THE TRANSFORMATION OF NATURE IN ART

By: ANANDA K. COOMARASWAMY

Copyright © 1934 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.
All rights reserved under Pan American and International Copyright Conventions.
Published in Canada by General Publishing Company, Ltd., 30 Lesmill Road, Don Mills, Toronto, Ontario.
Published in the United Kingdom by Constable and Company, Ltd.
This Dover edition, first published in 1956, is an unabridged and unaltered republication of the second edition, as published by the Harvard University Press in 1934.
This edition is published by special arrangement with Harvard University Press.
International Standard Book Number: 0-486-20368-9
Manufactured in the United States of America Dover Publications, Inc. 180 Varick Street New York, N.Y. 10014
Contents
I. THE THEORY OF ART IN ASIA 1

II. MEISTER ECKHART'S VIEW OF ART 59

III. REACTIONS TO ART IN INDIA 97

IV. AESTHETIC OF THE .UKRAN.TISAR.RA 111

V. PAROK.A 119

VI. .BH.SA 139

VII. ORIGIN AND USE OF IMAGES IN INDIA 153

NOTES 171

SANSKRIT GLOSSARY 215

LIST OF CHINESE CHARACTERS 231

BIBLIOGRAPHY 235

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Chapter I
THE THEORY OF ART IN ASIA
Tadbhavatu krtârhat. vaidagdhyasya, M.lat.m.dhava, I, 32 f.
IN THE following pages there is presented a statement of Oriental aesthetic theory based mainly on Indian and partly on Chinese sources; at the same time, by
means of notes and occasional remarks, a basis is offered for a general theory of art coördinating Eastern and Western points of view. Whenever European art is
referred to by way of contrast or elucidation, it should be remembered that "European art" is of two very different kinds, one Christian and scholastic, the other
post-Renaissance and personal. It will be evident enough from our essay on Eckhart, and might have been made equally clear from a study of St Thomas and his
sources, that there was a time when Europe and Asia could and did actually understand each other very well. Asia has remained herself; but subsequent to the
extroversion of the European consciousness and its preoccupation with surfaces, it has become more and more difficult for European minds to think in terms of unity,
and therefore more difficult to understand the Asiatic point of view. It is just possible that the mathematical development of modern science, and certain
corresponding
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tendencies in modern European art on the one hand, and the penetration of Asiatic thought and art into the Western environment on the other, may represent the
possibility of a renewed rapprochement. The peace and happiness of the world depend on this possibility. But for the present, Asiatic thought has hardly been, can
hardly be, presented in European phraseology without distortion, and what is called the appreciation of Asiatic art is mainly based on categorical misinterpretations.
Our purpose in the present volume is to place the Asiatic and the valid European views side by side, not as curiosities, but as representing actual and indispensable
truth; not endeavoring to prove by any argumentation what should be apparent to the consciousness of the intelligent -- sacetas.m anubhava. pram.a. tatra kevala.!
The scope of the discussion permits only a brief reference to Mu.ammadan art: Isl.mic aesthetics could be presented only by an author steeped in Arabic
philosophy and familiar with the literature on calligraphy, poetics, and the legitimacy of music. But it must be pointed out in passing that this Isl.mic art, which in so
many ways links East with West, and yet by its aniconic character seems to stand in opposition to both, really diverges not so much in fundamental principles as in
literal interpretation. For naturalism is antipathetic to religious art of all kinds, to art of any kind, and the spirit of the traditional Isl.mic interdiction of the
representation of living forms is not really infringed by such ideal representations as are met with in Indian
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or Christian iconography, or Chinese animal painting. The Mu.ammadan interdiction refers to such naturalistic representations as could theoretically, at the Judgment
Day, be required to function biologically; but the Indian icon is not constructed as though to function biologically, the Christian icon cannot be thought of as moved
by any other thing than its form, and each should, strictly speaking, be regarded as a kind of diagram, expressing certain ideas, and not as the likeness of anything on
earth.
Let us now consider what is art and what are the values of art from an Asiatic, that is, mainly Indian and Far Eastern, point of view. It will be natural to lay most
stress on India, because the systematic discussion of aesthetic problems has been far more developed there than in China, where we have to deduce the theory from
what has been said and done by painters, rather than from any doctrine propounded by philosophers or rhetoricians.
In the first place, then, we find it clearly recognized that the formal element in art represents a purely mental activity, citta-saññ.. 1 From this point of view, it will
appear natural enough that India should have developed a highly specialized technique of vision. The maker of an icon, having by various means proper to the
practice of Yoga eliminated the distracting influences of fugitive emotions and creature images, self-willing and self-thinking, proceeds to visualize the form of the
devat., angel or aspect of God, described in a given canonical prescription, s.dhana, mantram, dky.na. The mind "pro-duces" or "draws"
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(.kar.ati) 2 this form to itself, as though from a great distance. Ultimately, that is, from Heaven, where the types of art exist in formal operation; immediately, from
"the immanent space in the heart" (antar-h.daya-.k..a), 3 the common focus (sa.st.va, "concord") 4 of seer and seen, at which place the only possible experience
of reality takes place." 5 The true-knowledge-purity-aspect (jñ.na-sattvar.pa) thus conceived and inwardly known (antar-jñeya) reveals itself against the ideal space
(.k..a) like a reflection (pratibimbaval), or as if seen in a dream (svapnaval). The imager must realize a complete self-identification with it (.tm.na. . . . dhy.y.t, or
bh.vayet), whatever its peculiarities (n.n.lak.a.âla.k.tam), even in the case of opposite sex or when the divinity is provided with terrible supernatural
characteristics; the form thus known in an act of non-differentiation, being held in view as long as may be necessary (eva. r.pa. y.vad icchati t.vad vibh.vayet), is
the model from which he proceeds to execution in stone, pigment, or other material. 6
The whole process, up to the point of manufacture, belongs to the established order of personal devotions, in which worship is paid to an image mentally conceived
(dhy.tv. yajet); in any case, the principle involved is that true knowledge of an object is not obtained by merely empirical observation or reflex registration
(pratyak.a), but only when the knower and known, seer and seen, meet in an act transcending distinction (allayer advaila). To worship any Angel in truth one must
become the Angel: "whoever
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worships a divinity as other than the self, thinking 'He is one, and I another,' knows not," B.had.ra.yaka U pani.ad, I, 4, 10.
The procedure on the part of the imager, above outlined, implies a real understanding of the psychology of aesthetic intuition. To generalize, whatever object may be
the artist's chosen or appointed theme becomes for the time being the single object of his attention and devotion; and only when the theme has thus become for him
an immediate experience can it be stated authoritatively from knowledge. Accordingly, the language of Yoga may be employed even in the case of a portrait, for
example M.lavikâgnimitra, II, 2, where, the painter having missed something of the beauty of the model, this is attributed to a relaxation of concentration, an
imperfect absorption, .ithila-sam.dhi, not to want of observation. Even when a horse is to be modelled from life we still find the language of Yoga employed: "having
concentrated, he should set to work" (dhy.tv. kury.t), .ukran.tis.ra, IV, 7, 73.
Here indeed European and Asiatic art meet on absolutely common ground; according to Eckhart, the skilled painter shows his art, but it is not himself that it reveals
to us, and in the words of Dante, "Who paints a figure, if he cannot be it, cannot draw it," Chi pinge figura, si non può esser lei, non la può porre. 7 It should be
added that the idea of Yoga covers not merely the moment of intuition, but also execution: Yoga is dexterity in action, karmasu kau.ala, Bhagavad G.t., II, 50. So,
for example, in.a.nkarâc .rya's meta-
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phor of the arrow-maker "who perceives nothing beyond his work when he is buried in it," and the saying, "I have learnt concentration from the maker of arrows."
The words yogy., application, study, practice, and yukti, accomplishment, skill, virtuosity, are often used in connection with the arts.
An ideal derivation of the types that are to be represented or made by the human artist is sometimes asserted in another way, all the arts being thought of as having a
divine origin, and as having been revealed or otherwise brought down from Heaven to Earth: "our .aiva .gamas teach that the architecture of our temples is all
Kail.sabh.van., that is of forms prevailing in Kail.sa." A very striking enunciation of this principle will be found in Aitareya Br.hma.a, VI, 27: "It is in imitation
(anuk.iti) of the angelic (deva) works of art (.ilp.ni) that any work of art (.ilpa) is accomplished (adhigamyate) here; for example, a clay elephant, a brazen object, a
garment, a gold object, and a mule-chariot are 'works of art.' A work of art (.ilpa), indeed (ha), is accomplished in him who comprehends this. For these (angelic)
works of art (.ilp.ni, viz. the metrical .ilpa texts) are an integration of the Self (.tma-sa.sk.ti); and by them the sacrificer likewise integrates himself (.tm.na.
sa.skuruk) in the mode of rhythm (chandomaya)." Corresponding to this are many passages of the Rg Veda in which the artistry of the incantation (mantra) is
compared to that of a weaver or carpenter. Sometimes the artist is thought of as visiting some heaven,
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and there seeing the form of the angel or architecture to be reproduced on earth; sometimes the architect is spoken of as controlled by Vi.vakarma, originally an
essential name of the Supreme Artificer, later simply of the master architect of the angels, and patron of human craftsmen; or Vi.vakarma may be thought of as
himself assuming the form of a human architect in order to produce a particular work; or the required form may be revealed in a dream. 8
Nor is any distinction of kind as between fine and decorative, free or servile, art to be made in this connection. Indian literature provides us with numerous lists of the
eighteen or more professional arts (.ilpa) and the sixty-four avocational arts (kal.); and these embrace every kind of skilled activity, from music, painting, and
weaving to horsemanship, cookery, and the practice of magic, without distinction of rank, all being equally of angelic origin. 9
It is thus, and will become further, evident that all the forms of Indian art and its derivatives in the Far East are ideally determined. We must now give greater
precision to this statement, discussing what is implied in Asia by likeness or imitation, and what is the nature of Asiatic types. Lastly we shall be in a position to
consider the formal theory of aesthetic experience.
First of all with regard to representation (.k.ti, s.d..ya, Ch. hsing-ss., 4617, 10289, and wu-hsing, 12777, 4617) and imitation (anuk.ra, anukara.a, anuk.ti). We
find it stated that "s.d..ya is essential to the very substance (pradh.na) of painting," Vi.nudharmottara, XLII48; the word has
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usually been translated by "likeness," and may bear this sense, but it will be shown below that the meaning properly implied is something more like "correspondence
of formal and representative elements in art." In drama we meet with such definitions as lokav.tta-anukara.a, "following the movement (or operation) of the world,"
and yo 'ya. svabh.vo lokasya . . . n ..yam ity abhidh.yate, 10 "which designates the intrinsic nature of the world"; or again, what is to be exhibited on the stage is
avasth.na, "conditions" or "emotional situations," or the hero, R.ma, or the like, is thought of as the model, anuk.rya. 11 In China, in the third canon of Hsieh Ho,
we have "According to nature (wu, 12777) make shape (hsing, 4617)"; 12 and the common later phrase ksing-ss.., "shape-resemblance," in the same way seems
to define art as an imitation of Nature. In Japan, Seami, the great author and critic of N., asserts that the arts of music and dancing consist entirely in imitation
(monomane). 13
However, if we suppose that all this implies a conception of art as something seeking its perfection in the nearest possible approaches to illusion we shall be greatly
mistaken. It will appear presently that we should err equally in supposing that Asiatic art represents an "ideal" world, a world "idealized" in the popular (sentimental,
religious) sense of the words, that is, perfected or remolded nearer to the heart's desire; which were it so might be described as a blasphemy against the witness of
Perfect Experience, and a cynical depreciation of life itself. We shall find that
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Asiatic art is ideal in the mathematical sense: like Nature (natura naturans), not in appearance (viz. that of ens naturata), but in operation.
It should be realized that from the Indian (metaphysical) and Scholastic points of view, subjective and objective are not irreconcilable categories, one of which must
be regarded as real to the exclusion of the other. Reality (satya) subsists there where the intelligible and sensible meet in the common unity of being, and cannot be
thought of as existing in itself outside and apart from, but rather as, knowledge or vision, that is, only in act. All this is also implied in the Scholastic definition of truth
as adaequatio rei et intellectus, Aristotle's identity of the soul with what it knows, or according to St Thomas, "knowledge comes about in so far as the object known
is within the knower" ( Sum. Theol., I, Q. 59, A. 2), in radical contradiction to the conception of knowledge and being as independent acts, which point of view is
only logically, and not immediately, valid. Translating this from psychological to theological terms, we should say not that God has knowledge, but that Knowledge
(Pure Intellect, prajñ.) is one of the names of God (who is pure act); or metaphysically, by an identification of Being (sat) with Intelligence (cit), as in the well-known
concatenation sac-cit-.nanda (where it is similarly implied that love subsists only in the act of love, not in the lover or beloved but in union).
Now as to s.d..ya: literal meanings are sym-visibility, con-similarity; secondary meanings, coördination, analogy.
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That aesthetic s.d..ya does not imply naturalism, verisimilitude, illustration, or illusion in any superficial sense is sufficiently shown by the fact that in Indian lists of
factors essential to painting it is almost always mentioned with pram..a, "criterion of truth," here "ideal proportion"; in the Indian theories of knowledge empirical
observation (pratyak.a) as supplying only a test, and not the material of theory, is regarded as the least valid amongst the various pram..as. Pram..a will be
discussed more fully below; here it will suffice to point out that the constant association of s.d..ya and pram..a in lists of the essentials in painting, for example the
Six Limbs, 14 precludes our giving to either term a meaning flatly contradicting that of the other. Ideal form and natural shape, although distinct in principle, were not
conceived as incommensurable, but rather as coincident in the common unity of the symbol.
In Rhetoric, s.d..ya is illustrated by the example "The young man is a lion" ( Bhart.mitra, Abhidh.-v.tti-m.trik ., p. 17, and commonly quoted elsewhere); and this
analogy very well demonstrates what is really meant by aesthetic "imitation." Vasubandhu, Abhidharmako.a, IX, Poussin, pp. 280, 281, explains the relation of
knowledge (vijñ.na) to its object by saying that knowledge arises only in the act of knowing, by an immediate assimilation (tad.k.rat.) to its object, neither knower
nor known existing apart from the act of knowledge. The nature of the assimilation (tad.k.rat.) is illustrated by the s.d..ya of seed and fruit, which
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is one of reciprocal causality. The Ny.ya-Vai.e.ika definition of s.d..ya (quoted by Das Gupta, History of Indian Philosophy, I, 318) viz. tadbhinnatve sati
tadgata-bh.yodharmavattvam, is literally "the condition of embracing in itself things of a manifold nature which are distinct from itself," or more briefly the condition of
"identity in difference."
S.d..ya is then "similitude," but rather such as is implied by "simile" than by "simulacrum." It is in fact obvious that the likeness between anything and any
representation of it cannot be a likeness of nature, but must be analogical or exemplary, or both of these. What the representation imitates is the idea or species of
the thing, by which it is known intellectually, rather than the substance of the thing as it is perceived by the senses.
S.d..ya, "visual correspondence," has nevertheless been commonly misinterpreted as having to do with two appearances, that of the work of art and that of the
model. It refers, actually, to a quality wholly self-contained within the work of art itself, a correspondence of mental and sensational factors in the work. This
correspondence is indeed analogous to the correspondence of person and substance in the thing to be "imitated"; but the object and the work of art are
independently determined, each to its own good, and physically incommensurable, being the same only as to type. S.d.+015Bya as the ground (pradh.na) of
painting may be compared to s.hitya as the body (.ar.ra) of poetry, consistently defined as the "consent of sound and meaning" (.abdòrtha), and to s.r.pya,
denoting the aspectual coördi-
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nation of concept and percept essential to knowledge. 15 Accordingly, the requirement of s.d..ya does not merely not exclude the formal element in art, but
positively asserts the necessity of a concord of pictorial and formal elements. The whole point of view outlined above is already implied in the Kau..taki Upani.ad,
III, 8, where the sensational and intelligible (formal) elements of appearance are distinguished as bh.ta-m.tr. and prajñ.-m.tr., and it is asserted that "truly, from
either alone, no aspect (r.pa) whatsoever would be produced."
As to the Indian drama, the theme is exhibited by means of gestures, speech, costume, and natural adaptation of the actor for the part; and of these four, the first
three are highly conventional in any case, while with regard to the fourth not only is the appearance of the actor formally modified by make-up or even a mask, but
Indian treatises constantly emphasize that the actor should not be carried away by the emotions he represents, but should rather be the ever-conscious master of the
puppet show performed by his own body on the stage, The exhibition of his own emotions would not be art. 16
As to Chinese wu-hsing and hsing-ss., a multitude of passages could be adduced to show that it is not the outward appearance (hsing) as such, but rather the idea (i,
5367) in the mind of the artist, or the immanent divine spirit (shên, 9819), or the breath of life (ch'i, 1064), that is to be revealed by a right use of natural forms. We
have not merely the first canon of Hsieh Ho, which asserts that
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the work of art must reveal "the operation (yün, 13817) of the spirit (ch'i) in life-movement," but also such sayings as "By means of natural shape (hsing) represent
divine spirit (shên),""The painters of old painted the idea (i) and not merely the shape (hsing),""When Chao Tze Yün paints, though he makes few brush-strokes, he
expresses the idea (i, 5367) already conceived; mere skill (kung, 6553) cannot accomplish (nêng) this" ( Ostasiatische Zeitschrift, NF. 8, p. 105, text 4), or with
reference to a degenerate period, "Those painters who neglect natural shape (hsing) and secure the formative idea (i chih, 5367, 1783) are few,""What the age
means by pictures is resemblance (ss.)," and "The form was like (hsing-ss.), but the expression (yün, 13843) weak."
The Japanese N., which "can move the heart when not only representation but song, dance, mimic, and rapid action are all eliminated, emotion as it were springing
out of quiescence," is actually the most formal and least naturalistic of all kinds of drama in the world.
Thus none of the terms cited by any means implies a view of art as finding its perfection in illusion; for the East, as for St Thomas, ars imitatur naturam in sua
operatione.
The principle most emphasized in Indian treatises as essential to art is pram.ña. 17 The Indian theories of knowledge regard as the source of truth not empirical
perception (pratyak.a) but an inwardly known model (antarjñeya-r.pa) "which at the same time gives form to knowledge and is the cause of knowledge" ( Dign.ga,
k.rik.6), it being only
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required that such knowledge shall not contradict experience. It will be realized that this is also the method of science, which similarly uses experiment as the test
rather than as the source of theory. Pram..a as principle is the self-evident immediate (svata.) perception of what is correct under given conditions. As independent
of memory, pram..a cannot be identified with authority, but it may embody elements derived from authority, when considered not as principle but as canon. As not
contrary to experience, pram..a means what is "true" here and now, but might not be correct in the light of wider experience or under changed conditions; in other
words, the "development" of a theory is not excluded, nor the development of a design while in the course of execution. The doctrine can also be made clearer by
the analogy of conscience, AngloSaxon "inwit," still understood as an inward criterion which at the same time gives form to conduct and is the cause of conduct. But
whereas the Occidental conscience operates only in the field of ethics, and as to art a man is not ashamed to say "I know what I like," the Oriental conscience,
pram..a, cf. Chinese chih, 1753, liang, 7015, chêng, 720 (used by Hsüan Tsang), i, 5367, etc., governs all forms of activity, mental, aesthetic, and ethical
(speculabilium, factibilium, agibilium). Truth, Beauty, and Love as activities and therefore relative, are thus connected by analogy, and not by likeness, none deriving
its sanction from any other, but each from a common principle of order inherent in the nature of God, or in Chinese terms of Heaven
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and Earth. To sum up, pram..a means in philosophy the norm of properly directed thought, in ethics the norm of properly directed action, in art the norm of properly
conceived design, practically the recta ratio factibilium of St Thomas.
Thus the idea of pram..a implies the existence of types or archetypes, which might at first thought be compared with those of Plato and the derived European
tradition. But whereas Platonic types are types of being, external to the conditioned universe and thought of as absolutes reflected in phenomena, Indian types are
those of sentient activity or functional utility conceivable only in a contingent world. Oriental types, Indian .iva- .akti, Chinese Yang and Yin, or Heaven and Earth,
are not thought of as mechanically reflected in phenomena, but as representing to our mentality the operative principles by which we "explain" phenomena -- just as,
for example, the concept of the shortest distance between two points may be said to "explain" the existence of a perceptible straight line. Thus Indian types
representing sentiences or powers are analogous to those of Scholastic theology and the energies of science, but not comparable with Plato's types.
Just as conscience is externalized in rules of conduct, or the principles of thought in logic, so aesthetic pram..a finds expressions in rules (vidhi, niyama), or canons of
proportion (t.la, t.lam.na, pram..ni), proper to different types, and in the lak.a.as of iconography and cultivated taste, prescribed by authority and tradition; and
only
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that art "which accords with canonical standards (..stram.na) is truly lovely, none other, forsooth!" ( .ukran.tis.ra, IV, 4, 105-106). As to the necessity for such
rules, contingent as they are by nature, and yet binding in a given environment, this follows from the imperfection of human nature as it is in itself. Man is indeed more
than a merely instinctive and behavioristic animal, but he has not yet attained to such an identification of the inner and outer, contemplative and active, life as should
enable him to act at the same time without discipline and altogether conveniently. On the one hand, the gambolling of lambs, however charming, is not yet dancing; on
the other, the human artist, even the master whom Ching Hao calls "Profound" or "Mysterious" (miao, 7857) and who "works in a style appropriate to his subject,"
can hardly lay claim to the spontaneity of the "Divine" (shên, 9819) painter "who makes no effort of his own, his hand moves spontaneously." 18
There exists, in fact, dating from the T'ang period, a threefold Chinese classification (San p'ing, 9552, 9273) of painting as Divine (shên, 9819), Profound or
Mysterious (miao, 7857), and Accomplished (nêng, 8184). The first of these implies an absolute perfection; representing rather the goal than the attainable in human
art; the second is such mastery as approaches perfection, the third is mere dexterity. A fourth class, the Marvellous or Extraordinary (i, 5536), was added later, with
Taoist implications, to denote a more personal kind of "philosophical" or "literary" painting, great in achievement, though not the work
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of professional artists, and not governed by traditional rules; i thus corresponds very nearly to what is meant by "genius," with all its virtues and limitations. 19
A striking Indian parallel to the San p'ing occurs in R.ja.ekhara K.vya-m.m..s., Ch. II, where the creative faculty (k.rayitr. pratibh.) is considered as of three
kinds, viz. Innate (sahaj.), Gotten (.h.ry.), and Learnt (aupade.ik.), poets being correspondingly classed as s.rasvata (from Sarasvat., .akti of Brahm., and
mother of learning and wisdom), .bhy.sika (trained, adept, vocational), and aupade.ika (taught, depending on rules or recipes). Here s.rasvata and sahaja clearly
correspond to shêen; .h.ry. and .bhy.sika to miao, involving the idea of mastery; and aupade.ik. to nêng, having a trick rather than a habit. The one thing most
necessary to the human workman is abhy.sa, "practice," otherwise thought of as anu..la, "devoted application" or "obedience," the fruit of which is .li..atva,
"habitus," or second nature, skill, lit. "clingingness," "adherence"; and this finds expression in the performance as m.dhurya, "grace" or "facility" ( N..ya ..stra,
Benares ed., XXVI, 34; K.vyam.l. ed., XXII, 34).
The Six Canons of Hsieh Ho, referring to painting, were first published in the fifth century, and have remained authoritative to the present day. They have been
discussed at great length by Far Eastern and European authors, the chief differences of opinion centering on the Taoist or Confucian interpretation of the first canon.
20 The following version is based directly on the text:
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(i) Operation or revolution (yün, 13817), or concord or reverberation (yün, 13843), of the spirit (ch'i, 1064) in life movement.
(2) Rendering of the "bones" (essential structure) by the brush.
(3) According to the object (natural species, wu, 12777) make shape (hsing, 4617).
(4) According to the kind, apply, or distribute, color.
(5) Right composition, lit. "design due-placing."
(6) Traditional (ch'uan, 2740) procedure, lit. "handed down model, or method, draw accordingly."
Of these canons, the first is of primary metaphysical importance, and may be said to control all the others, each of which taken by itself has a straightforward
meaning. The second canon demands a rendering of character rather than of mere outward aspect; the third and fourth refer to mass and color as means of
representation; the fifth refers to the proper and appropriate placing of things represented, according to their natural relationships, and must thus be distinguished
from composition or design in the sense in which these words are now used; the last implies the copying of ancient masterpieces and adherence to wonted methods
and ascertained rules. These Six Canons have close analogies in Indian theory, but there is no good reason to suppose that they are of Indian origin.
In connection with the last canon, it may be remarked that a condition of spontaneity (shên, sahaja) outside of and above ascertained rules, though not against them,
can
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be imagined, as in the Bhagavad G.t., II, 46, where the knower of Brahman is said to have no further use for the Vedas, or when St Augustine says, "Love God,
and do what you will." But if the liberated being (j.vanmukta) or saint in a state of grace is thus free to act without deliberation as to duty, it is because for him there
no longer exists a separation of self and not-self; if for the true Yogin pratyak.a must imply a presentation indistinguishable from that of the inwardly known form
(jñ.na-sattva-r.pa), this will be evidence, not of genius, but of a fully matured self (k.tatman), a perfected visual habit, such that the seer now sees not merely
projected sensations, but as he ought to see, virtually without duality, loving all things alike.
All art thus tends towards a perfection in which pictorial and formal elements are not merely reconciled, but completely identified. At this distant but ever virtually
present point, all necessity for art disappears, and the Isl.mic doctors are justified in their assertion that the only true artist (mu.avvir) is God, in Indian terms
nirm..a-k.raka.
The metaphor of God as the supreme artist appears also in the Christian Scholastic tradition, for example St Thomas, Sum. Theol., Q. 74, A. 3, "as the giving form
to a work of art is by means of the form of the art in the mind of the artist, which may be called his intelligible word, so the giving form to every creature is by the
word of God; and for this reason in the works of distinction and adornment the Word is mentioned . . . the words, God saw that it was good . . . express a certain
satisfaction taken by God in
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his works, as of an artist in his art." Eckhart makes constant use of the same idea. Cf. notes 21, 57. Needless to point out, the concept of "creation" (nirm..a,
karma) is a religious (bhaktiv.da) translation of what in metaphysics is spoken of as manifestation, procession, or expression (s..i); or psychologically simply as a
"coming to be" (utp.da, bhava, yath.-bh.ta, etc.), dependent on second or mediate causes.
As the author of the Chieh Tz. Yüan expresses it, "When painting has reached divinity (shên) there is an end of the matter." A conception of this kind can be
recognized in the Chinese story of the painter Wu Tao-tz., who painted on a palace wall a glorious landscape, with mountains, forests, clouds, birds, men, and all
things as in Nature, a veritable world-picture; while the Emperor his patron was admiring this painting, Wu Tao-tz. pointed to a doorway on the side of a mountain,
inviting the Emperor to enter and behold the marvels within. Wu Tao-tz. himself entered first, beckoning the Emperor to follow; but the door closed, and the painter
was never seen again. A corresponding disappearance of the work of art, when perfection has been attained, is mythically expressed in other legends, such as those
of painted dragons that flew from the walls on which they were painted, first told of the artist Chang Sêng Yu in the Liang Dynasty. 21
Such is the perfection toward which art and artist tend, art becoming manifested life, and the artist passing beyond our ken. But to lay claim therefore to a state of
liberty and
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superiority to discipline (an.c.ra) on behalf of the human artist, to idolize one who is still a man as something more than man, to glorify rebellion and independence,
as in the modern deification of genius and tolerance of the vagaries of genius, is plainly preposterous, or as Muslims would say blasphemous, for who shall presume
to say that he indeed knows Brahman, or truly and completely loves God. The ultimate liberty of spontaneity is indeed conceivable only as a workless manifestation
in which art and artist are perfected; but what thus lies beyond contingency is no longer "art," and in the meantime the way to liberty has nothing whatever in common
with any wilful rebellion or calculated originality; least of all has it anything to do with functional self-expression. Ascertained rules should be thought of as the vehicle
assumed by spontaneity, in so far as spontaneity is possible for us, rather than as any kind of bondage. Such rules are necessary to any being whose activity depends
on will, as expressed in India with reference to the drama: "All the activities of the angels, whether at home in their own places, or abroad in the breaths of life, are
intellectually emanated; those of men are put forth by conscious effort; therefore it is that the works to be done by men are defined in detail," N..ya ..stra, II, 5. As
expressed by St Thomas ( Sum. Theol., I, Q. 59, A. 2), "there alone are essence and will identified where all good is contained within the essence of him who wills .
. . this cannot be said of any creature." In tending toward an ultimate coincidence of discipline and will, the artist does indeed be-
-23-
come ever less and less conscious of rules, and for the virtuoso intuition and performance are already apparently simultaneous; but at every stage the artist will delight
in rules, as the master of language delights in grammar, though he may speak without constant reference to the treatises on syntax. It is of the essence of art to bring
back into order the multiplicity of Nature, and it is in this sense that he "prepares all creatures to return to God."
It should be hardly necessary to point out that art is by definition essentially conventional (sa.ketita); for it is only by convention that nature can be made intelligible,
and only by signs and symbols, r.pa, prat.ka, that communication is made possible. A good example of the way in which we take the conventionality of art for
granted is afforded by the story of a famous master who was commissioned to paint a bamboo forest. With magnificent skill he painted entirely in red. The patron
objected that this was unnatural. The painter enquired, "In what color should it have been painted." and the patron replied, "In black, of course.""And who," said the
artist, "ever saw a blackleaved bamboo." 22
The whole problem of symbolism (prat.ka, "symbol") is discussed by .a.karâc.rya, Commentary on the Vedânta S.tras, I, 1, 20. Endorsing the statement that "all
who sing here to the harp, sing Him," he points out that this Him refers to the highest Lord only, who is the ultimate theme even of worldly songs. And as to
anthropomorphic expressions in scripture, "we reply that the highest Lord may,
-24-
when he pleases, assume a bodily shape formed of M.y., in order to gratify his devout worshippers"; but all this is merely analogical, as when we say that the
Brahman abides here or there, which in reality abides only in its own glory (cf. ibid., I, 2, 29 ). The representation of the invisible by the visible is also discussed by
Deussen, Philosophy of the Upanishads, pp. 99-101. For a discussion of "sign" and "symbol" see pp. 125 - 127 .
Conventionality has nothing to do with calculated simplification (as in modern designing), or with degeneration from representation (as often assumed by the
historians of art). It is unfortunate indeed that the word conventional should have come to be used in a deprecatory sense with reference to decadent art. Decadent
art is simply an art which is no longer felt or energized, but merely denotes, in which there exists no longer any real correspondence between the formal and pictorial
elements, its meaning as it were negated by the weakness or incongruity of the pictorial element; but it is often, as for example in late Hellenistic art, actually far less
conventional than are the primitive or classic stages of the same sequence. True art, pure art, never enters into competition with the unattainable perfection of the
world, but relies exclusively on its own logic and its own criteria, which cannot be tested by standards of truth or goodness applicable in other fields of activity. If, for
example, an icon is provided with numerous heads or arms, or combines anthropomorphic and theriomorphic elements, arithmetic and observation will assist us to
de-
-25-
termine whether or not the iconography is correct (.gamârthâvisa.v.di, ..stram.na), but only our own response to its qualities of energy and characteristic order will
enable us to judge it as a work of art. If K...a is depicted as the seducer of the milkmaids of Braja, it would be ridiculous to raise objections on moral grounds, as
though a model on the plane of conduct had been presented; for here art, by a well understood convention, deals with the natural relation of the soul to God ("all
creation is female to God"), and if we cannot understand or will not accept the tradition, that is simply an announcement of our inability to pass aesthetic judgment in
the given case.
Some further considerations upon unequal quality and decadence in art may be submitted, by decadence "characteristic imperfection" being meant rather than the
opposite of "progress." Any lack of temporal perfection in a work of art is a betrayal of the imperfection of the artist, such perfection as is possible to human work
being a product of the will. It is obvious that the workman's first consideration should have been the good of the work to be done, for it is only so that he can praise
his theme; and as to whether the work is in this sense good, we ought to be guided by a proper and ruthless critical faculty. But it should not be overlooked that even
in outwardly imperfect works, whether originally so or having become so through damage, the image may remain intact; for in the first case the image, which was not
of the artist's own invention but inherited, can still be recognized in its imperfect embodiment, and in the sec-
-26-
ond the form by which the art was moved must have been immanent in every part of it, and is thus present in what survives of it, and this is why such works may be
adequate to evoke in a strong-minded spectator a true aesthetic experience, such a one supplying by his own imaginative energy all that is lacking in the original
production. More often, of course, what passes for an appreciation of decadent or damaged work is merely a sentimental pleasure based on associated ideas,
v.san. qua nostalgia.
There are two distinguishable modes of decadence in art, one corresponding to a diminished sensuality, the other reflecting, not an animal attachment to sensation,
but a senescent refinement. It is essential to distinguish this attenuation or over-refinement of what was once a classical art from the austerity of primitive forms which
may be less seductive, but express a high degree of intellectuality. Over-refinement and elaboration of apparatus in the arts are well illustrated in modern dramatic
and concert production, and in the quality of trained voices and instruments such as the piano. All these means at the disposal of the artist are the means of his
undoing, except in the rare cases where he can still by a real devotion to his theme make us forget them. Those accustomed to such comfortable arts as these are in
real danger of rejecting less highly finished or less elaborate products, not at all on aesthetic grounds, but out of pure laziness and love of comfort. One thinks by
contrast of the Beng.l. Y.tr.s that "without scenery, without the artistic display of costumes, could rouse emo-
-27-
tions which nowadays we scarcely experience," or, on the other hand, of utterly sophisticated arts like the N. plays of Japan, in which the means have been reduced
to a minimum, and though they have been brought to that high pitch of perfection that the theme demands, are yet entirely devoid of any element of luxury. These
points of view have been discussed by Rabindranath Tagore in connection with the rendition of Indian music. "Our master singers," he says, "never take the least
trouble to make their voice and manner attractive. . . . Those of the audience . . . whose senses have to be satisfied as well are held to be beneath the notice of any
self-respecting artist," while "those of the audience who are appreciative are content to perfect the song in their own mind by the force of their own feeling." In other
words, while the formal beauty is the essential in art, loveliness and convenience are, not indeed fortuitous, but in the proper sense of the word, accidents of art,
happy or unhappy accidents as the case may be.
We are now in a position to describe the peculiarities of Oriental art with greater precision. The Indian or Far Eastern icon, carved or painted, is neither a memory
image nor an idealization, but a visual symbolism, ideal in the mathematical sense. The "anthropomorphic" icon is of of the same kind as a yantra, that is, a
geometrical representation of a deity, or a mantra, that is, an auditory representation of a deity. The peculiarity of the icon depends immediately upon these
conditions, and could not be otherwise explained, even were we unaware that in actual prac-
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tice it is the mantra and not the eye's intrinsic faculty that originates the image. Accordingly, the Indian icon fills the whole field of vision at once, all is equally clear
and equally essential; the eye is not led to range from one point to another, as in empirical vision, nor to seek a concentration of meaning in one part more than in
another, as in a more "theatrical" art. There is no feeling of texture or flesh, but only of stone, metal, or pigment, the object being an image in one or other of these
materials, and not a deceptive replica (savar.a) of any objective cause of sensation. The parts of the icon are not organically related, for it is not contemplated that
they should function biologically, but ideally related, being the required component parts of a given type of activity stated in terms of the visible and tangible medium.
This does not mean that the various parts are not related, or that the whole is not a unity, but that the relation is mental rather than functional. These principles will
apply as much to landscape as to iconography.
In Western art the picture is generally conceived as seen in a frame or through a window, and so brought toward the spectator; but the Oriental image really exists
only in our own mind and heart and is thence projected or reflected onto space. The Western presentation is designed as if seen from a fixed point of view, and must
be optically plausible; Chinese landscape is typically represented as seen from more than one point of view, or in any case from a conventional, not a "real," point of
view, and here it is not plausibility but
-29-
intelligibility that is essential. In painting generally there is relievo (natônnata, nimnônnata), that is to say modelling in abstract light, painting being thought of as a
constricted mode of sculpture; but never before the European influence in the seventeenth century any use of cast shadows, chiaroscuro, ch.yâtapa, "shade and
shine." Methods of representing space in art will always correspond more or less to contemporary habits of vision, and nothing more than this is required for art;
perspective is nothing but the means employed to convey to the spectator the idea of three-dimensional space, and among the different kinds of perspective that
have been made use of, the one called "scientific" has no particular advantage from the aesthetic point of view. On this point, Asa.ga, Mah.y.na S.trâla.k.ra, XIII,
17, is illuminating: citre . . . natônnata. nâsti ca, d..yate atha ca, "there is no actual relief in a painting, and yet we see it there," an observation which is repeated from
the same point of view in the Laitkdvaldra Satra, Nanjio ed., p. 91. 23 It would be thus as much beside the mark to conceive of a progress in art as revealed by a
development in Raumdarstellung as to seek to establish a stylistic sequence on a supposed more or less close observation of Nature. Let us not forget that the mind
is a part, and the most important part, of our knowledge of Nature, and that this point of view, though it may have been forgotten in Europe, has been continuously
current in Asia for more than two thousand years.
Where European art naturally depicts a moment of time,
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an arrested action or an effect of light, Oriental art represents a continuous condition. In traditional European terms, we should express this by saying that modern
European art endeavors to represent things as they are in themselves, Asiatic and Christian art to represent things more nearly as they are in God, or nearer to their
source. As to what is meant by representing a continuous condition, for example, the Buddha attained Enlightenment countless ages since, his manifestation is still
accessible, and will so remain; the Dance of .iva takes place, not merely in the T.raka forest, nor even at Cidambaram, but in the heart of the worshipper; the
K...a L.l. is not an historical event, of which N.laka..ha reminds us, but, using Christian phraseology, a "play played eternally before all creatures." This point of
view, which was by no means unknown to the European schoolmen and is still reflected in India's so-called lack of any historical sense, Islam and China being here
nearer to the world than India, though not so enmeshed in the world as modern Europe, constitutes the a priori explanation of the Indian adherence to types and
indifference to transient effects. One might say, not that transient effects are meaningless, but that their value is not realized except to the degree that they are seen
sub specie aeternitatis, that is formaliter. And where it is not the event but the type of activity that constitutes the theme, how could the East have been interested in
cast shadows. Or how could the ..nyav.din, who may deny that any Buddha ever really existed, or that any doctrine was ever actually
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taught, and so must be entirely indifferent as to the historicity of the Buddha's life, have been curious about the portraiture of Buddha. It would indeed be irrelevant
to demand from any art a solution of problems of representation altogether remote from contemporary interest.
Little as it might have been foreseen, the concept of types prevails also in the portraiture of individuals, where the model is present (pratyak.a) to the eye or memory.
