Iconography and Images (Murtī): Ancient Concepts
This article will briefly examine some concepts of material religious image in ancient India, that is to say, from vedic times (probably c. 12th–8th cents. BCE) to 12th century CE. It will not deal with abstract images that are meditated upon in spiritual practices or with the aesthetic of image or art history. The earliest historical testimonies of material religious images in the subcontinent go back to the 2nd century BCE, after which it gradually became an omnipresent phenomenon. Yet, no Indian philosophical system paid serious attention to the notion of religious image before the disciples of Rāmānuja (12th cent. CE). Sources available to explore concepts of material religious image in ancient India are scant and mainly literary and epigraphic.
Though the word “image” is not entirely satisfactory, it is adopted in this article to refer to the representation of a god, religious leader, or perfect soul. “Icon” refers to images made according to fixed canonical rules and would not include formless religious images. The term “idol,” especially used by European missionaries and British colonial reports, is tainted by Christian culture and loaded with negative undertones; in Indian history, it would only suit the iconophobia of several modern Indian currents and Islam.
Sanskrit language (and languages derived from it) is a mine of terms designating material religious image. A well-known ancient term is pratimā (from prati + root mā-, “to copy”). Other common terms are bimba (sometimes vimba, vimva, reflection) and bera (probably from vera, body). Pratikṛti (lit. substitute), is comparatively rare (at least in ritual literature). Arcā is a generic name for material images that receive worship (pūjā, arcā). Ritual literature distinguishes images according to their function: for instance, kautuka (also arcā), which receives the daily worship, autsava (or utsavabera), festival image, and so on. The term liṅga is characteristic of Śaivism. Mūrti (manifestation), rūpa (shape, form), svarūpa (own shape), deva (god, deity), and devatā (deity) occasionally designate material images. The word arcāvatāra ([divine] descent in an image) does not seem to appear in literature prior to the 12th century. The term vyūha (divine emanation in Pāñcarātra context) designates not a material image, but a group of divine manifestations.
Ancient vedic literature does not show evidence of material representations of deities, but it depicts gods and goddesses as possessing bodies, particularly in the Ṛgvedasaṃhitā, which is the literary historical core of Vedism. Poetic vision and creation relied heavily on the belief in the inherent power of language. Language, accompanied by ritual ( yajña ), was a tool for manifesting vedic gods. One may even venture that, while ancient Vedism rarely used material images, the very substance of its religious images was language. Moreover, it conveyed perfectly the mobility that is a hallmark of the vedic society, which it attributed to its gods. Later strata of the ancient vedic corpus distinguish the mobility of gods from the sedentariness of demons (asuras): these are said to remain seated in their halls (ŚBr. 6.8.1.1).
The period from the 4th to the 2nd century BCE could have been one of an iconological crise de conscience, that is, a period of accommodation to material religious iconology in various circles of the vedic society. Several Kalpasūtras mention temples without any animosity; Yāska’s Nirukta discusses the anthropomorphic character of gods, and the Śvetāśvataropaniṣad discusses the divine body and its representation and interestingly uses the term pratimā in this context.
The Arthaśāstra, a manual of political sciences (perhaps 4th cent. CE in its present form), shows evidence of political exploitation of divine images. The royal power could use them to demoralize or destroy credulous enemies: royal agents hidden inside(?) temple images impersonate the god and converse with the king to spread in the enemy’s country the rumor of the king’s intimacy with the divine power; fake inauspicious events are created in images (in the enemy’s country), necessitating ritual atonements by the enemy, who is then killed during the ritual performance, and so on. The king could also employ images and temples to deceive his own subjects with a view to augmenting the royal treasury: for instance, his “inspector of deities” might arrange the display of fake serpents in temples and earn money by making the devotees pay to see them, or he might construct a temple overnight and claim the next day that it was a miracle, constituting a new source of income.
However, these techniques do not mean that kings were devoid of devotion. Moreover, rituals prescribed in scriptures were at the kings’ disposal to atone for these desecrating actions. Closely connected with the concept of king (often designated by the term deva) as an object worthy of viewing ( darśana ) and devotion ( bhakti ) is the attitude associating both living and dead kings with divine images. Coins stamped with divine or Buddhistic images and images of monarchs on each face confirm the close association of kings with superhuman beings and gods. Kings also installed statues of themselves in the precincts of the temples whose building they patronized.
The tradition of honoring Buddhist stūpas may have originally been associated with royal funerary traditions. In the Common Era, although temples were sometimes built to commemorate monarchs, there is no definite proof that non-Buddhist temples were erected on royal corporeal remains. Tamil sources and archaeological studies of the beginning of the 1st millennium mention the worship of commemorative stones of heroes, monarchs, artisans, and other dignitaries. However, it is not certain whether this custom could be interpreted as ancestor worship.
