something about art

The Art of Ancient India: Buddhist, Hindu, Jain by Susan L. Huntington; John C.Huntington; The Art and Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent by James C. HarleReview by: Christopher TadgellJournal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 48, No. 2 (Jun., 1989), pp. 206-209Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Society of Architectural HistoriansStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/990375 .Accessed: 31/01/2015 15:19

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

University of California Press and Society of Architectural Historians are collaborating with JSTOR todigitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 134.83.1.244 on Sat, 31 Jan 2015 15:19:45 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucalhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=sahhttp://www.jstor.org/stable/990375?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

206 JSAH, XLVIII:2, JUNE 1989

INDIAN ARCHITECTURE

SUSAN L. andJOHN C. HUNTINGTON, The Art of Ancient India: Buddhist, Hindu,Jain, New York: Weatherhill, 1985, 786

pp., 775 illus. $80.00.

JAMES C. HARLE, The Art and Architecture of the Indian Sub- continent (Pelican History of Art), Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986, 597 pp., 393 illus. $40.00 (cloth), $18.95 (paper).

Susan and John Huntington have written The Art of Ancient India "for many audiences-the scholar, for whom we hope to

provide an up-to-date background against which his or her own

specific areas of interest may be examined; for teachers and students at the college level, for whom this volume might provide both an overview of a complex subject and a resource for their own deeper investigations into the subject; and for the

general reader, for whom we hope to provide a broad-based introduction to what is for us one of the most fascinating areas of world art" (p. xi). They note that the need for an up-to-date overview of the art of South Asia has been apparent for de- cades-and one would readily agree that a revision of the last significant work of this kind, Benjamin Rowland's sterling Pel- ican History of Art volume on the Art and Architecture of India: Buddhist, Hindu, Jain (Harmondsworth, 1953) has long been overdue. "The volume reflects our efforts to provide such a

synthesis," and in the integration of the three arts I find the reflection particularly illuminating.

It would be daunting enough to set out simply to follow the intertwined courses of the development of architecture, sculpture, and painting in South Asia-which here includes modern India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. As the Huntingtons rightly imply, however, a conventional art-historical approach to this

subject, preoccupied with formal analysis and the permutations of style, is totally inadequate: "For millenia, the peoples of South Asia have produced works of art in seemingly endless quantity and of virtually infinite diversity. Such objects were frequently materialisations of their creators' highest religious and philo- sophical ideals . . . not just aesthetic expressions or exercises in colour or form but... visualisations of the transcendant, brought into the range of human understanding" (p. xxvi). "Most Indic

religions seek to ... foster the realization of universal unity and of the understanding that each seemingly separate entity is but a manifestation of the One. Ultimate truth is considered to be transcendent, intrinsically beyond our limited means of acquir- ing knowledge. However, a number of symbolic devices (which indicate the Truth not by revealing it but by referring to it) may point toward the goal of realizing the undifferentiated state.

Among these are mantras (verbal formulae or incantations), yan- tras (mechanical devices such as geometric diagrams), and murtis

(images, icons, or sculptures).... These latter two devices ...

comprise the main subject of this book. What we call the art of ancient India is, in fact, the reification of certain metaphysical concepts, the purpose of which is to enable the religious devotee to more easily internalise the ultimate Truth" (p. xxvi). In

general I admire the way the Huntingtons have confronted the

excruciatingly difficult task of summarizing Indian religions, as the context for painting, sculpture, and architecture, in a manner

comprehensible to the Western reader. I shall return to this aspect of the book below. If religion was the major motivating force behind Indian artistic endeavor, there was secular moti- vation, too; and though, admittedly, it produced little that has proved durable, the Huntingtons might have paid more attention to it.