It is true that classical Indian portraits must have been recognizable, and even admirable, likenesses. We have already seen that s.d..ya, conformity of sense and
substance, is essential in painting, and it has been pointed out that different, though closely related, terms, viz. sad... and susad..., are employed when the idea of
an exact or speaking likeness is to be expressed. 24 The painted portrait (pratik.ti, .k.ti) functioned primarily as a substitute for the living presence of the original.
One of the oldest treatises, the Tanjur Citralak.a.a, refers the origin of painting in the world to this requirement, and yet actually treats only the physiognomical
peculiarities (lak.a.a) of types. Even more instructive is a later case, occurring in one of the Vikramacaritra stories: here the King is so much attached to the Queen
that he keeps her at his side, even in council, but this departure from custom and propriety is disapproved of by the courtiers, and the King consents to have a
portrait painted, as a substitute for the Queen's presence. The court painter is allowed to see the Queen; he recognizes that she is a padmin., that is, a "Lotus-lady,"
one of the
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four types under which women are classed according to physiognomy and character by Hindu rhetoricians. He paints her accordingly padmin.-lak.a.a-yuktam,
"with the characteristic marks of a Lotus-lady," and yet the portrait is spoken of not merely as r.pam, a figure, but even as svar.pam, "her intrinsic aspect." We
know also, both in China and in India, of ancestral portraits, but these were usually prepared after death, and so far as preserved have the character of effigies
(Chinese ying-tu, "diagram of a shade") rather than of speaking likenesses. In the Pratim.n..aka, the hero, marvelling at the execution of the statues in an ancestral
chapel, does not recognize them as those of his parents, and wonders if they are representations of deities. We even find a polemic against portraiture: "images of the
angels are productive of good, and heavenward-leading, but those of men or other mortal beings lead not to heaven nor work weal," .ukran.tis.ra, IV, 4, 75 and
76. Chinese ancestral portraits are not devoid of individual characterization, but this represents only a slight, not an essential, modification of general formulae; the
books on portraiture (fu shên, "depicting soul") refer only to types of features, canons of proportion, suitable accessories, and varieties of brush stroke proper for the
draperies; the essence of the subject must be portrayed, but there is nothing said about anatomical accuracy. The painter Kuo Kung-ch'ên was praised for his
rendering of very soul ( Ching shên, 2133, 9819) and mind ( i ch'u, 5367, 3120) in a portrait; but there cannot be adduced from the whole of
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Asia such a thing as a treatise on anatomy designed for use by artists.
The first effect produced on a modern Western spectator by these scholastic qualities of Oriental art is one of monotony. In literature and plastic art, persons are not
so much distinguished as individuals as by what they do, in which connection it may be remembered that orthodoxy, for the East, is determined by what a man does,
and not by his beliefs. Again, the productions of any one period are characterized far more by what is common to them all than by the personal variations. Because
of their exclusively professional character and formal control, and the total absence of the conception of private property in ideas, the range of quality and theme that
can be found in Oriental works of one and the same age or school is less than that which can be seen in European art at the present day, and besides this, identical
themes and formulae have been adhered to during long periods. Where the modern student, accustomed to an infinite variety of choice in themes, and an infinite
variety and tolerance of personal mannerisms, has neither accustomed himself to the idea of an unanimous style, nor to that of themes determined by general
necessities and unanimous demand, nor learned to distinguish nuances in the unfamiliar stylistic sequences, his impatience can hardly be wondered at; but this
impatience, which is not a virtue, must be outgrown. Here is involved the whole question of the distinction between originality or novelty and intensity or energy; it
should be enough to say that
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when there is realization, when the themes are felt and art lives, it is of no moment whether or not the themes are new or old.
Life itself -- the different ways in which the difficult problems of human association have been solved -- represents the ultimate and chief of the arts of Asia; and it
must be stated once for all that the forms assumed by this life are by no means empirically determined, but designed as far as possible according to a metaphysical
tradition, on the one hand conformably to a divine order, and on the other with a view to facilitating the attainment by each individual of approximate perfection in his
kind, that is, permitting him, by an exact adjustment of opportunity to potentiality, to achieve such realization of his entire being as is possible to him. Even
town-planning depends in the last analysis upon considerations of this kind. Neither the society nor the specific arts can be rationally enjoyed without a recognition of
the metaphysical principles to which they are thus related, for things can be enjoyed only in proportion to their intelligibility, speaking, that is, humanly and not merely
functionally.
Oriental life is modelled on types of conduct sanctioned by tradition. For India, R.ma and S.t. represent ideals still potent, the svadharma of each caste is a mode of
behavior, good form being à la mode; and until recently every Chinese accepted as a matter of course the concept of manners established by Confucius. The
Japanese word for rudeness means "acting in an unexpected way." Here,
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then, life is designed like a garden, not allowed to run wild. All this formality, for a cultured spectator, is far more attractive than can be the variety of imperfection so
freely displayed by the plain and blunt, or as he thinks, "more sincere," European. This external conformity, whereby a man is lost in the crowd as true architecture
seems to be a part of its native landscape, constitutes for the Oriental himself a privacy within which the individual character can flower unhampered. This is most of
all true in the case of women, whom the East has so long sheltered from necessities of self-assertion; one may say that for women of the aristocratic classes in India
or Japan there has existed no freedom whatever in the modern sense, yet these same women, molded by centuries of stylistic living, achieved an absolute perfection
in their kind, and perhaps Asiatic art can show no higher achievement than this. In India, where the "tyranny of caste" strictly governs marriage, diet, and every detail
of outward conduct, there exists and has always existed unrestricted freedom of thought as to modes of belief or thought; a breach of social etiquette may involve
excommunication from society, but religious intolerance is practically unknown, and it is a perfectly normal thing for different members of the same family to choose
for themselves the particular deity of their personal devotion.
It has been well said that civilization is style. An immanent culture in this sense endows every individual with an outward grace, a typological perfection, such as only
the rarest beings can achieve by their own effort, a kind of per-
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fection which does not belong to genius; whereas a democracy, which requires of every man to save his own "face" and soul, actually condemns each to an
exhibition of his own irregularity and imperfection, and this implicit acceptance of formal imperfection only too easily passes over into an exhibitionism which makes a
virtue of vanity and is complacently described as self-expression.
We have so far discussed the art of Asia in its theological aspect, that is with reference to the scholastic organization of thought in terms of types of activity, and the
corresponding arts of symbolism and iconography, in which the elements of form presented by Nature and redeemed by art are used as means of communication.
The classical developments of this kind of art belong mainly to the first millennium of the Christian era. Its later prolongations tend to decadence, the formal elements
retaining their edifying value, in design and composition, but losing their vitality, or surviving only in folk art, where the intensity of an earlier time expressing a more
conscious will is replaced by a simpler harmony of style prevailing throughout the whole manmade environment. Eighteenth-century Siam and Ceylon provide us with
admirable examples of such a folk style based on classical tradition, this condition representing the antithesis of that now realized in the West, where in place of
vocation as the general type of activity we find the types of individual genius on the one hand, and that of unskilled labor on the other.
Another kind of art, sometimes called romantic or idealis-
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tic, but better described as imagist 25 or mystical, where denotation and connotation cannot be divided, is typically developed throughout Asia in the second
millennium. In this kind of art no distinction is felt between what a thing "is" and what it "signifies." However, in thus drawing a distinction between symbolic and
imagist art it must be very strongly emphasized that the two kinds of art are inseverably connected and related historically and aesthetically; for example, Kamakura
Buddhist painting in the twelfth or thirteenth century is still iconographic, in Sung landscape and animal painting there is always an underlying symbolism, and, on the
other hand, Indian animal sculpture at M.mallapuram in the seventh century is already romantic, humorous, and mystical. A more definite break between the two
points of view is illustrated in the well-known story of the Zen priest Tan-hsia, who used a wooden image of the Buddha to make his fire -- not however, as
iconoclast, but simply because he was cold. The two kinds of art are most closely connected by the philosophy and practice of Yoga; in other words, a
self-identification with the theme is always prerequisite. But whereas the theological art is concerned with types of power, the mystical art is concerned with only one
power. Its ultimate theme is that single and undivided principle which reveals itself in every form of life whenever the light of the mind so shines on anything that the
secret of its inner life is realized, both as an end in itself unrelated to any human purpose, and as no other than the secret of one's own innermost
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being. "When thou seest an eagle, thou seest a portion of genius"; "the heavens declare the glory of God"; "a mouse is miracle enough," these are European analogies;
or St Bernard's Ligna et lapides docebunt te, quod a magistris audire non posse.
Here, then, the proximate theme may be any aspect of Nature whatsoever, not excluding human nature but "wherever the mind attaches itself," every aspect of life
having an equal value in a spiritual view. In theory this point of view could be applied in justification of the greatest possible variety of individual choice, and
interpreted as a "liberation" of the artist from associated ideas. However, in the more practical economy of the great living traditions we find, as before, that certain
restricted kinds or groups of themes are adhered to generation after generation in a given area, and that the technique is still controlled by most elaborate rules, and
can only be acquired in long years of patient practice (abhy.sa). Historical conditions and environment, an inheritance of older symbolisms, specific racial
sensibilities, all these provide a better than private determination of the work to be done; for the artist or artisan, who "has his art which he is expected to practice,"
this is a means to the conservation of energy; for man generally, it secures a continued comprehensibility of art, its value as communication.
The outstanding aspects of the imagist or mystical art of Asia are the Ch'an or Zen 26 art of China and Japan, in which the theme is either landscape or plant or
animal life;
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Vai..ava painting, poetry, and music in India, where the theme is sexual love; and ..f. poetry and music in Persia, devoted to the praise of intoxication.
The nature of Ch'an Zen is not easy to explain. Its sources are partly Indian, partly Taoist, its development both Chinese and Japanese. Chinese Buddhist art is like
Indian in general aspect, differing only in style; Ch'an-Zen art provides us with a perfect example of that kind of real assimilation of new cultural ideas which results in
a development formally unlike the original. This is altogether different from that hybridization which results from "influences" exerted by one art upon another;
influences in this last sense, though historians of art attach great importance to them, are almost always manifested in unconscious parody, -- one thinks of Hellenistic
art in India, or chinoiseries in Europe, -- and in any case belong to the history of taste rather than to the history of art. At the same time that we recognize Indian
sources of Ch'an-Zen art, it is to be remembered that Zen is also deeply rooted in Taoism; it is sufficiently shown by the saying of Chuang Tz., "The mind of the
sage, being in repose, becomes the mirror of the universe, the speculum of all creation," that China had always and independently been aware of the true nature of
imaginative vision.
The Ch'an-Zen discipline is one of activity and order; its doctrine the invalidity of doctrine, its end an illumination by immediate experience. Ch'an-Zen art, seeking
realization of the divine being in man, proceeds by way of opening
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his eyes to a like spiritual essence in the world of Nature external to himself; the scripture of Zen "is written with the characters of heaven, of man, of beasts, of
demons, of hundreds of blades of grass, and of thousands of trees" (D.gen), "every flower exhibits the image of Buddha" (Dug.). A good idea of Ch'en-Zen art can
be obtained from the words of a twelfth-century Chinese critic, writing on animal painting: after alluding to the horse and bull as symbols of Heaven and Earth, he
continues: "But tigers, leopards, deer, wild swine, fawns, and hares -- creatures that cannot be inured to the will of man -- these the painter chooses for the sake of
their skittish gambols and swift shy evasions, loves them as things that seek the desolation of great plains and wintry snows, as creatures that will not be haltered with
a bridle, nor tethered by the foot. He would commit to brushwork the gallant splendor of their stride; this he would do and no more." 27 But the Ch'an-Zen artist no
more paints from Nature than the poet writes from Nature; he has been trained according to treatises on style so detailed and explicit that there would seem to be no
room left for the operation of personality. A Japanese painter once said to me, "I have had to concentrate on the bamboo for many, many years, still a certain
technique for the rendering of the tips of bamboo leaves eludes me." And yet immediacy or spontaneity has been more nearly perfectly attained in Ch'an-Zen art than
anywhere else. Here there is no formal iconography, but an intuition that has to be expressed in an ink painting where no least stroke of the brush can be
-41-
erased or modified; the work is as irrevocable as life itself. There is no kind of art that comes nearer to "grasping the joy as it flies," the winged life that is no longer
life when we have taken thought to remember and describe it; no kind of art more studied in method, or less labored in effect. Every work of Ch'an-Zen art is
unique, and in proportion to its perfection inscrutable.
But Ch'an-Zen is by no means only a way to perfect experience, it is also a way to the perfecting of character. Ch'an-Zen represents all and more than we now
mean by the word "culture": an active principle pervading every aspect of human life, becoming now the chivalry of the warrior, now the grace of the lover, now the
habit of the craftsman. The latter point may be illustrated by Chuang Tz.'s story of the wheelwright who ventured to criticize a nobleman for reading the works of a
dead sage. In excusing his temerity, he explained: "Your humble servant must regard the matter from the point of view of his own art. In making a wheel, if I proceed
too gently, that is easy enough, but the work will not stand fast; if I proceed too violently, that is not only toilsome, but the parts will not fit well together. It is only
when the movements of my hand are neither too gentle nor too violent that the idea in my mind can be realized. Still, I cannot explain this in words; there is a skill in it
which I cannot teach my son, nor can he learn it from me." The wheelwright pointed out, in other words, that perfection cannot be achieved by reading about it, but
only in direct action.
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Thus Ch'an-Zen is by no means an asceticism divorced from life, though there are many great Ch'an-Zen monasteries; Ch'an-Zen art presents no exception to the
general rule in Asia, that all works of art have definite and commonly understood meanings, apart from any aesthetic perfection of the work itself. The meanings of
Ch'an-Zen themes are such as have sometimes been expressed in European art by means of allegorical figures. Dragon and tiger, mist and mountain, horse and bull,
are types of Heaven and Earth, spirit and matter; the gentle long-armed gibbon suggests benevolence, the peacock is symbolic of longevity, the lotus represents an
immaculate purity. Let us consider the case of the pine tree and the morning glory, both favorite themes of Japanese art: "The morning glory blossoms only for an
hour, and yet it differs not at heart from the pine, which may endure for a thousand years." What is to be understood here is not an obvious allegory of time and
eternity, but that the pine no more takes thought of its thousand years than the morning glory of its passing hour; each fulfils its destiny and is content; and Matsunaga,
the author of the poem, wished that his heart might be like theirs. If such associations add nothing directly to aesthetic quality, neither do they in any way detract from
it. When at last Zen art found expression in scepticism,
Granted this dewdrop world is but a dewdrop world, This granted, yet . . . 28
there came into being the despised popular and secular
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Ukiyoye 29 art of Japan. But here an artistic tradition had been so firmly established, the vision of the world so approfondi, that in a sphere corresponding with that
of the modern picture postcard -- Ukiyoye illustrated the theatre, the Yoshiwara, and the Aussichtspunkt -- there still survived a purity and charm of conception that
sufficed, however slight their essence, to win acceptance in Europe, long before the existence of a more serious and classical art had been suspected.
A mystical development took place in India somewhat later, and on different lines. In the anthropocentric European view of life, the nude human form has always
seemed to be peculiarly significant, but in Asia, where human life has been thought of as differing from that of other creatures, or even from that of the "inanimate"
creation only in degree, not in kind, this has never been the case. On the other hand, in India, the conditions of human love, from the first meeting of eyes to ultimate
self-oblivion, have seemed spiritually significant, and there has always been a free and direct use of sexual imagery in religious symbolism. On the one hand, physical
union has seemed to present a selfevident image of spiritual unity; on the other, operative forces, as in modern scientific method, are conceived as male and female,
positive and negative. It was thus natural enough that later Vai..ava mysticism, speaking always of devotion, bhakti, should do so in the same terms; the true and
timeless relation of the soul to God could now only be expressed in impassioned epithalamia celebrating
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the nuptials of R.dh. and K...a, milkmaid and herdsman, earthly Bride and heavenly Bridegroom. So there came into being songs and dances in which at one and
the same time sensuality has spiritual significance, and spirituality physical substance, and painting that depicts a transfigured world, where all men are heroic, all
women beautiful and passionate and shy, beasts and even trees and rivers are aware of the presence of the Beloved -- a world of imagination and reality, seen with
the eyes of Majñ.n. 30 If in the dance ("nautch") the mutual relations of hero and heroine imitated by the players display an esoteric meaning, 31 this is not by
arbitrary interpretation or as allegory, but by a mutual introsusception. If in painting and poetry the daily life of peasants seemed to reflect conditions ever present in
the pastoral Heaven of the Divine Cowherd, this is not a sentimental or romantic symbolism, but born of the conviction that "all the men and women of the world are
His living forms" (Kab.r), that reality is here and now tangibly and visibly accessible. Here the scent of the earth is ever present: "If he has no eyes, nor nose, nor
mouth, how could he have stolen and eaten curd. Can we abandon our love of K...a, to worship a figure painted on a wall." (S.r D.s.) Realities of experience,
and neither a theory of design nor inspiration coming none knows whence, are the sources of this art; and those who cannot at least in fancy (v.san.) 32 experience
the same emotions and sense their natural operation cannot expect to be able to understand the art by any other and more analytical processes. For no art can be
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judged until we place ourselves at the point of view of the artist; so only can the determination be known by which its design and execution are entirely controlled.
A formal theory of art based on the facts as above outlined has been enunciated in India in a considerable literature on Rhetoric (ala.k.ra). It is true that this theory
is mainly developed in connection with poetry, drama, dancing, and music, but it is immediately applicable to art of all kinds, much of its terminology employs the
concept of color, and we have evidence that the theory was also in fact applied to painting. 33 Accordingly, in what follows we have not hesitated to give an
extended interpretation to terms primarily employed in connection with poetry, or rather literature (k.vya), considered as the type of art. 34 The justification of art is
then made with reference to use (prayojana) or value (puru.ârtha) 35 by pointing out that it subserves the Four Purposes of Life, viz. Right Action (dharma),
Pleasure (k.ma), Wealth (artha), and Spiritual Freedom (mok.a). Of these, the first three represent the proximate, the last the ultimate, ends of life; the work of art is
determined (prativihita) in the same way, proximately with regard to immediate use, and ultimately with regard to aesthetic experience. Art is then defined as follows:
VAKYA. RASÂTMAKA. K.VYAM, that is, "ART IS EXPRESSION INFORMED BY IDEAL BEAUTY." 36 Mere narration (nirv.ha, itih.sa), bare utility,
are not art, or are only art in a rudimentary sense. Nor has art as such a merely informative value confined to its explicit meaning (vyutpatti): only the man of little
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wit (alpabuddhi) can fail to recognize that art is by nature a well-spring of delight (.nanda-ni.yanda), whatever may have been the occasion of its appearance. 37 On
the other hand, there cannot be imagined an art without meaning or use. The doctrine of art for art's sake is disposed of in a sentence quoted in the S.hitya Darpa.a
V, 1, Commentary: "All expressions (v.kya), human or revealed, are directed to an end beyond themselves (k.rya-param, 'another factibile'); or if not so
determined (atatparatve) are thereby comparable only to the utterances of a madman." Therefore, "let the purpose (k.târthat.) of skill (vaidagdhya) be attained,"
M.lat.m.dhava, I, 32 f. Again, the distinction of art (controlled workmanship, things well and truly made) from Nature (functional expression, sattva-bh.va) is made
as follows: "the work (karma) of the two hands is an otherwisedetermined (parast.t-prativihit.) element of natural being (bh.ta-m.tr.)," Kau..taki Upani.ad, III, 5.
In this theory of art, the most important term is RASA, rendered above "Ideal Beauty," but meaning literally "tincture" or essence, and generally translated in the
present connection as "flavor"; aesthetic experience being described as the tasting of flavor (rasâsv.dana) or simply as tasting (sv.da, .sv.da), the taster as rasika,
the work of art as rasavat. 38 It should also be observed that the word rasa is used (1) relatively, in the plural, with reference to the various, usually eight or nine,
emotional conditions which may constitute the burden of a given work, love (.+1E5B.Bg.ra-rasa) being the most significant of these, and (2) absolutely, in the
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singular, with reference to the interior act of tasting flavor unparticularized. In the latter sense, which alone need be considered here, the idea of an aesthetic beauty to
be tasted, and knowable only in the activity of tasting, 39 is to be clearly distinguished from the relative beauties or lovelinesses of the separate parts of the work, or
of the work itself considered merely as a surface, the appreciation of all which is a matter of taste (ruci) or predilection. 40 The latter relative beauties will appear in
the theme and aesthetic surfaces, in all that has to do with the proximate determination of the work to be done, its ordering to use; the formal beauty will be sensed in
vitality and unity, design and rhythm, in no way depending on the nature of the theme, or its component parts. It is indeed very explicitly pointed out that any theme
whatever, "lovely or unlovely, noble or vulgar, gracious or frightful, etc.," may become the vehicle of rasa. 41
The definition of aesthetic experience (rasâsv.dana) given in the S.hitya Darpa.a, III, 2-3, is of such authority and value as to demand translation in extenso; we
offer first, a very literal version with brief comment, then a slightly smoother rendering avoiding interruptions. Thus, (1) "Flavor (rasa.) is tasted (.sv.dyate) by men
having an innate knowledge of absolute values (kai.cit-pram.t.bhi.), in exaltation of the pure consciousness (sattvôdrek.t), as self-luminous (svaprak..a .), in the
mode at once of ecstasy and intellect (.nanda-cin-maya .), void of contact with things knowable (vedyântara-spar.a- ..nya.), twin brother to the
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tasting of Brahma (brahmâsvb.da-sahôdara.), whereof the life is a super-wordly lightning-flash (lokôttara-camatk.raprâ.a.), as intrinsic aspect (svâk.ravat =
svar.pavat), in indivisibility (abhinnatve)": and (2) "Pure aesthetic experience is theirs in whom the knowledge of ideal beauty is innate; it is known intuitively, in
intellectual ecstasy without accompaniment of ideation, at the highest level of conscious being; born of one mother with the vision of God, its life is as it were a flash
of blinding light of transmundane origin, impossible to analyze, and yet in the image of our very being."
Neither of the foregoing renderings embodies any foreign matter. On the other hand, only an extended series of alternative renderings would suffice to develop the
full reference of the original terms. Pram.t. (from the same root as pram..a, present also in English "metre") is quis rationem artis intelligit; here not as one instructed,
but by nature. The notion of innate genius may be compared with Blake's "Man is born like a garden ready planted and sown," and "The knowledge of Ideal Beauty
cannot be acquired, it is born with us." But it must be understood that from the Indian point of view, genius is not a fortuitous manifestation, but the necessary
consequence of a rectification of the whole personality, accomplished in a previous condition of being; cf. the notion of an absolute pram..a natural to the
Comprehensor, to the Buddha, see note 74, infra. The "exaltation of sattva" implies, of course, abstraction from extension, operation, local motion (rajas), and from
inde-
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termination or inertia (tamas). Aesthetic experience is a transformation not merely of feeling (as suggested by the word aesthesis, per se), but equally of
understanding; cf. the state of "Deep Sleep," characterized by the expression prajñ.na-ghana- .nanda-mayi, "a condensed understanding in the mode of ecstasy,"
discussed below, p. 133 and note 89. The level of pure aesthetic experience is indeed that of the pure angelic understanding, proper to the Motionless Heaven,
Brahmaloka. With "like a flash of lightning," cf. B.had.ra.yaka Upani.ad, II, 3, 6 and Kena Upani.ad, 29, where the vision of Brahman is compared to a "sudden
flash of lightning," or "What flashes in the lightning." The vision is our very Being, Ding an Sich, svâk.ra, and like our Being, beyond our individually limited grasp
(graha.a) or conception (sa.kalpa); "you cannot see the seer of seeing," B.had.ra.yaka Upani.ad, III, 4, 2. 42
In any case, "It is the spectator's own energy (uts.ha) that is the cause of tasting, just as when children play with clay elephants"; the permanent mood (sth.yi-bh.va)
is brought to life as rasa because of the spectator's own capacity for tasting, "not by the character or actions of the hero to be imitated (anuk.rya), nor by the
deliberate ordering of the work to that end (tatparatvata.)." 43 Those devoid of the required capacity or energy are no better than the wood or masonry of the
gallery. 44 Aesthetic experience is thus only accessible to those competent (pram.t., rasika, sah.daya). Competence depends "on purity or singleness (sattva) of
heart and on an inner character (antara-dharma)
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or habit of obedience (anu.+12BBla) tending to aversion of attention from external phenomena; this character and habit, not to be acquired by mere learning, but
either innate or cultivated, depends on an ideal sensibility (v.san.) and the faculty of self-identification (yogyat.) with the forms (bhavana) depicted
(var.anU+12Bya)." 45 Just as the original intuition arose from a self-identification of the artist with the appointed theme, so aesthetic experience, reproduction, arises
from a self-identification of the spectator with the presented matter; criticism repeats the process of creation. An interesting case is that of the actor, or any artist,
who must not be naturally moved by the passions he depicts, though he may obtain aesthetic experience from the spectacle of his own performance. 46
Notwithstanding that aesthetic experience is thus declared to be an inscrutable and uncaused spiritual activity, that is virtually ever-present and potentially realizable,
but not possible to be realized unless and until all affective and mental barriers have been resolved, all knots of the heart undone, it is necessarily admitted that the
experience arises in relation to some specific representation. The elements of this representation, the work of art itself, can be and are discussed by the Hindu
rhetoricians at great length, and provide the material and much of the terminology of analysis and criticism. For present purposes it will suffice to present these
constituents of the work of art in a brief form; but it must not be forgotten that here only is to be found the tangible (gr.hya) matter of the work of art,
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all that can be explained and accounted for in it, and that this all includes precisely that a priori knowledge which the spectator must possess or come to possess
before he can pretend to competence in the sense above defined. The elements of the work of art are, then:
1. Determinants (vibh.va), viz. the physical stimulants to aesthetic reproduction, particularly the theme and its parts, the indications of time and place, and other
apparatus of representation -- the whole factibile. The operation of the Determinants takes place by the operation of an idealsympathy (s.dh.ra.ya), a
self-identification with the imagined situation. 47
2. Consequents (anubh.va), the specific and conventional means of "registering" (s.can.) emotional states, in particular gestures (abhinaya).
3. Moods (bh.va), the conscious emotional states as represented in art. These include thirty-three Fugitive or Transient (vyabhic.ri) Moods such as joy, agitation,
impatience, etc., and eight or nine Permanent (stk.yi) Moods, the Erotic, Heroic, etc., which in turn are the vehicles of the specific rasas or emotional colorings. In
any work, one of the Permanent Moods must constitute a master motif to which all the others are subordinate; for "the extended development of a transient emotion
becomes an inhibition of rasa," 48 or, as we should now express it, the work becomes sentimental, embarrassing rather than moving.
4. The representation of involuntary physical reactions (sattva-bh.va), for example fainting.
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All of these determinants and symbols are recognized collectively and indivisibly in aesthetic experience, the work of art being as such a unity; but they are
recognized separately in subsequent analysis.
According to the related School of Manifestation (Vyaktivada) the essential or soul of poetry is called dkvani, "the reverberation of meaning arising by suggestion
(vyañjan.)." 49 In grammar and logic, a word or other symbol is held to have two powers only, those of denotation (abhidh.) and connotation (lak.a.); for example
gop.la is literally "cowherd," but constantly signifies Kr...a. The rhetoricians assume for a word or symbol a third power, that of suggestion (vyañjan.), the matter
suggested, which we should call the real content of the work, being dhvani, with respect to either the theme (vastu), any metaphor or other ornament (ala.k.ra), or,
what is more essential, one of the specific rasas. In other words, abhid., lak.a.., and vyañjan. correspond to literal, allegorical, and anagogic significance. Dhvani,
as overtone of meaning, is thus the immediate vehicle of single rasa and means to aesthetic experience. 50 Included in dhvani is t.tpary.rtha, the meaning conveyed
by the whole sentence or formula, as distinct from the mere sum of meanings of its separate parts. The School of Manifestation is so called because the perception
(prat.ti) of rasa is thought of simply as the manifestation of an inherent and already existing intuitive condition of the spirit, in the same sense that Enlightenment is
virtually everpresent though not always realized. The prat.ti of rasa, as
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it were, breaks through the enclosing walls (vara.a, .vara.a) by which the soul, though predisposed by ideal sympathy (s.dh.ra.ya) and sensibility (v.san.), is still
immured 51 and restricted from shining forth in its true character as the taster of rasa in an aesthetic experience which is as aforesaid the very twin brother of the
experience of the unity of Brahman.
In the later and otherwise more synthetic scheme of the S.hitya Darpa.a, the rasa and dhvani theories are not quite so closely linked, dhvani being now not so much
the soul of all poetry as characteristic of the superior sort of poetry in which what is suggested outweighs what is literally expressed.
For the sake of completeness there need only be mentioned two earlier theories in which Ornament or Figures (ala.k.ra) and Style or Composition (r.ti) are
regarded respectively as the essential elements in art. These theories, which have not held their own in India, may be compared to the minor European conceptions
of art as dexterity, or as consisting merely of aesthetic surfaces which are significant only as sources of sensation. This last point of view can be maintained
consistently in India only from the standpoint of the naïve realism which underlies a strictly monastic prejudice against the world.
It remains to be pointed out that the rasa and dhvani theories are essentially metaphysical and Vedântic in method and conclusion, though they are expressed not so
much in terms of the pure Vedânta of the Upani.ads as in
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those of a later Vedânta combined with other systems, particularly the Yoga. The fully evolved Indian theory of beauty is in fact hardly to be dated before the tenth
or eleventh century, though the doctrine of rasa is already clearly enunciated in Bharata N..ya ..stra, which may be anterior to the fifth century and itself derives
from still older sources.
In any case, the conception of the work of art as determined outwardly to use and inwardly to a delight of the reason; the view of its operation as not intelligibly
causal, but by way of a destruction of the mental and affective barriers behind which the natural manifestation of the spirit is concealed; the necessity that the soul
should be already prepared for this emancipation by an inborn or acquired sensibility; the requirement of self-identification with the ultimate theme, on the part of
both artist and spectator, as prerequisite to visualization in the first instance and reproduction in the second; finally, the conception of ideal beauty as unconditioned
by natural affections, indivisible, supersensual, and indistinguishable from the gnosis of God-all these characteristics of the theory demonstrate its logical connection
with the predominant trends of Indian thought, and its natural place in the whole body of Indian philosophy.
Consequently, though it could not be argued that any aesthetic theory is explicitly set forth in the Upani.ads, it will not surprise us to find that the ideas and
terminology of the later aesthetic are there already recognizable. For
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example, in the B.had.ra.yaka Upani.ad, I, 4, 7, the world is said to be differentiated or known in plurality by, and only by, means of name and aspect,
n.Bmar.pa, idea and image; ibid., III, 2, 3 and 5 , "Voice (v.c) is an apprehender (graha); it is seized by the idea (n.ma) as an over-apprehender, then indeed by
voice (v.c) one utters thoughts (n.m.ni)," and similarly "Sight (cak.u) is an apprehender; it is seized by aspect (r.pa) as an over-apprehender, then indeed by the
eye (cak.u) one sees things (r.p..i)." 52 Further, ibid., III, 9, 20 , " on the heart (h.daya) are aspects (r.p..i) based," and similarly in the case of speech. As to the
heart, "it is the same as Praj.pati, it is Brahman," ibid., V, 3 , and "other than that Imperishable, there is none that (really) sees," ibid., III, 8, II . 53 Actual objects
(r.p..i) seen in space are really seen not as such, but only as colored areas, the concept of space being altogether mental and conventional. 54
The Indian theory, in origins and formulation, seems at first sight to be sui generis. But merely because of the specific idiomatic and mythical form in which it finds
expression, it need not be thought of as otherwise than universal. It does not in fact differ from what is implicit in the Far Eastern view of art, or on the other hand in
any essentials from the Scholastic Christian point of view, or what is asserted in the aphorisms of Blake; it does differ essentially from the modern non-intellectual
interpretations of art as sensation. What are probably the most significant elements in the Asiatic theory are the views (1) that aesthetic ex-
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perience is an ecstasy in itself inscrutable, but in so far as it can be defined, a delight of the reason, and (2) that the work of art itself, which serves as the stimulus to
the release of the spirit from all inhibitions of vision, can only come into being and have being as a thing ordered to specific ends. Heaven and Earth are united in the
analogy (s.d..ya, etc.) of art, which is an ordering of sensation to intelligibility and tends toward an ultimate perfection in which the seer perceives all things imaged
in himself.
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Chapter II
MEISTER ECKHART'S VIEW OF ART
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Chapter II
MEISTER ECKHART'S VIEW OF ART
Docti rationem artis intelligunt, indocti voluptatem.
Quintilian, IX, 4.
T HE Schoolmen composed no special treatise with the title 'Philosophy of Art.' . . . There is nevertheless a far-reaching theory of art to be found in their writings."
55 Amongst such there are none more universal, more profound, or more distinguished by vigor of statement and clarity of thought than those of Meister Eckhart, 56
whose Sermons might well be termed an Upani.ad of Europe. Eckhart's preëminence is not of the order of genius; what is remarkable in him is nothing in kind,
nothing individual or curious, but only a great energy or will that allows him to resume and concentrate in one consistent demonstration the spiritual being of Europe
at its highest tension. Toward his theme he is utterly devout, and his trained mental powers are the author of his style, but otherwise, in his own words spoken with
reference to the painter of portraits, "it is not himself that it reveals to us" ( 37 ); "What I give out is in me . . . as the gift of God" ( 143 ).
The real analogy between Eckhart's modes of thought and those which have long been current in India should make it easy for the Vedântist or Mah.y.na Buddhist
to under-
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stand him, which would require a much greater effort on the part of a Protestant Christian or modern philosopher. In European readers, some knowledge of
Scholastic thought and Christian theology must be taken for granted. Partly for the sake of Indian readers, and partly because the use of Oriental side by side with
European technical terms cannot much longer be avoided by students of aesthetics or metaphysics, I have bracketed Sanskrit equivalents wherever they serve to
explain or better define the meaning. For the rest, every word or passage enclosed by quotation marks is Eckhart's. I have not thought it necessary to distinguish his
own words from those of the various doctors, masters, and heathen philosophers whom he sometimes quotes and endorses, this not being a study of Eckhart's
sources. I have tried to arrange the available material logically, and where it has been necessary to develop the idea, to do so strictly in harmony with Scholastic
ideas in general and Eckhart's phrases in particular, often using his own words even when this is not specifically indicated by the page references.
Eckhart's whole conception of human life in operation and attainment is aesthetic: it runs through all his thought that man is an artist in the analogy of the "exalted
workman," and his idea of "sovran good" and "immutable delight" is that of a perfected art. 57 Art is religion, religion art, not related, but the same. No one can study
theology without perceiving this; for example, the Trinity is an "arrangement" of God, 58 "articulate speech" (369), "de-
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termined by formal notions" (268), "symmetry with supreme lucidity" (366). Eckhart is writing, not a treatise on the arts as such, though he is evidently quite familiar
with them, but sermons on the art of knowing God. Ignorance is "lack of knowledge . . . brutish" ( 13 ).
What is knowledge. Threefold: (1) of particulars and generals, sensible, empirical, literal, indicative, sa.vyavah.rika-pratyak.a, (2) of universals, rational or
intelligible, allegorical, conventional, parok.a, (3) of sameness, without image or likeness, transcendental, anagogic, aparok.a = paramârthika-pratyak.a (13, 32,
87-88, 166, 228, II, 183, etc.; cf. Chapter V). Of these the first two (avidy.) are relative, the last (vidy.) immediate and absolute, only to be expressed in terms of
negation.
To clarify his meaning, Eckhart makes constant allusion to the practice of specific arts, to the art in the artist, and to the perfecting of art and artist. Understanding
may be audibly or visibly perceived, in either case as an aesthetic process. For example, "I see the lilies in the field, their gaiety, their color, all their leaves" ( 143 ),
just as any brute perceives them; this is simply the recognition and relishing of "creatures as creatures," "as they are in themselves," to be recognized and valued as to
their uses. But "my inner man relishes things not as creatures but as the gift of God" ( 143 ), that is, as intelligible images, here with a specifically edifying connotation.
"And again, to my innermost man they savor not of God's gift but of ever and aye. Even so do all creatures speak God" ( 143 ), "I am come like the fra-
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grance of a flower" (284); that is the overtone of meaning, suggestion, dhvani, unalloyed savoring, rasa. In all, these are the three aesthetic functions of denotation,
connotation, and implication, corresponding to recognition, interpretation, and immediate understanding.
The soul has two powerful faculties, intellect and will, expressed in vision and love, which can be exercised in fruitful operation, outwardly or inwardly ( 166 ).
Where things exist as intelligible images, as means of understanding and communication, intellectually, in the imagination, there lies man's way. It is here that things are
known in unintelligible multiplicity and must be realized in intelligible unity, here that the use of things is understood, and that renunciation of all uses must be made: "to
find nature herself all her likenesses have to be shattered and the further in the nearer the actual thing" ( 259 ), such renunciation and such shattering being of the
essence of art, in which all things are seen alike without any sense of possession, not in their nature but in their being, quite disinterestedly. 59
In outward operation, these powers of the soul, intellect and will, correspond to vocation, as with the artist (artifex), professor (doctor), or celebrant (priest), and to
conduct as distinguished from specific skill. The artist is not a special kind of man, but every man is a special kind of artist. The vocations ("arranging this or that," 16)
are so many different disciplines; conduct ("comforting another," 16) another discipline proper to all men alike. Every activity involves what we should now call an
aesthetic process, a succession
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of problem, solution, and execution. Materials apart, whoever acts, acts in the same way, will following the intellect, whether he makes a house, or studies
mathematics, or performs an office, or does good works.
Our modern system of thought has substituted for this division of labor a spiritual caste system which divides men into species. Those who have lost most by this are
the artists, professionally speaking, on the one hand, and laymen generally on the other. The artist (meaning such as would still be so called) loses by his isolation and
corresponding pride, and by the emasculation of his art, no longer conceived as intellectual, but only as emotional in motivation and significance; the workman (to
whom the name of artist is now denied) loses in that he is not called, but forced to labor unintelligently, goods being valued above men. All alike have lost, in that art