The Kushana temple of Mat (Māṭ) near Mathura is a rare instance of a sanctuary that contains both divine and royal images. The site of Naneghat (Nāṇeghāṭ) in Maharashtra is evidence of memorial monument. Bhāsa’s Pratimānāṭaka (variously dated between the 1st and 9th cents. CE) describes the entry of Bharata into a hall of royal images, said to be attended by a devakulika, that is, a “person attached to the devakula.” Devakula is generally understood as “temple” in early texts such as the Śāṅkhāyanagṛhyasūtra, but the exact meaning of devakulika in the Pratimānāṭaka remains to be determined, since the word deva also refers to kings. The images in the hall first appear to Bharata to be divine images; he is later told that these are the images of his deceased father and forefathers. In this passage Bhāsa seems to illustrate, through the initial ambiguity between divine and human images and the subsequent recognition of their difference experienced by Bharata, the distinction between the divine image built according to canonical requirements and the realistic representation of human individuals.
The early Buddhist iconology, like the vedic attitude, is important for understanding later Hindu concepts of religious image. That the earliest extant Buddhist stone sculpture (3rd–2nd cents. BCE) is aniconic cannot be denied. Not only does it not represent the Buddha, but it also positively represents his absence, for instance, by an empty throne. This does not preclude the possibility of contemporaneous iconic representations of Buddha, though there is no documentation to support this conjecture.
Evidence shows that in the 3rd century BCE, certain Buddhists worshipped the Buddha or his previous incarnations (bodhisattvas) in the form of relics (Skt. dhātu, śarīra). The early extant stūpas, which contained relics and sculptures but without the image of the Buddha, support the hypothesis that relic worship preceded image worship in Buddhism. Buddhist relics (originally, at least) were taken from incinerated, not from nonincinerated, bodies. Some scholars connect the veneration of relics in stūpas with the inhumation of unincinerated bodies of ascetics and the veneration of their tombs. Relics were the objects of pilgrimages and processions and meant to be seen and touched. However, relic worship was not accepted in all Buddhist circles. Those favoring it maintained that relics were imbued with Buddhist virtues and (perhaps) even with life. By around the 3rd century CE, the image of Buddha was considered to be a kind of relic. Making images of Buddha and taking them in procession was common practice at that time. The image of Buddha was considered to be a person in some monasteries. In some circles, however, representing the Buddha continued to be disapproved of, either on doctrinal grounds or because of the commercial aspect of image worship.
The practice of image reliquaries (i.e. images into which relics are introduced) seems to have been current in the Far East, but ancient documentation about it is rare in India. The Bhikṣuṇīvinayavibhaṅga (pre-6th cent.) prohibits nuns from accepting such images. The merits of making and installing image reliquaries are mentioned in Gilgit manuscripts (tentatively dated 6th–7th cents.). The earliest mention of the worship of Buddhist scriptures seems to date back to the beginning of the Common Era. It was apparently an alternative to and even competed with image worship. Worship of manuscripts was also common practice in Jainism. It is also prescribed by Hindu manuals, for example in the Pāñcarātra Pauṣkarasaṃhitā.
The legal counterpart of the religious image as a living person is its ownership. Epigraphy seems to testify to the possession of property by religious images as early as the 2nd century CE. By the 5th to 6th centuries, the idea was well established. Buddhist relics and stūpas were also considered to be legal owners. But the same period saw the existence of objections to the notion of the religious image as a living and legal person. The Mīmāṃsāka author Śabara (4th or 5th cent.) criticizes the notion that gods have bodies and own land and villages (ŚaBh. 9.1.6). He refers (through the position of his opponent) to painted representations of deities, but all religious images are probably included in the debate. Śabara’s discussion of this topic is contextual, for his main purpose is to refute the identification of vedic sacrifice (yāga) with worship ( pūjā ), not to reject worship, a customary religious activity. Śabara’s commentator Kumārila (between 600 and 700?) admitted the “dharmic character” (dharmatva) of the worship of temple deities, because those who perform vedic sacrifices also perform that worship. It seems that the notion of the image as a legal person was accepted by the members of different strata of the Indian society, including the religious and nonreligious elite. Ownership of properties by religious images perhaps helped to avoid legal disputes. The extraordinary growth of temple worship and its immense socioeconomic importance certainly strengthened this ideological consensus.
Hindu ritual manuals, notably of the Vaikhānasa Vaiṣṇava school (late 1st mill.), present two classifications of divine images. The first classifies images into “nonhuman” and “human” images (apauruṣa and pauruṣa). The second contains up to five categories of divine images:
Buddhist, Jain, and Hindu legends as well as local Māhātmyas often mention miraculous and supernatural images in which gods or supreme beings directly manifest themselves. The discovery of such images, even formless stones, is linked with supernatural events; the place of their existence is announced in dream and the like. The Mayamata, a treatise of fine arts (composed between the 9th and 12th cent.), describes the “self-manifested” liṅga (svayambhūliṅga) as devoid of all canonical features and ordains that it should not be mended in any way. A similar observation is made in the Ajitāgama, a Śaiva Tantra. Several other objects are believed to be sacred, for example, liṅga pebbles (bāṇaliṅga) found in rivers (originally the Narmadā), which are supposed to have been created by Śiva, and śālagrāmas, lithic nodules found mainly in the Gaṇḍakī river, which are held by Vaiṣṇavas to be direct manifestations of Viṣṇu. Although such objects are natural from the modern nonreligious point of view (not being man-made), they are considered supernatural from the Indian religious point of view.