James Harle's Pelican History of Art volume, The Art and Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent, replaces Benjamin Row- land's Pelican volume. Excluding Southeast Asia but including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, Harle adds a section on Muslim architecture. Secular architecture is ignored, except for a passing reference to a handful of forts in "Western India, Malwa ans Madhya Pradesh," and a cursory note on the Mughal palaces before a summary list of the main Rajput ones at the end of part seven, "Indo-Islamic Architec- ture." I feel I must say at the outset that the inadequacy of this part in general-some 20 pages of text out of nearly 500 in all-is a great disappointment. Given the dazzling complexity of the subject as a whole and the severe constraints presumably exerted by the publishers, it would have been better to follow Rowland or issue an expanded work in two volumes if equal justice could not be done to all aspects in one.

The great strength of Professor Harle's book is the treatment of sculpture, especially in the early parts. Here the quantity and quality of Early India's sculptural legacy far outweighs the architectural remains, except, of course, for the excavated works, themselves sculpted. Thereafter an escalating number of buildings survive in part or in whole and as much of the most important sculpture was intrinsic to the design of those buildings, the description of architecture eclipses the analyses of sculpture as the two arts are dealt with in tandem. However, when early fresco supplants sculpture in interior design, it is dealt with in the separate section on painting, which is inevitably dominated by the imported miniature tradition.

Harle admits to "a fairly conventional art-historical approach, emphasizing styles, their character, origins, and development and supplying only as much of the cultural background as seemed necessary for an understanding of the basic features of the artistic, sculptural, and architectural forms" (p. 9). I find it difficult to agree with his assessment of how much background was necessary. No less than the Huntingtons' readers, surely, Pelican History of Art readers will need a summary of Indian history, far more on the major religions, and a guide to symbolism. Harle is right to warn that "in a field where the great prepon- derance of art, mainly religious, relies to some extent at least on ancient traditions, many areas of interpretation are open- geomantic, cosmological, mystical, and sometimes, in the later periods, magical" but it is not good enough to leave interpretation of the meaning behind the forms to "Stella Kramrisch's great The Hindu Temple [Calcutta, 1946] ... by far the most important study of the temple in all its aspects ... [and] one of the intellectual monuments of our time" (p. 9).

Leaving the problem of explanation aside for the moment, let us turn to the difficulties of exposition. The problem of

assembling the vast amount of material on the development of

painting, sculpture, and architecture across a subcontinent at


http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

BOOK REVIEWS 207

least as rich and diversified as Europe, is notorious. Harle rightly avoids the misleading sectarian division between Buddhist and Hindu-if not between Hindu and Muslim-in favor of a not unconventional four-part chronological division turning upon the Guptas. In effect the contraction of Rowland's first three parts ("Prehistoric and Epic," "Early Classic Periods," and "Ro- mano-Indian") into a prelude to the Guptas, enhancing the undeniable importance of the latter, understates the degree to which Gupta artists, builders in particular, were dependent upon their inheritance. Continuity of development is further masked by the division of the second, third, and fourth parts into "Gup- ta," "Post-Gupta," and "Later-Hindu"-this is not unconventional and though essentially arbitrary, the fourth division offers a necessary corrective to Rowland's inadequate treatment of indigenous activity in the half millenium following the decline of the Guptas in hardly more than 40 pages of a single section called "Hindu Renaissance."

The artificiality of this convention is a real problem when the dynastic approach implicit in the title of Part 2 is abandoned in Parts 3 and 4 for subdivisions in accordance with areas of northern India. Over such a broad time scale, in practice the nonspecialist will often not be able to understand what is hap- pening in a given area without knowing what was going on in other areas. To be specific: how can one recall the ground plans of Early Western Chalukyan temples (p. 136) before one has been introduced to them; more important, in Part 3, chapters 11 and 12, the reader is given terms like Nagara and Dravida (northern and southern) in a vacuum, without any introduction to the fundamental bifurcation of the development of the Hindu temple in north and south, because the straightjacket of the area approach has relegated any consideration of the south to Part 5. Indeed only in chapter 13 is there a clear definition even of the northern form; this section, like the introduction to the South Indian part itself, reads as though it had been written to come earlier. While Harle probably relegated the Early Cha- lukyas at Aihole to this relatively late stage in the book to discount their seminal importance, it would have made greater sense to deal with them as contemporaries of the later Guptas. More specifically, the area approach is unaccountably given pre- cedence over chronology in the relegation of the Mahabody temple to Part 3, chapter 15, even though a 6th-century date- well within the period when the area was ruled by the Guptas- is upheld for the present temple's foundation. This work, moreover, gives a crucial insight into the putative form of the northern superstructure, the 19th-century restoration notwithstanding, as Harle recognizes: "it does ... essentially represent the structure which replaced the original shrine .... There is no firm evidence to date this event, so crucial to the history of the development of the Indian temple, particularly the Nagara type, but it was certainly no later than the fifth or sixth century" (p. 201).