being now a luxury, no longer the normal type of all activity, all men are compelled to live in squalor and disorder and have become so inured to this that they are
unaware of it. The only surviving artists in the Scholastic, Gothic sense, are scientists, surgeons, and engineers, the only ateliers, laboratories.
Just because Eckhart's treatment of aesthetics is not ad hoc, but takes for granted the point of view of a school, not in any private sense his own, it has a special
value; we can have no doubt that it was actually in this fashion that cultured men in Paris and Cologne, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when Christian art was
at its zenith, thought of art and the specific arts. These same men in
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their collective capacity as the Church prescribed the themes of art and the more essential details of its iconography; the workman, sometimes a trained monk, more
often a trained gildsman, added from the storehouse of tradition another element to form besides the skill of craft which he was expected to practice in his vocation.
Thus intellect and will worked in unanimity. Is not the determination of this art -- that in it which alone is common to the mind and to the product, that is, its imagery,
not its style, still less any individual mannerism -- a thing that must be understood if we would understand Christian art at all. I sometimes wonder if we really want to
understand it. For on the one hand, from the histories of art one would suppose that the very form by which the art is moved from within can be neglected, and that
nothing matters in it but the facts of history, accidents of provenance and influence, and problems of attribution -- all those things with which the mediaeval workman
was least of all concerned; and on the other hand, we have those who insist that the enjoyment of the work of art, admittedly its ultimate value (if we understand
"enjoyment" rightly, which is the very problem of aesthetics, and cannot be assumed) demands no other preparatory discipline, being an unintelligible ecstasy (as may
be granted), and can be taught (which is inadmissible) to those who aspire to the transcendent vision, but are only too ready to be persuaded that the mirror of the
universe is the eye's intrinsic faculty (such readiness is "a trick the soul has, when indulging in comfortable intuitions of divinity," 447). The
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study of art, from a historical point of view, may be harmless in itself, yet no better than the satisfaction of a curiosity; the enjoyment of works of art merely as a
pleasure of the eye or ear may be harmless in itself ("that a disagreeable noise should be as grateful to the ear as the sweet tones of a lyre is a thing I never shall attain
to," II, 97), yet no more than an enhanced sensation. If this were all, aesthetic would be nothing more than a discussion of taste, and so indeed the experimental
psychologists believe.
To speak of art exclusively in terms of sensation is doing violence to the inner man, the knowing subject; to extract from Eckhart's thought a theory of taste (ruci)
would be doing violence to its unity. If I venture at all to extract from it a theory of art, this is not as an exercise in dialectics, but because it is required for the specific
interpretation of Christian art, and because the Scholastic view is more than a great provincial school of thought; it represents a universal mode of thought, and this
mode throws a light on the analogous theories that have prevailed in Asia, and should serve Western students as a means of approach to, and understanding of,
Asiatic art.
The doctrine of types, ideas, forms, or images is of fundamental importance for the understanding of Eckhart's references to art. More rarely, the words semblance,
likeness, symbol, effigy, pattern, and prototype are employed. Amongst all these, type and prototype, pattern, idea, and ideal are used only with reference to things
known
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and seen intellectually (parok.a), the others in the same sense or with reference to the image materially embodied (pratyak.a). To begin with, what is an image in
these two senses. An image "is anything known or born" ( 258 ), or anything both known and born or made. The Son, for example, is the Father's "own image
abiding in himself . . . his immanent form," and at the same time "the exact likeness, the perfect image of his Father" ( 258 ) in a distinct Person. In the same way all
creatures "in their preexisting forms in God have been divine life for ever," only their material embodiment "when Nature is working in time and space" ( 71 ) being by
birth and as it were God's handiwork: "these preëxisting forms are the origin or principle of the creation of all creatures, and in this sense they are types and pertain
to practical knowledge" ( 253 ). They live in the "divine mind," the "hoard" which "is God's art" (461): "Intellect is the temple of God wherein he is shining in all his
glory. Nowhere does God dwell more really than in this temple of his intellect's nature" ( 212 ) (.laya-vijñ.na), "quiddity or mode is the way into this temple" (ibid.).
And like God's hoard "There is a power in the soul called mind (vijñ.na, sa.kalpa); it is her storehouse of incorporeal forms and intellectual notions" (402); the ideas
in this storehouse of the soul may seem either to be new or to be remembered ( 105 ), but in either case are as it were recollected ( 226 , 295), for "all the words of
his divine essence flow into the word in our mind in distinction of Person just as memory pours out treasure of images into the powers of
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the soul" (402). Another superficial distinction of ideas in kind can be made as between the ideas of natural species, as when one works with the "rose-form" ( 251 )
or the image of Conrad ( 128 ), and artificial ideas, arising "theoretically, as the house of wood and stone is designed in the architect's practical mind, who makes the
house as much like his ideal as he can" ( 252 ), either kind being "in the practical power" as the "idea of the work" ( 252 ) to be done, if work is to be done, as well
as abiding in the mind as objects of understanding and a priori means of rational communication. Either of these kinds of ideas is equally invention (anuvitta), a
discovery amongst "the sum of all the forms conceived by man and which subsist in God himself, I having no property in them and no idea of ownership" ( 35 , cf. 17
); which point of view we all naturally endorse when we say that an idea has come to us, or that we have hit upon it, eureka, never that we have made it. At the best,
we have prepared ourselves for it by emptying our conscience of all other creature images and fugitive emotions, accepting for the time being only the seal or imprint
of this one thing. So the image is in the artist, not he in it; it is his whose image it is, not his who harbors it ( 52 ). When we find "just as the artist, inspired by his art,
will carve in wood or paint on canvas or the wall" ( II, 211), "art" means the idea of the theme, as it presents itself to him. The image in the object, in the artist's mind,
and in the graven image are the same, though in the artist and in his work only according to his powers, not in its full perfection. In the graven
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image of anything it may be thought of not as introduced by the artist but as latent in the medium because of the appetite for form that matter has; for example, "when
the artist makes a statue out of wood or stone he does not put the image in the wood, he chips away the wood which hides the form. He gives the wood nothing, he
takes it away: carves it out where it is too thick, pares off overlay, and then there appears what was hidden" ( II, 82) -an analogy of how God's image is ever present
in the ground of the soul, but concealed by veils and hindrances ( II,81).
God's and man's ideas or types are thus not Platonic ideas external to intellect (in Essence there is no likeness or image, but only Sameness, samat.), nor immutable
or general, but types of activity, forces, principles of work or becoming, living and particular -- "to call a tree a tree is not to name it, for all the species are confused"
( 117 ), no two creatures being alike in their nature, for "every creature makes innate denial; the one denies it is the other" ( 249 ). Ideas are as many in number as
there have been or ever can be things in time, "there are as many types as there are grades of nature to be typified" ( 252 , 253 ); they cannot be more in number
than this, because God's work is not by choice, there is nothing that he leaves undone, what he thinks is, what is is what he thinks, his creation is without means or
succession. "Every nature emanates from its appropriate form" (477), but our conception of process and succession is merely "due to our gross senses" (365);
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from God's point of view ideas are all known at once in perfection and in one form; from our temporal point of view ideas are free and variably becoming, or as we
now say evolving. From any point of view, ideas or forms (n.ma) are "living," not merely existing like standards fixed and deposited for safe-keeping -- ideas not
merely of static shapes, but ideas of acts ( 16 ).
"An icon in stone or on the wall, with no foundation to it (that is, materials apart, and) taken simply as form, is the same form as his whose form it is" ( 64 ). So then
normally there will be nothing of the artist in the work except his skill: "the painter who has painted a good portrait therein shows his art; it is not himself that it reveals
to us" ( 37 ). But if the painter paints his own portrait, as God does, then both his skill and his image will be in it, himself as he knows himself, but not his very self:
"this reflects credit on the painter who embodies in it his dearest conception of his art and makes it the image of himself. The likeness of the portrait praises the author
without words" ( 97 ). "Iif I paint my likeness on the wall, he who sees the likeness is not seeing me; but anyone who sees me sees my likeness and not my likeness
merely but my child. If I really knew my soul, anyone who saw my conception of it would say it was my son, for I share therewith my energy and nature, and as here
so it is in the Godhead. The Father understands himself perfectly clearly, so there appears to him his image, that is to say, his Son" (408) (the portrait and the
corporeal man are both the man's conception of himself, they are
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"alike" in form, however different in aspect flesh and paint must be).
In this connection may be considered a difficult passage occurring in the exegesis of Genesis I, 26, "Let us make man in our image and likeness." Eckhart says,
"Work comes from the outward and from the inner man, but the innermost man takes no part in it. In making a thing the very innermost self of a man comes into
outwardness" ( 195 ), in which there seems to be some contradiction. The first is clear: the work as a substance in a given shape comes from the man's hands
molding matter, and as form from the specific idea in him, as it is in his intellect, which does no work in molding matter, but only singles out the best it can according
to its idiosyncrasy. Because the actual handiwork is done by the man's very body, it is only natural that there should be a trace of his physiognomy left in it, just as
the axe which "brings about the workman's desired end" ( II, 178) leaves its mark in the wood and could be identified thereby. 59 So then in touch and style the
work somewhat reveals the man, that is as to the accidents of his being. That the very innermost self of a man also "comes into outwardness," according to Eckhart's
own analogy, as "When God made man the very innermost heart of the Godhead was concerned in his making" ( 195 , 436), and yet "God's works enclose a mere
nothing of God, wherefore they cannot disclose him" (87, cf. Bhagavad G.t., IX, 4 and 5). Or again, "Form is a revelation of essence" ( 38 ), in which there is
neither image nor likeness; essence is in all
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things, and though it "gets not," yet "it moves movable things like creatures" (284). As Godhead to God, so is innermost man to workman, Godhead and innermost
man being present in the work, one in being with it, but not operatively or intelligibly. In Eckhart's own work we see the man possessed of his ideas, and wrestling
with his means, the "intractable" ( 119 ) and untaught German speech of his day; but in the ideas at last so vigorously expressed there is a "mere nothing of the man"
as he is in God. For man to be in his handiwork as God is in his creation it would have to be as immanent life, the thing made would have to be alive and possessed
of free will. If we do sometimes say that a work lives, this is only metaphorical, a sort of animism which projects our own living reactions into the thing as it is in itself.
That there is no life in man's handiwork underlies the Mu.ammadan doctors' interdiction of representative art, the imitation of living forms being regarded as a
blasphemy, inasmuch as the artist brings into being a pseudo-creation, as it were in mockery of God, who alone gives life. Nevertheless, as we have seen and shall
further demonstrate, Christian art is not a mimicry of natural species, nor merely a source of pleasurable sensations, but is a manner of speaking about God and
Nature: it no more trespasses upon God's dignity than when we speak of him or see of him or taste of him, using names or other images, 60 being only too well
aware the while that "nothing true can be spoken of God" ( 8 ), "God is nameless" ( 246 ), "there is no knowing
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him by likeness" ( 55 ), (who is nir.bh.sa, am.rta), "a portrait of the highest seraph limned in black would be a better likeness far than God portrayed as highest
seraph; that were a preëminent unlikeness" ( 46 ), and yet believing that there is nothing "more useful and salutary to the soul than excursions in the science of the
holy Trinity and unity" (392) in which excursions we are naturally compelled to make use of name and form, being "permitted to use the names his saints have called
him by" (70, cf. St Thomas, Sum. Theol., I, Q. 51, A. 3, "it is in no wise contrary to truth for intelligible things to be set forth in Scripture under sensible figures, since
it is not said for the purpose of maintaining that intelligible things are sensible, but in order that properties of intelligible things may be understood according to
similitude through sensible figures"). The demonstration of iconoclasm is as follows: "they held their peace for fear of lying" ( 237 ); "Anyone content with what can
be expressed in words -- God is a word, Heaven is a word -- is aptly styled an unbeliever" (339). But this is a sort of asceticism or renunciation proper only to
those who have a vision of God without means and have earned the right to say that all scripture is vain; otherwise, a denial of the soul's powers, expressed in
outward works, as a means to edification and enlightenment, is by no means excusable.
Notwithstanding that man's handiwork is without life, still the human maker is an analogy of the "exalted workman" (376), the divine architect, all-maker
(Vi.vakarma). "Suppose some master of the arts. If he produces a work
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of art he none the less preserves his arts within himself: the arts are the artist in the artist" (that is, in the man so called), just as "Things flowed forth finite into time
while abiding in eternity" where they are "God in God" (285). "The idea of the work exists in the worker's practical mind as an object of his understanding, which
regards it as expressing his idea to which he forms the material work" ( 252 ), that is, not in his mind as a mode of understanding, but as a thing already and directly
understood, for "I make a letter of the alphabet like the image of that letter in my mind, not like my mind itself" ( 235 ). Every least detail of the work will correspond
to details of form in the artist's mind: "no architect can carry in his head the plan of a whole house without the plans of all its details" ( 252 ).
Again, "the form, idea, or semblance of a thing, a rose, for instance, is present in my soul, and must be for two reasons. One is because from the appearance of its
mental form (j.na-sattva-r.pa) I can paint the rose in corporal matter, so there must be an image of the rose-form in my soul. The second reason is because from the
subjective rose-idea I recognize the objective rose although I do not copy it (that is, do not copy the rose in painting). Just as I can carry in my mind the notion of a
house I never mean to build" ( 252 ). "For the purpose of making a crock a man takes a handful of clay; that is the medium he works in. He gives it a form he has in
him, nobler than his material" ( 68 ). And as to this form as it exists in the artist's mind, "Another power in the soul is that wherewith
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she thinks (dh.,dhyai). This power is able to picture in itself things which are not there, so that I can see things as well as with my eyes, or even better. I can see a
rose in winter when there are no roses (cf. 116 ), therefore with this power the soul produces (.kar.ati) things from the non-existent (h.daya-.k..a) like God who
creates things out of nothing (kha = ..os)" ( 212 , cf. 445). In any case "to be properly expressed a thing must proceed from within, moved by its form; it must
come, not in from without, but out from within" ( 108 ).
In other words, just as "the soul is the form of the body," so the art in the artist is the form of the work: "the cutting of the wood is from the saw; but that it assumes at
length the form of a bed is from the design of the art" (in the artist), "the form of the bed is not in the saw or the axe, but a certain movement toward that form," St
Thomas, Sum. Theol., I, Q. 110. A. 2 and Q. 118, A. 1, quoting also Avicenna, "all forms which are in matter proceed from the concept of the intellect."
The arising of the image is not by an act of will whether human or divine, but of attention (dh.ra..) when the will is at rest; there can be nothing meritorious ( 17 ) in
the possession of images, since an image "receives its being from the thing whose image it is, for it is a natural product . . . prior to the will, will following the image" (
51 , cf. 17 ). The aesthetic process is as follows: what I say "springs up in me, then I pause in the idea, and thirdly I speak it out" ( 222 ), or again, "First when a
word is conceived in my mind
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it is a subtle, intangible thing; it is a true word when it takes shape in my thought. Later, as spoken aloud by my mouth, it is but an outward expression of the interior
word" ( 80 ), "the mind sees and formulates and the will wills and memory holds it fast" ( 16 ). As to this abiding intention, or pause in the idea, "my wish of today is
my purpose of tomorrow, the idea of which is kept alive (sthita) by my actual thinking (vibh.vayati) of it, just as, they said, God's works are done" ( 238 ). As to the
work, "Working and becoming are the same. When the carpenter stops working, the house will stop becoming. Still the axe and stop the growth" ( 163 ); "Man
requires many instruments for his external works; much preparation is needed ere he can bring them forth as he has imagined them" ( 5 ); the seeking intellect "spends
perhaps a year or more in research on some natural fact, finding out what it is, only to work as long again stripping off what it is not" ( 17 ), but "angels . . . need less
means for their works and have fewer images" ( 5 ).
As we have seen, the aesthetic process is threefold, the arising of the idea in germ, its taking shape before the mind's eye, and outward expression in work ( 80 , 228
). The first act is necessarily the effect of attention directed to a given object: the artist is commissioned, not to paint, but to paint something in particular, let us say a
flower or an angel (deva) or other object. Eckhart takes the case of the host of angels, and though he does not refer to the third stage of actual execution, this would
be an easy step. "A
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master was once questioned by his pupil about the angelic order. He answered him and said, Go hence and withdraw into thyself until thou understandest: give thy
whole self up to it, then look, refusing to see anything but what thou findest there. It will seem to thee at first as though thou art the angels with them and as thou dost
surrender to their collective being thou shalt think thyself 61 the angels as a whole with the whole company of angels" ( 216 ). So far, the process is identical with the
Indian imager's dhy.na-yoga: and had an actual picture of the angels been required, it might have been added dhy.tv. kury.t, that is, "Having thus seen and
surrendered to the presented form, begin the work." Had the painting been required to fill a given space, or had it been intended that the angels should stand in some
particular relation to other figures in the picture, all this, being a part of the prescribed object, would have had its prototype in the perfected mental image. As to the
picture itself, if one had been made, it is merely an arrangement of pigments, nor can my eye learn anything about the angels from its sensations of reflected light: only
I can have some idea of them, and that not in or by sensation, but by their image, the same that was in the artist's mind, and now taken back from the picture into my
mind, for "bodily hearing and sight are engineered in the mind" ( 93 ) and "If my soul knows an angel she knows him by some means and in an image, an image
imageless, not in an image such as they are here" ( 112 ). "Before my eye can see the painting on the wall it must be filtered through the
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air and in a still more tenuous form borne into my phantasy to be assimilated by my understanding" ( 111 ).
Thus the artist's model is always a mental image. The eye (m..sa-cak.u) is nothing but a mirror: it may be said to see an object, such as a rose or stone or work of
art, by virtue of some substantial kinship between them ( 104 , 105 ) 116 , 152 , 212 , 240 ); "it is a case of like to like" ( 258 ). But if I say I see, it is only as it
were, for "If it were intellect, I should see nothing" ( 105 ). "I see" only indirectly and by means of the eye as instrument, which instrument serves me because of a
corresponding soul power linked to it, but far removed from matter ( 104 ); "subtract the mind, and the eye is open to no purpose" (288). My eye sees flat, but I see
in relief; this relief is not necessarily a fact, but an idea of relation, which would have validity for me even supposing a total unreality of the external world. The
inwardly known aspect (antarjñeya-r.pa), relatively immaterial, is the means by which I recognize what the eye sees, the only means by which I can pretend to
understand what the eye reports, or with which I can speak of it to others. "I do not see the hand, the stone, itself; I see the image of the stone, but I do not see this
image in a second image or by any other means; I see it without means and without image. This image is itself the means: image without image like motion without
motion although causing motion and size which has no size though the principle of size" ( 114 ). "The soul knows only in effigy" ( 243 ), not anything in itself, but more
nearly as things are in God, ideally. I can never see
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what my eye sees (sensibly) nor hear what my ear hears as vibration, I can only know rationally, by means of an image. "We can see the sunlight where it falls upon a
tree or any other object, but we fail to apprehend the sun itself " ( 72 ) except as an idea. There is nothing exotic in this point of view; it is an axiom of modern
science, which knows matter only in mathematical formulae, not in sensation.
From all this it will be understood how from the Scholastic point of view a naturalistic or visual art, made only according to the eyes (this means, made to yield
sensations as nearly as possible identical with those evoked by the model itself), and only for the eyes, must be regarded not merely as irreligious or idolatrous
(idolatry is the love of creatures as they are in themselves), but also irrational and indeterminate. For the only thing which can be truly likened to the natural species is
its reflection in the mirror of the eye, which is a sensation, not an understanding (the eye, having no understanding of its own, remains incomprehensible to intellect, a
case of unlike to unlike). Again, the material image, the work of art, is commensurable with natural species only as to substance (both are essence, but essence
cannot be measured): fundamentally incommensurable, in difference of material and life. Nature and art are alike (s.d..ya) only in idea, otherwise irreconcilable.
Recognizability, whether of natural species or material image, has nothing to do with any fancied likeness between these two, but is by means of the incorporeal form
or image (n.ma) which is in the object, in the artist, in the work of
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art, and finally in the spectator, having been brought into visibility as far as possible in the material image (r.pa) in another nature, but still not made of that nature.
Just in so far as anything could be made like natural species, that is self-moving which is inconceivable, or as Muhammadans would say forbidden, it would not be art
but Nature, or necromancy at the best; or could the artist, which is conceivable potentially, though it may be temporally impossible, attain perfection, becoming one
with God, he would share in God's creation from time everlasting, natural species would be his image in time as they are God's, nothing would remain but the
ever-present world-picture as God sees it. There would be no occasion for works of art, the end of art having been accomplished. In the meantime, where we find
ourselves, an art made as far as possible according to the eye's intrinsic faculty ( 253 ) and merely for the eye can be thought of only as a superposition of illusion
upon illusion, a willing substitution of the snake for the rope, Eckhart's own metaphor of double illusion being that of a straight shaft seen in the water as if bent ( II,
77).
In what sense art is necessarily conventional or rational he expresses thus: "What the eye sees has to be conveyed to it (the soul) by means, in images" ( 111, cf. 82).
The skilful painter can "do Conrad to the life" ( 128 ), but what is doing Conrad to the life. Not making something that could be mistaken for the man himself, but
making "the very image of him" (ibid.), that is, as far as lies in the painter's power, his "express image" ( 253 ) as it exists reflected
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in the mirror of God's essence, "the exemplary element in him ( Conrad) which is on a par with God," "a matter of likeness of form" ( 157 ). "Will enjoys things as
they are in themselves, whereas intellect enjoys them as they are in it. . . . The eye in itself is a better thing than the eye as painted on the wall. Nevertheless, I still
maintain that intellect is higher than the will" ( 213 ). He means in that it sees things somewhat as God sees them, sub specie aeternitatis ( 47 ), at their source,
impartially; for "Creatures all come into my mind and are rational in me. I alone prepare all creatures to return to God "; "I alone take all creatures out of their sense
into my mind and make them one in me" ( 143 ); "Intellect (manas, prajñ.) raises all things up into God" ( 86 ). "Creatures never rest till they have gotten into human
nature; therein do they attain to their original form, God namely" (380), human nature having "nothing to do with time" ( 206 ). "The most trivial thing perceived in
God, a flower for example as espied in God (that is, in its and His true and single aspect, svar.pa), would be a thing more perfect than the universe" ( 206 ) as it is in
itself. It is as artist, seeing rationally or formally, that man sees things in their perfection and eternal youth, as far as his idiosyncrasy permits, "as far as the recipient
will allow" ( 212 ).
Naturalism in art has nothing to do with subject-matter in itself. An image of God may be made repulsive in its suggestion of actuality; a painting of a flower may be
like nothing on earth. Eckhart holds no brief for any one for-
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mula, as for hieratic art or art profane with respect to theme. "He who seeks God under settled forms lays hold of the form while missing the God concealed in it" (
49 ), is really an idolater. Sacred subjects are no more valid images of God than are the forms of natural species: "Eight heavens are spoken of and nine choirs of
angels . . . you must know that expressions of that sort, which conjure up pictures in the mind, merely serve as allurements to God" (328), and as "Augustine says,
'All scripture is vain'" ( 69 ). Again and again Eckhart insists that all content (not all intent) is God, one should learn to see him anywhere and everywhere: "to whom
God is dearer in one thing than another, that man is a barbarian, still in the wilds, a child" (419), "finding God in one way rather than another . . . is not the best," "we
should be able to enjoy him in any guise and in any thing" (482, 483), "what e'er it be" (419), "I am come like the fragrance of a flower" (284), "any flea as it is in
God is nobler than the highest of the angels in himself" ( 240 ). This is the perfected impartiality of art; the angelic (adhidaivata) point of view, wherein all things are
loved alike, "in itself everything is lovable, and nothing hateful," Dante, Convivio, IV, 1 , 25 .
So much for the artist's mode of understanding, intellectual or rational. The work of art, man's "creature," is by the same token, even more than by its substantial
distinction from the object, conventional; to be interpreted and understood not as a direct reflection of the world as the world is in itself, but as a symbol or group of
symbols hav-
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ing an ascertained rational significance and an even deeper content, not functioning only as means to recognition but as means to communication and to vision. Thus
with reference to the interpretation of scripture and myths in general, and the same holds good for any other kind of art, "the material things in them, they say, must
be translated to a higher plane. . . . All the stories taken from them have another, esoteric meaning. Our understanding of them is as totally unlike the thing as it is in
itself and as it is in God as though it did not exist" ( 257 ), but there is more in the work of art than can be understood, "none so wise but when he tries to fathom
them will find they are beyond his depth and discover more therein" (ibid.). Art is simultaneously denotation, connotation, and suggestion; statement, implication, and
content; literal, allegorical, and anagogic.
If art is thus by nature rational, why is not every work of art immediately intelligible. Just because the artist sees only just so much and what of the express image his
powers permit; man's images are a specific selection from an inexhaustible sum of possibilities. "Words derive their power from the original Word" ( 99 ), such
selections being differently made in different ages, by different races, and to a less marked degree by different individuals. As constantly asserted by Scholastic
philosophy, the thing known is in the knower according to the mode of the knower: therefore "All souls have not the same aptitude . . . vision . . . is not enjoyed the
same by all" (301.). "Art amounts, in temporal things, to singling out the best" (461), 62 : that is,
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the most essential from any given point of view, which may be yours or mine, or may have been that of the first or thirteenth century, or that of any other given
environment and heritage. That is why in art, even when the same subject has been dealt with, or the same natural species "imitated," we find an unending variety of
treatment, constituting what we call styles. Differences of spoken language are the most obvious example of this; but he greatly deludes himself who thinks that any of
the arts is a universal language, or that the language of any art is by nature onomatopoetic. The variety of styles, and what has often been called progress and
decadence in art but is really the historical procession of the styles, have nothing to do with man's varying and always very limited ability to mimic nature. Styles are
idioms of knowledge and communication. They suffice for communication in so far and for so long as they are understood by convention (sa.keta); elsewhere or at
another time, they must be learnt before the art can be deciphered, which requires "industry and patience," "just as one learns to write" ( 10 , 9 ), or as "calling
requires the uses of discrimination" ( II, 93).
We have divined that style or idiom represents a particular modality or partiality of vision; the lineaments (lak.a.as) of which modality are determined by the relation
between the artist individually and his theme (cf. .ukranitis.ra, IV, 4, 159-160); and as this relation is unique and reflects the powers and limitations of the individual,
the mode of pattern in his mind may be called his own. The
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accidents of being by which an individuality is recognized may indeed be called a man's own, man as he is in himself; "my looks are not my nature, they are accidents
of nature" ( 94 ), "accidents are various" ( 253 ). In this sense every artist leaves in all his work something of himself, and "Supposing God had called in any angel to
help in the making of the soul he must have put into the soul something of the angel, for never did an artist paint, carve an image or write the letters of the alphabet,
but he must have copied the pattern in his mind" ( II, 203), and not the pattern in the universal mind, individual intellect having "in no wise the perfection nor plenitude
for it" ( 17 ). Style is not convention as principle, though all styles and all art are conventional, or as Eckhart says "rational": style is a particular body of convention as
distinguished from other bodies. If then style is the man, as has been said with some measure of truth, this does not mean that style is in itself a virtue, or an occasion
for pride. Touch and style are the accidents of art. As Chuang Tz. expresses it, the limits of things are their own limits in so far as they are things. In so far as art
transcends style, we call it universal: Bach surpasses Beethoven. God has no style, his "idiosyncrasy is being" ( 206 ).
In intellect, which, as Eckhart so often insists, is the summit, head, or highest power of the soul, whereby it touches the consciousness of God, man and God are like,
but in abiding intention (kratu) and in working (karma) most unlike, for here enter in the elements of will and time.
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Man's ideas live in his mind only for so long, even though it be all his life ( 238 ); but creatures have been alive in God for ever, and ever shall be, though in
themselves alive only by birth at a given time (352, cf. Pañcavi..a Br.hma.a, VI, 9, 18). And in the case of causes of becoming other than the first cause, such
causes "can with safety quit the things they cause when these have gotten being of their own. When the house is in being its builder can depart and for the reason that
it is not the builder alone that makes the house: the materials thereof he draws from Nature. But God provides creature with the whole of what it is, so he is bound to
stay with it or it will promptly drop out of existence" (427), "as a picture is painted upon canvas, and it fades" ( 237 ); similarly "Augustine observes that the architect
who builds a house therein displays his art; though it may fall to ruin the art within his soul neither ages nor decays" ( 129 ).
With respect to his "staying with creatures to keep them in being" (427, cf. 261 ) Eckhart thinks of God as a mother (the creations both of God and man are in the
nature of children begotten and conceived), and it will not be overlooked that in so far as man takes care of things that have been made and preserves them from
decay, he is working temporally in the analogy of God's maternal maintenance. All man's working in creation, preservation, and destruction is a temporal analogy of
God's simultaneous expression, maintenance, and resolution, s...i, sthiti, laya. But "yonder no work is done at all" ( 238 ); "if the carpenter were per-
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fect at his work he would not need materials; he would no sooner think a house than, lo, it would be made," as is the case "with works in God; he thinks them and
behold they are" ( 238 ); or again, "a carpenter building a house will first erect it in his mind and, were the house enough subject to his will, then, materials apart, the
only difference between them would be that of begetter and suddenly begotten . . . (as) it is in God . . . one God, there being no distinction of outpouring (abhis...i)
and outpoured (abhisarga)" ( 72 ). 63
Alike in man and God, the "art" (intuition-expression) is and remains wholly in the artist; but "think not it is with God as with a human carpenter, who works or works
not as he chooses, who can do or leave undone at his good pleasure. It is not thus with God; but finding thee ready, he is obliged to act, to overflow into thee; just as
the sun must needs burst forth when the air is bright, and is unable to contain itself" ( 23 ). The "being ready" is otherwise expressed as matter's being "insatiable for
form" ( 18 ); so God "must do, willy-nilly" ( 162 ), according to his nature, without a why. In man this becomes what has been called the gratuitousness of art: "man
ought not to work for any why, not for God nor for his glory nor for anything at all that is outside him, but only for that which is his being, his very life within him" (
163 , cf. B.had.ranyaka Upani.ad, IV, 5, 6); "have no ulterior purpose in thy work" ( 149 ), "work as though no one existed, no one lived, no one had ever come
upon the earth" (308); "All happiness to those
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who have listened to this sermon. Had there been no one here I must have preached it to the poor-box" ( 143 ). "God and God's will are one, for if I am a man and
if I mean to do real work entirely without or free from will . . . I should do my works in such a way that they entered not into my will. . . . I should do them simply at
the will of God" (308), "Above all lay no claim to anything. Let go thyself, and let God act for thee" (308). The artist has some "inkling" ( 47 ) of God's manner of
working "willingly but not by will, naturally and not by nature" ( 225 ) when he has acquired mastery and the habit (habitus, .li..atva) of his work and does not
hesitate but "can go ahead without a qualm, not wondering, am I right or am I doing wrong. If the painter had to plan out every brush mark before he made his first
he would not paint at all" ( 141 ). Still, "Heaven does more than the carpenter who builds a house" ( II, 209).
"Inspired by his art" ( II, 211), "as much like his ideal as he can" ( 252 ), and "working for work's sake," sound to modern ears like art for art's sake. But "art" and
"his ideal" have not here their modern sentimental connotations, they represent nothing but the artist's understanding of his theme, the work to be done (k.târtha);
working for "the real intention of the work's first cause" ( 252 ) is not working for the sake of the workmanship, as the modern doctrine implies; "working for work's
sake" means in freedom, without ulterior motive, easily (cf. Bhagavad G.t., passim). To work according to the "dearest conception of
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his art" ( 97 ), that is with all the skill and care he can command, is merely honest, and "By honest I mean doing one's best at the moment" ( II, 95), having "good
grounds for thinking no one else could do the work as well" ( II, 90), and standing for "perfection in temporal works" ( II, 92), the "careful" being "those who let
nothing hinder them in their work" ( II, 90).
The first cause of the work and the good of the work to be done are one and the same, "the ultimate end (prayojana) of the work is ever the real intention (artha) of
the work's first cause" ( 252 ), "when the carpenter builds a house his first intention is a roof (that is, the idea of shelter), and that is (actually) the finish of the house" (
196 ). No man being a rational being works for no end: "The builder hewing wood and stone because he wants to build a house 'gainst summer's heat and winter's
chill is thinking first and last about the house, excepting for the house he would never hew a single stone or do a hand's turn of the work" ( II, 72).
The good of the work is its immediate physical good, not its edifying purpose. Actual work requires a worldly wisdom, industry, and cunning, not to be confused
with vision, but matter of fact, and with due regard to the material ( II, 93): for instance, "A celebrant (of the mass) over-much intent on recollection is liable to make
mistakes. The best way is to try and concentrate the mind before and afterwards, but when actually saying it to do so quite straightforwardly" ( II, 175). A work may
be undertaken ad
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majorem gloriam Dei or to any more immediate end, but the end can only be enjoyed in the prospect or in completion of the work. In action the workman is nothing
but a tool, and should use himself accordingly, concerned with the work and not with its results; he can and should be totally absorbed in the work, like the "heathen
philosopher who studied mathematics . . . in pursuance of his art . . . too much absorbed to see or hear his enemy" ( 12 ). Working thus is not for the sake of or to
display skill, but to serve and praise the first cause of the work, that is, the subject imaged in the artist's mind "without idea of ownership" ( 35 ). It is immaterial what
the work may be, but it is essential that the artist should be wholly given to it, "it is all the same to him what he is loving " ( II, 66), it is working for the love of God in
any case, because the perfection of the work is "to prepare all creatures to return to God" ( 143 ) as "in their natural mode (they) are exemplified in divine essence" (
253 ), and this will hold good even if the painter paints his own portrait, God's image in himself." 64 He is no true workman but a vainglorious showman who would
astonish by his skill; "any proper man ought to be ashamed for good people to know of this in him" ( II, 51); having his art which he is expected to practice, he
should take his artfulness and cunning for granted. If by reason of his skill he gets a good report in the world, that is to be taken as the "gift of God" ( 143 ), not as
his due who should work " as though no one existed " (308). Similarly as to wages, the workman is indeed worthy of his hire, but if
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he is "careful" for anything but the good of the work to be done, he is no workman but a "thrall and hireling" ( 149 ).
Working in the world "at some useful occupation" ( 22 ) is by no means any hindrance to the perfecting of the man, and though "praying is a better act than spinning"
( II, 8) a man should relinquish "rapture" to engage in any activity that may be required of him by way of service ( II, 14, etc.), and even that "without which I cannot
get into God, is work, vocation or calling in time, which interferes not one whit with eternal salvation" ( II, 93). "To be in the right state one of two things has to
happen: either he must find God and learn to have him in his works, or else things and works must be abandoned altogether. But no one in this life can be without
activities, human ones, and not a few at that, so man has to learn to find his God in everything" ( II, 11; cf. Bhagavad G.t. III, 33); even for the religious "active life
bridges the gaps in the life of contemplation," and, "Those who lead the contemplative life and do no outward works, are most mistaken and all on the wrong tack";
"No person can in this life reach the point at which he is excused from outward works" (425 cf. Bhagavad G.t., III, 16 and 25); therefore "'work in all things' and
'fulfil thy destiny'" ( 165 ). Still more in the case of one "who knows nothing of the truth from within, if he woo it without (he) shall find it too within" (440). In any
case "God's purpose in the union (yoga) of contemplation is fruitfulness in works" ( 16 ).
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The workman is naturally happy in his work, seeing the image in his mind becoming, in the analogy of God, whose vision of all creatures is the vision of himself in
himself; this pleasure taken in the sight of matter in the act of receiving form is, in the workman still at work, a form of aesthetic experience. But in what this
experience essentially consists, it will be more convenient to consider from the point of view of the spectator who sees the work completed in intention or in actuality,
not in the process of becoming but as it were apart from duration, for "No activity is so perfect but it hinders recollection. The hearing of the mass permits of
recollection more than the saying of it does ( II, 174).
So what is aesthetic experience, or, as Eckhart calls it, recollection, contemplation, illumination (avabh.sa), the culminating point of vision, rapture, rest. In so far as
it is accessible to man as a rumor ( 95 ) or foretaste (479), passing like a flash of lightning ( 255 ), it is the vision of the world-picture as God sees it, loving all
creatures alike, not as of use, but as the image of himself in himself (360), each in its divine nature and in unity, as a conscious eye situated in a mirror ( 253 , 384)
might see all things in all their dimensions apart from time and space as the single object of its vision, not turning from one thing to another ( 12 ) but seeing without
light, in a timeless image-bearing light, where "over all sensible things hangs the motionless haze of unity." That is a seeing of things in their perfection, ever verdant,
unaged and unaging ( 36 ): "To have all that has being and
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is lustily to be desired and brings delight; to have it all at once and whole in the undivided soul and that in God, revealed in its perfection, in its flower, where it first
burgeons forth in the ground of its existence . . . that is happiness" ( 82 ), a "peculiar wonder" ( 47 ), "neither in intellect nor will, . . . as happiness and not as
intellection" ( 200 ), not dialectically but as if one had the knowledge and the power to gather up all time in one eternal now ( 81 ), as God enjoys himself ( 142 , 240
).
Again, it is compared to the seeing of a play, a play (l.l.) played eternally before all creatures, where player and audience, sport and players, are the same, their
nature proceeding in itself, in clear conception and delight ( 147 , 148 ), or to an operation in which God and I are one, works wrought there being all living. This
sharing of God's vision of himself in his "work," which in so far as we can have an "inkling" of it is what we mean by aesthetic experience, is likewise what we mean
