A Pantheon Rediscovered | South Asian Studies

Earliest Depictions of Hindu Deities on Coins from Gandhâra:
New Numismatic EvidenceOsmund Bopearachchi (CNRS-ENS, Paris)

The Rabatak inscription from Afghanistan enabled to solve many questions regarding the genealogy and beliefs of Kushan kings who were the successors of Kujula Kadphises. The recent discovery of a large coin hoard in Peshawar also throws new light on the chronology of the early Kushans. Furthermore this hoard brought to light new evidence on the earliest depictions of Hindu Gods, very particularly of Shiva. The naked Shiva without erect linga shown on three series of coins struck by Vima Kadphises in honor of his father Vima Taktu is modeled after the image of Heracles portrayed on the coins of Kujula Kadphises, grandfather of Vima Kadphises and great grand father of Kanshka I. However the divinity depicted on these coins is meant to be Shiva. He is three-headed. What is more fascinating in this iconography is the trishula (trident) adorned with vajra (thuderbolt), parashu (blade axe) and cakra (wheel). He has the kamandalu (water pot) of Brahma, vajra of Indra and chakra of Vishnu. We are in front of a syncretic deity, before the polarization and codification of symbols which take place at a later stage in the Hindu iconography where each god is equipped with stereotyped attributes. Much emphasis will be given in this paper to present hitherto unknown images of syncretic deities in Gandhâra. The new discoveries – most of them still unpublished – enable us to demonstrate the evolution in the iconography the Hindu gods who go through a period transition during the Kushan period until their codification which begins take place at a later period.

Satavahana Terracottas between Tradition and Innovation:
Aan Exploration of Sources and Transmission of Models.Pia Brancaccio
(Assistant Professor, Department of Art and Art History, Drexel University)

The towns of Ter and Paithan, mentioned in the Periplus of the Erithrean Sea, were among the best known inland suppliers of export goods to Indian Ocean trade. In these two centers during the Satavahana period we observe an unprecedented Westernizing trend in the terracotta production. While the visual connections between Satavahana terracottas and Mediterranean types are often apparent, no study has ever discussed the actual sources that might have contributed to the capillary diffusion of a new westernizing idiom on the plateau.

Through an analysis of a small group of unpublished steatite molds from Ter and Paithan that bear close visual connections with Satavahana terracottas, I will try to address issues related to the diffusion of Western motifs in the art of baked clay. The molds offer us a key to explore points of contacts between the traditions of coroplastic, metalworking and sphragistic. Moreover they shed light on how foreign models were appropriated and circulated among inland communities connected with international trade. Finally, they lead to uncharted connections between the Satavahana centers and the Northwest of the subcontinent suggesting that Indian Ocean trade was not the only conduit for the diffusion of Western visual forms on the plateau.

Terracotta Art of Panna:
An Isolated Phenomenon or a Changing Artistic Tradition.
Sima Roy Chowdhury

A principal concern regarding the early historical terracottas of Bengal relates to the fact that their iconographic identification is often difficult and tentative. On the one hand, there are the typical early historical plaques and figurines depicting a range of largely unknown divinities and popular narratives. Simultaneously, there exists a tradition of making the so-called ‘timeless’ type of terracottas meant for ritualistic purposes. This is chronologically followed by sites like Panna (in southern West Bengal), where the artistic representation of known cult icons is evident. A crucial issue the paper would attempt to focus on is the relation of Panna, as a centre of terracotta art, to the other early Bengal sites that are known to have produced terracottas. The terracottas from Panna can be dated between the fourth and sixth centuries AD and, therefore, may only be regarded as being located in the periphery, of the early historical period. Being accidental finds, all terracotta sculptures from Panna have been dated according to the artistic styles they manifest. Among the finds there are some massive sculptural terracotta figures that have been conceived and executed in the round, depicting some interesting iconographic subjects, such as, the goddess Varahi who thus makes her first appearance in Bengal.

It would thus appear that, in a certain sense, the Panna terracotta repertoire is a break from the typical pattern of early historical art as evinced by sites like Chandraketugarh, Tamluk and Harinarayanpur, both in terms of the themes depicted and the style employed. The present paper tries to understand whether the terracottas of Panna represent an island in the artistic tradition of early Bengal or whether they symbolize a change in the region’s artistic repertoire, where some of these stylistic shifts had already been anticipated in the arts of the other early historical sites in Bengal.

