himalayas, the long white trumpet-shaped flower of Datura-alba, a poisonous plant sacred to Shiva as Lord of Life and Death.  This flower is very generally used in South Indian architecture as a motif for bracket design, either for the cross-brackets which sustain the roofs of temple mandapams or for those supporting balconies or other architectural details.

The most suggestive use of the datura motif is for the gargoyels which carry off the water used in the temple service for the ritualistic bathing of the god.  The priest inside the shrine pours Gangese water over the head of the image.  The water passes through the walls of the vimana and is discharged by the long projecting gargoyle-a conventional datura flower-into a stone tank in the courtyard. Thus does the temple symbolize the perennial flow of the sacred streams that descend from Shiva’s head at Kailasa to sustain the life of the worshippers in the scorching plains below.

The cross-brackets of the temple with the datura flower motif repeat the symbolism of the four petalled World Lotus.

The Rain Clouds

Anyone who knows the Himalayas will have observed the low-lying bank of clouds which often gather around the highest peaks, so that the mountain tops look like islands in a milky sea. The magnificent plinth running round the base and carved in bold relief with a herd of elephants supporting the temple on their backs symbolizes the rain-cloud.

The elephant is the rain cloud, Indra’s chief officer. At Ellora the sculptors poetic fancy likens the clouds to Indra’s, rain gods, elephants bearing the holy mountain on their backs.

When the people who adopted the Aryan culture, spread farther and farther out of sight of the Himalayas, they carried with them the deep impressions that their early environment had made upon them in the images and symbols used in their religious ritual.

These impressions in fact were to be the primary creative impulses in the beginnings of Indian art.

Lotus, Symbol Of Nirvana

The Lotus motif though the most visible is yet the least understood image of Indian art.  To understand this symbolism and to recognize its connection objectively and metaphysically with the philosophy of Buddhism and Hinduism, is to add very much to the interest of Indian architecture and art, for if the student fails to follow the inner working of the Indian mind he is not likely to enjoy or appreciate the aesthetics of Indian art.

Puranic ideas are very strongly emphasized in the symbolism of Indian art.  One of them being that Asia was to be conceived as a four petalled lotus flower.

Since Puranic ideas are so deep set in India’s spiritual thought, the Indian no longer seeks corroboration from references of their source or feels the need to do so.

But, for the student of Indian art absorbing these impressions is most significant. Imagine and retain in your mind’s eye the Puranic description of the Himalayas as the center of the World Lotus.  The seed-vessel or pod of the Lotus as Brahma’s holy city near Mt. Kailash, and the lake Manasarovar, whose deep blue waters mirror the Creator’s mind.  The Himalayan snow peaks as the glittering up-turned Lotus petals.  The plains of India, together with the sub-Himalayan slopes, forming the southern one of its four great petals turned down upon the stalk which springs from the naval of Narayana, Brahma, the Creator, the Eternal Spirit reposing on the bed of the cosmic ocean.

The lotus symbol, like all other Indian symbols, has a metaphysical, or subjective, as well as an objective significance.  The shining lotus flower floating on the still dark surface of the lake.  Their many petals opening as the sun’s rays touch them at day break, and closing again at sun set.

Rooted deep in the mud of a lake or river and pushing its way gradually upwards through the water until its beautiful flower blossomed in the light of heaven, the lotus or water-lily was Nature’s own symbol of the spiritual process by which the human mind won liberation in Nirvana.  It seemed a perfect symbol of creation, of divine purity and the beauty of the cosmos evolved from the dark void of chaos and sustained in equilibrum by the cosmic ether, Akash.

The Mahanirvana Tantra gives the mystic meaning of this lotus symbolism.  The root, it says, is Brahman, the Unknowable, from which all creation springs.  The stalk is Maya, the unreality of world phenomena.  The flower is the world itself.  The fruit is Moksha, the soul-liberation when it is released from worldly desires.

The bell shaped fruit was the mystic Hiranyagarbha, the womb of the Universe, holding the germ of worlds enumerable and still unborn.  The lotus, the stool and foot stool of the Gods, the symbol of the material universe and of the heavenly spheres above it.

Their colors, red, white and blue, were emblems of the Trimurti, the 3 Aspects of one.  Red for Brahma the Creator, white for Siva, the Divine Spirit and Blue for Vishnu, the Preserver and upholder of the Universe.

Lotus is the oldest and the most universal floral symbol in Indian art.  It is a solar as well as a geographical or orological symbol.

Lets once again look at some selected works of Indian Art and learn more about the subtle influence of the haunting mystery of these works.

Indegeneous Indian art existed much before Ashoka, though at Sarnath, the best known earliest monument of Indian art was built by Ashoka, on the spot where Buddha began to preach or to "turn the Wheel of the Law".

The poet Kalidas in Kumar-Sambahva addresses King Himalaya as "Earth's stately Pillar girt about with clouds."