by Beauty as distinct from loveliness or liking, which have their drawbacks in their opposites. "The supremely pure splendor of the impartible essence illumines all
things at once." According to Dionysius, Beauty is order, symmetry with supreme lucidity. In this sense "the Godhead is the beauty of the three Persons" (366),
"beauty with which the sun is nothing to compare" (399), "each Person radiant to the rest as to itself. This illumination is the perfection of beauty." "All things tend
toward their ultimate perfection" ( 72 ).
So much of pure aesthetic experience as is possible to
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anyone is his guarantee of ultimate perfection and of perfect happiness. It is as artist-scholar that man prepares all things to return to God, in so far as he sees them
intellectually (parok..l) and not merely sensibly (pratyak.e.a). This is from Eckhart's point of view the "meaning" of art. "That is as far as I can understand it" (282).
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Chapter III
REACTIONS TO ART IN INDIA
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Chapter III
REACTIONS TO ART IN INDIA
When music is too archaic or inaccessible to give us aesthetic data, more may be learned from the disposition of those who were pleased by it than from its recorded
technical data.
D. F. Tovey, in Encyclopedia Britannica, s.v. Music.
THE purpose of the following notes is to bring together, mainly from the general, non-technical literature, a few passages in which the reaction of the public to works
of art is reported, partly as a contribution to the vocabulary of criticism, but more with a view to showing how the art was actually regarded by those for whom it
was made. The artist himself (.ilpin, k.raka, kavi) is commonly described as "knowing his craft" (.ilpa-vi..rada, etc.) and as "skilful" (ku.ala); nothing like a special
sensibility or natural talent is mentioned, but we find that the moral virtues of ordinary men are expected in the artist, and for the rest he has his art which he is
expected to practice. His attitude with respect to his commission is naturally expressed in J.taka, II, 254, as follows, "We musicians, O king, live by the practice of
our art (sippain niss.ya); for remuneration, I will play," but as numerous texts and inscriptions prove, the workman when moved by piety was ready to work
gratuitously as an act of merit. In the latter case, artist and patron are one, the work being commanded by
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the artist's own devotional feeling. As to fame, and the purpose of the work, an illuminating couplet attributed to one of the successors of the A..acch.p of Hind.
literature tells us:
Ours is true poetry, if so be it please great poets yet to come, Otherwise, its pretext is that it is a reminder of R.dh. and K...a.
The workman being a rational being, it is taken for granted that every work has a theme or subject (vastu, k.rya, k.târtha, anuk.rya, .likkitavya, etc.) and a
corresponding utility or meaning (artha, arthat., prayojana).
The general word for understanding or apprehension is grahana, "grasping," for example, Vi..udharmottara, III, 41, 12; cf. the senses as "apprehenders" (grah.h)
and ideas at "over-apprehenders," B.had.ra.yaka Upani.ad, III, 2, and Pali gahana used with sippa to denote "learning a craft." An audience is praised as
"appreciative of the merits (gu.a-gr.hi..)" of a play, Priyadar.ik., I, 3. According to the Abhinaya Darpana, "The audience shines like a wishing-tree, when the
Vedas are its branches, ..stras its flowers, and learned men the bees. . . . The Seven Limbs of the audience are men of learning, poets, elders, singers, buffoons, and
those versed in history and mythology," and the chief of the audience, the patron, must be a connoisseur. 65 Applause is ukku..hi in J.taka, II, 253 and 367, more
often the still current exclamation, s.dku, "well-done."
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In the D.tav.kya of Bh.sa, 7, the picture (pa.a) of the Gambling Scene is called "admirable" (dar.an.ya, cf. modern colloquial "easy to look at"); and, after a
detailed description of the subject-matter represented, Duryodhana concludes, ibid., 13 , "O what richness of color (var.â.hyat.)! What a presentation of the
moods (bh.vôpapannat.)! What a skilful laying on of colors (yuktalekhat.)! How explicit the painting (suvyaktam .likhito)! I am pleased."
As to these comments, var.â.hya is stated to be what most interests "others" (itare jan..), 66 that is, people in general, not masters (.c.rya) or connoisseurs
(vicak.a.a, Vi..udharmottara, III, 41, 11; see JAOS., LII, II, confirmed by the Tri.a..i.al.k.puru.acaritra passage cited below); for the expression of bh.va and
rasa in painting, see JAOS., LII, 15, n. 5, and Basava Raja, .iva-Tattva-Ratn.kara, VI, 2, 19; the exact significance of yuktalekhat. is less certain. Cf. the word as
cited below.
Dar.an.ya, "worth seeing," occurs regularly in connection with pictures, sculpture, and architecture. Cf. C.lava.sa, C, 251, manohara. dassan.ya. tora.a.; ibid.,
258 , an image of the Buddha is dassan.ya. . . . c.rudassana.; and ibid., 262 , pictures are dassaniyyâpare c.r. cittakamme; analogous is the use of sava..ya
(.rava..ya), "worth hearing," and sava..yatara., "very well worth hearing," ibid., LXXXIC, 33 , while the two terms are used together, ibid., 35 , with reference to
songs and dances, which are dassanassava.a-ppiya., "pleasing to see and hear." Cf. .rotra. sukhayati, "pleases the ear," and d...ipr.ti. vidhatte,
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"pleases the eye," with reference to natural beauties, Priyadar.ik., II, 4. A word very commonly applied to pictures is manorama, "pleasing the heart." In the
Divyâvad.na, 361-362, M.ra, at Upagupta's request, manifests himself in the form of the Buddha, with all his specific lineaments (lak.a.â.hyam). Upagupta bows
down to this representation, that is, as he explains, to him whose image it is. The aspect (r.pa) assumed by Mira, as an actor assumes a part, is nayanak.ntim
.k.tim, "a representation delighting the eyes," and nayana.ntikara. nar...m, "giving peace to the eye of man"; Upagupta is abhipramudita, pramuditamana,
"overjoyed," Pr.modyam utpannam, "delight overflows," and he exclaims Aho, r.pa-.obh., ki. bahun., "In short, what beauty of aspect!"
From a monastic point of view, usually but not exclusively Buddhist or Jaina, the arts are rejected altogether as merely a source of pleasant sensations; cf. v.san. in
Mah.y.na psychology as "nostalgia," but in art an indispensable innate sensibility. As a single example of the monastic attitude Tri.a..i.al.k.puru.acaritra, I, 1, 361,
may be cited, where it is asserted that music (sa.g.ta) in no way serves for welfare (ku.ala), but only infatuates by giving a momentary pleasure (muhurta-sukha).
The fact is that what Hindus mean by the "pleasure of the eyes" may or may not be a disinterested pleasure, and this has always to be determined from the context;
cf. the Scholastic id qua visum placet.
In the .akuntal. ( VI, 13-14, in Kale's edition (K), ibid.,
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VI, 15-16, in Pischel's (P), the variants in both versions being here utilized), the King, looking at his own memory picture of .akuntal., exclaims with reference to the
subject rather than the workmanship, "O, the beauty of the painting" (aho r.pam .lekhyasya), and later makes a distinction between what is "right" (s.dhu) in the
work, and what is "off " or "out" (anyath., not to be confused with ardhalikhita, "unfinished," which occurs below); still, "something of .akuntal.'s charm (l.va.ya) is
caught (ki.cid-anvita) in the line (rekh.)." The Vid..aka finds the line (rekh.) full of tender sentiment (bh.va-madhur., P), and the "imitation of mood in the tender
passages is noteworthy" (madhurâvasth.na-dar .an.yo bh.v.nuprave.a., K), alternatively "it seems to be the very rendering of reality" (sattvônuprave.a-.a khaya,
P); he exclaims, "In short" (ki. bahun., P), "she makes me want to speak to her" (.lapana-kaut.halam me janayati); he pretends that his eye actually stumbles
(skhalati) over the hills and vales (nimnônnata-prade.e.u). 67 Mi.rake.. remarks on the King's skill with the "brush and in outline" (vartik.rekh.-nipu.at.),
alternatively "in color and line" (var.arekh.).
In the Pratijñ.yaugandharâya.a of Bh.sa, III, 1, the court jester speaks of the skilful laying on of color (yuktalekhat.) in a fresco, shown by the fact that when he
rubs the painting it only grows the brighter (ujjvalatara).
In the M.lavikâgnimitra, II, 2, a lack of correspondence between the beauty of the model and that represented in
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the painting 68 is spoken of as k.nti-visa.v.da, and ascribed to imperfect concentration (.ithila-sam.dhi) on the part of the painter. In the Priyadar.ik., III, and
Vikramôrv..., II (introductory stanza), imperfections of acting are similarly ascribed to the actor's absent-mindedness (.B.ya-h.dayat.).
In the Pratim.n..ka of Bh.sa, III, 5, Bharata, seeing the statues of his parents, whom he does not recognize, exclaims, "Ah, what sweetness in the workmanship of
these stones (aho kriy.-m.dhurya. p....n.m)! Ah, what feeling (bh.va) is embodied in these images (aho bh.vagatir .k.t.n.m)!" He wonders what the figures
represent, but "Anyhow, there is a great delight (prahar.a) in my heart," which delight is perhaps thought of not so much as aesthetic as due to a subconscious
recognition of the statues as those of his parents. But pramuda. pray.ti, said of the Self with respect to the pleasure felt at the spectacle of its own manifestation as
the world picture (jagaccitra, .a.karâc.rya, Svâtmanir.pa.a, 95), implies a delight unquestionably disinterested.
In Bhavabh.ti Uttara-R.ma-Caritra, I, 39, the sight of the paintings leaves a latent or persisting emotional impression (bh.van.), not a mere memory, but a lingering
sentiment, in S.t.'s mind; this may be compared with "I still seem to hear the music as I walk," cited below, and .akuntal., V, 8 f. (Pischel), where Du..anta,
overhearing the singing of his Queen Ha.savat., soliloquizes, "What a passion-laden (r.ga-pariv.hi..) song! . . . Why then am I so filled with yearning by hearing
such a song, as though I
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were divided from a loved one. Howbeit, if after seeing lovely things, or hearing sweet words, a man is saddened as well as charmed, it may be because
unconsciously he remembers loves heart-felt ere birth, survivals of a former disposition (p.rva.-bh.va-sthir..i)"; the stage direction follows, "He registers (r.payati)
perplexity occasioned by a thing forgotten."
In the case of portraits, the excellence of the likeness is naturally commented upon, for example, Svapnav.savadatt., VI, 13, and M.cchaka.ika, IV, 1, he words
sad... nd susad... (not s.dâ.ya) being employed. In the Svapnav.savadatt., loc. cit., the Queen, looking at the picture of V.savadatt., is "delighted and
perplexed" (prah...ôdvign.m iva), but this is because she thinks she recognizes the person represented; it is not an aesthetic effect. In the M.lat.m.dhava, I, 33
(9-10), the purpose of the portrait (.lekhya-prayojana) is said to be consolation in longing (utka..h.-vinodana).
The different ways in which a painting may be regarded by spectators of various classes are stated in some detail in Hemacandra Tri.a..i.al.k.puru.acaritra, I, 1,
648 ff., where a painting on canvas (pa.a) is spread out (vist.rya) with a practical purpose, viz. in the hope that some spectator will recognize it as a representation
of the events of his own former life. Those versed in scripture (.gamavit) praise the representation of the Nand..vara heavens, because "it accords with the purport
of the scripture" (.gamârthâvisa.v.di); the very pious (mah..raddha) nod their heads and describe to one another the figures (bimb.ni) of the saints
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(jina); those expert in the practice of the arts (kal.-kau.ala..lin) praise the purity of the outlines (rekh.-.uddhi), as they examine them again and again with sideling
glances; others talk of the colors, white, black, yellow, blue, and red, that make the painting look like a brilliant sunset.
An appreciation of architectural beauty is frequently expressed in general terms; there is, for instance, a moving description of the ruined city of Po.onn.ruv., of
which the buildings "through decay and old age are like greybeards and unable to stand erect, becoming more and more bowed down from day to day," C.lava.sa,
LXXXVIII. In the same text, LXXVIII, 39, we find the phrase "creating out of brick and stone an elixir for the eyes" (rasâyana); cf. netrâm.ta, of a picture,
Avad.na Kalpalat., p. vii.
In the Guttila-J.taka (No. 243) there is a competition between two v... players, who show their art (sippa. dassesanti) which the people see (passanti). At first,
when both play equally well, the public is delighted (tu..ho= tu..ha.). 69 The competition then becomes one not so much in musical talent as in the performance of a
stunt, the victor playing on a reduced number of strings, and finally only on the body of his instrument. The public cries out against the defeated competitor, saying,
"You do not know the measure (pam..a = pram..a) of your capacity."
In the Vikramacaritra, III, 2 ( HOS., 26, 18 and 27, 15), 70 where there is a dancing competition between two apsarases. Vikramâditya, who knows all the arts
(sakala-kalâbhijña) and is especially a connoisseur (vicak.a.a) of the science of
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the ensemble of musical arts (sa.g.ta-vidy.), acts as judge. 71 He decides in favor of Urva.. because she fulfils the requirements of the N..ya ..stra, both as to her
person and as to her ability; the latter is shown specifically in registering (s.can.) the full meaning by means of language conveyed in bodily movements, in the
accurate rhythms of the feet, in the sensitive gestures (abhinaya) of the hands and their agreement with the permitted variations (tadvikalpânuv.ttau), in the constant
displacement of one mood by another in the field of representation, and in her skilful blending of the passions (r.gabandha). In short, "I preferred Urva.. because I
found her a danseuse of such a sort as is described in the N..ya ..stra."
In the Priyadar.ik., III, where there is a play within a play, the former raises the spectator's interest to the highest degree, adhikatara. kaut.hala. vardhayati, which
is modestly explained by the author as due to the merit of the subject. In the same act of the same work, the verb avah., "to transport," "enrapture," is used with
reference to the effects of a performance on the harp (v...); the King, too, evokes admiration or astonishment (vismaya) by his performance.
In the M.cchaka.ika, III, 2-5, C.rudatta has attended a musical performance (g.ndharva); he is reminiscent, and exclaims, "Ah, ah, well done (s.dhu)! Master
Rebhila's song was excellent (su..hu)." Then, more technically, 72 speaking both as expert in the art and as rasika, "The sound was informed by the moods (bh.va),
now passionate (rakta),
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now sweet (madhura), now calm (sama), languishing (lalita) and ravishing too; it seemed like the lovely voice of my own hidden love. The low progressions
(svara-sa.krama) seated in the vibrating strings, the crescendo (t.ra) of the scales (var.a) and modes (m.rcchana), and their diminuendo (m.du) in the pauses --
when passion is restrained, desire repeats its languishing (lalita) -- and though the reality was ended with the song itself, I seem to hear it as I walk." There is a
similarly technical appreciation of a v... performance in Priyadar.ik., III, 10.
To sum up, it will be seen that everyone is thought of as making use of the work of art in his own way, the work of visual art, no less than a word, being a
k.ma-dhenu, yielding to the spectator just what he seeks from it or is capable of understanding. Everyone is interested in the subject-matter or application of the
work, as a matter of course. More specifically, we find that learned men, pundits, are concerned about the correctness of the iconography; the pious are interested in
the representation of the holy themes as such; connoisseurs (vicak.a.a in the cited passages, elsewhere rasika, pram.t., sah.daya) are moved by the expression of
bh.va and rasa, and like to express their appreciation in the technical terminology of rhetoric; masters of the art, fellow artists, regard chiefly the drawing, and
technical skill in general; ordinary laymen like the bright colors, or marvel at the artist's dexterity. 73 Those who are in love are chiefly interested in portraiture
reflecting all the charms (k.nti, l.va.ya) of the original. Rarely do we meet with
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any mention of originality or novelty. 74 We ought then, to appreciate Indian art from every point of view, to be equipped with learning, piety, sensibility, knowledge
of technique, and simplicity: combining the qualities of the pa..ita, the bhakta, the rasika, the .c.rya, and the alpabuddhi-jana.
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Chapter IV
AESTHETIC OF THE .UKRAN.TIS.RA
THE .ukran.tis.ra of .ukrâc.rya is a mediaeval Indian treatise on statecraft and an encyclopaedic work on social organization considered from every point of view.
In the passages dealing with the making of images are embodied some very definite statements of aesthetic principles; and as these passages have been
misunderstood and mistranslated, or at least inadequately translated, it seems desirable to present a fresh and complete version. The verses translated begin with Ch.
IV, Sec. 4, verse 70, the numbering being that of Vidy.s.gara's text, with those of Sarkar's translation in parentheses: 75
"One should make use of (yojayet) the visual-formulae (dhy.na) proper to the angels (devat.) whose images are to be made (.rambhya). It is for the successful
accomplishment of this practice (yoga) of visual-formulation (dhy.na) that the lineaments (lak.a.a) of images are prescribed. The human-imager (pratim.k.ra)
should be expert in this visual-contemplation, since thus, and in no other way, and verily not by direct observation (pratyak.a), (can the end be achieved)." 70 , 71 (
147 - 150 ).
"Images made of sand (saikata), dough (pai..a), or painted (lekhya), or of stucco (lepya), or terracotta (m..-maya
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maya), or wood (v.k.a), or stone (P....na), or metal (dh.tu) are of relative durability in the same order." 72 ( 151 ).
"Images made as directed, with all their members complete, are attractive and merit-yielding; those otherwise are destructive of life and wealth, and ever increase
sorrow; one should make images of angels (deva), for these are productive of good, and heavenward-leading (svargya), but those of men or other (creatures) lead
not to heaven nor are they auspicious. That image is said to be lovely (ramya) which is of neither more nor less than the prescribed proportions (m.na). Images of
the angels, even with lineaments (lak.a.a) imperfectly depicted, work weal to men, but never those of mortals, even though their lineaments (be accurately
represented)." 73 - 76 ( 152 - 158 ).
"Images of the angels are of three sorts, pure (s.ttvika, that is, as they are in themselves naturally), active (r.jasika, expansive, manifesting in 'work'), and dark
(t.masika, effectively as if limited by the inertia of matter and engaged in actual work). Those of Vi..u and other angels should be employed and worshipped (yogya
p.jya) according to the necessities of the case. A s.ttvika image is one in a yogaposture, self-supported, with hands exhibiting bounty and encouragement
(varâbhaya), and worshipped by the premier angels and such like beings (devendrâdi). A r.jasika image is one supported by a vehicle (v.hana), adorned with a
variety of ornaments, with hands holding weapons and implements, and exhibiting bounty and encouragement. A t.masika image is one of dread (ugra) aspect,
engaged in
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slaying demons by means of weapons and implements, and as if eager for combat." 77 - 80 ( 159 - 166 ).
"It is prescribed that the veins of the hands and feet should not be shown, nor should the ankle-bones be seen. Those parts of images are said to be really lovely
(su.obhana) which are neither more nor less in proportion (m.na) than the limbs of such images as have been made by experts, and every member that is neither too
thick nor too thin will be altogether pleasing (sarvamanorama). Although hardly one in a hundred thousand is produced that is altogether pleasing in every member,
still that which accords with canonical prescription (..stram.na) is alone truly lovely (ramya), none other, to be sure! There are some to whom that which captivates
their heart (tat lagna. h.d) is lovely; but for those who know, that which falls short of canonical proportion (..astram.na) is not beautiful." 101 - 106 ( 209 - 215 ).
"One should contrive for every member such grace (p..tava) as is appropriate." 121 ( 256 ).
"In the case of painted images, or those made of stucco, sand, terracotta, or dough, an omission of lineaments (lak.a.a) will do no harm; one should beware of
defects of proportion (m.na) only in the case of images of stone or metal." 152 , 153 (306, 309).
"The lineaments (lak.a.a) of images are known (sm.ta) from the natures (bh.va) of the worshipped and the worshipper (sevyasevaka). By the power of the
intension (tapas) of the officiant (arcaka) whose heart is ever set
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upon the Lord, the faults of an image immediately pass away." 159 , 160 (320-322).
"There is no rule (niyama) for the thickness of the limbs of a child, they should be devised as may seem lovely." 185 (375).
"The artist (.ilpi) should ever conceive the beauty (vapu) of the images (of the angels) as youthful (taruna), rarely as childlike (b.la-sad..a), never as aged
(v.ddha-sad..a)." 201 (403, 404).
"The King should not set up or keep in a temple a disproportioned or broken image; worn out images of the angels, and ruined temples, are to be carefully restored."
203 (407, 408).
The following, from Section 7, refers only to figures of horses: "When a figure (r.pa) of a horse is to be made, the model (bimba) should always be in view (v.k.ya),
and if one cannot be looked at (ad...v.) the figure should not be made. The artist (.lpi) having first (agre) made his visual contemplation (dky.tv.) on the horse and
attentive to its forms (avayavânata.) should do his work, embodying all the proportions (m.na) of horses meet for splendor and divorced from ill-omen." 73 , 74 (
145 - 147 ). It will be seen here, that in spite of the apparent demand for likeness to the horse in view, there is insistence on visualization and on adherence to ideal
proportions.
The portions of the text omitted above provide the detailed measurements proper to the various types of beings. It will be quite evident that .ukrâc.rya is
propounding a
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purely scholastic and hieratic conception of what is lovely or beautiful, and nowhere admits the validity of individual taste. Just as Professor Masson-Oursel has
pointed out, 76 "Indian art is aiming at something quite other than the copying of Nature. What we assume, quite superficially, to be the inspiration of an art for art's
sake, really proceeds from a religious scholasticism that implies a traditional classification of types established by convention. If here or there a relief or painting
exhibits some feature drawn from life, it is only accidentally that the artist has, in spite of himself, transcribed something from actual Nature: and this is certainly, from
the indigenous point of view, the least meritorious part of his work." Those who wish to study the "development" of Indian art must emancipate themselves entirely
from the innate European tendency to use a supposedly greater or less degree of the observation of Nature as a measuring rod by which to trace stylistic sequences
or recognize aesthetic merit. Indian art can only be studied as showing at different times a greater or less degree of consciousness, a greater or less energy; the
criteria are degrees of vitality, unity, grace, and the like, never of illusion. In India, an art of primarily representative interest, that of portraiture, was practiced mainly
by amateurs, and even so required a mental visualization only less formal than that of the hieratic work; in itself the portraiture had usually an erotic purpose or
content, and in any case a merely personal and temporary value, not an ultimate spiritual significance. 77
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Chapter V
PAROK.A
Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth.
Corinthians, I, 2, 13.
THE terms parok.a and pratyak.a are used in contrasted senses. The purely grammatical distinction of parok.a and pratyak.a need not detain us: a stanza referring
to an Angel (deva), if voiced in the third person, is said to be parok.a, "indirect," or if addressed immediately in the seccond person, pratyak.a, "direct," Nirukta,
VII, 1. What concerns us more is the distinction of the parok.a as proper to the Angels (adhidaivata), who are accordingly described as parok.a-priya, "fond of"
the symbolic, from the pratyak.a as proper to man (m.nu.a) as individual (adhy.tma), who is evidently pratyak.a-priya, "fond of" the obvious, though this is not
explicitly stated.
In Jaim. Up. Br., I, 20, Ait. Br., III, 33 and VIII, 30, .. Br., VI, 1, 1, 2 and 11 and XIV, I, 1, 13, Br. Up., IV, 2, 2, and Ait. Up., III, 14, examples are given as
follows (the parok.a designations being followed in each case by the pratyak.a designations printed in italics): antarik.a, antaryak.a; m.nu.a, m.du.a; nyagrodha,
nyagroha; Indra, indha, idandra; Agni, agri; a.va, a.ru. To these may be added from passages cited below: Ahi Budhnya, Agni
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G.rhapatya; Soma, nyagrodha; and vi.vajit, vrata. The pratyak.a term stands for the parok.a referent; for example, "the lotus means the Waters, this Earth is a leaf
thereof," .. Br., VII, 4, 1, 8, where lotus and leaf have physical, Waters (= Possibility) and Earth (= Ground) metaphysical, referents. Evidently it is not necessary
that the parok.a and pratyak.a terms should be sensibly distinct; the pu.kara which is spoken of as the birthplace of Agni or Vasi..ha, and which represents the
Ground of all existence, is not the pu.kara of the botanist, though the words are the same. The actual lotus-leaf laid down upon the Fire Altar has no necessary
meaning of its own, quâ lotus-leaf; it is merely a datum with respect to which we can have only estimative or affective knowledge; it is the referent of pu.kara-par.a,
but impersonates the referent of the parok.a term p.thiv.. The distinction is one of reference, which the student, guided by the context, or if necessary by the
Commentator, is expected to understand; 78 and if he takes the reference literally, we say that his understanding is superficial. For the parok.a and pratyak.a
references are not coincident: the former are names of assumed or otherwise known but not perceptible referents (cf. .a.karâc.rya on Ait. Up., III, 14); and the
latter, names of sensibly experienced referents which are, or are regarded as, merely symbols of or suitable substitutes for the aforesaid unseen referents. It follows
that the reference of the parok.a term is much wider than that of the pratyak.a term; viz., in that of the many conceivable signs of or substitutes for the operating but
unseen referent
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the pratyak.a term specifies only one. It follows at the same time that the parok.a vocabulary will be much less numerous than the pratyak.a; the Angels have fewer
ideas, and use less means than men.
The passage, Ait. Up., III, 14, already cited, may be quoted in full. In the previous verse it is said that the Self, individually conscious in the plurality of beings, beheld
the Brahman immediately, that is, recognized its manifestation in the world (cf. Kena Up., 24-28), and "I have seen It (ida. dadar.a), he said." Then follows,
"Therefore his name is Ida.-dra ('It-seeing'), Idandra indeed is his name. Him that is Idandra, the Angels speak of (lit. 'regard,' .cak.ate) metaphysically
(parok.e.a) as Indra, for the metaphysical, indeed, is proper to the Angels." .a.karâc.rya comments as follows: "Because the Supreme Self saw 'This,' the
immanent Brahman, face to face directly (s.k..d aparok..t), immediately (aparok.e.a) as 'This,' therefore He (the Supreme Self) is called Idandra; God (..vara) is
in the world (loke) explicitly (prasiddha) by name Idandra. 'Him that is Idandra, Indra metaphysically': that is, the knowers of Brahman speak of Him thus, with
metaphysicalreference (paroks.âbhidh.nena), for practical purposes (sa.vyavah.rikârtha) in fear of taking (graha.a) (in vain) His name who is worthy of all worship.
'The metaphysical is proper to the Angels': that is, they are wonted (priy.) to metaphysical (parok.a) names, and it is thereby indeed that they are 'Angels.' 79 Much
more so in the case of God (..vara), who is the Angel of all Angels."
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Adhidaivata and adhy.tma are contrasted in the same way as parok.a and pratyak.a: for example, Kena Up., 2930, with reference to the vision of Brahman. Here
"with respect to the Angels" (adhidaivata) the vision is compared to a flash of lightning; but "with respect to the incarnate Self" (adhy.ima) the vision is a thing which,
when the Intellect (manas) is directed to and ponders intently on Brahman, becomes a concept (sa.kalpa). The Kau..taki Upani.ad, IV, 2, gives a fuller list of
correspondences, beginning with "In the Supernal Sun the Great Principle" (that is, universally, adhidaivata) and "In the Mirror the Counter-image" (that is,
individually, adhy.tma).
The problem presents itself both in connection with the literature, and in connection with the ritual and plastic art, the performance of the ritual, or the iconographic
representation, securing "indirectly" (parok.e.a, parok..t) practical effects by setting in motion the corresponding forces. Thus the officiant "indirectly by means of
Ahi Budhnya" (that is, by incantation of the verse .g Veda, VI, 50, 14) though "directly by means of Agni G.rhapatya" (the household fire actually kindled) endows
the sacrificer with fiery-energy (tejas), Ait. Br., III, 36; the K.atriya who eats the shoots and fruits of the nyagrodha "indirectly" (parok.e.a) obtains the drinking of
Soma -- "he does not partake of Soma directly (pratyak.am)," ibid., VII, 31 . Again, in the Pañcavi..a Br.hma.a, XXII, 9, 4 and 3, "The Vi.vajit (-rite) is,
indirectly, the (Mah.-)vrata; he by means thereof directly obtains food," for "What presents itself directly to men
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presents itself indirectly (or metaphysically) to the Angels, and what presents itself indirectly to men presents itself directly to the Angels." In this sense all the Vedic
rituals are Mysterium und Mimus, Mysteries and Imitations: what anthropologists describe empirically (pratyak.e.a) as "sympathetic magic" is a metaphysical
operation, an enchantment and a conjuration, not a religious, devotional service or "prayer."
In iconography, where again the terms are not of individual choice, but ..stram.na, sm.ta, etc., we have to do with a visual language of the same kind as the verbal.
The lotus of iconography is not the lotus of sensible experience; it is parok.a, "not recognizable" to those who do not "understand art"; most of the accidents proper
to the lotus of the botanist are omitted from the symbol, which is, moreover, of indefinite dimensions (again, "out of proportion" for those who do not "understand
art," the same who say with regard to Italian primitives, "That was before they knew anything about anatomy"), am.tra, like the p.thiv. that is symbolized, not like
the specifically dimensioned objects (m.tr..) seen by the eye's intrinsic faculty (cak.u..), Maitri Up., VI, 6. 80 In other words, the reference of the lotus of
iconography is "angelic," adhidaivata, that of the "lotus" of the botanist, "sensible," pratyak.a.
In saying "iconography," we do not mean to distinguish iconography from art: 81 , all art is "imagination," that is, a presentation of images which correspond to
references originally in the mind of the artist, and not (even with the
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"best," or rather "worst" intentions) to any "natural," praiyak.a model. For example, Ait. Br., VI, 27, "It is in imitation (anuk.ti) of the angelic (deva) works of art
(.ilpa) that any work of art (.ilpa) is arrived at (adhigam) here; 82 for example, a clay elephant, a brazen object, a garment, a golden object, and a mule-chariot are
'works of art'; a (true) work of art is accomplished (adhigam) in him who comprehends this"; 83 and .ukran.tis.ra, IV, 4, 70-71, where "the imager must be expert
in vision (dhy.na), and in no other way, certainly not in the presence of a model (pratyak.e.a) can the work be accomplished." In distinguishing thus a language of
symbols from a language of signs I have in mind the distinctions of symbol and sign as drawn by Jung. 84 A symbolic expression is one that is held to be the best
possible formula by which allusion may be made to a relatively unknown "thing," which referent, however, is nevertheless recognized or postulated as "existing." The
use of any symbol, such as the figure "vajra" or the word "Brahman," implies a conviction, and generally a conventional agreement resting on authority, that the
relatively unknown, or it may be unknowable, referent cannot be any more clearly represented. A sign, on the other hand, is an analogous or abbreviated expression
for a definitely known thing; every man knows or can be informed, by indication of an object, as to what the sign "means." Thus wings are symbols when they "mean"
angelic independence of local motion, but "signs" when they designate an aviator; the cross is a symbol when used (metaphysically) to represent
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the structure of the Universe with respect to hierarchy and extension, but a sign when used (practically) to warn the motorist of a near-by crossroad. The use of the
words wings or cross to designate relatively unknown, "occult," or abstract referents is symbolic, parok.e.a; their use to designate known, visible or potentially
visible, concrete referents is semiotic, pratyak.e.a. Or if we use blue pigment to "represent" blue eyes or blue sky, it is as a sign; but if we make the Virgin's robe
blue, then "blue" becomes the symbol of an idea, and the reference is no longer to the thing "sky" but to certain abstract qualities such as "infinity" which we have
imputed to the "thing" we see overhead. In this particular case the sign and symbol are the same, viz. blue pigment, and, just as in the case of the sign or symbol
pu.kara, lotus, the "meaning" must be understood in connection with the context. An understanding of this kind is all-important; for if we take the sign for a symbol,
we shall be sentimentalizing our notion of blue eyes, and if we take the symbol for a sign, we are reducing "thought" to "recognition." In the latter case, our tacit
assumption can be only that the Virgin wears the sky just as we wear our bodies, which is tantamount to speaking of the Virgin as a "personification of the sky," and
to an identification of Mariolatry with the "worship of Nature." 85 The reader may suppose that such a crude mistake is impossible, as it may be impossible for him
who as an inheritor of the Christian tradition knows better; nevertheless, it is this very mistake that he makes when, from a point of view sup-
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posedly "scientific" but in fact merely "profane," he speaks of Ionian philosophy as "naturalistic," or of the religion of the Vedas as a "worship of natural forces."
We are now, in the first place, led to understand how it is that in certain cases ideas, especially metaphysical or theological ideas (perhaps there are no others,
"scientific" ideas being strictly speaking theological in kind) can be better communicated by visual than by verbal symbols (visual symbols will include, of course, the
gestures or tones employed in ritual, as well as the surfaces of factibilia). The words "lotus," "pu.kara," for example, are the same however employed, parok..t or
pratyak.e.a, but the lotus of iconography can scarcely be confused with the lotus of the botanist; an art in which such a confusion becomes possible is no longer art,
no longer iconography, but semiotic. It is true that in the decadence of art what should be symbols are replaced by what are merely signs, a formal by an informal
referendum; and in such times of decadence it is even believed that the impulses of the "Primitives" were also descriptive; it is believed, as aforesaid, that the Vedic
enchantments (mantra) are descriptions of natural phenomena. It is just in this connection, in the second place, that we are led to understand how and why it is that
"realistic" art must be regarded as "decadent," that is to say, falling short of what is proper to the dignity of man as man, to whom not merely sensible, but also
intelligible worlds are accessible. Granted that by restoring to the lotus all, or all we can, of those accidents that are proper to the lotus of the botanist,
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we produce an object apt to deceive an animal: what we have thus done is to make it clear that our reference is, and is only, to a natural species and not to an idea;
our "work of art" is no longer creative, "imitating" an exemplary form, 86 but merely a succedaneum, more or less apt to titillate the senses. If bees have been
deceived by painted flowers, why was not honey also provided. The more an image is "true to nature," the more it lies. It lies in both senses, parok.a and pratyak.a:
the portrait of the artist's wife posing as the Mother of God is untrue in its implication of likeness (the being of the Mother of God is not in the human mode), and on
the other hand, the portrait of the artist's wife as such is untrue with respect to human affectibility, in that it cannot take the place of living flesh ("The eye in itself is a
better thing than the eye as painted on the wall," Eckhart). Hence the .ukran.tis.ra, IV, 4, 76, speaks of portraiture as "unheavenly," asvargya, and the doctors of
Islam disparage representative art because it simulates the work of the Supreme Artist, and is yet devoid of life.
Innumerable examples of the correspondence between what is known to the Angels in one way, to man in another could, of course, be accumulated from the Vedic
literature. That these correspondences are thought of as real and necessary implies the notion of the analogical relationship of macrocosm and microcosm, such as is
most explicitly asserted in Ait. Br., VIII, 2, where each of the two worlds "this" and "that" is anur.pam, "in the image of" the other. And if in fact the word parok.a is
not found in the
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.g Veda, the notion of an angelic language distinct from that of man is there very clearly expressed in other ways. It will suffice to cite I, 164, 10, 37 and 45: "There
on the pitch of heaven (dyu) they chant (mant.) a Wisdom (v.c) that is all-knowing (vi.v.-vid) but not-all-animating (avi.vaminva, perhaps 'all-disposing')"; that is, in
accord with S.ya.a, the Angels communicate with each other in a hidden (gupta) language, which embraces all things but does not extend to, or is not understood
by, all (na sarva-vy.pakam). Again, "When the First-born of the Law (sc. Agni, or the Sun) approached me, then got I a share of that Wisdom." What is meant by
"a" share appears in the verse 45, "Wisdom (v.c) has been measured out in four degrees (pada), the comprehending Brahma.a knows them: three kept close hid
(guh. nihit.) cause no motion (na i.gayanti glossed by S.ya.a na ce..ante, 'do not strive,' or 'make no gesture'); men speak only the fourth degree of Wisdom." The
mantra is quoted in Jaim. Up. Br., I, 7, where the three degrees are said to be the (three) Worlds; the notion being evidently the same as that of Maitri Up., VI, 6,
where Praj.pati "utters" the Three Worlds which are his cosmic (lokavat) manifestation (tan. = r.pa), these "utterances" (vy.h.ti., viz. Bh.r, Bhuvas, Svar = Dante's
infima parta, mezza, and cima del mondo) being the "names" or "forms" (n.ma) of the Worlds. The triplicity of the utterance corresponds to the triunity of the
speaker, these Worlds being the spheres of .iva, Brahm., and Vi..u, or Agni, V.yu (or Indra) and .ditya. 87 The three utterances are simple, but
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exemplary; they confess all things, but do not specify them. These three parts of Wisdom (or "Speech") are said to be "hidden" and to "make no gesture," because,
although the Worlds are moved by them, they do not move, but are only "thought" and immanent: "He thinks them, and behold they are" ( Eckhart). 88 It is Man
who by giving names to things (n.ma-dheya, .g Veda, X, 71, 1) contracts and identifies (vi-dh., vy.k., vi-kalp) things into variety in time and space, and so
completes the creation in its kinds, as is also to be understood in Genesis, II, 19-20. By "Man," not you and I individually, but Universal Man as Seer (..i) or Poetic
Genius (kavi) is to be understood. No doctrine of solipsism is involved.
That "men speak only the fourth degree of Wisdom" corresponds to .g Veda, X, 90, 4, "Only one fourth of Him is born here," that is to say, in time and space.
Maitri Up., VII, 11 (8), and M....kya Up. make it clear that this one fourth corresponds to the three states (.vasatha) or levels (sth.na) of being, known as
"Waking," "Dreaming," and "Deep Sleep," while the aforesaid three fourths correspond to that inscrutable (anirukta, av.cya, etc.) level of "Nonduality" (of
manifestation and non-manifestation, Aparaand Para-Brahman) which is spoken of as "Fourth" with respect to the three states of "Waking," "Dreaming" and "Deep
Sleep."
How then can we determine the parok.a level of reference more exactly. The "three quarters of Him," the Fourth state, Pambrahman, Eckhart's "Godhead," is
excluded
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from the problem in that understanding there is neither thought nor spoken; on the other hand, the parok.a language is certainly not inaccessible to human beings,
since the Vedic mantras and other traditional scriptures spoken in this language are accessible to any student. Our enquiry must start from the indications given that
the level of reference is adhidaivata, "angelic," as distinguished from adhy.tma or m.nu.a, "having reference to oneself," and "human" or "mortal." What is "angelic,"
and what "human". In terms of Scholastic philosophy, "purely intelligible," and "rational," respectively, nor could any better answers be given in as brief a form.
Angels, however, are of many hierarchies and orders: God himself is Mahideva, the Supreme Angel, or Devadev.n.m-Devâtideva, Angel of the Angels (cf. "Rex
angelorum"), and on the other hand, even the powers of the individual soul may be spoken of as dev... In any case, "The kingdom of heaven is within you," "All
deities reside in the human breast" (Blake), where "within you" is antarbh.tasya khe, and "breast" is h.daya; cf. Jaim. Up. Br., I, 14, mayy et.. sarv. devat. . . .
bhavanti, "all these Angels are in me." "Human," on the other hand, as is proved by the equivalence adhy.tma = m.nu.a, and by the correlation of "Human"
understanding with the three states of "Waking," "Dreaming," and "Deep Sleep" (and not merely with the first of these), has by no means merely a "corporeal"
connotation but one involving all extensions and transpositions of individuality. The state of Deep Sleep, in particular, though super-individual, is still "human" in
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that a return from this condition to that of corporeality is always possible, by way of avatara.a, "special incarnation," or in the return from sam.dhi to worldly
consciousness. It is perfectly clear therefore that the parok.a and pratyak.a understandings are not divided by an impassable wall (we have already seen that "this"
and "that" are in the image of one another), but in their degrees represent a hierarchy of types of consciousness extending from animal to deity, and according to
which one and the same individual may function upon different occasions. We can only determine the "level of reference" absolutely if we confine our attention to the
limiting conditions.
If we ask in this sense at what level of awareness the metaphysical understanding (parok.a jñ.na) is all-sufficient, and specific reference superfluous, the answer can
be found in .g Veda I, 164, 10, divo p...he, "on the back (that is, top) of heaven," for it is there that the Angels communicate with one another in a purely parok.a
fashion, such speaking being called a chanting (mantrayante, "they incant "), and there that the "utterance" of the "Angel of all the Angels" is primordially "heard." That
is in the Paradise of Brahm. as described in Kau..taki Up., I, 3 ff., beyond the Solar "gateway of the worlds," kept by Agni, the Angel of the Flaming Sword. That
is in human (m.nu.a) language called "Deep Sleep," but angelically speaking, "Pure Intelligence (prajñ.)"; "it is a unified and mere understanding (ek.bh.ta.
prajñ.na-ghana)," 89 M....kya Up., 5, and characterized by "the cessation of the consciousness of particulars," Sar-vopani.ats.ra
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vopani.ats.ra, 7. The Buddhist equivalents are Sukh.v.ti, Sambhogak.ya; Christian, the Empyrean or Motionless Heaven, there is the "peace that passeth
understanding," "Come unto Me, and I will give you rest," that rest being precisely our "Deep Sleep." Needless to say that rest and sleep which can only be
represented to the "Waking" level of reference as an idling and unconsciousness are on the level of "Deep Sleep" a preëminent and creative activity. "Dreaming" and
"Deep Sleep" are not places, but conditions of being, "close kept in the empty chamber of the heart," guh. nihitam, antarbh.tasya khe, antarh.dayâk..e. There
within us are the angelic "levels of purely intelligible reference."
The text of M....kya Up., 5, continues, .nanda-mayo hy .nanda-bhuk, "in the modality of Ecstasy, enjoying Love." Here .nanda represents the transformation
(par.v.tti) 90 of carnal love, just as prajñ. the transformation of carnal understanding; the Love is in Eckhart's sense, "We desire a thing while as yet we do not
possess it. When we have it, we love it, desire then falling away." Heavenly being is thus at once intellectual and ecstatic. With this conception, and in connection
with what has already been said with respect to levels of reference in art, may be cited the definition of aesthetic experience (rasâsv.dana, "tasting of the tincture") in
the S.hitya Darpa.a, III, 2-4, as .nanda-cin-maya, "in the mode of ecstasy and intellect," lokôttara-camatk.ra-pr..a., "whereof the life is a supersensual flash,"
vedyântaraspar.a-..nya., "without contact of aught else known,"
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brahmâsvda-sahôdara., "very twin of the tasting of Brahman," and sacetas.m anubhava. pram..a. tatra kevalam, "whereof the only evidence is that of intellectual
men."
We have not thus far taken into consideration that pratyak.a (= aparok.a, sâk..t) is of two very different kinds, with respect to which parok.a occupies a middle
place. The pratyak.a so far considered is sa.vyavah.rika, "worldly," or "practical," proper to the human mode of being. But there is also a paramârthika-pratyak.a