In contrast with the supernatural images, those created by artisans must meet fixed “iconographic” standards. “Iconography” originally seems to have been closely linked with divination in India. As already mentioned, the earliest dated text to describe religious images (including Buddhist and Jain) is the Bṛhatsaṃhitā, a treatise of divination. Lakṣaṇa (also nimitta and liṅga) is a key concept in this text, used to designate the signs that need to be interpreted to foretell future events. The Bṛhatsaṃhitā mentions religious images in two contexts. In the first context, images are described as the possible seat of “non-natural events” (utpātas) such as anomalous and causeless breaks, movements, and sweating, which are bad omens. The second context is “iconographic”: images should include a set of lakṣaṇas (such as the form, position, clothing, weapons, symbols, etc.) to announce positive results. Lakṣaṇa in this context is often interpreted as an iconographic characteristic, but the real meaning is closer (at least originally) to the notion of “sign” in divination. The term lakṣaṇa is also employed in mantic descriptions of human bodies in the Bṛhatsaṃhitā and later manuals of divination. Image making is also closely associated with divination. The choice of raw material and its extraction are supervised by an astrologist-prognosticator. Measurements are also vital: later fine arts (śilpa) and ritual manuals often refer to the so-called ayādi method by which the measurements of all parts of the images (as well as temples, palanquins, etc.) are verified. These numerical series reveal the effects of measurements and help to rectify them to attract good and prevent bad effects. From the point of view of divination, the so-called iconography is but a manner of integrating the image into natural laws so that it does not portend unwanted results. From this perspective, the “human” images of the above classification conform to natural laws and are “natural.”
The group of performers of pratiṣṭhā and the hierarchy of its members varied according to the social importance of the event, the time, and the religious context. The relation among the patron who financed the installation, the artisan who made the image, and the religious actors who performed the ceremonies does not seem to have been uniform until the installation ritual was standardized by the Hindu temple ritual manuals at the end of the 1st millennium. These manuals defend the dominance of temple priests over the artisan and ritual operations. But artisans seem to have had a comparatively higher status in Buddhist milieus and according to some Hindu texts, for instance, the Viṣṇudharmottarapurāṇa 3.97.1, which identifies the architect-artisan (sthapati) as one of the 16 priests (ṛtvij) of the pratiṣṭhā.
In ancient Hinduism, pratiṣṭhā was performed not only to newly made images, but also to previously venerated objects, as in the case of the Buddhist relics. The Pauṣkarasaṃhitā, a Pāñcarātra Vaiṣṇava Tantra, mentions the installation of previously worshipped stones marked with Vaiṣṇava symbols such as imprints of divine feet, of discs, and lotuses. Nevertheless, the meaning of pratiṣṭhā came to be attached mainly to newly made images.
The end of the 1st millennium saw an overwhelming scriptural standardization of the installation ritual, with which certain rudimentary theological notions were associated. Scholars sometimes search for an original nucleus of a pratiṣṭhā on the basis of this standardization. According to these scholars, the rite of pratiṣṭhā progressively integrated various modules, becoming more complex as it evolved from simple domestic forms to elaborate public celebrations. There is, however, no evidence for such a scenario. Pratiṣṭhā seems to have developed in a constant dialectical movement among various modules, ceremonies, theological concepts, and so on, and this accretion was not unidirectional.
As scriptural prescriptions tended to idealize ritual processes, traces of exchanges of practices and of mutual influences faded away, but sometimes remained discernible like watermarks. A significant example is that of the connection between Buddhist reliquaries and foundation deposits in Hindu image pedestals and temples. Reliquaries and deposits are different by definition; archaeological findings seem to confirm this difference. However, the contents of the two boxes are often comparable: auspicious symbols, precious stones, and so forth. Though reliquaries are supposed also to contain human bones or ashes, this is not always the case. Giving a different name to something can help a particular religious tradition to appropriate a common custom; it also formally wards off ambiguity by imposing a specific functional interpretation. The Hindu scriptural term “embryo” (garbha) for foundation deposits precludes the possibility of any identification with a reliquary.