Harle justifies treating the south in a separate section-perhaps his best, in the event-after the survey of all the northern schools, on the grounds that the earliest southern buildings were later than the earliest northern ones and that its relatively un- broken longevity far surpassed Hindu building activity in the north. While the latter is undeniable, in my opinion Harle overstates the former. Apart from the restored work at Bodh Gaya, the earliest surviving superstructures in a recognizably Nagara form, all generally dated between the late 5th and mid-

7th centuries, are to be found most notably at Deogarh and Bhitargaon (badly mutilated), Bhubaneshwar, Sirpur, and Aih- ole. The earliest surviving Dravida temples are usually thought to be the so-called rathas hewn from boulders at Mahaballipuram under Narasimhavarman I Mamalla (c. 630-670). Countering the assessment of Srinivasan (credited p. 518, n. 27, with having written the definitive surveys of Pallava architecture), Harle implicitly gives them to Mamalla's successors on the negative evidence of Nagaswamy-the nonappearance in the inscriptions on these works of the sort of title which, in accordance with later practice, Mamalla might have been expected to use (p. 518, n. 30). However disposed one might be toward this sort of argument, especially in the depth of obscurity into which the chronology of the evolution of the Hindu temple has sunk, it is hardly adequate as the basis for the deduction that "the earliest temples in the 'southern' style at Badami and nearby are perhaps half a century earlier than those of the Pallavas" (p. 272). Harle denies direct filiation between the surviving buildings of the two schools-and, implicitly, the possibility that Mamalla, impressed with the stone buildings of the Chalukyas while occupying Badami in 642, could have commissioned the rathas in emulation on his return to the south. It is certainly possible that both worked coincidentally from the pervasive structural prototype of the prasada, long executed in perishable materials for both temples and palaces. It is simply not good enough, however, to ignore the counterargument, crucial not only for the dating of individual works but for assessing the seminal importance of the Pallavas, that Vikramaditya I (655-674) or even Pulakesin II (610-642), impressed with the work of Mamalla's architects after occupying Kanchi, brought the Dravida form north as an alternative to the Nagara. Harle's readiness to do this, of course, accords with his relegation of the southern school to a late place in the book and this, in turn, makes much that he says in the sections on the Early and Later Chalukyas in the Deccan-"where north meets south"-incomprehensible to a reader with no knowledge of the south.

There is a natural watershed in the long development of the southern tradition between the decline of the Cholas and the advent of Vijayanagar and this is roughly coincidental with the establishment of the Muslims in the north. Recognizing this, the north and south may be dealt with in coeval phases. Which comes first is then determinable on a need-to-know basis. As I have already maintained, we need to know about the Pallavas before the Early Chalukyas can be acquitted comprehensibly. Equally we need to know about the Cholas and the mainstream of pre-Muslim northern development before the synthesis at- tempted by Later Chalukyas and Hoysalas can be accounted for. A return to the Hindus of Vijayanagar and their successors in the south, as well as the resurgent Rajputs in the north, after dealing with the Muslims of Delhi and the regional Sultanates, has the advantage of counteracting the impression-reinforced by the division of the subject into Hindu and Muslim parts- that significant Hindu activity in the subcontinent ceased with the dominance of the Muslims. Some knowledge of the interaction of the Deccani Sultanates and Vijayanagar, moreover, is essential for a full appreciation not only of the works of Vijaya- nagar itself but of the Mughal achievement.