(= aparok.a-sâk..t) which transcends even angelic modes of understanding and communication. In one way or another, universally or specifically, "the Self (.tman)
knows everything. But where understanding (vijñ.na) is without duality (advaita), footloose of cause, effect, and operation, wordless, incomparable, and inexplicable
. . . what is that. That does not belong to speech (tad av.cyam)," Maitri Up., VI, 7. As it is said elsewhere, "This Brahman is silence." Knowledge in this sense,
neither of the senses nor the intellect, is spoken of as evident (pratyak.a, sâk..t) only analogically, with respect to its immediacy. It is aparok.a in both senses, as
"selfevident," and "non-symbolic." That which is alien to all speech (av.cya), and transmundane (avyavah.rika), is alien equally to. sa.vyavah.rika-pratyaksa and to
parok.a understanding, both of which are in the domain of avidy., where things are spoken of in likenesses. There, there are neither signs nor symbols, reference nor
referent; "it" can only be realized immediately, beyond all levels of reference.
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It may be observed that with respect to all three kinds of reference, human, angelic, and transcendental, the eye (ak.a, cak.u) is used as the symbol of perception by
the senses (actually or analogically), the ear with respect to intellectual reference, thought of as "audition" rather than as hearing, "by the ear" (.rotre.a) in this sense
being equivalent to parok.a, "not by the eye," where "eye" stands for the external senses. In the terminology under discussion, three different "eyes" are in question,
viz. the carnal eye or eye's intrinsic faculty (m..sa-cak.u), the angelic eye (divyacak.u), and the eye of wisdom (jñ.na-cak.u, etc.). "Knowledge" accessible to the
first two of these is a merely relative or false knowledge (avidy.); only that of the last is a true knowledge (vidy.) in undifferentiated sameness. Angelic
understanding, in that it embodies elements of multiplicity, remains "relative" (avidy.), though at its highest level, being in unity, it is virtually absolute (vidy.).
How then should the terms parok.a and pratyak.a be translated. Translators of the passages cited above have rendered parok.a as follows: 91 "mystic" or
"esoteric" (Eggeling), "cryptic" (Hume and Caland), "mysterious" ( Max Müller and Keith), "incognito" (S. Sitaram Sastri), "not recognizable," "occult" (Oertel),
"indirect" (Sarup). Le P. Dandoy renders "médiat," in contrast to (paramârthika-)pratyak.a, "immédiat." 92 For the paired terms, parok.a and
(vyavah.rika-)pratyak.a we have already employed or now suggest: angelic, human; indirect, direct; symbolic, semiotic; noumenal, phenomenal; universal, par-
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ticular; theoretical, practical; abstract, concrete; intelligible, sensible; metaphorical, literal.
Amongst these terms, "indirect" and "direct" are obviously satisfactory with respect to the purely grammatical definitions, and in the other connection "direct" has the
further advantage of corresponding to both senses of pratyak.a. "Immediate is evidently satisfactory for paramârthika-pratyak.a, but "mediate" evidently
unsatisfactory for parok.a, inasmuch as the Angels use less and not more means than men; sa.vyavah.rika-pratyak.a is not "immediate" in the technical sense of this
word, but merely "sensibly perceptible," or rather "having a perceptible referent." For parok.a, terms implying incomprehensibility are certainly to be avoided, 93
inasmuch as parok.a is precisely the "intelligible" as contrasted with the "sensible"; "obscure" and "mysterious" are thus excluded, but "secret" or "hidden" (S.ya.a's
"gupta") are not incorrect. 94 "Mystic" is unfortunate as having a connotation distinct from, and "inferior" to, that of "metaphysical," and also because "mystic" is often
confused with "mysterious." "Esoteric," in relation to "exoteric," represents a kind of distinction hardly proper to metaphysics. "Occult" is excellent, if it can be made
evident that the meanings now associated with "occultism" are excluded. "Angelic" in relation to "human" is correct in reference, but not a translation. We suggest as
the most desirable renderings, for (vyavah.rika-) pratyak.a, either "direct," "evident," "obvious," or "semiotic"; for parok.a, either "indirect," "metaphysical,"
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"occult," "universal," "abstract," or "symbolic"; for paramârthika-pratyak.a (= aparok.a, sâk..t), "immediate."
One further point: in the often recurring expression parok.a-priy. iva dev.., "priy." must not be rendered "are fond of," because the parok.a understanding is an
angelic property, depending not on choice but on nature; it is no doubt true that the Angels "love what is their own" (that is, would not be other than they are), but we
cannot imply that this "love" is an "affection" -- it is their being, not an accident of being; 95 cf. Maitri Up., VI, 34, "What is one's thought, that he becomes," and
similarly Dhammapada, I, 1, 2. The last consideration reminds us that in so far as man employs and understands angelic means of communication, the "language of
birds," he is of the angelic kind ("Intellect is the swiftest of birds," mano javi..ha. patayatsu anta., .g Veda, VI, 9, 5); in so far as his communications and
understanding are limited to "matters of fact," he is not merely "a little" but a great deal "lower than the Angels."
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Chapter VI
.BH.SA
.BH.SA, literally "shining back," "reflection," "semblance," is predicated of the individual self (j.va) with respect to Brahman ( Vedânta S.tra, II, 3, 50,
.a.karâc.rya explaining .bh.sa as "counter-image," or "reflection," pratibimba). In theistic texts, such as those of northern .aivism, .bh.sa implies the world
conceived as a theophany. The true Self "counter-sees itself" reflected in the possibilities of being ( Pañcavi..a Br.hma.a, VII, 8, 1), as the world-picture
(jagac-citra) painted by the Self on the canvas of the Self ( .a.karâc.rya). 96 "He illumines (bh.sayati) these worlds. . . . He gladdens (rañjayati, 'colors') these
worlds" ( Maitri Upani.ad, VI, 7); that is, " God made man in His own image"; bh.sa is Eckhart's "imagebearing light"; cf. citra-bh.sa, .g Veda, VI, 10, 3, sar.pa
jyoti, ibid., X, 55, 3 , bh.-r.pa, Maitri Upani.ad, VI, 4. .bh.sa, then, and citra, "art," are fundamentally "image," owing such reality as may be theirs to That whose
image they reflect.
In .ilpa usage, as I have shown in JAOS., XLVIII, 251, .bh.sa means "painting," and not some mysterious and otherwise unknown material, as suggested by
AcharyaDictionary of Hindu Architecture,
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Dictionary of Hindu Architecture, p. 63, and M.nas.ra, p. 71. I now offer in support of the same view the translation of a text not cited by Acharya, viz. the
K..yapa.ilpa, Ch. L, Pratim.-lak.a.a, vv. 1-7 (.nandâ.r.ma Series, No. 95, p. 167):
1. Hearken with singly-directed mind to the exposition of the characteristics of images, the immovable, the movable, and those both movable and immovable, which
form a class of three. 97
2. Those made of terracotta (m.nmaya) or laterite (..rkara), of stucco (sauyaja), or painted (read .lekhya., cf. lekhya. in .ukran.tis.ra, IV, 4, 70), are the
immovable; those made of stone, wood, mineral (dh.tu, possibly jade), or gem,
3. Are both immovable and movable; those of metal (loha) are the immovable. (Further) ardha-citra, citra, and citrâbh.sa form a class of three,
4. (of which) ardha-citra ('half-representation,' high relief) is an image in which half the body is not seen (read ardhângadar.a.am), citra (full round representation) is
when the image is visible all round (sarvâyavasa.d...a.), 98
5. (And) .bh.sa (painting) is said with respect to an image on a canvas or wall (made to appear as if) in relief (nimnónnate pa.e bhittau). (Further), ardha-citra is
done in plaster (sudh.), being half in the power of the other funround representation (citra),
6. (And) .bh.sa (painting) is to be done with mineral colors (dh.tu), 99 and so also citrârdha (= ardha-citra). But
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paintings (citrâbh.sa) of the Angels are (also) of three kinds, best, middling, and good,
7. (For example), a base (p..ha) of (plain) brick is good, a painted one (.bh.saka) is better, and one of painted terracotta relief (.bh.sârdham m.nmaya.) is best.
Another source not cited by Acharya is the .ilparatna, XLVI, 1-11; here citra, ardba-citra, and citrâbh.sa are similarly distinguished, the first being
sarvâ.ga-d..yakara.a., "having all its parts visible," the second bhitty.dau lagna-bh.venâpy-ardha., "when half of its being is attached to a wall or the like surface,"
and the third is referred to as a vilekkana., "painting," and further, as lekhya. . . . n.n.-var.ânvita., "painted with the use of many colors." It is also stated that citra
and citrârdha may be done in clay or plaster, wood, stone, or metal.
.bh.sa is used in .ilpa texts also in another sense, 100 with reference to the unit of measurement proper to be employed in various kinds of buildings, the four
different units specified being j.ti, the full cubit (hasta), chanda, three-quarter cubit, vikalpa (not defined), and .bh.sa, half cubit. These units are employed
respectively in building for Gods and Brahmans, K.atriyas, Vai.yas, and ..dras. It is therefore clear that .bh.sa represents here the least in a series of modifications
or transformations of a whole unit. This meaning is quite consistent with that of .bh.sa, "painting," regarded as a modification of citra, "full-round representation," that
of rasâbh.sa, "semblance of flavor" in Ala. k.ra terminology, vastrâbh.sa, "semblance of clothes" in
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a painting ( Pañcada.., VI, 6), cid-.bh.sa, "reflection of absolute intelligence," ibid., 7 , and that of .bh.sa as "theophany."
.bh.sa-gata occurs in Vasubandhu, Abhidharmako.a, V, 34 ( Poussin, p. 72), with the related meaning "in the field of objective experience," .bh.sa being
equivalent to vi.ayar.pat., "sensible objectivity," and .bh.sa-gata to d..ya, "empirically perceptible." Dign.ga uses ava-bh.sate with reference to the seemingly
objective character of an intellectual image (antarjñeya-r.pa); ava-bh.sa can also be used for "illumination" as a spiritual experience. Bh.vâbh.sa is "semblance of
existence." The opposite of .bh.sa is nit-.bh.sa or an-.bh.sa, "imageless." 101
The word .bh.sa as "painting" involves some interesting considerations bearing on the psychological conception of the relation of painting to sculpture and relief, and
on the idea of the third dimension in painting. Verse 5b, literally translated above, implies, as does also the very word citrâbh.sa, literally "the shining forth or
semblance of citra," that painting is thought of as a constricted mode of sculpture; relief, which may also be colored, logically occupying an intermediate place. The
view that painting, although actually applied to plane surfaces, was nevertheless conventionally regarded as a kind of solid representation can be supported by
additional literary evidences. For example, in Vinaya, IV, 61, a monk "raises" (vu..h.peti) a picture (cittam) on a cloth; and in Sa.yutta Nik.ya, Comm., II, 5, a
painter "raises up" (samu..h.peti) a shape (r.pam) on a
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wall surface by means of his brushes and colors. In the Mah.y.na S.trâla.k.ra of Asa.ga, XIII, 17, we have citre . . . natônnata. nâsti ca, d..yate atha ca, "there is
no actual relief in a painting, and yet we see it there," and similarly in the La.kâvat.ra S.tra, Nanjio ed., p. 91, a painted surface (citrak.ta-prade.a) is said to be
seen in relief (nimnônnata) though actually flat (animnônnata). In more than one place we have the metaphor of the eyes stumbling (skhalati) over the elevations and
depressions (nimnônnata) represented in a picture, these hills and vales being either those of the luxuriant forms of women, or those of the landscape background (
.akuntal., VI, 13-14, and perhaps Tri.sa..i.al.k.puru.acaritra, I, 1, 360). And in verse 5a, translated above, nimnônnate in agreement with pate and bhittau is
especially noteworthy, the canvas or wall being spoken of as "in relief," though it is quite certain that a plane painted surface is all that is referred to.
Natônnata and nimnônnata thus provide us with exact terms for the relievo, plastic modelling, or modelling in abstract light 102 which is actually seen in the paintings
of Aja..., while for the process of "shading" by which the relief effect was created and sense of volume conveyed, we have the term vartan., and corresponding
Palivattana and ujjotana, "shading" and "adding high lights," in a passage of the Atthas.lin.. 103 Such relievo must not, of course, be confused with anything of the
nature of "effect of light," chiaroscuro, ch.yâtapa, 104 "shade and shine." Relievo and chiaroscuro are indeed not merely independent, but actually
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contradictory notions, as was realized in Europe even as late as the time of Leonardo, who, though as a naturalist he had long studied the effects produced by direct
sunlight and cast shadows, rightly maintained that these effects destroyed the representation of true relief or volume.
The question of relief involves to some degree that of perspective. Recent discussions of the problems of spatial representation in Far Eastern and Indian art 105
convey the impression that the authors are devoting much labor to what is really a rather artificial problem, posed for them by the unfamiliarity of the arts in question,
this unfamiliarity persisting despite their good knowledge of the arts themselves as they exist in countless extant and accessible examples. It is difficult to believe that
problems of spatial representation were ever in Asia attacked as such, in the sense that they were wrestled with in Quattrocento Italy, that is to say from a scientific
and visualistic rather than an aesthetic point of view. It is surely impossible to believe that there was ever a time when art was unintelligible to those for whom it was
made, for in this case it must have been unintelligible also to those who made it -- the "artist" not being, as at the present day he is, an isolated and peculiar person.
To suppose that art was unintelligible, and that artists, in the goodness of their hearts, were trying to make it comprehensible either to themselves or others, is as if to
suppose that speakers made sounds with a view to the subsequent formation of a valid means of communication, or that carpenters began to build houses with a
view
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to the appearance of architecture, whereas in fact speech is always adequate to the thing to be expressed, and there can no more be a progress in art than in
metaphysics, but only a varying development of different aspects.
All men, and even animals, are aware that objects stand apart from each other in space, up and down, sideways, and backwards; and if animals have not a word for
"three dimensions," they still know how to move in different directions, and have a sense of far and near. Space, then, has to be taken for granted as a primary datum
of intelligence, and it is obvious that as soon as it became possible to make intelligible representations of objects, it must have been taken for granted by those who
understood them that these were representations of objects existing in space. The question of perspective thus becomes a purely historical and descriptive problem;
the definition of perspective reduces itself to "means employed to indicate the existence or distribution of objects in space." From the aesthetic point of view, no one
variety of perspective can be regarded as superior to any other, and though we naturally prefer that kind of perspective which best corresponds to our own habits of
vision and therefore requires least effort of comprehension, all that is really required is intelligibility. It is in fact perfectly possible to learn to read the perspective of an
unfamiliar art as fluently as we read that of our own times, and in the same way without being actively conscious of the use of any particular mode of perspective.
The question of optical plausibility therefore does not arise,
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since it always inheres in the kind of perspective to which we are or have become accustomed; if by optical plausibility we mean anything more than this, it can only
be in connection with a naïvely illusionistic view of art, as if we wished to paint a picture of the master that should be recognized by the dog.
A discussion of the history of perspective in India, and of the related problem of continuous representation, would take us too far afield; but it may be remarked that
while the necessities of iconography, so far as s.ttvika representations are involved, determine the predominance of frontality at all times, there is a representation of
free movement from the earliest times, at Mohenjodaro, in Maurya terracottas, and even at Bh.rhut. 106 If we consider literary sources from the Gupta period
onward we find a tabulated scheme of positions (sth.na) ranging from the frontal (.ju) through stages of profil perdu to strict profile (bhitti-gata, "gone into the wall")
and mixed views, as well as a series of terms denoting various degrees of bending and torsion of the body. 107 The various positions are defined by reference to
actually or ideally suspended threads, in terms of the distance between given points on the body and the threads themselves, and also in terms of k.aya-v.ddhi, "loss
and gain," that is effectively foreshortening, the parts which in a given position are not seen being described as ch.y.-gata, "gone into shadow." All these are matters
belonging to the history of technique rather than that of principle.
As to the development, it may be added that while the
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early sculpture in the round exhibits the strongest possible feeling for plastic volume, the early reliefs (ardha-citra) approximate rather to painting (citrâbh.sa) than to
solid sculpture (citra), being, for example at Bh.rhut, closely compressed between the two planes of the wrought surface, though there are already exceptions to this
at Bh.j.. 108 Then at S.ñc. the relief is heightened, and the effect moves in the opposite direction from that of painting to that of round sculpture; this tendency
continues throughout the Ku..na and later .ndhra periods, and reaches its fullest development in the Gupta period, and subsequently persists, notwithstanding that
the intrinsic quality of the volume represented is no longer the same. Needless to say, early Chinese "relief " is still more like painting than is early Indian, being in fact
only an engraving on stone, employing perspective methods rather difficult to grasp, but in any case not in the nature of foreshortening as in sculpture; later, the
raising of the relief in Chinese stone sculpture is a reflection of Indian methods.
But the earliest Indian relief, notwithstanding its compression, has always the intention of solidity, and the earliest Indian painting by its emphatic modelling
demonstrates its close relation to the contemporary sculpture in the round, with its impressive volume and mass. A like volume found expression in the reliefs only
gradually, which might perhaps be thought of as indicating a later origin of relief technique, and the historical precedence of full-round sculpture and painting.
However this may be, in mediaeval
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times the two tendencies crossed as it were in opposite directions, the one maintaining in fact a high relief, the other representing a flattening of the mental image.
When sculpture gradually lost its sense of plastic volume, painting was also actually flattened out; for example, the phrase nimnônnata-pa.a could hardly be applied
to any painting of the Gujar.t. or Rajput schools, where only vestiges of the old plastic shading survive. The flattening of the visual concept must be related to a
corresponding psychological modification, and certainly not to any change in technical procedure undertaken for its own sake; for thought precedes stylistic
expression in the work, and to seek for the causes of changes in the changes themselves would be a reductio ad absurdum of history. 109
Psychological changes, manifested in attenuation of form, can only be thought of as representing a slackening of energy, a looser concentration, .ithila-sam.dhi.
When one considers the impressive volumes of the earlier art, in which the form is as it were pressed outward from within by an indomitable will, one thinks also of
those numerous passages in literature where the hero is said to swell with anger, or of women's bodies that expand in adolescence or in passion, or of those pregnant
trees whose pent-up flowering must be released by the touch of a lovely foot. With the passing of time all these energies were and must have been brought under
greater control, softened and refined in expression, the will no longer asserting, but now rather realizing itself in an active quiescence. We feel this already in the
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relative serenity of Gupta sculpture and the sophisticated poesy of the classical drama; we could not imagine in the twelfth century such heroic forms as those of the
figures of donors at K.rl., or that of Friar Bala "Bodhisattva" at S.rn.th. The impulsive and ruthless heroism of the past survives only in the tradition of Rajput
chivalry. In general, the tendency is toward a more purely intellectual conception of experience. It is perhaps worth noting that a like development was also taking
place in contemporary mediaeval Europe, as will be apparent if for example we compare St Thomas with .a.karâc.rya; in neither case can it be said that any
outward disorder could interfere with the supremacy of intellect.
It would be too easy to exaggerate the nature of the change, and very much mistaken to evaluate it only in terms of decadence. Stylistic sequences in thought and art
are not in themselves pure loss or pure gain, decadence or progress, but necessary and therefore acceptable developments of special aspects. When the will has
been in some measure appeased, the intellect can the better exercise its power. If this change of direction at first involves a loss of animal perfection (immediacy of
action), it is nevertheless a becoming toward a higher spontaneity, in which the unity of the inner and outer life is to be restored, and there are even moments at the
height of a development and in the lives of individuals when the balance seems to be restored and art transcends style. Apart from these questions of perfection, it
might well be argued that the flattening out of art,
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implying as it does a more conventional symbolism than even that of modelling in abstract light, reflects a more intellectual mode of understanding, which does not
require even a suggestion of modelling as an aid to reproduction; as in the case of the angels who have fewer ideas and use less means than men.
In any case, one could not, if one would wish to, turn back the movement of time. To be other than we are would be for us the same as not to be; to wish that the art
of any period had been other than it was is the same as to wish that it had never been. Every style is complete in itself, and to be justified accordingly, not to be
judged by the standards of a former or any other age.
With one voice which is wondrous
He giveth utterance to thoughts innumerable,
That are received by audiences of all sorts,
Each understanding them in his own way. 110
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Chapter VII
THE ORIGIN AND USE OF IMAGES IN INDIA
It may be said that images are to the Hindu worshipper what diagrams are to the geometrician.
Rao, Elements of Hindu Iconography, II, 28.
Few of those who condemn idolatry, or make it's suppression a purpose of missionary activity, have ever seriously envisaged the actual use of images, in historical or
psychological perspective, or surmised a possible significance in the fact that the vast majority of men of all races, and in all ages, including the present, Protestants,
Hebrews, and Musalmans being the chief exceptions, have made use of more or less anthropomorphic images as aids to devotion. For these reasons it may be not
without value to offer an account of the use of images in India, as far as possible in terms of thought natural to those who actually make use of such images. This may
at least conduce to a realization of the truth enunciated by an incarnate Indian deity, K...a, that "the path men take from every side is Mine."
In explaining the use of images in India, where the method is regarded as edifying, it should not be inferred that Hindus or Buddhists are to be represented en masse
as less superstitious than other peoples. We meet with all kinds of stories about images that speak, or bow, or weep;
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images receive material offerings and services, which they are said to "enjoy"; we know that the real presence of the deity is invited in them for the purpose of
receiving worship; on the completion of an image, its eyes are "opened" by a special and elaborate ceremony. 111 Thus, it is clearly indicated that the image is to be
regarded as if animated by the deity. 112
Obviously, however, there is nothing peculiarly Indian here. Similar miracles have been reported of Christian images; even the Christian church, like an Indian temple,
is a house dwelt in by God in a special sense, yet it is not regarded as his prison, nor do its walls confine his omnipresence, whether in India or in Europe.
Further, superstition, or realism, is inseparable from human nature, and it would be easy to show that this is always and everywhere the case. The mere existence of
science does not defend us from it; the majority will always conceive of atoms and electrons as real things, which would be tangible if they were not so small, and will
always believe that tangibility is a proof of existence; and are fully convinced that a being, originating at a given moment of time, may yet, as that same being, survive
eternally in time. He who believes that phenomena of necessity stand for solid existing actualities, or that there can exist any empirical consciousness or individuality
without a material (substantial) basis, or that anything that has come into being can endure as such forever, is an idolater, a fetishist. Even if we should accept the
popular Western view of Hinduism
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as a polytheistic system, it could not be maintained that the Indian icon is an any sense a fetish. As pointed out by Guénon, "Dans l'Inde, en particulier, une image
symbolique representant l'un ou l'autre des 'attributs divins,' et qui est appelée prat.ka, n'est point une 'idole,' car elle n'a jamais été prise pour autre chose que ce
qu'elle est réellement, un support de méditation et un moyen auxiliaire de realization" ( Introduction à l'étude des doctrines hindoues, p. 209). A good illustration of
this is to be found in the Divyâvad.na, Ch. XXVI, where Upagupta compels M.ra, who as a yak.a has the power of assuming shapes at will, to exhibit himself in
the shape of the Buddha. Upagupta bows down, and M.ra, shocked at this apparent worship of himself, protests. Upagupta explains that he is not worshipping
M.ra, but the person represented--"just as people venerating earthen images of the undying angels, do not revere the clay as such, but the immortals represented
therein." 113 Here we have the case of an individual who has passed beyond individuality, but is yet represented according to human needs by an image. The
principle is even clearer in the case of the images of the angels; the image per se is neither God nor any angel, but merely an aspect or hypostasis (avasth.) of God,
who is in the last analysis without likeness (am.rta), not determined by form (ar.pa), trans-form (para-r.pa). His various forms or emanations are conceived by a
process of symbolic filiation. To conceive of Hinduism as a polytheistic system is in itself a naïveté of which only a Western student, inheriting Graeco-Roman
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concepts of "paganism" could be capable; the Muhammadan view of Christianity as polytheism could be better justified than this.
In fact, if we consider Indian religious philosophy as a whole, and regard the extent to which its highest conceptions have passed as dogmas into the currency of daily
life, we shall have to define Hindu civilization as one of the least superstitious the world has known. M.y. is not properly delusion, but strictly speaking creative
power, .akti, the principle of manifestation; delusion, moha, is to conceive of appearances as things in themselves, and to be attached to them as such without regard
to their procession.
In the Bhagavad G.t., better known in India than the New Testament in Europe, we are taught of the Real, that "This neither dies nor is it born; he who regardeth
This as a slayer, he who thinketh This is slain, are equally unknowing." Again and again, from the Upani.ads to the most devotional theistic hymns the Godhead,
ultimate reality, is spoken of as unlimited by any form, not to be described by any predicate, unknowable. Thus, in the Upani.ads, "He is, by that alone is He to be
apprehended" (cf. "I am that I am "); in the words of the .aiva hymnist M..nikka V.çagar, "He is passing the description of words, not comprehensible by the mind,
not visible to the eye or other senses." Similarly in later Buddhism, in the Vajray.na (..nyav.da) system, we find it categorically stated that the divinities, that is, the
personal God or premier angel in all His forms, "are manifestations of the essential
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nature of non-being"; the doctrine of the only reality of the Void (Behmen's "Abyss") is pushed to the point of an explicit denial of the existence of any Buddha or any
Buddhist doctrine.
Again, whereas we are apt to suppose that the religious significance of Christianity stands or falls with the actual historicity of Jesus, we find an Indian commentator
(N.laka..ha) saying of the K...a L.l., believed historical by most Hindus, that the narration is not the real point, that this is not an historical event, but is based
upon eternal truths, on the actual relation of the soul to God, and that the events take place, not in the outer world, but in the heart of man. Here we are in a world
inaccessible to higher criticism, neither of superstition on the one hand, nor of cynicism on the other. It has been more than once pointed out that the position of
Christianity could well be strengthened by a similar emancipation from the historical point of view, as was to a large extent actually the case with the Schoolmen.
As for India, it is precisely in a world dominated by an idealistic concept of reality, and yet with the approval of the most profound thinkers, that there flourished
what we are pleased to call idolatry. M..nikka V.çagar, quoted above, constantly speaks of the attributes of God, refers to the legendary accounts of His actions,
and takes for granted the use and service of images. In Vajray.na Buddhism, often though not quite correctly designated as nihilistic, the development of an
elaborate pantheon, fully realized in
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material imagery, reaches its zenith. .a.kârac.rya himself, one of the most brilliant intellects the world has known, interpreter of the Upani.ads and creator of the
Vedânta system of pure monism accepted by a majority of all Hindus and analogous to the idealism of Kant, was a devout worshipper of images, a visitor to shrines,
a singer of devotional hymns.
True, in a famous prayer, he apologizes for visualizing in contemplation One who is not limited by any form, for praising in hymns One who is beyond the reach of
words, and for visiting Him in sacred shrines, who is omnipresent. Actually, too, there exist some groups in Hinduism (the Sikhs, for example) who do not make use
of images. But if even he who knew could not resist the impulse to love, -- and love requires an object of adoration, and an object must be conceived in word or
form, -- how much greater must be the necessity of that majority for whom it is so much easier to worship than to know. Thus the philosopher perceives the
inevitability of the use of imagery, verbal and visual, and sanctions the service of images. God Himself makes like concession to our mortal nature, "taking the forms
imagined by His worshipers," making Himself as we are that we may be as He is.
The Hindu ..vara (Supreme God) is not a jealous God, because all gods are aspects of Him, imagined by His worshippers; in the words of K...a: "When any
devotee seeks to worship any aspect with faith, it is none other than Myself that bestows that steadfast faith, and when by wor-
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shipping any aspect he wins what he desires, it is none other than Myself that grants his prayers. Howsoever men approach Me, so do I welcome them, for the path
men take from every side is Mine." Those whose ideal is less high attain, indeed, of necessity to lesser heights; but no man can safely aspire to higher ideals than are
pertinent to his spiritual age. In any case, his spiritual growth cannot be aided by a desecration of his ideals; he can be aided only by the fullest recognition of these
ideals as retaining their validity in any scheme, however profound. This was the Hindu method; Indian religion adapts herself with infinite grace to every human need.
The collective genius that made of Hinduism a continuity ranging from the contemplation of the Absolute to the physical service of an image made of clay did not
shrink from an ultimate acceptance of every aspect of God conceived by man, and of every ritual devised by his devotion.
We have already suggested that the multiplicity of the forms of images, coinciding with the development of monotheistic Hinduism, arises from various causes, all
ultimately referable to the diversity of need of individuals and groups. In particular, this multiplicity is due historically to the inclusion of all pre-existing forms, all local
forms, in a greater theological synthesis, where they are interpreted as modes or emanations (vy.ha) of the supreme I.vara; and subsequently, to the further growth
of theological speculation. In the words of Y.ska, "We see actually that because of the greatness of God, the one principle of life is praised in
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various ways. Other angels are the individual members of a unique Self" ( Nirukta, VII, 4): cf. Ruysbroeck, Adornment . . ., Ch. XXV, "because of His
incomprehensible nobility and sublimity, which we cannot rightly name nor wholly express, we give Him all these names."
Iconolatry, however, was not left to be regarded as an ignorant or useless practice fit only for spiritual children; even the greatest, as we have seen, visited temples,
and worshipped images, and certainly these greatest thinkers did not do so blindly or unconsciously. A human necessity was recognized, the nature of the necessity
was understood, its psychology systematically analyzed, the various phases of image worship, mental and material, were defined, and the variety of forms explained
by the doctrines of emanation and of gracious condescension.
In the first place, then, the forms of images are not arbitrary. Their ultimate elements may be of popular origin rather than priestly invention, but the method is
adopted and further developed within the sphere of intellectual orthodoxy. Each conception is of human origin, notwithstanding that the natural tendency of man to
realism leads to a belief in actually existent heavens where the Angel appears as he is represented. In the words of .ukrâc.rya, "the characteristics of images are
determined by the relation that subsists between the adorer and the adored"; in those cited by Gop.labhatta from an unknown source, the present spiritual activity of
the worshiper, and the actual existence of a traditional iconography, are reconciled as follows --
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"Though it is the devotion (bhakti) of the devotee that causes the manifestation of the image of the Blessed One (Bhagavata), in this matter (of iconography) the
procedure of the ancient sages should be followed." 114
The whole problem of symbolism (prat.ka, "symbol") is discussed by .a.karâc.rya, Commentary on the Vedânta S.tras, I, 1, 20. Endorsing the statement that "all
who sing here to the harp, sing Him," he points out that this "Him" refers to the highest Lord only, who is the ultimate theme even of worldly songs. And as to
anthropomorphic expressions in scripture, "we reply that the highest Lord may, when he pleases, assume a bodily shape formed of M.y., in order to gratify his
devout worshipers"; but all this is merely analogical, as when we say that the Brahman abides here or there, which in reality abides only in its own glory (cf. ibid., I,
2, 29 ). The representation of the invisible by the visible is also discussed by Deussen, Philosophy of the Upanishads, pp. 99-101. Cf. also the discussion of parok.a
in Ch. V.
Parenthetically, we may remark that stylistic sequences (change of aesthetic form without change of basic shape) are a revealing record of changes in the nature of
religious experience; in Europe, for example, the difference between a thirteenth-century and a modern Madonna betrays the passage from passionate conviction to
facile sentimentality. Of this, however, the worshiper is altogether unaware; from the standpoint of edification, the value of an image does not depend on its aesthetic
qualities. A recognition of the sig-
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nificance of stylistic changes, in successive periods, important as it may be for us as students of art, is actually apparent only in disinterested retrospect; the
theologian, proposing means of edification, has been concerned only with the forms of images. Stylistic changes correspond to linguistic changes: we all speak the
language of our own time without question or analysis.
Let us consider now the processes actually involved in the making of images. Long anterior to the oldest surviving images of the supreme deities we meet with
descriptions of the gods as having limbs, garments, weapons or other attributes; such descriptions are to be found even in the Vedic lauds and myths. Now in theistic
Hinduism, where the method of Yoga is employed, that is, focused attention leading to the realization of identity of consciousness with the object considered,
whether or not this object be God, these descriptions, now called dhy.na mantrams or trance formulae, or alternatively, s.dhan.s, means, provide the germ from
which the form of the deity is to be visualized. For example, "I worship our gentle lady Bhuvane.var., like the risen sun, lovely, victorious, destroying defects in
prayer, with a shining crown on her head, three-eyed and with swinging earrings adorned with diverse gems, as a lotus-lady, abounding in treasure, making the
gestures of charity and giving assurance. Such is the dhy.nam of Bhuvane.var." (a form of Dev.). To the form thus conceived imagined flowers and other offerings
are to be made. Such interior worship of a mantra-body or correspondingly imagined form
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is called subtle (s.k.ma), in contradistinction to the exterior worship of a material image, which is termed gross (sth.la), though merely in a descriptive, not a
deprecatory, sense.
Further contrasted with both these modes of worship is that called para-r.pa, "trans-form," in which the worship is paid directly to the deity as he is in himself. This
last mode no doubt corresponds to the ambition of the iconoclast, but such gnosis is in fact only possible, and therefore only permissible, to the perfected Yogin and
veritable j.vanmukta, who is so far as he himself is concerned set free from all name and aspect, whatever may be the outward appearance he presents. Had the
iconoclast in fact attained to such perfection as this, he could not have been an iconoclast.
In any case it must be realized, in connection with the gross or subtle modes of worship, that the end is only to be attained by an identification of the worshiper's
consciousness with the form under which the deity is conceived: n.devo deva. yajet, "only as the angel can one worship the angel," and so devo bh.tv. deva. yajet,
"to worship the Angel become the Angel." Only when the dhy.nam is thus realized in full sam.dhi (the consummation of Yoga, which commences with focused
attention) is the worship achieved. Thus, for example, with regard to the form of Na.ar.ja, representing .iva's cosmic dance, in the words of Tirum.lar,
The dancing foot, the sound of the tinkling bells,
The songs that are sung, and the various steps,
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The forms assumed by our Master as He dances,
Discover these in your own heart, so shall your bonds be broken.
When, on the other hand, a material image is to be produced for purposes of worship in a temple or elsewhere, this as a technical procedure must be undertaken by
a professional craftsman, who may be variously designated .ilpin, "craftsman," yogin, "yogi," s.dhaka, "adept," or simply r.pak.ra or pratim.k.ra, "imager." Such a
craftsman goes through the whole process of self-purification and worship, mental visualization and identification of consciousness with the form evoked, and then
only translates the form into stone or metal. Thus the trance formulae become the prescriptions by which the craftsman works, and as such they are commonly
included in the .ilpa ..stras, the technical literature of craftsmanship. These books in turn provide invaluable data for the modern student of iconography.
Technical production is thus bound up with the psychological method known as yoga. In other words the artist does not resort to models but uses a mental
construction, and this condition sufficiently explains the cerebral character of the art, which everyone will have remarked for himself. In the words of the
encyclopaedist .ukrâc.rya, "One should set up in temples the images of angels who are the objects of his devotion, by mental vision of their attributes; it is for the full
achievement of this yoga-vision that the proper lineaments of images are prescribed; therefore the mortal imager should resort to trance-vision, for thus and no
otherwise, and surely not by direct perception, is the
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end to be attained" (translated also above, p. 114 , in slightly different words).
The proper characteristics of images are further elucidated in the .ilpa ..stras by a series of canons known as t.lam.na or pram..a, in which are prescribed the ideal
proportions proper to the various deities, whether conceived as Kings of the World, or otherwise. These proportions are expressed in terms of a basic unit, just as
we speak of a figure having so many "heads"; but the corresponding Indian measure is that of the "face," from the hair on the forehead to the chin, and the different
canons are therefore designated Ten-face, Nine-face, and so on down to the Fiveface canon suitable for minor deities of dwarfish character. These ideal proportions
correspond to the character of the aspect of the angel to be represented, and complete the exposition of this character otherwise set forth by means of facial
expression, attributes, costume, or gesture. And as .ukrâc.rya says further (see also more literal versions above, Ch. IV), "Only an image made in accordance with
the canon can be called beautiful; some may think that beautiful which corresponds to their own fancy, but that not in accordance with the canon is unlovely to the
discerning eye." And again, "Even the misshapen image of an angel is to be preferred to that of a man, however attractive the latter may be"; because the
representations of the angels are means to spiritual ends, not so those which are only likenesses of human individuals. "When the consciousness is brought to rest in
the form (n.ma, "name," "idea"), and
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sees only the form, then, inasmuch as it rests in the form, aspectual perception is dispensed with and only the reference remains; one reaches then the
world-withoutaspectual-perception, and with further practice attains to liberation from all hindrances, becoming adept." 115 Here, in another language than our own,
are contrasted ideal and realistic art: the one a means to the attainment of fuller consciousness, the other merely a means to pleasure. So too might the anatomical
limitations of Giotto be defended as against the human charm of Raphael.
It should be further understood that images differ greatly in the degree of their anthropomorphism. Some are merely symbols, as when the Bodhi tree is used to
represent the Buddha at the time of the Enlightenment, or when only the feet of the Lord are represented as objects of worship. A very important iconographic type
is that of the yantra, used especially in the ..kta systems; here we have to do with a purely geometrical form, often for instance composed of interlocking triangles,
representing the male and female, static and kinetic aspects of the Two-in-One. Further, images in the round may be avyakta, non-manifest, like a li.gam; or
vyaktâvyakta, partially manifest, as in the case of a mukha-lingam; or vyakta, fully manifest in "anthromorphic" or partly theriomorphic types. 116 In the last analysis
all these are equally ideal, symbolic forms.
In the actual use of a material image, it should always be remembered that it must be prepared for worship by a ceremony of invocation (.vahana); and if intended
only for
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temporary use, subsequently desecrated by a formula of dismissal (visarjana). When not in p.j., that is before consecration or after desecration, the image has no
more sacrosanct character than any other material object. It should not be supposed that the deity, by invocation and dismissal, is made to come or go, for
omnipresence does not move; these ceremonies are really projections of the worshipper's own mental attitude toward the image. By invocation he announces to
himself his intention of using the image as a means of communion with the Angel; by dismissal he announces that his service has been completed, and that he no
longer regards the image as a link between himself and the deity.
It is only by a change of viewpoint, psychologically equivalent to such a formal desecration, that the worshipper, who naturally regards the icon as a devotional utility,
comes to regard it as a mere work of art to be sensationally regarded as such. Conversely, the modern aesthetician and Kunsthistoriker, who is interested only in
aesthetic surfaces and sensations, fails to conceive of the work as the necessary product of a given determination, that is, as having purpose and utility. Of these two,
the worshipper, for whom the object was made, is nearer to the root of the matter than the aesthetician who endeavors to isolate beauty from function. 117
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Notes
1
(page 5 ). "A mental concept (citta-saññ.) arises in the mind of the painter, that such and such a shape (r.pa) must be made in such and such a way. . . . All the
various arts (sippa) in the world are produced by the mind," Atthas.lin., PTS. ed., p. 64; see "An Early Passage on Indian Painting," Eastern Art, III ( 1931), and
cf. note 43.