An example of dialectical movement between ritual prescription and interpretation is the opening of the eyes of the image. This ceremony has long been considered by scholars to be a module characteristic of the pratiṣṭhā ritual. It is alluded to by the Buddhist Ratnaguṇasaṃcayagāthā (pre- 5th cent. CE) and prescribed by two postvedic texts, the Baudhāyagṛhyapariśiṣṭasūtra and the Vaikhānasasmārtasūtra. However, the Bṛhatsaṃhitā (6th cent. CE) does not include it in its installation ritual. This ceremony became an important topic in Hindu manuals with regard to the ritual distribution of the roles of the artisan and the temple priests. Some manuals distinguish between the opening of the eyes without mantras (by the artisan) and with mantras (symbolic, performed by the priest), with a purification of the image from the intervening touch of the artisan. The persistent remodeling of this ceremony illustrates how socioreligious preoccupations influenced the various forms of the installation ritual.
Power was inherent in supernatural and miraculous images because they were of extraordinary origin. In contrast, man-made images were given power and/or consciousness during the pratiṣṭhā ritual through several modules such as opening of the eyes of the image, showering it with water imbued with divine power at the end of the rite, and, sometimes, the application to the image of color mixed with gold, symbolizing supplementary power.
The oldest Naiyāyika discussions about God’s body are traceable to two works of the 9th century, Bhāsarvajña’s Nyāyabhūṣaṇa and Jayantabhaṭṭa’s Nyāyamañjarī. Both reject the notion of God possessing a body. Two centuries later, Udayana rejected that God, as the omniscient creator of the universe, possessed a body, but accepted it for the performance of specific actions such as teaching the Veda. He named these occasional bodies “bodies of manifestation” (nirmāṇakāya), an expression also found in Buddhism. Udayana also discussed the image of deities in the context of the efficacy of rituals. He rejects the idea that rites could transform ritual objects, including divine images. But then, if they do not gain new qualities through pratiṣṭhā, how could one obtain merits through the worship of such images? Udayana’s answer is twofold. First, the transformation takes place not in material objects, religious images, and so on, but in the patron of the rite. Second, the deities do not enter images, but their consciousness is expressed in them. Udayana’s view is far from the elementary theological views expressed in the manuals of temple priests. But it perhaps shows the concern of an 11th-century Naiyāyika to legitimate the installation and efficacy of religious images.
Though the word “image” is not entirely satisfactory, it is adopted in this article to refer to the representation of a god, religious leader, or perfect soul. “Icon” refers to images made according to fixed canonical rules and would not include formless religious images. The term “idol,” especially used by European missionaries and British colonial reports, is tainted by Christian culture and loaded with negative undertones; in Indian history, it would only suit the iconophobia of several modern Indian currents and Islam.
Sanskrit language (and languages derived from it) is a mine of terms designating material religious image. A well-known ancient term is pratimā (from prati + root mā-, “to copy”). Other common terms are bimba (sometimes vimba, vimva, reflection) and bera (probably from vera, body). Pratikṛti (lit. substitute), is comparatively rare (at least in ritual literature). Arcā is a generic name for material images that receive worship (pūjā, arcā). Ritual literature distinguishes images according to their function: for instance, kautuka (also arcā), which receives the daily worship, autsava (or utsavabera), festival image, and so on. The term liṅga is characteristic of Śaivism. Mūrti (manifestation), rūpa (shape, form), svarūpa (own shape), deva (god, deity), and devatā (deity) occasionally designate material images. The word arcāvatāra ([divine] descent in an image) does not seem to appear in literature prior to the 12th century. The term vyūha (divine emanation in Pāñcarātra context) designates not a material image, but a group of divine manifestations.
Indus Valley
Archaeological exploration of the prehistoric Indus Valley society (sometimes called civilization) has unearthed a considerable quantity of iconographical material. The Indus Valley society, whose “Mature Harappan period” started around the 25th century BCE and disappeared around the 18th century BCE, developed in the northeast of the subcontinent. Modern research sometimes interprets Indus seal figures representing persons sitting in a “yogic” posture as images of Śiva or Paśupati, clay representations of fat women as mother goddesses, and so on. The anthropomorphic, semi-anthropromorphic, or fantastic figures from the Indus society will continue to receive all kinds of interpretations until the Indus “script” is deciphered, which could put an end to such speculations. At present it is not known what was divine and human in those seals, or whether there was any differentiation at all between the two in the Indus society.Ancient Vedic Society
In contrast with the Indus Valley society, the ancient vedic society (one among the many human groups that lived on the subcontinent) does not seem to have valued material images, perhaps with a few exceptions. Its members composed, compiled, used, and transmitted vedic texts, from the Ṛgvedasaṃhitā (12th to 8th cents. BCE) to the early Upaniṣads (c. 5th cent. BCE). The authority of Vedism largely extended beyond this time limit, to such an extent that it legitimated and continues to legitimate rituals and religious practices that have little to do with ancient vedic culture.Ancient vedic literature does not show evidence of material representations of deities, but it depicts gods and goddesses as possessing bodies, particularly in the Ṛgvedasaṃhitā, which is the literary historical core of Vedism. Poetic vision and creation relied heavily on the belief in the inherent power of language. Language, accompanied by ritual ( yajña ), was a tool for manifesting vedic gods. One may even venture that, while ancient Vedism rarely used material images, the very substance of its religious images was language. Moreover, it conveyed perfectly the mobility that is a hallmark of the vedic society, which it attributed to its gods. Later strata of the ancient vedic corpus distinguish the mobility of gods from the sedentariness of demons (asuras): these are said to remain seated in their halls (ŚBr. 6.8.1.1).