Carried Away: Abduction, Abjection and Anxiety in the Indian Epic ImaginationRobert P. Goldman (The University of California at Berkeley)

The sexually motivated abduction of women forms a central and often-repeated motif in the Sanskrit epics and puranas. Indeed the motif of abduction of willing or unwilling women for the purpose of marriage in one form or another seems to haunt the imagination of the authors and audiences of much of the early narrative literature. Nonetheless the theme itself has received little attention and almost no theorization on the part of scholars. In an effort to begin to remedy this lack I would like to examine some of the more prominent cases of the abduction, or to use a more archaic sense of the term, rape, in the early Sanskrit epic and puranic corpus. In so doing I will propose a rough typology of abduction narratives with an eye toward offering some tentative explanations of the theme’s narrative function and psychological underpinnings

Iranian Gods in Hindu Garb:
Images of Zoroastrian Deities in Bactria and Sogdiana, 2nd – 8th c. ADFrantz Grenet
(Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes)

The texts of the Zoroastrian religion show little interest in the anthropomorphical visualization of the gods. Descriptions of that sort are laconic and repetitive, the richest vocabulary being used for animal metamorphoses of some gods. In Sasanian Iran, images from the pantheon are so scarce and unimaginative that the term « iconoclasm » has been proposed for this period. This observation, however, is not valid for regions situated in the Eastern part of the Iranian-speaking world. In Bactria 16 deities mentioned in the Avesta, the sacred book of Zoroastrians, are depicted on coins from the Kushan dynasty (mostly on issues from the 2nd c. AD). Almost all of them are copied from Greek gods, with two exceptions when the main model is Indian : the god labelled Oêsho (< Vayush, Iranian god of the atmosphere) is depicted as Shiva-Mahâdeva ; the god Manaogabo (< Manâ baga « the god Thought », protector of cattle) is depicted as a god combining attributes from various origins but two of them, the plough and the wheel, are taken from Balarâma and Krishna respectively. This attempt at a Zoroastrian-Vishnuite synthesis was not continued. On the contrary Oêsho-Shiva remained one of the major gods of the official pantheon of the later Kushans, then of the Sogdians where many images of him with the name Wêsparkar (« Vayush who acts in the superior region ») are documented until the 8th c. In fact, from the 6th c. onwards, borrowings from Hindu images took over the dying heritage of Greek gods in Sogdiana. Kârttikeya provided the model for one or more probably two fighting gods, Indra lent his elephant vahâna to the supreme god Ahura Mazdâ, Durgâ influenced Nana (ultimately of Mesopotamian origin), and the image of the Zoroastrian Hell was completed with a guardian inspired by Vaishravana. In all these cases the models, though recognizable, were not copied slavishly, but adapted in order to take into account specific functions of the Iranian gods.

A Pantheon Rediscovered:

Terracottas from Early Bangladesh

Enamul Haque

The terracottas from Bengal, a historic geo-political unit till the departure of the British in 1947, may be said to have been noticed infrequently. Terracottas exclusively from Bangladesh, the eastern half of the undivided Bengal, have been treated in a dissertation (Chowdhury 1999) rather insufficiently and published indifferently with substandard illustrations. In this backdrop, this paper aims to present an up to date account of terracotta plaques and figurines discovered within Bangladesh so far, covering a period from c. 3rd century BCE to the end of the Hindu-Buddhist rule in the beginning of 13th century CE. The materials will be presented, site by site, together with illustrations and any comment that is useful for their evaluation and determining their importance in the art history of Bengal. The sites thus included are Mahasthangarh, Govinda Bhita, Mangolkot (Bogra), Bhasu Bihar, Savar, Mainamati, Paharpur and Wari-Bateswar.

Chandraketugarh: Authentication by Scientific TestingPieter Meyers (formerly Los Angeles County Museum of Art)

During the last decades, a large number of pottery vessels, terracotta plaques, and ivory objects, attributed to the Chandraketugarh area in Bengal, eastern India, have appeared on the art market. These objects have stylistically been dated within the period: 2nd cent. BC – 2nd cent. AD.

The rich and complex decoration on these objects is mostly of very high quality, their condition tends to be excellent; thermoluminescence (TL) and Carbon-14 testing have confirmed the authenticity of many of these objects. Nevertheless, serious reservations exist among scholars on the authenticity of these unprovenanced objects, predominantly because of the absence of excavated material that is similar in quality, size, shape and condition. The feeling is that they are “too good to be true.” Implied is a disregard or at least a lack of confidence in TL and C-14 testing.

This presentation will discuss the (un)reliability of TL and C-14, and propose ways of obtaining additional scientific and technical evidence that could solve the authenticity questions.

Popular in a Sacred Universe:
Formation of Iconographic Types in Bharhut PanelsR.N. Misra
(Indian Institute of Advanced Studies)

The beginnings of art in early historical phase in India seem to have been rooted in popular or clan-based communitarian beliefs and ethos which found a formal expression in the folk cults, Buddhism and Bhagavatism. It is wonder that these cults and religions emerged as pioneers in institutionalizing and harnessing art in different representational modes: narratives in case of the Buddhism, iconic in respect of the folk religions, and non-iconic in case of the Bhagavatas. Each of these sects or religions, especially Buddhism, aspired to discover artistic forms not so much in competition as in fulfillment of their own proclivities and preferences, facilitating transition of forms from symbolic to representational, non-iconic to iconic.