In my opinion the best way around the problem of exposition is to follow well-established precedent and adopt India-wide dynastic rather than area subdivisions for the millenium follow-



208 JSAH, XLVIII:2, JUNE 1989

ing the advent of the Guptas. The danger of identifying formal developments too closely with dynasties is no more insidious than identifying them with area. Broad continuity of development within the divergent northern and southern traditions will not be obscured either way, and the whole complex story will be told with much greater clarity despite the uncertainty of some crucial dynastic dates, which Harle avoids by denying his readers all but the barest minimum of historical background.

Stressing that the interaction of numerous indigenous and imported political regimes over the past two and one-half millenia "left a legacy of complicated linguistic, racial, and cultural patterns that are reflected in the important artistic schools of the South Asian subcontinent" (p. xxv), the Huntingtons adopt a chronology based upon dynastic history for their approach to the interweaving of regional, religious, and cultural trends, their acute awareness of the pitfalls notwithstanding.

After an introduction establishing the geographical context, rehearsing the problems of dating and asserting most persua- sively the indissoluble connection between art and the essentially religious culture of Indian society, the Huntingtons divide their book into five parts. The first, "Foundations of Indic Civiliza- tion: The Prehistoric and Protohistoric Periods," deals with antecedents, the "Indus (or Harappa) Civilization (c. 2300 to 1750 B.c.)," and the predominantly literary evidence left by "The Vedic and Upanisadic Periods (c. 1500 to 450 B.c.)." Part 2, "Period of the Early Dynasties," deals with developments throughout the region from the rise of the Mauryas in the 4th century B.C. to the decline of the Kusanas toward the end of the 3rd century A.D. The Buddhists were then predominant but one of the book's virtues is to take the emergence of Hindu, or at least proto-Hindu, art back to an earlier-than-usual date. Part 3, "Dynasties of the Middle Period," which traces the putative development of the temple, Buddhist and Hindu, and its sculptural and painted embellishment, is dominated by the work done under three major imperial regimes: the Gupta, from their advent in the Ganges basin early in the 4th century A.D. to their decline as an essentially north Indian power some two centuries later, and, over the following two centuries, the Pallavas and Chalukyas, whose rival claims to the invention of the southern form are left unresolved though the dating of the Pallava works, at least, is generally uncontroversial. Rather than continuing with southern developments, equally satisfactorily they turn in Part 4 to "Later Northern Schools" including those of Kashmir, Bihar, Bengal, Orissa, and the various Rajput clans, notably the Gujara-Pratiharas, Solankis, Kalacuris, Chandellas, and Para- maras. Part 5, "Later Schools of the Deccan and the South," opens with Colas and their neighbors (mid-9th to 13th centuries); exemplary logic then takes us to the Deccani domains of the Gangas, Later Chalukyas, Yadavas, Kakatiyas, and Hoy- salas; the next two chapters are devoted to imperial Vijayanagar and its Nyaks successors, the last (apart from a short afterword) to Kerala.

Most helpfully, each major section begins with an outline of the relevant period of dynastic history. This leads me back to the problem of explanation. While Professor Harle's approach precludes much background, religious or dynastic, as I have already noted, the Huntingtons constantly interweave the strands of religious development with those of the evolution of all three arts. Given the complexity of the subject, my only reservation is that the reader might have found it easier to cope had strict

contextual relevance been waived and the religious background also been dealt with in introductory sections, rather than within the substantive narrative itself. A concise summary, too, needed for recurrent reference, would have obviated repetition.

The third chapter of the Huntingtons' first part seems to me to provide exactly what the reader needs on the Vedic tradition of the invading Aryans. The section on the Upanisads is also excellent, as far as it goes, in stressing their indigenous, non- Vedic content but one wants more on the native tradition: in addition to the Vedic cosmology and the intervention of Indra, one looks in particular for some account of Varuna and what Ananda Coomaraswami calls the "Water Cosmology" (Yahsas, Washington, 1928, and New Delhi, 1971)-if only to discount the lucid thesis that this was the vital source of iconography and symbolism for Buddhist and Hindu alike. It cannot but be baffling to encounter its protagonists-the fertility spirits of sacred spots (caityas), most especially associated with trees and water (yaksas and nagas and their female counterparts, vehicles, etc.)-emerging from the general narrative without prior introduction (e.g., pp. 59, 68).