The period from the 4th to the 2nd century BCE could have been one of an iconological crise de conscience, that is, a period of accommodation to material religious iconology in various circles of the vedic society. Several Kalpasūtras mention temples without any animosity; Yāska’s Nirukta discusses the anthropomorphic character of gods, and the Śvetāśvataropaniṣad discusses the divine body and its representation and interestingly uses the term pratimā in this context.
Early Political Use of Religious Images
Two major early testimonies, both ascribed to the 2nd century BCE, reflect the place of divine images in politics. One is numismatic: six coins of Agathokles, an Indo-Greek king, contain images of Vāsudeva and Balarāma. The other testimony is Patañjali’s commentary on Pāṇini’s Aṣṭādhyāyī 5.3.99, which ordains that the suffix –ka is to be added to the names of gods Śiva, Skanda, and Viśākha when their cultic images (arcā) are designated. Moreover, this suffix applies solely to the names of the images that were sold by Mauryas “to obtain gold,” and not to contemporaneous images. This ordinance seems to show that the grammarian believed that cultic image was a mere representation, not to be considered as a god.The Arthaśāstra, a manual of political sciences (perhaps 4th cent. CE in its present form), shows evidence of political exploitation of divine images. The royal power could use them to demoralize or destroy credulous enemies: royal agents hidden inside(?) temple images impersonate the god and converse with the king to spread in the enemy’s country the rumor of the king’s intimacy with the divine power; fake inauspicious events are created in images (in the enemy’s country), necessitating ritual atonements by the enemy, who is then killed during the ritual performance, and so on. The king could also employ images and temples to deceive his own subjects with a view to augmenting the royal treasury: for instance, his “inspector of deities” might arrange the display of fake serpents in temples and earn money by making the devotees pay to see them, or he might construct a temple overnight and claim the next day that it was a miracle, constituting a new source of income.
However, these techniques do not mean that kings were devoid of devotion. Moreover, rituals prescribed in scriptures were at the kings’ disposal to atone for these desecrating actions. Closely connected with the concept of king (often designated by the term deva) as an object worthy of viewing ( darśana ) and devotion ( bhakti ) is the attitude associating both living and dead kings with divine images. Coins stamped with divine or Buddhistic images and images of monarchs on each face confirm the close association of kings with superhuman beings and gods. Kings also installed statues of themselves in the precincts of the temples whose building they patronized.
The tradition of honoring Buddhist stūpas may have originally been associated with royal funerary traditions. In the Common Era, although temples were sometimes built to commemorate monarchs, there is no definite proof that non-Buddhist temples were erected on royal corporeal remains. Tamil sources and archaeological studies of the beginning of the 1st millennium mention the worship of commemorative stones of heroes, monarchs, artisans, and other dignitaries. However, it is not certain whether this custom could be interpreted as ancestor worship.
The Kushana temple of Mat (Māṭ) near Mathura is a rare instance of a sanctuary that contains both divine and royal images. The site of Naneghat (Nāṇeghāṭ) in Maharashtra is evidence of memorial monument. Bhāsa’s Pratimānāṭaka (variously dated between the 1st and 9th cents. CE) describes the entry of Bharata into a hall of royal images, said to be attended by a devakulika, that is, a “person attached to the devakula.” Devakula is generally understood as “temple” in early texts such as the Śāṅkhāyanagṛhyasūtra, but the exact meaning of devakulika in the Pratimānāṭaka remains to be determined, since the word deva also refers to kings. The images in the hall first appear to Bharata to be divine images; he is later told that these are the images of his deceased father and forefathers. In this passage Bhāsa seems to illustrate, through the initial ambiguity between divine and human images and the subsequent recognition of their difference experienced by Bharata, the distinction between the divine image built according to canonical requirements and the realistic representation of human individuals.
Images of the Buddha
In ancient India, divine image was an object of worship or a means to worship the deity it represented. But the representation of disappeared or spiritually liberated persons, such as the Buddha or the tīrthaṅkaras, and its worship is a paradox: having completely disappeared through their extinction (nirvāṇa) or spiritual liberation (mokṣa, mukti), such persons cannot help the devotees or play the role of an intermediary with divine powers. They can only be remembered by their followers for inspiration.The early Buddhist iconology, like the vedic attitude, is important for understanding later Hindu concepts of religious image. That the earliest extant Buddhist stone sculpture (3rd–2nd cents. BCE) is aniconic cannot be denied. Not only does it not represent the Buddha, but it also positively represents his absence, for instance, by an empty throne. This does not preclude the possibility of contemporaneous iconic representations of Buddha, though there is no documentation to support this conjecture.