This paper seeks to concentrate on representations of people of different callings in the early Buddhist reliefs of Bharhut (in central India) of the Sunga times (beginning in BCE 187). These portrayals are significant in that they reveal artists’ conscious effort in crafting figural distinctions and differentiations to suitably distinguish individuals of different pursuits. The inventory of such individuals turns out to be fairly extesnive, including kings, chieftains, their consorts, counselors, traders, peasants, artisans and craftsmen (e.g., blacksmith, arrow-maker, sculptor, hunter, gardener etc.), women, ascetics, mendicants and others of varying status and ranks. Their depictions mark the first attempts towards evolving a ‘popular iconography’ of sorts in a sacred universe where they were meant to edify the Buddhist faith. They also indicate the care that the Bharhut artist took in being discriminating enough without compromising on explicit intelligibility of the characters that were represented in particular episodes. The reliefs of Bharhut and their labels in inscriptions thus seem to mark a community’s accommodation within the Buddhist creed even as it introduces an art practice which in time assumed the character of a pan-Indian art movement.

Intersections of Parallel Traditions:
Selective Commonalities in Early Indian Stone and Terracotta Sculpture Sonya Rhie Quintanilla
(San Diego Museum of Art)

The areas where the terracotta and stone traditions intersect in early India reveal how institutionalized patrons, who saw to the production of stone sculpture on public religious monuments, drew selectively from vernacular imagery and concepts discernible from terracotta sculptures. Members of the religious institutions who were responsible for creating the iconographic programs on the exteriors of the earliest stone monuments embedded narrative and symbolic imagery among popular motifs and divinities that they chose from the quotidian repertoire. Images frequently depicted in terracotta, such as erotic scenes, animals, yakshas, and yakshis, seem incongruous on the exterior spaces of the early Buddhist and Jain religious monuments. Their incorporation may be explained by a conscious effort to incorporate popular, familiar imagery onto monuments that might otherwise be considered inauspicious, probably because of the funerary connotations of stupas and the material of stone. Furthermore, much of the non-narrative auspicious imagery may have been thought to appeal especially to women, who were a major segment of the lay donor communities.

Conversely, the ways in which the two traditions remain separate also provide insights into the motivations of the early patrons of stone sculpture. In terms of individual iconography, surprisingly few identifiable divinities are found both in terracotta and stone. What does the imaging in terracotta versus stone imply with regard to the status or function of a particular divinity?

Evidence from early stone sites at Udayagiri and Khandagiri in Orissa, Bhaja and Pitalkhora in Maharashtra, Mathura and Kausambi in Uttar Pradesh, Bodhgaya in Bihar, and Sanchi in Madhya Pradesh will be discussed in conjunction with the terracottas recovered from these areas as well as Chandraketugarh in West Bengal. This study will be limited to the objects and monuments that predate the Kushan period of the 2nd century CE, when terracotta production appears to have been eclipsed by the mass production of stone sculpture, only to reemerge in a different mode during the Gupta period.

Childbirth , Childhood and the Magico-Religious World of TransformationsDoris Meth Srinivasan
(SUNY - Stony Brook)

A major preoccupation , if not anxiety, of antiquity’s pan-Indic folk was safeguarding the process of procreation. The concerns arise from beliefs that reproductive health and welfare are assured not only by medical means but by magico-religious powers. This paper explores visual representations relating to birthing - both the biological and magical processes, the latter expressing man’s hope for a re-birth equated with immortality. My springboard into this theme is the famous Tamluk plaque in the Ashmolen Museum possibly representing a Mother Goddess. The focus is on the small low squatting male figures , dangling like talismen on the female’s uppermost thighs. This squat is associated all over the subcontinent with representations of matrkas, devi-s and even a major Hindu god portrayed in post-Gupta art as a cosmic creator. Recently published Gandharan seals depicting Bhima Devi in the related posture open the possiblility of associating a ritual performed at the place of this ‘birthing’ deity. Bhima seems to be able to tap a magical power promising a second birth, that is, a transformation . Legends surrounding a Bhima Temple in present day Tamluk reveal some features having an uncanny similarity to a Bhimasthana mentioned in the Mahabharata.

Assuredly, with these ancient visual representations we leave royal and sectarian art and enter into a realm of the mundane where magic and superstitions may exist . As such, some visual ideograms are widespread, but accompanied by little , directly correlated, documentation.

The Goddess in the Grove: The Demonic Cult of Nikumbhila
Valmiki, Gender, and Religious AnxietiesSally J. Sutherland Goldman (The University of California at Berkeley)

This paper will explore Valmiki’s construction of a number of his female characters who are either practitioners of religious rites or objects thereof, as markers of exogenous threats to his idealized aryan world. It will also examine the poet’s mechanism for resolving the anxieties engendered by those threats. We can, I will suggest, understand the poem’s intersection of the feminine and the religious as intentional and as marking real or imagined threats to his idealized brahmanic culture, as well as well as embodying potential resolutions of those threats.

For more information, please contact phyllis.granoff@yale.edu or barbara.papacoda@yale.edu

*image of Terracotta Goddess “Tamluk Yakshi” from the Ashmolean Museum of Arts & Archaeology. Reprinted with permission.