Chapter 3 also introduces us to Mahavira and Buddha but one looks in vain again for a concise summary of the Jataka legends of the Buddha's life, another vital source of iconography. Later too, considerable argument against traditional ideas on Hinayana aniconic attitudes to that iconography-much of it inevitably speculative, most of it not unconvincing-is un- fortunately dispersed in several sections of the general narrative. In line with current thought, the Huntingtons plausibly take the origins of the devotional theism of Mahayana Buddhism much further back than has been traditional. In playing down the impact of Hellenisticforms (p. 110), however, they produce nothing to deny (or substantiate) the association of image or- ientated worship with the infiltration of Hellenistic concepts in the generations after the brief apparition of Alexander (pp. 113, 630). Worthy though it is to take image worship back well

beyond the Saka-Parthian period, it seems less so to ignore Marshall's identification of the earliest surviving image shrine in India-a votive structure of c. 78 A.D. in the compound of the Dharmarajika Stupa at Taxila (J. Marshall, Taxila, Cam-

bridge, 1951)-to say nothing of the earliest known large-scale temple, the distinctly Greco-Roman one at Jandial which was

probably built by the early Sakas in the 1st century B.C. For his part, Harle avoids such issues as Buddhist sectarian

attitudes to the icon, but I do not think clarity is furthered by the treatment of Mathura, let alone the Mahayana phase of Amaravati, before Gandhara (p. 34). Even if only to dispute the

importance generally placed on the introduction of Hellenistic ideas to Gandhara and assert the primacy of indigenous ideas

developed at Mathura, the obscure events at the latter site are best seen against the much more clearly delineated ones in Gand- hara. Moreover, scant attention to the great sites of Taxila and Nagarjuniconda deny the opportunity even to register the first

appearance of a building specifically destined to house the image of the deity rather than to shelter the relics of a holy man.

Given the scope of his coverage of the temple, indeed, it is astonishing that Harle never clearly delineates its origin. The basic elements of the earliest image shrine, cella and porch, could and should have been accounted for in terms of the per- sonal, noncongregational nature of Indian worship (puja) from the outset, with the priest acting as intermediary between the



BOOK REVIEWS 209

individual devotee in the porch and the god in the sanctum. Fully aware of Hindu devotional practice though the Hunting- tons are, their early observation that Hindu puja "might be described as a hospitality ritual involving the offering of foods, water, and flowers to a deity" (p. 28) needs elaboration in the context of a section on the function of the temple.

Intrinsically important, of course, some account of Hinduism and its puja not only provides the key to the basic constituent elements of the buildings concerned, but it is crucial if the complicated development of the simple prototype into the residence of the god-palace or mountain-is to be understood. Excellent as they are on Hindu iconography, the Huntingtons often imply that architecture was an extension of sculpture. This is wholly comprehensible given the significance of excavated work in the development of the monumental masonry tradition and the crucial importance of the temple's sculptural program. In their consideration of the excavated works as sculptural rep- resentations, indeed, only in passing do we encounter the structures being represented. Moreover, they show little interest in building typology as a guide to the analysis of the origin and significance of form.

The principal secular and religious forms of building in India can be related back to a common prototype, the prasada. Though almost everything else in Indian architecture is controversial, the connection between palace and temple-the palace of the god-is manifest in the use of this wordprasada for the dominant element of both. The earliest image of a religious complex (a monastery in essence) in one of the Bharhut reliefs-"palace of the gods"-shows that it was composed of a multistory resi- dential structure and a portico-like shrine. A major part of the fascination of the subject is how disparate social and religious requirements, not excluding even the Muslim, could be satisfied by the adaptation and development of this type.