Evidence shows that in the 3rd century BCE, certain Buddhists worshipped the Buddha or his previous incarnations (bodhisattvas) in the form of relics (Skt. dhātu, śarīra). The early extant stūpas, which contained relics and sculptures but without the image of the Buddha, support the hypothesis that relic worship preceded image worship in Buddhism. Buddhist relics (originally, at least) were taken from incinerated, not from nonincinerated, bodies. Some scholars connect the veneration of relics in stūpas with the inhumation of unincinerated bodies of ascetics and the veneration of their tombs. Relics were the objects of pilgrimages and processions and meant to be seen and touched. However, relic worship was not accepted in all Buddhist circles. Those favoring it maintained that relics were imbued with Buddhist virtues and (perhaps) even with life. By around the 3rd century CE, the image of Buddha was considered to be a kind of relic. Making images of Buddha and taking them in procession was common practice at that time. The image of Buddha was considered to be a person in some monasteries. In some circles, however, representing the Buddha continued to be disapproved of, either on doctrinal grounds or because of the commercial aspect of image worship.
The practice of image reliquaries (i.e. images into which relics are introduced) seems to have been current in the Far East, but ancient documentation about it is rare in India. The Bhikṣuṇīvinayavibhaṅga (pre-6th cent.) prohibits nuns from accepting such images. The merits of making and installing image reliquaries are mentioned in Gilgit manuscripts (tentatively dated 6th–7th cents.). The earliest mention of the worship of Buddhist scriptures seems to date back to the beginning of the Common Era. It was apparently an alternative to and even competed with image worship. Worship of manuscripts was also common practice in Jainism. It is also prescribed by Hindu manuals, for example in the Pāñcarātra Pauṣkarasaṃhitā.
Image as a Person: A Debate around the 5th Century
The period around the 5th to 6th century illustrates well the coexistence of various and sometimes contradictory concepts of the religious image. One example concerns the question of whether the image was a living person. During the first three centuries CE, the image of the Buddha presided over assemblies and received various marks of attention, such as protection from rain. It was given a “perfumed room” in monasteries. The poems of the Āḻvārs, Tamil Vaiṣṇava saints (6th–9th cents.), identify the material image of god as the body of god. The image, as a sentient person, receives offerings addressed to his five senses and interacts with the devotee. For example, the term darśana in this religious context is interpreted both as the deity’s showing itself to the devotee and the act of seeing the deity by the devotee. This notion seems to have existed in Buddhism since the beginning of the Common Era, because it was said that the devotee obtained merits by seeing the auspicious marks of the image of the Buddha.The legal counterpart of the religious image as a living person is its ownership. Epigraphy seems to testify to the possession of property by religious images as early as the 2nd century CE. By the 5th to 6th centuries, the idea was well established. Buddhist relics and stūpas were also considered to be legal owners. But the same period saw the existence of objections to the notion of the religious image as a living and legal person. The Mīmāṃsāka author Śabara (4th or 5th cent.) criticizes the notion that gods have bodies and own land and villages (ŚaBh. 9.1.6). He refers (through the position of his opponent) to painted representations of deities, but all religious images are probably included in the debate. Śabara’s discussion of this topic is contextual, for his main purpose is to refute the identification of vedic sacrifice (yāga) with worship ( pūjā ), not to reject worship, a customary religious activity. Śabara’s commentator Kumārila (between 600 and 700?) admitted the “dharmic character” (dharmatva) of the worship of temple deities, because those who perform vedic sacrifices also perform that worship. It seems that the notion of the image as a legal person was accepted by the members of different strata of the Indian society, including the religious and nonreligious elite. Ownership of properties by religious images perhaps helped to avoid legal disputes. The extraordinary growth of temple worship and its immense socioeconomic importance certainly strengthened this ideological consensus.
Images, Mantic Signs, Iconography
The oldest dated text to record “iconographic” prescriptions is the Bṛhatsaṃhitā, a 6th-century manual of divination by Varāhamihira. Several important Hindu and Buddhist manuals of iconography and fine arts (śilpaśāstra) were written before the end of the 1st millennium. Temple ritual manuals (of c. 10th cent.) of various sectarian affiliations also contain a wealth of “iconographic” data among their prescriptions for making and installing images. Among puranic material, the Citrasūtra (3.35–43) of the Viṣṇudharmottarapurāṇa (5th–11th cents.) is well known for its “iconographic” prescriptions.Hindu ritual manuals, notably of the Vaikhānasa Vaiṣṇava school (late 1st mill.), present two classifications of divine images. The first classifies images into “nonhuman” and “human” images (apauruṣa and pauruṣa). The second contains up to five categories of divine images:
- 1.
