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PREFACE
I need no excuse for writing this book. There is no single book at present which covers the iconographies of the Hindus, the Buddhists and the Jains in its entirety. This is the first book which covers this area in a single volume. A book which would provide information about the icons of the three Indian religions was perhaps not only necessary but also overdue.
During millennias, the Indian sub-continent produced vast mythologies of gods and goddesses, semi-divine beings, rakshasas and rakshasis. The Westerner is baffled by the numberless deities he sees looking at him from the walls of its numerous rock and structural temples. Many of these deities have numerous hands, and heads while quite a few of them are zoomorphic. It is difficult for a non-Indian to comprehend how the God of Learning could have the head of an elephant or how a God could take the form of a boar. The Westerner can understand God with anthropomorphic forms. The Bible says that God made man in his own image. So a God who looks like man is atleast credible. Any deviation from this man-like ideal therefore seems a departure from Godliness. If, however, it is accepted that God does not or need not resemble man, and that the form of the Homo sapiens is merely used as a tool to comprehend the idea of deity, then it may not become necessary to insist on a photographic resemblance between God and man.
To the Indian God is nirākāra (formless or without form), nirguna (without attributes), and nirvikalpa (beyond Time). When the artist tried to translate the idea of God in plastic terms, he gave him attributes to suggest his power. Since it was imagined that the power of God was great, he was given numerous hands to hold the physical symbols of power like the bow and the arrow, the trisula and the chakra. The numerous heads of the deity are merely suggestive of his great wisdom. The nimbus of the Buddha is merely a receptable for his Bodhi.
Generally God is represented as standing on a lotus. It is not a human god standing on a real lotus. The pictorial representations are mainly symbolic. The artist was aware that a lotus cannot sustain the weight of a human being. The artist used the lotus as a symbol of purity and of self-creation. As the lotus springs from the water, God too springs from the Primeval Waters.
This book attempts to introduce the layman, both foreign and Indian, to the iconography of the three important Indian religions. In the introductory chapters, the meanings of the various objects held by Indian deities in their hands and their significance has been explained. Many illustrations have been provided to make the discussion simple. Information concerning the deities has been provided in tabular form to make identification easy. Most visitors to the cave and structural temples find it difficult to identify the various deities carved there. This book will enable them to identify the numerous deities of India. That is why the book is so profusely illustrated.
The author has benefited by many excellent books on iconography. Gopinath Rao's work, Elements of Hindu Iconography, is a classic on the subject. But nobody could possibly handle his four volumes with ease. Khare has an excellent book on iconography, but it is in Marathi, and so is inaccessible to those who cannot read that language. Bhattashali's book is concerned primarily with the images in the