2
(page 6 ). "Attracting form" is discussed in JAOS., LII, 16, n. 8. Skr. k.. (the root in .-kar.ati) has the same dual significance which is found in English "draw," as
(1) to drag, drag toward or together, attract, and (2) delineate, draw up, compose, put in due form. English draw corresponds to G. tragen, to bear, and Skr. dh.
(dhar) to bear, bear in mind, support, conceive, hold fast or firm, etc. While k.. is to "draw" in either sense, .-k.. can be accurately rendered to "draw up" or
"pro-duce." Cf. "fetch" (of the imagination), and "fetch" as an apparition. A remarkable use of English "draw" in our sense is to be found in Böhme Mysterium
Pansophicum, IV, 2 (which I can only cite in Earle's version), in connection with the formative aspect of the creative will (of God), as follows: "the desire is a stern
attraction. . . . And it draws magically, viz. its own desiring into a substance" (cf. Skr. dhar-ma, as "substance").

3
(page 6 ). Upani.ads, passim. Rabindranath Tagore retains the same phraseology in his song A mi chini go chini, where it is "in the immanent space of the heart" that
he hears "now and again" the song of Bide.in., the stranger lady who is ideal beauty -- h.di m.jhe .k.e sunecchi tom.r. g.n. Where and what is this space in the
heart. In the Ch.ndogya Upani.ad, VIII, 14 (also VIII, 1, 1).k..a is called "the revealer of name and aspect," and identified with Brahman, the Imperishable, the
Self. This