- “self-manifested” (svayaṃvyakta, “in which the supreme god, Viṣṇu, reveals himself directly as an image”);
- 2.
- “divine” (divya, “founded by gods other than Viṣṇu”);
- 3.
- “founded by a ṛṣi ” (ārṣa) or “by a perfect person” (saiddha);
- 4.
- “antique” (paurāṇa, paurāṇika); and
- 5.
- “human” (mānuṣa).
Buddhist, Jain, and Hindu legends as well as local Māhātmyas often mention miraculous and supernatural images in which gods or supreme beings directly manifest themselves. The discovery of such images, even formless stones, is linked with supernatural events; the place of their existence is announced in dream and the like. The Mayamata, a treatise of fine arts (composed between the 9th and 12th cent.), describes the “self-manifested” liṅga (svayambhūliṅga) as devoid of all canonical features and ordains that it should not be mended in any way. A similar observation is made in the Ajitāgama, a Śaiva Tantra. Several other objects are believed to be sacred, for example, liṅga pebbles (bāṇaliṅga) found in rivers (originally the Narmadā), which are supposed to have been created by Śiva, and śālagrāmas, lithic nodules found mainly in the Gaṇḍakī river, which are held by Vaiṣṇavas to be direct manifestations of Viṣṇu. Although such objects are natural from the modern nonreligious point of view (not being man-made), they are considered supernatural from the Indian religious point of view.
In contrast with the supernatural images, those created by artisans must meet fixed “iconographic” standards. “Iconography” originally seems to have been closely linked with divination in India. As already mentioned, the earliest dated text to describe religious images (including Buddhist and Jain) is the Bṛhatsaṃhitā, a treatise of divination. Lakṣaṇa (also nimitta and liṅga) is a key concept in this text, used to designate the signs that need to be interpreted to foretell future events. The Bṛhatsaṃhitā mentions religious images in two contexts. In the first context, images are described as the possible seat of “non-natural events” (utpātas) such as anomalous and causeless breaks, movements, and sweating, which are bad omens. The second context is “iconographic”: images should include a set of lakṣaṇas (such as the form, position, clothing, weapons, symbols, etc.) to announce positive results. Lakṣaṇa in this context is often interpreted as an iconographic characteristic, but the real meaning is closer (at least originally) to the notion of “sign” in divination. The term lakṣaṇa is also employed in mantic descriptions of human bodies in the Bṛhatsaṃhitā and later manuals of divination. Image making is also closely associated with divination. The choice of raw material and its extraction are supervised by an astrologist-prognosticator. Measurements are also vital: later fine arts (śilpa) and ritual manuals often refer to the so-called ayādi method by which the measurements of all parts of the images (as well as temples, palanquins, etc.) are verified. These numerical series reveal the effects of measurements and help to rectify them to attract good and prevent bad effects. From the point of view of divination, the so-called iconography is but a manner of integrating the image into natural laws so that it does not portend unwanted results. From this perspective, the “human” images of the above classification conform to natural laws and are “natural.”
Installation
Pratiṣṭhā (here translated as “installation”) is generally understood as a rite that gives life or power to a religious image. There is, however, no definite proof that installation was originally a rite, namely, a systematized and replicable succession of religious ceremonies. In the Brāhmaṇas and several Upaniṣads, the word pratiṣṭhā signifies “establishing.” In the Taittirīyopaniṣad, it designates the process of establishing oneself at various spiritual levels. Pratiṣṭhā also has a political connotation in later Sanskrit literature, such as the establishment of a dynasty. In the Buddhist inscriptions of the first four centuries CE, pratiṣṭhā seems to mean material fixation. It concerned relics, which were supposed to possess an inherent religious value (and even life), as well as man-made objects such as images and architectural elements of the stūpa, like the parasol (chattra), and so on. The Aṣṭasāhasrikāprajñāpāramitā, an early text (perhaps 1st cent. CE), also ordains the installation of Buddhist scriptures. Early Buddhist pratiṣṭhā was probably a public and solemn event, but there is no proof that it was a rite.The group of performers of pratiṣṭhā and the hierarchy of its members varied according to the social importance of the event, the time, and the religious context. The relation among the patron who financed the installation, the artisan who made the image, and the religious actors who performed the ceremonies does not seem to have been uniform until the installation ritual was standardized by the Hindu temple ritual manuals at the end of the 1st millennium. These manuals defend the dominance of temple priests over the artisan and ritual operations. But artisans seem to have had a comparatively higher status in Buddhist milieus and according to some Hindu texts, for instance, the Viṣṇudharmottarapurāṇa 3.97.1, which identifies the architect-artisan (sthapati) as one of the 16 priests (ṛtvij) of the pratiṣṭhā.
