Svasti

SR No.: 007006
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Nalini Balbir
Publisher: K S Muddappa Smaraka Trust
Publication Year: 2010
Total Pages: 446
Language: English, Hindi
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 16 MB

Page 118

Phyllis Granoff, Illustrating the Bhaktāmarastotra
117
The Bhaktāmara Stotra continues to be illustrated today. It is depicted in stone on the remarkable temple at Sanganer, for example (Plates 10.21 and 10.22).'3 The stability of the iconographic tradition was already apparent from a comparison of the two manuscripts discussed in this paper, and now the reliefs on the temple at Sanganer tell us that much of the iconographic program has been maintained over the centuries and despite the change in the medium. Once some unknown artist achieved this remarkably successful language to convey in painting what Mānatunga the hymnist had said in words, that visual language would seem to have been remarkably consistent. Indeed, in the case of the Michigan and Ara manuscripts, so similar are the illustrations for any given verse that I was able to identify the subject of the Michigan manuscript immediately on finding the Ara manuscript. Our aware these are illustrations to a poem might help us to appreciate the stability of the artistic formula. These paintings use visual images as their words, just as they rely upon widely shared metaphors and other figures of speech. Recognition and familiarity are important; the viewer has to know the language of these illustrations, just as someone who reads the hymn has to know the language in which it is written and its literary conventions. And here I think that literature and literary theory can help us with another question that these manuscripts raise: originality or lack of it. Sanskrit writers take as dim a view as we do of plagiarism, and they had a remarkably subtle understanding of originality. It is not afraid of the works of other poets, but demands of the true poet some creative touch in the use of a traditional image.14 I do not think that anyone would doubt the creativity of the Michigan artist. Using a language that others also spoke and relying on a shared vocabulary of images, the Michigan artist has nonetheless created a great poem.
13 I thank Dominique Sila Khan for these photographs. 14 I have written on plagiarism in Sanskrit literature, “Putting the Polish on the Poet's Efforts: Reading the Karnasundarī as a Reflection on Poetic Creativity", in a volume edited by David Shulman and Yigal Bronner, forthcoming.