Harle rightly asserts the nonsectarian nature of Indian art, notes in passing the secular origins of the prasada and rightly defines the word literally as "palace" while noting that it is one of several names for the shrine proper (chapter 11, p. 502, n. 5). Unlike the Huntingtons, who give little on the protohistoric vernacular, Harle does reproduce single and multistory residen- tial structures drawn from early reliefs (p. 44, P1. 27) and points

to the one from Ghantasala as an obvious prototype for later temple prasadas (pp. 43, 166). The persistent quotation of such forms in the stone temples of the south (out of structural context) is noted in passing, but there is no recognition of the clear stages of abstraction through which the form went in the north in response to the identification of holy palace and mountain. Ap- preciation of Kramrisch notwithstanding, the full significance of the temple as a residence (vastu) is hardly explored in either book.

In the hospitality ritual performed in the temple prasada, not only is the god offered sustenance, but he is put to bed with his wife. Though aware that "erotic sculpture has formed an important part of the Indian tradition from the earliest times," Harle, for instance, can postulate (as late as p. 239) that its role is apotropaic but that the "elaboration of the sexual acts at Khajuraho would appear to be simply a manifestation of the sophistication, not without a certain playfulness, which pervades so much of the sculpture there." The Huntingtons, on the other hand, perceptively note: "Sexual imagery, which eventually cul- minates in the representation of figures in intercourse (yuga- naddha) was long misunderstood by scholars as a 'degeneration'. ... However, the total emotional and physical involvement of the individual with the partner during sexual activity is a met- aphor in Indic religious thought for the mystical union with the Universal; the combining of the male and female into a totally integrated unity was seen to symbolize the active path to enlightenment" (p. 268). Beyond this, nomenclature provides crucial footholds in the shifting sands of interpretation. The shrine building might be a vastu but the temple is a tirtha, a "fording place" of spiritual regeneration, and the sanctum is the garbha griha, the "womb chamber." Without understanding that the latter is the scene of the gestation of grace and that its generation can only be effected by the stimulation of the male aspect of the deity into union with the female aspect (sakhti) one can hardly be expected to understand the essential fertility associations, in particular the explicit sexuality, of ubiquitous Hindu temple ornament-not least the loving couple (mithuna), the most controversial of ancient India's symbols.

CHRISTOPHER TADGELL

Canterbury College of Art



Article Contentsp. 206p. 207p. 208p. 209

Issue Table of ContentsJournal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 48, No. 2 (Jun., 1989), pp. 117-211Front MatterThe First American Architectural Journals: The Profession's Voice [pp. 117-138]Romancing the Tome; Or an Academician's Pursuit of a Popular Audience in 18th-Century France [pp. 139-149]Borromini, S. Ivo, and Prudentius [pp. 150-157]S. Fortunato in Todi: Why the Hall Church? [pp. 158-171]Vitruvius on Stage Architecture and Some Recently Discovered Scaenae Frons Decorations [pp. 172-179]BooksEarly Christian and Medieval ArchitectureReview: untitled [pp. 180-181]Review: untitled [pp. 181-182]Review: untitled [pp. 182-183]Review: untitled [pp. 184-185]

The Italian RenaissanceReview: untitled [pp. 185-188]Review: untitled [pp. 188-189]

German NeoclassicismReview: untitled [pp. 189-190]

ArchitectsReview: untitled [p. 191]Review: untitled [pp. 191-192]Review: untitled [pp. 192-193]

Architectural Drawing and PhotographyReview: untitled [pp. 194-195]Review: untitled [pp. 195-197]

EngineeringReview: untitled [pp. 197-198]Review: untitled [pp. 198-200]

Vernacular ArchitectureReview: untitled [pp. 200-201]Review: untitled [pp. 201-202]Review: untitled [pp. 202-203]Review: untitled [pp. 203-204]

Restaurant ArchitectureReview: untitled [pp. 204-205]

Indian ArchitectureReview: untitled [pp. 206-209]

Letter [p. 210]Back Matter [pp. 211-211]

something about art

Documents