The design of Ashoka’s Pillar was the architectural rendering of the Indian poetical metaphor, imperfectly understood by Persian craftsman.  The architectural standards showed the World Pillar surmounted by the emblems of Buddhism to proclaim the universal dominion of the Good Law.

Upon the abacus of the Sarnath capital, above the conspicuous bell-shaped member, there are four animals carved in high relief, the same as the Chinese map gives as the four gates of the Mansarovar lake.  Local tradition relates that there were four outlets to the waters of Mansarovar lake named respectively after a peacock, a bull, a horse, and a lion.  These outlets it was believed formed the sources of the four sacred rivers of India.  The Chinese tradition embodied in a map of the region by order of Emperor Chien Lung I, in the 18th Century, corresponds with the Tibetan, except that it substitutes an elephant for the peacock.

At first sight you may not notice the lotus or the seed vessel of the lotus at Sarnath.  But remember that very often a craftsman does not know the original meaning of a traditional pattern especially one foreign.  Therefore, expect to find many variations.

On the top is the Wheel of Law supported by the four heraldic lions.  The abacus upon which the lions stand is ornamented with small lotus petals, and underneath it on either side there spring a lotus bud, the stalks of the lotus being hung with garlands; the large bell shaped member is also decorated with, or made up of, lotus petals turned downwards. Between the abacus and this "bell-shaped" member is a small ovola moulding, as in the Sarnath capital, with regular indentations indicating the numerous compartments of the seed vessel of the white or blue lotus radiating from the center like the spokes of a wheel.

Another illustration from indigenous Indian art is the Barhut stupa.  The so called bell is a cluster of petals of the lotus flower when they are turned down upon the stalk, leaving the half-ripened seed-vessel of the lotus exposed.  Then the petals form a bell-shaped cluster such as the sculptor of the capital is trying to represent.  Only in the capital the lotus is not the pink or rose lotus (Nelumbium speciosum) which has a fruit like an inverted cone, but the melon shaped fruit of the white or blue water-lily.

The shaft of the pillar then stands for the stalk of the flower: the bell-shaped member is made up of the petals and stamens: the indented ovolo molding above, which is generally made more important is the seed vessel of the white or blue lotus.  Above this is the super capital or the cross-beams of the roof.

Another early example is in the rock-cut chapter house at Karli.  The lower turned-down petals are again highly conventionalized, as in the Sarnath capital, so that their identity with the lotus flower is less clear.  But on the other hand the seed vessel of the lotus, which symbolizes Brahma’s mystic temple or holy city at Lake Mansarovar, is made much more conspicuous.  It is enclosed in a quadrangle shrine, open to all four sides, the opening representing the four "gates" of the lake.  Above this shrine the upturned petals of the lotus symbolizing the snow capped Himalayan peaks are very visible.  On the summit of the capital, instead of a wheel are four Buddhist divinities mounted on kneeling elephants.  They are some of the inhabitants of the heavenly spheres that rise from the summit of the World Lotus at Mt. Kailas.

Closely connected to the lotus was the water pot, Kalash or Kumbhu, which held the creative elements, or the nectar of immortality churned by the gods and demons from the cosmic ocean. The design of the pillar of the World Lotus became modified in later Indian art.  At Ajanta, some six or seven centuries after Ashok’s time, the original symbolism of the World Lotus is barely recognizable.  The conspicuous turned down petals of the lotus that formed the "bell" in the old capitals have disappeared and the seed-vessel with the upturned petals resembles a sacrificial water-vessel, the Lota.

Yet, there are reminiscences of the four "gates" in the four ornaments that mark the corners of the capital, and there is sufficient resemblance in the whole design to show the derivation of the capital from the earlier type.  The transformation of the lotus fruit into a water vessel was a very natural and obvious one, seeing that the lotus fruit itself was a symbol for the sacred lake at Kailasa. Another variation is when the water-vessel becomes a vase of plenty with sprays of lotus buds forming the four corners.

The open lotus is also used as a sun emblem on Buddhist rails of Barhut, Sanchi and Amaravati.

Buddhist and Hindu domes, constructively derived from the Bambu also, were made to imitate the bell shaped lotus fruit and sculptured with petals of the flower.

It is suggested by the famous architect and art critic E.B. Havell that the bulbous domes like that of the Taj Mahal in Agra and of Humayun’s tomb in Delhi follow the architectural form and symbolism of the old Buddhist-Hindu canon based upon the lotus flower and the water pot.

In the massive pillars of the rock temples of Elephanta, the whole design is simplified and the seed-vessel of the lotus becomes the principal member of the capital.

Here Brahma, the Creator, whose seat is at Kailasa, has a shrine dedicated to his special worship, a cubicle cell with four gates guarded by eight colossal Devas, probably meant for the Prajapatis, the eight lords of creation.  At present the cell is occupied by Siva’s phallic symbol, the lingam.   The four heads probably symbolize the four world rivers that flow from the Creator’s holy city of Kailasa.