Jignasa Journal Of History Of Ideas And Culture Part 02

Author(s): Vibha Upadhyaya and Others
Publisher: University of Rajasthan

Page 78

294 / Jijñāsā
I
Searching for the Feminine: Within the Traditions of Pratima Laksana or the Iconography
The Hindu religious tradition has among its unique features, a striking characteristic in the importance of goddess worship, which are overwhelming in their numbers, from an apparent, ancient continuity in realms of mythology, theology and worship. Their 'divine' character apart, these representations of goddesses can be studied to approach the notions of discerning femininity, through the layers of associated religious structures and the allied texts and visual depiction, to address through their perception within the religion, a possible likelihood of the feminine attributes, which further may be tested to be of an universal or of regional appeal. To attempt to view the above mentioned terrain, the bridge between the religious texts, the subsidiary texts to it of canonical nature and the sculptures against their monumental backdrop, need to be linked to a possible historical sequence to also understand the legitimacy (?) in the theological assumptions usually found in abundance, that all female deities in the said tradition are actually different manifestations of a fundamental feminine principle or reflect the grand goddesses.
The tradition of Brahamana architecture and iconographic canons range from the works like Arthasăstra of Kautilya, Mayamata, Manasara, Bṛhatsamhita, Matsya Purana, Agni Purana, and other Puranas as well as Aparajitaprecha, Samarängana-Sutradhara, Räpaprakäia. Rūpamandana and Agamas like Kamikāgama, Suprabhedagama, Ansumadbhedagama, and Šukranītisära and other religious works, where the scope of these works is limited to architectural and sculptural topics; while the Jaina pratima lakṣaṇa texts are Nirvaṇakalika, Pratisthäsäroddhära, Acaradinakara, Pratisthāsarasangraha, Pratisthätilaka, Manträdhirajakalpa etc. and the Buddhist iconographic canons were mainly the Sadhanmäla and Niṣpannayogavali.' The Brahamaņas were considered both active members as well as ideologues of the ruling class, and are attributed with having perfected
....... a theory which expressed the dominant material relationships in ritual terms with the Brahamana as its point of reference. It is indicative of the dominance of the Brahamaṇa varna in the socio-economic set-up of the early medieval times that its ideology became the ideology of the society as a whole and the imitation of its customs or the process of Sanskritization became an important vehicle for social mobility.""" But social mobility apart, the all pervasive Brahamanical patriarchic ideology, which stemmed and pervaded the social institutions of early India, may have thus given a certain feminine iconographical and sculptural language, which originated in the gender politics and further was constantly fed by, as well as manifested in the corollary religious and social structures and the practices therein. Thus an overemphasis of the śastric injunction is extolled and mandated in the texts as a requisite for the continuity of the formulaic sculptural tradition that had developed a methodology of schemata. The fact of the matter remains that, in so far as the women's projection in these transactions, it remained pointedly in the manner of 'feminine' in nature, for the intense deliberation and the labor involved in execution adhering to the theoretical aspect in sync and matched with the emerging, conscious dominant continuum of the sculptural typologies.
It was not only the femininity, but the celebration of this femininity which was empirically arrived at a spatial temporal level, and further expressed and communicated through the externalization of it in also metaphysical nuances, by usage of symbols spanning from probably the Indus-Saraswati period (specially the mother goddess figurines, the dancing girl etc.), while though the Vedic texts