In ancient Hinduism, pratiṣṭhā was performed not only to newly made images, but also to previously venerated objects, as in the case of the Buddhist relics. The Pauṣkarasaṃhitā, a Pāñcarātra Vaiṣṇava Tantra, mentions the installation of previously worshipped stones marked with Vaiṣṇava symbols such as imprints of divine feet, of discs, and lotuses. Nevertheless, the meaning of pratiṣṭhā came to be attached mainly to newly made images.
The end of the 1st millennium saw an overwhelming scriptural standardization of the installation ritual, with which certain rudimentary theological notions were associated. Scholars sometimes search for an original nucleus of a pratiṣṭhā on the basis of this standardization. According to these scholars, the rite of pratiṣṭhā progressively integrated various modules, becoming more complex as it evolved from simple domestic forms to elaborate public celebrations. There is, however, no evidence for such a scenario. Pratiṣṭhā seems to have developed in a constant dialectical movement among various modules, ceremonies, theological concepts, and so on, and this accretion was not unidirectional.
As scriptural prescriptions tended to idealize ritual processes, traces of exchanges of practices and of mutual influences faded away, but sometimes remained discernible like watermarks. A significant example is that of the connection between Buddhist reliquaries and foundation deposits in Hindu image pedestals and temples. Reliquaries and deposits are different by definition; archaeological findings seem to confirm this difference. However, the contents of the two boxes are often comparable: auspicious symbols, precious stones, and so forth. Though reliquaries are supposed also to contain human bones or ashes, this is not always the case. Giving a different name to something can help a particular religious tradition to appropriate a common custom; it also formally wards off ambiguity by imposing a specific functional interpretation. The Hindu scriptural term “embryo” (garbha) for foundation deposits precludes the possibility of any identification with a reliquary.
An example of dialectical movement between ritual prescription and interpretation is the opening of the eyes of the image. This ceremony has long been considered by scholars to be a module characteristic of the pratiṣṭhā ritual. It is alluded to by the Buddhist Ratnaguṇasaṃcayagāthā (pre- 5th cent. CE) and prescribed by two postvedic texts, the Baudhāyagṛhyapariśiṣṭasūtra and the Vaikhānasasmārtasūtra. However, the Bṛhatsaṃhitā (6th cent. CE) does not include it in its installation ritual. This ceremony became an important topic in Hindu manuals with regard to the ritual distribution of the roles of the artisan and the temple priests. Some manuals distinguish between the opening of the eyes without mantras (by the artisan) and with mantras (symbolic, performed by the priest), with a purification of the image from the intervening touch of the artisan. The persistent remodeling of this ceremony illustrates how socioreligious preoccupations influenced the various forms of the installation ritual.
Power was inherent in supernatural and miraculous images because they were of extraordinary origin. In contrast, man-made images were given power and/or consciousness during the pratiṣṭhā ritual through several modules such as opening of the eyes of the image, showering it with water imbued with divine power at the end of the rite, and, sometimes, the application to the image of color mixed with gold, symbolizing supplementary power.
Religious Image and Philosophy: Nyāya
Theology appears to be a comparatively recent topic in ancient Hindu philosophical schools. Discussions of the notion of religious image are rare. The examples of the Nyāya and Vaiśeṣika schools is significant in this regard. The Vaiśeṣikasūtras (probably first cents. CE) do not directly refer to God. The Nyāyasūtras (probably before the end of the 3rd cent. CE) mention God only incidentally. They refer to a theory according to which God is the cause of the universe, but it is not certain that this was the author’s thesis. The situation changed in the 6th century with the commentators Praśastapāda and Uddyotakara, who clearly accept the notion of a creator god. In the 11th century, Udayana brings in an entirely new perspective. The main aim of his Nyāyakusumāñjali is to establish the existence of God through reasoning.The oldest Naiyāyika discussions about God’s body are traceable to two works of the 9th century, Bhāsarvajña’s Nyāyabhūṣaṇa and Jayantabhaṭṭa’s Nyāyamañjarī. Both reject the notion of God possessing a body. Two centuries later, Udayana rejected that God, as the omniscient creator of the universe, possessed a body, but accepted it for the performance of specific actions such as teaching the Veda. He named these occasional bodies “bodies of manifestation” (nirmāṇakāya), an expression also found in Buddhism. Udayana also discussed the image of deities in the context of the efficacy of rituals. He rejects the idea that rites could transform ritual objects, including divine images. But then, if they do not gain new qualities through pratiṣṭhā, how could one obtain merits through the worship of such images? Udayana’s answer is twofold. First, the transformation takes place not in material objects, religious images, and so on, but in the patron of the rite. Second, the deities do not enter images, but their consciousness is expressed in them. Udayana’s view is far from the elementary theological views expressed in the manuals of temple priests. But it perhaps shows the concern of an 11th-century Naiyāyika to legitimate the installation and efficacy of religious images.
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