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is "that mysterious nothing out of which the soul is made . . . which nothing is at large in the almighty power of the Father" ( Eckhart). This ideal space is the principle
wherein all the possibilities of being can be realized ( Ch.ndogya Upani.ad, VIII, 1, 1-3). The antarh.daya-.k..a, "space in the heart," is the totality of this ideal
space at the innermost core of our being, where only the full content of life can be experienced in the immediately experienced; that consent, from the point of view
of aesthetics, is "Beauty," from the point of view of epistemology "Truth" (cf. "Nirv..a is the transcendental knowledge of the sameness of all principles," Saddharma
Pu..ar.ka, Kern text, p. 133), and from the standpoint of ethics "Perfection." Thus while Beauty may be equated with Perfection and Truth absolutely ( rasa . . .
brahmâsv.da-sahôdara, S.hitya Darpa.a, III, 1-2), loveliness is merely a good, ugliness merely an evil. Beauty is invisible and indivisible, only to be known as Deity
is known, in the heart; art is an utterance of Beauty, science an utterance of Truth, ethics an utterance of Perfection in terms of light and shade, thesis and antithesis,
good and evil. Error consists primarily in the attachment of absolute values to either of these relative factors, which are only means of apprehension, and not ends in
themselves.

4
(page 6 ). B.had.ra.yaka Upani.ad, IV, 2, 3, with respect to the consent of essence and nature.

5
(page 6 ). "Contained in the Lotus of the Heart are Heaven and Earth . . . both what is ours here and now, and what is not yet ours," Ch.ndogya Upani.ad, VIII, 1,
1-3; "the Heart is the same as Praj.pati, it is Brahman, it is all," B.had.ra.yaka Upani.ad, V, 3; cf. .g Veda, IV, 58, 11 and VI, 9, 6.

6
(page 6 ). The foregoing summary is based on a Sanskrit text cited by A. Foucher, L'lconographie bouddhique de l'Inde, II ( 1905), 8-11; B. Bhattacharya, The
Indian Buddhist Iconography ( 1924), 169 ff., and Buddhist Esoterism, 1932, Ch. XI;

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and the B.had.ra.yaka Upani.ad, I, 4, 10 Cf. also the .ukran.tis.ra., IV, 4, 70-71, above, p. 113.
It will be observed that imagination (the power of having mental images) is here deliberately exercised. The vaguer implications of inspiration, enthusiasm,
intoxication, are lacking. Needless to say, imagination may take form either as vision or as audition; what has been said above with reference to visual art applies
equally to the case of literature, whether scripture or belles lettres. The Vedas, and all their accessory literatures and sciences, for example, are contained in the
Word (v.c, dharma, o.), which having been uttered (ni..vasita, vy.h.ti) is then heard (.ruti) by the Prophets (..i), that audition depending not on "inspiration," but
upon attention. V.lm.ki, before he begins dictation, first visualizes in Yoga the entire R.mây..a, the characters "presenting themselves to his vision living and moving
as though in real life"; and the work being thus completed before the practical activity is begun, the dictation is then so rapid that none but the four-handed Ga.e.a,
using all his hands, can take it down. Similarly, when the Bodhisattva attains Enlightenment, becoming Buddha, the Dharma presents itself to him in its entirety, ready
to be taught, not merely as an idea to be subsequently developed. Similar conceptions of the operation of imagination are to be found already in the .g Veda, where
for example wisdom (v.c) is spoken of as "seen" or "heard" ( X, 71, 4), ideas are "hewn out" . tak.) "in the heart" (h.d) ( X, 71, 8), and thought is formulated (.
dh., cf. . dkyai, e.g. in dhy.na) as a carpenter shapes wood ( III, 38, 1; cf. X, 51, 9-10, and S.ya.a on these passages).
The Indian formulation is idiomatic, but the process described is universal. The Scholastic parallels are very close; cf. Eckhart, "What I say springs up in me, then I
pause in the idea, and thirdly I speak it out," again when he speaks of the carpenter who "first erects the house in his mind," or explains in what manner the Angels
may be visualized (see above, p. 78). Cf. also Dante, when he says "I am one that when Love inspires me,

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pay heed; and in what way He dictates within me, that I speak out to you" ( Purgatorio, XXIII, 53-54) and requires of his hearer to "hold the image like a firm rock"
( Paradiso, XIII, 2-3, and it needs not to say that the author in the first place must have "held the image" thus); above all when he says "He who would paint a figure,
if he cannot be it, cannot draw it" ( Convivio, Canzone III, 53-54), glossed "No painter can portray any figure, if he have not first of all made himself such as the
figure ought to be" ( Convivio, IV, 10, 106, p. 309 of the Oxford text); again when he speaks of "figures as I have them in conception" ( Paradiso, XVIII, 85); until
finally the "high fantasy falls short of power" to depict the Deity as he is in himself ( Paradiso, XXXIII, 142), as also in Indiadhy.na falls short of sam.dhi, failing to
visualize the Brahman in any likeness, who is without likeness (am.rta, nir.bh.sa) -- te contemplans totum deficit.
Chuang Tzil ( Giles, p. 240) gives an excellent account of the working of Yoga (though not so-called) in connection with the carpenter making a wooden stand for
musical instruments, who, when asked, "What mystery is there in your art." replies, "No mystery, your Highness, and yet there is something. When I am about to
make such a stand . . . I first reduce my mind to absolute quiescence. . . . I become oblivious of any reward to be gained . . . of any fame to be acquired . . .
unconscious of my physical frame. Then, with no thought of the Court present to my mind, my skill becomes concentrated, and all disturbing elements from without
are gone. I enter some mountain forest. I search for a suitable tree. It contains the form required, which is afterwards elaborated. I see the stand in my mind's eye,
and then set to work."
And as to habit (habitus, tao as "way"): "Let me take an illustration," said the wheelwright, "from my own trade. In making a wheel, if you work too slowly, you can't
make it firm; if you work too fast, the spokes won't fit in. You must go neither too slowly nor too fast. There must be coördination of mind and hand. Words cannot
explain what it is, but there is some mys-

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terious art herein. I cannot teach it to my son; nor can he learn it from me. Consequently, though seventy years of age, I am still making wheels in my old age" ( ibid.,
p. 271 ). Similarly with the sword maker: "Is it your skill, Sir, or have you a way." "It is concentration. . . . If a thing was not a sword, I did not notice it. I availed
myself of whatever energy I did not use in other directions in order to secure greater efficiency in the direction required" ( ibid., p 290 ).
 

7
(page 7 ). Dante's theory of art is discussed by Julius Schlosser , Die Kunstliteratur ( Vienna, 1924), pp. 66-77. Dante's conception derives from Aristotle, St
Thomas, and the troubadours, and is still essentially scholastic. In the De Monarchia he speaks of art as threefold, (1) as idea in the mind, (2) as technique in the tool
(means), and (3) as potentiality in the material. In Paradiso, I, 127, he speaks of the sorda (t.masika) quality in the material, which seems to resist the intention of the
artist, recalling Eckhart's carpenter, who building a house "will first erect it in his mind and, were the house enough subject to his will, then, materials apart, the only
difference between them would be that of begetter and suddenly begotten." Needless to say, Dante's artista includes those whom we now call artisans; see, for
example, Paradiso, XVI, 49.
Dante in asserting the necessary identification of the artist with his theme (chi pinge figura . . ., as cited above) is still at one with the East and with Eckhart, as when
the latter says, "On giving my whole mind to the subject of the angels . . . it seemed to me that I was all the angels," and "the painter who has painted a good portrait
therein shows his art; it is not himself that it reveals to us." But Leonardo is already far removed from this point of view when he declares more than once, il pittore
pinge se stesso, "the painter paints himself," "himself" not being the painter's essence, but the accidents of his being, his physiognomy, which come out in the painting
just as a man is somewhat revealed in his handwriting. This inevitable reflection

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of the physical man in his handiwork is indeed also recognized in India, for example, Lekhakasya ca yad r.pa. citre bhavati t.d(r.p)yam, "the painter's own shape
comes out in the picture" (cited from a Pur..a, R.pam 27/28, p. 99); but this is precisely why the painter himself must be a normal man, since otherwise his
peculiarity might be reflected in his art. From the Scholastic and Indian point of view, any such reflection of the person of the artist in his work must be regarded as a
defect; whereas in later European art, the trace of the artist's individual peculiarities coming to be regarded as a virtue in the art, and flattering the artist's pride, the
way to aesthetic exhibitionism and the substitution of the player ("star") for the play were prepared. In the same way the history of artists has replaced the history of
art.

8
(page 9 ). See my History of Indian and Indonesian Art, p. 125; also, Mah.va.sa, XVIII, 24, XXVII, 10-20, and XXX, 11, and J.taka, No. 489. For example,
"vehicles" or "thrones," Skr. v.hana, .sana, which are living principles alike from the Christian and Hindu points of view ( St Thomas, Sum. Theol., I, Q. 108, A.
5-7; Garu.a, Ha.sa and Nandi as the seats or vehicles of Vi..u, Brahm., and .iva); weapons or powers, Angels from the Christian, Devat.s from the Hindu point
of view ( St Thomas, ibid., B.had Devat., I, 74 and LV, 143); or the palaces and chariots (vim.na, ratha) of the Angels, imitated in their earthly shrines.
In Mhb., XII, 285, 148, .iva is called sarva-.lpa-pravartaka, instigator of all arts," and ibid., XIII, 18, 2 f. , he imparts kal.jñ.na, "the understanding of
accomplishments," to Garga. Observe that "Sanskrit" (sa.sk.ta) is deva-n.gar., "the language of the heavenly city," analogous to deva-.ilp.ni, the "angelic works of
art" for which see above, pp. 8 , 126 .
With Aitareya Br.hma.a, VI, 27, cited in the text, cf. Aitareya .ra.yaka, III, 2, 6, where "Praj.pati, the Year, after emanating offspring, was disintegrated
(viyasra.sata); he reintegrated himself (.tm.na. samadadh.yat) by means of the metres (chan-

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dobhir)," and Jaimin.ya Upani.ad Br.hma.a, III, 11, where initiation is called a metrical transformation (d.k.ate . . . chand..sy eva abhisambhavati). In these
passages the spiritual significance of rhythm in art is plainly asserted. Conversely they are also of interest in connection with the problem of the origins of art, all
rhythm corresponding in the last analysis to cosmic rhythms; cf. Jaimin.ya Upani.ad Br.hma.a, I, 35, 7, "the Year is endless: its two ends are Winter and Spring.
After (anu) this it is that the two, ends of a village are united; after this that the two ends of a necklet meet"; ibid. I, 2, the G.yatras.man "should be sung according to
the course (vartman) of the Spirit and the Waters," and Jeremias, Der Kosmos von Sumer, 1932, p. 4, "Eine grosse Leistung Herman Wirths beruht darin, class er in
der Lehre vom Wege Gottes nach dem äonischen Lauf nicht nur die Wurzel der Symbolik gesehen hat -- das war nicht neu -- sondern auch die Wurzel der Sprache
und Schrift."

9
(page 9 ).The Indian words kal., .ilpa both have the same broad significance that the word "art" once enjoyed in Europe; cf. New Oxford Dictionary, s.v. Art. I,
"Skill in doing anything as the result of knowledge and practice," and II, "Anything wherein skill may be attained or displayed." A distinction is, however, to be made
between the .ilpas, or vocational arts, and the kal.s, or avocational arts (accomplishments). It is not conceived that a .ilpa can be acquired without training under a
master (.c.rya), or be practiced otherwise than as an hereditary profession. There are various lists of .ilpas, generally eighteen in number, and always including
architecture and painting. In the Tri.a..i.al.k.puru.acaritra, I, 2, 950 ff. ( Gaekwar Oriental Series, LI, 152), there is a list of "Five Arts (.ilpa)," viz. those of the
potter, architect, painter, weaver, and barber, each with its human raison d'être (hetu). For the sixty-four kal.s see A. Venkatasubbiah , The Kal.s ( Inaug. Diss.,
Bern, Madras, 1911) (add to Bibliography L. D. Barnett, Antagada Das.o, p. 30); and A. Venkatasubbiah , and E. Müller, "The Kal.s," JRAS. ( 1914).

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There is a classification of the vocational arts (sippa) as elevated or respectable (ukka..ha) and lesser or vulgar (h.na) in the Vinaya, IV, 6 f. There is also a
distinction generally made in the dramatic ..stras between a high or cultivated (m.rga) and a popular or folk (de..) style of dancing, the former embodying rasa,
bh.va, vyañjan., etc., the latter consisting only of rhythmic movement, and being regarded (whether rightly or wrongly) as devoid of aesthetic content.
Thus it is hardly possible, except with the connotation "more or less expressive or significant," to speak of a distinction of arts according to their psychological quality
or more or less honorable application; the distinctions that are made are rather with reference to the social status of the artist than with reference to the art itself, no
professional artist having a high social status as such. Thus music and calligraphy are the highest arts in China because every gentleman and official is supposed to be
proficient in them, while the painter, at least until the Sung period, was always regarded qua artisan, not qua gentleman. The sculptor, though his work served the
highest ends of worship, was thought of only as an expert mason; and if in India he sometimes claimed a higher respect, this was not as artist in the modern sense,
but because in setting up images he also exercised priestly functions, cf. M.m..s. Ny.ya Prak..a, paragraphs 98, 229 (in Edgerton edition, New Haven, 1929, pp.
78, 130). Although the drama and dancing belong to the most highly developed and sophisticated arts of Asia, the status of the professional actor has been generally
no higher in Asia than it was in Europe in the time of Shakespeare.
It is generally true that a concept of vocation has always and everywhere prevailed in Asia, and that the practice of any art is foreordained by birth. There are,
nevertheless, exceptions to all these generalizations, even to the extent that any art may be practiced gratuitously by an amateur as an avocation; for example, at the
present day in Java some of the most expert actors are members of royal families, and the daughters of princes are

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accomplished dancers, and this was at one time also permissible in India. Standards in such cases are as high for the amateur as for the professional, but only the
latter receives his social designation from his work. Here again it appears clearly that no kind of art is thought of as high or low, noble or ignoble in itself, only
persons being considered of high or low rank according to their natal status in an established social hierarchy.

10
(page 10 ). N..ya ..stra, I, 113 and 112 ( Gaekwar Oriental Series).

11
(page 10 ). S.hitya Darpa.a, VI, 2, and Da.ar.pa, I, 7, IV, 47.

12
(page 10 ).For Hsieh Ho see note 19.

13
(page 10 ).For Seami's writings see A. Waley, The Nõ Plays of Japan ( 1921), Introduction. Seami says, Y.gaku no michi wa issai monomane ari, "The arts of
music and dancing consist entirely in imitation." That this does not mean imitation or naturalism of such sort as might, in the case of painting, be based on photographs
of galloping horses is well shown in the following story about a particular performance:
In the Nõ play Tahusa, the action of a player in the part of a reaper from Shinano was criticized by a spectator from Shinano as not corresponding to the actual
usage of reapers in that district, that is, as not true to Nature. In the next performance the action was "corrected"; but the performance was a failure, for "it startled
the eyes."

14
(page 12 ).The "Six Limbs" are given in Ya.odhara's twelfthor thirteenth-century commentary on the Kama S.tra, Benares ed. ( 1929), p. 30, as follows:
"R.pa-bheda., pram...ni, bh.va-l.va.ya-yojana. S.d..ya., var.ik.-bhanga, iti citra. .a.angaka.,"
"Differentiation of types, canons of proportion, embodiment of sentiment and charm, correspondence of formal and pictorial ele-

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ments, preparation (lit. "breaking," "analysis") of pigments, these are the six limbs of painting." For a more subjective interpretation see A. N. Tagore, Sadanga, ou
les Six Canons de la Peinture hindoue ( Paris, 1922).
The "Eight Limbs" of the Samarâga.as.tradh.ra (see JAOS., LII, 16, n. 8) are apparently vartik. (the crayon), bh.mibandhana, (. preparation of the ground),
rekh.-karm..i (outline work), lak.a.a (characteristic lineaments of the types), kar.a-karma (production, perhaps = var.a-karma, coloring), vartan.-karma
(shading, that is, indication of plastic modelling, relievo), lekha-kara.a (. corrections), and dvika-karma (. final outlines).

15
(page 14 ).See De, Sanskrit Poetics, II, 46-47. Sound and meaning (rutârtha) as "letter and spirit" are discussed from another point of view, that of the inadequacy
of words, in the La.kâvatâra S.tra ( Suzuki, Studies in the La.kâvatâra S.tra ( 1930), pp. 108, 113, 434, and see note 43). Sound is the physical fact, words are
merely an indication, a hint, a pointing out the way -- "do not fall into the error of thinking that the full meaning is contained in the letter"; meaning is a manner of inner
perception, only to be divined by an activity of the intellect (prajñ., buddhi) in distinction from all associated ideas (v.san.). The relation of this view to the dhvani
theory of suggestion discussed below will be evident. But although words or other images are necessarily incomplete means of statement and communication, the
given symbol may be perfect in the sense that it could not have been better found, just as the reflection of the moon in still water may be called perfect, though the
moon is not in it otherwise than as an image. Just as the reflection is not substantially a doublet of the moon, so the work of art cannot be a doublet (savar.a) of its
subject, though it may be according to the workman's skill a perfect embodiment of the mental image present to his consciousness. The image whether in the mind or
in the work is only a means to knowledge, not in itself knowledge.

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Art in the artist is the indivisible identity of form and concept, formal and pictorial elements in his mind; art in the work is the embodiment of this identity in a given
material. What is meant in either case by the "concomitance" (s.hitya, s.d..ya) of sound and sense, pictorial and formal elements, may be inferred from Raghuva..a,
I, 1, where P.rvat. and .iva are spoken of as twoin-one, "commingled like a sound and its meaning," v.garth.v iva sa.p.ktau; cf. Bh.maha, I, 16, .abdârthau
sahitau k.vya., "literature is the unity of sound and sense." Sound and sense, pictorial and formal elements, are the body of art, but these intelligible elements are not
the soul (.tman) or ultimate content of art, as will appear later according to the theories of rasa and dhvani; and that is why according to Zen doctrine (and St
Augustine) all scripture, in its finite sense, is vain.
The similar term s.r.pya, "co-aspectuality," is used in connection with the theory of empirical (pratyak.a) perception, where it is asserted (see Dasgupta, History of
Indian Philosophy, I, 151 f., and Stcherbatsky, Buddhist Logic, II, 12 f. -- my views agreeing with Stcherbatsky's rather than with those of de la Vallée Poussin in
Mélanges chinois et bouddhiques, p. 415) that knowledge of an object presented to the senses consists in a coordination (s.r.pya = s.d..ya) between the form
assumed by the perceiving consciousness and the aspect presented by the object. The definition of s.r.pya cited by Stcherbatsky, loc. cit., I, 213, 552, and 555,
viz. atyanta-vilak.a..n.m s.lak.a.yam, "similarity of things extremely dissimilar," corresponds exactly to the Ny.ya-Vai.e.ika definition of s.d..ya cited in our text,
implying likeness by analogy. In any case, the terms (s.d..ya, s.r.pya, s.hitya, tad.k.rat., anuk.ti, anur.pa, etc.) refer, not to likeness between things (symbol and
referent, picture and model, to wit), but to a correspondence between ideas and things. This correspondence tends toward identity at higher levels of reference, but
attains this identity only in the Absolute, experienced "like a flash of lightning" as s.dh.ra.ya and s.yujya in the consummation (sam.dhi) of contemplation (dhy.na).

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That s.d..ya does not mean "visual resemblance" is further seen in the fact that s.d..ya is precisely that kind of "likeness" or "analogy" which is involved in metaphor
(upac.ra); cf. S.hitya Darpa.a, II, 10, "Metaphor (upac.ra) consists in the suppression of what implies a difference of sense between two terms which are quite
distinct from one another, viz. by means of an overplus of correspondence (s.d..ya) which brings them together." Classical examples of metaphor are gaur b.h.ka.,
"a b.h.ka (peasant) is an ox," and agnir m.navaka., "the pupil is a fire."
Corresponding to s.d..ya, s.r..pya, tad.k.rat., tad.tmya, etc., are s.dh.ra.ya (see note 47) and s.yujya, the consummation of Yoga in Identity. It will be seen
that these terms are at the same time exact equivalents of the Scholastic adaequatio, and knowledge being an adaequatio rei et intellectus; "The knower," in the
words of Eckhart ( I, 394) "being that which is known."
Hsüan Tsang translates s.d..ya by ch'ou (2508), implying the notion of reciprocity. But it cannot be said that any Chinese terms actually used in aesthetics represent
an exact equivalent of s.d..ya; and if one wished to coin such a technical term, ying (13294) ch'ou might be suggested.

16
(page 14 ). S.hitya Darpa.a, III, 19 and 20a, and Da.ar.pa, IV, 52; cf. Regnaud, La Rhétorique sanskrite, p. 296. The actor may enjoy aesthetic experience
(.sv.da) as the spectator of his own performance, not qua performer; cf. .a.karâc.rya, .ata.lok., 7, "Or does the actor, playing a woman's part (str.ve.adh.r.)
pant for a husband, imagining himself a woman."

17
(page 15 ).Pram..a, from root m., present also in English "measure," "mete," "metre," etc. On pram..a as principle see Masson-Oursel, Une Connexion, etc., and
Esquisse, etc., pp. 256, 288. Thought of not as principle, but as ascertained standard,

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pram..a can also be used in the plural, as "canon of proportion"; see note 14. It is essential to understand that even as "authority "pram..a must not be thought of as
a measure possibly contradictory to experience; on the contrary, "correct" knowledge requires a coincidence, consonantia, of "theory" and "fact"; cf. note 15 as to
s.d.sya and s.hitya, and Woodroffe, Garland of Letters, p. 266. Only pram..a conceived as an attribute or name of "God" or "Buddha" as "witness" (sâk.in) can
be called absolute; cf. Vasubandhu, Abhidharmako.a, VIII, 40 ( Poussin, 222-225).
For Siam, cf. "The form (outline) of an object is judged by the standard of drong (proper forms in proper proportions) in accordance with b.ab or example- --
referring to teachings of .ch.riya parampar." (pupillary succession), P. C. Jinavaravamsa, "Notes on Siamese Arts and Crafts," Ceylon National Review ( July,
1907). An interesting analogy is presented by Zend afsman, generally "metre," but used in Yasna, XIX, as criterion or norm, with reference to right thought, right
word, and right deed (humatem, hukhtem, huarestem).

18
(page 18 ).For Ching Hao see Waley, Introduction, etc., p. 169, and Sirén, A History of Early Chinese Painting (Index, s.v.). I may say that the text of the present
work was completed and sent to press long before the appearance of Professor Sirén's admirable work in 1933; Sirén's book is probably the best account of
Chinese aesthetics so far made available in a European language.
The two classes of painting here mentioned, viz. shên and miao, are the first two in the traditional threefold classification, San p'ing; see p. 18. Ching Hao has also
two other classes, the Amazing (ch'i, 991) and the Clever or Skilful (ch'iao, 1411); the latter of these corresponds to the Accomplished (nêng, 8184) in the San
p'ing. Cf. "This picture is clever (ch'iao) in composition and technique, but deficient in idea-movement (i ch'ü, 5367, 3120)."

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19
(page 19 ).With Chinese shên, divine or spontaneous, compare also the remarks in notes 21 and 64, and Chuang Tz. on the Divine Man, Giles, Chuang Tz., p.
151. Shên-daiva, "angelic."
Pratibh., "illumination," is the usual designation of the poetic faculty. As to the nature of this faculty there is some difference of view. Some regard it as natural
(naisargik.) or spontaneous (sahaj.), or even supersensual (lokôttar.), making it one with the principle of form (prajñ.) or with genius (.akti), and thus equivalent to
Chinese i (5536), except that the Indian "genius" is not thought of in the European and Chinese way as functioning in rebellion against or apart from tradition. To sum
up the views which are here and there expressed with varying degrees of emphasis in one direction or the other, one may say that the true artist is both born and
made, both theoretically and practically equipped, by genius (.kti), imagination or vision (pratibh.), scholarship (vyutpatti), concentration (sam.dhi), and practice
(abhy.sa). This is practically the view of the K.vyam.m..s+0101. For the whole problem see De, Sanskrit Poetics, pp. 53, 369.

20
(page 19 ).The most elaborate discussion is by Petrucci. Enclycopédie, etc., pp. 7 ff., where the versions of Giles, Hirth, and Taki are also cited. Petrucci introduces
into his interpretation a number of metaphysical ideas which are significant in themselves, but hardly justified by the text. My versions are based on Far Eastern
sources kindly communicated by my friend and colleague Kojiro Tomita. The problems are also fully discussed in Sirén, A History of Early Chinese Painting (
1933).
A connection of Hsieh Ho Six Canons with Ya.odhara Six Limbs (see note 14) has often been suggested. The difference of eight centuries in date does not exclude
the possibility of derivation, for the Six Limbs represents nothing but a late list of ideas which were already current in India in the time of Hsieh Ho, and even as it
stands may be a direct citation from older sources. However, it seems to me unnecessary to postulate any direct con-

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nection, and better to note simply the extent to which the Chinese and Indian ideas actually correspond.
In the first canon, the word ch'i, spirit, means from the Taoist point of view life as it proceeds from Heaven and Earth, the two modalities of the Tao, and even when
understood as by Mencius in the sense of "passion-nature" or "fiery nature" represents the principle of life, as desire, the will to life. The word ch'i is also to be used
with literal accuracy as the proper Chinese rendering of the third member of the Christian Trinity. The Indian equivalent is prâ.a, spiration, life, identified either
directly with Brahman, or manifested as the Wind by which the Waters are stirred, so that his reflection which is the world-picture appears in them. Ch'i is
accordingly "form" in the sense that "the soul is the form of the body"; or in the sense of desire or will to life, ch'i is represented by Indian k.ma (Eros). Again, the
idea yün, of operation or reverberation, is strictly comparable to what is meant by the dhvani of Indian rhetoricians (see note 49), it being only as it were by an
echoing in the heart of the hearer that the full meaning of a word (or any other symbol) can be realized. The canon asserts that the ultimate theme of all art is the
universal energy of the spirit, and for this point of view also many Indian parallels can be found, for example in the words of Kab.r ( Bolpur, ed., I, 68) by "He is the
true master (sadguru, or from the present point of view, true artist) who makes you perceive the Supreme Self (paramâtman) wherever the mind attaches itself."
More theologically expressed, "Whatever may be apprehended by the mind, whatever may be perceived by the senses, whatever may be discerned by the intellect,
all is but a form of Thee" ( Vi..u Purâ.a, I. 4). .a.karâc.rya likewise asserts that art is a theophany (.bh.sa) when he says that Brahman is the theme equally of
sacred and secular songs (Commentary on the Brahma S.tra, I, 1, 20). Less metaphysically, in the Vi..udharmottara, XLIII, 39, it is asserted that he is a true
painter who can represent the sleeping as possessed of life or sentience (cetan.), the dead as devoid of it.

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The second canon asserts that the vehicle of expression (as defined in the first canon) is the brush stroke or line, and it is selfevident that the brush stroke or line is in
itself the most abstract and intelligible part of the work, since an outline, boundary, or limiting plane does not correspond to anything seen in Nature but represents an
interpretation of what we see; in other words, line is not representative, but symbolic. The same is implied by Indian authorities when they remind us that it is the line
(rekh.) that interests the master, while the public cares most about color (see p. 101 and note 73). The third and fourth canons, taken by themselves, point out that
the pictorial or representative elements in a work of art are those of shape (mass or area), and color, and this too becomes self-evident if we reflect that what the eye
sees in Nature is nothing but a patchwork of colors, as was recognized early in the development of Indian psychology (see note 54); colored areas, being thus the
primary data of sense impression, become in the work of art the primary means of recognition; and because the attempt at recognition is the first, animal, reaction of
the naïve spectator, it has been observed that color is what interests the public (see p. 101 and notes 66 and 73).
Further, if we take the first and second pairs of canons together (as we are bound to do, because we must assume the consistency of the series) and assume the
general Chinese and Indian principle of the conformity of a thing to its inner nature (for example, M.cchaka.ika, IX, 16, na hy .k.ti. susad..am vijah.ti v.ttam,
"Outer-form by no means contradicts a like inwarddisposition"; Kum.rasambhava, v. 36, p.pav.ttaye na r.pam, "beauty goes not with evil nature" -- Mallin.tha
cites yatr. k.tis tatra gu..., "as are the forms, so are the virtues," and na sur.p.. p.pasam.c.r. bhavanti, "the fair do not act sinfully"; Da. akum.racarita,
Mitragupta's adventure, seyam .k.tir na vyabhicarati .. lam, "Such is her person; the character must correspond"), what we have is tantamount to an assertion that
the natural unity of a painting inheres in the conformity of its significance and its presentation, and this consent is precisely what we

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have already recognized (p. 13 and note 15) as consonantia, s.d..ya, etc. We have seen also that the same necessity is frequently enunciated in Chinese dicta on
painting, and have suggested (note 15) that if a term should have to be coined, ying (13294) ch'ou (2508) might be suitable.
The fifth canon perhaps asserts only the necessity of placing the parts of a painting in their natural logical relation, or may be taken in connection with what has been
said about composition, above, p. 20 .
The last canon is not immediately equivalent to any one of the Six Limbs, but does correspond to what is met with throughout the theory and practice of art in India,
ch'uan being equivalent to ..stram.na, n.y.t, vidhivat, sippânur.pena, etc. For example, it is "because of traditional authority (n.y.t) regarding them, displayed in
treatises (..strar.pat.) compiled by learned men of modern times, that the arts (kal.), etc., are even today current (vartate)," Tri.a..i.al.k.puru.acaritra, I, 2, 972,
the reference being to the preservation of the Five Arts and their subdivisions, alluded to in note 9.

21
(page 22). The visible (d..ya, vi.aya) universe may be regarded as a real theophany, shining forth, .bh.sa, of God (cf. Chatterji, Kashmir Shaivism ( 1914), pp.
53-61, and Eckhart's "image-bearing light"), real to the extent that we perceive its ultimate significance, paramârtha. More empirically expressed, God is the creator,
nirm..a-k.raka, of the world-picture, jagaccitra, of which the beauty, rama..iyat., is the same as that which in art is the source of disinterested pleasure, id quod
visum placet, d...ipr.ti. vidhatte. .a.karâc.rya himself uses the same simile, as follows: "On the vast canvas of the Self, the picture of the manifold worlds is painted
by the Self itself, and that Supreme Self itself seeing but itself, enjoys great delight (pramuda. pray.ti)" ( Svâtmanir.pa.a, 95). The world-picture is not here
considered from the point of view of the practical activity as made up of lovely and unlovely parts, but as seen in contemplation, as an

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aesthetic experience. For God is without motive or ends to be attained ( Bhagavad G.t., III, 22); his art is without means and not really a making or becoming, but
rather a self-illumined (svaprak..a), reflected modality (.bh.sa), or play (l.l.), in which the gratuitous character of art attains its ultimate perfection. God is not
visible in essence, but only as it were in regard, in the sensual world, according to the manner of our vision, which vision when perfected returns all creatures to their
source, seeing them as He does.
This conception of God as the supreme artist, as representing the perfection toward which human art tends, has played an important part in both European and
Asiatic aesthetics and theology. In Europe the idea has been current from the neo-Platonists onward, and was expressed with particular clarity by St Thomas and by
Eckhart. These ideas are expressed in Chinese thought not merely by the term shên applied to art conceived as an unwilled manifestation, but also in the Taoist
myths of the disappearance of the artist, and the coming to life of works of art, referred to in the text. These are in fact the inevitable consequences of perfection, that
the artist becoming as God is no longer seen, and at the same time shares in the everlasting Now of God's timeless productivity. In Chinese Taoist tradition the
attainment of perfection through art, as it were by .ilpa-yoga, has received a specific mythical expression; but the idea of the necessary disappearance (niv.tta,
"involution," abhisambhava, "re-becoming") of the perfected being, however perfection may have been realized, naturally finds its place in all metaphysical systems.
For example, dh.tv. .ariram ak.ta. k.tâtm. brahma-lokam abhisambhav.mi, "Having shaken off the body (substance), as a self made (-perfect) I am conformed to
the unmade world of Brahma," Ch.ndogya Upani.ad, VIII, 13, where total realization is implied, involving a transformation even with respect to the intelligible plane.
The notion recurs, of course, in the Vedânta S.tras; cf. René Guénon, L'homme et son Devenir selon le Vedanta, pp. 194, 195. The disappearance or merging of

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the poet-saint Mã.ikka V.çagar in the image of .iva ( Tiruv.tav.rar Pur..na, VII, 28-29) affords a case in point. Cf. in the Hebrew tradition, Moses, Enoch, and
Elias, the last of these appearing also in the Muhammadan tradition as having drunk of the Water of Life.
The equivalent in Christianity is the Ascension; cf. Eckhart: "We may reasonably suppose that when the time came for John to go, God caused to befall him what
was due to happen on the day of judgment. . . . We may take it that his body, which was destined to perish here on earth, was disintegrated in the air, so that there
entered into God only the being of his body, which would have accompanied the soul at the last day." The rationale of the disappearance proceeds immediately from
the distinction of the sensible from the intelligible spheres of manifestation, K.madh.tu or K.maloka, and R.padh.tu or R.paloka (see note 74). The
.ilpa-sth.na-kau.ala, or operative facility of the practical intellect, functions only on the sensible plane, where "work" is to be done; intellectual creation (nirm..a),
functioning on both planes, (1) on the sensible plane is embodied by human will in a work of art, which "lives" and has "movement" only metaphorically, and (2) on
the intelligible plane is immediately manifested as formal life. In any case, that art may be thought of as a "way" is most of all apparent in the fact that aesthetic
perception is essentially disinterested.

22
(page 24). Recognition is not dependent on verisimilitude, but is by convention; the realistic spectator reverses the "imitative" procedure of the artist who has given
form to natural shape, by interpreting the manufactured image (r.pa) as though it were the thing itself present to the eye (pratyak.a) ( Bhart.hari, V.kyapad.ya, III,
7, 5).

23
(page 30). In the Lankâvat.ra S.tra, loc. cit., the unreality of appearances is illustrated by various similes, among them that of painted surfaces (citrak.ta-prade..)
which are seen as if in relief (nimnônnat.), although really flat (animnônnat.).

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24
(page 32). Svapnav.savadatt., VI, 13, and M.cchaka.ika, IV, 0, 3. So also in M.cchaka.ika, IX, 16, susad..a is "true resemblance." Cf. v.ddhisad..a,
"old-looking," in .ukran.tis.ra, IV, 4, 201, and sad..a, "the like" ( = "etc."), in Vasubandhu Abhidharmako.a, IX ( Poussin, p. 275). For "exact likeness" we have
also tad.nur.va. (-r.pam) in Haribhadra's .va.yaka ..k., II, 8, 2 and 3, and pratyak.am in the Karp.ramañjar., I, 30.
In the Vi..udharmottara, III, 41 , 2, s.d..ya is a noun, and kiñcilloka-s.d..ya must be taken to mean "in which there is a similitude only partially connected with the
material world"; in any case nothing like an injunction to realism could be thought of, for the satya painting in question has clearly to do with the angelic sphere, and
pram..a as well as s. d..ya are required in it. My version in JAOS., LII, 13, needs correction accordingly; cf. my "Painter's Art in Ancient India; Aja...," in Journ.
Indian Society of Oriental Art, I, 26, n. 2.

25
(page 38). "Imagist" might perhaps be suitably rendered by adhyav.sana, "introsusceptive," S.hitya Darpa.a, II, 8-9.
Indian parallels to Zen are naturally not lacking; for example, in J.taka, no. 460, the evanescence of the morning dew suffices to enlightenment, and analogous to the
story of Tan Hsia is that of the Tamil poetess and devotee, Auvvai, who when she was rebuked for sitting with her feet outstretched towards the image in a temple,
an act of formal disrespect, admitted her fault, but added, "If you will point out to me in what direction God is not to be found, I will there stretch out my feet." There
are likewise abundant parallels in European tradition, for example in the Gospels, and in Eckhart and Blake.

26
(page 39 ). Chinese ch'an (348), Japanese zen = Sanskrit dhy.na, Pali jh.na.

27
(page 41). Version by Waley, italics mine.

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28
(page 43). A Japanese hokku; in poems of this kind the hearer is expected to complete the thought in his own mind; cf. the Chinese phrase "to give spiritual form
(shên) to the very part left undelineated," and what has been said above as to the literal inadequacy but practical efficiency of words (note 15), and below on the
spectator's own effort (note 43).

29
(page 44). Ukiyoye means "pictures of the fleeting world"; the Japanese print is its typical product, but there are also paintings of the same kind.

30
(page 45). An allusion to the Persian ..f. story of Lail. and Majñ.n. When it was objected to Majñ.n that Lail. was not so beautiful as he pretended, he answered,
"To see the beauty of Lail. requires the eyes of Majñ.n."

31
(page 45). Tiruve.ka.a's admirable preface to the Telugu edition ( 1887) of the Abhinaya Darpa.a (see Coomaraswamy and Duggirala, The Mirror of Gesture,
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1917) may well be quoted here. Tiruve.ka.a first alludes to the neglect of the art and science of the mimetic dance (nautch) in modern
times, which neglect had been mainly the result of European and puritanical influences, though he does not say as much, and then proceeds to a reassertion of the
normal Hindu point of view:
"It is known to everyone that in these days our people not merely neglect this lore as though it were of a common sort, but go so far as to declare it to be an art that
is only suited for the entertainment of the vulgar, unworthy of cultivated men, and fit to be practiced only by play-actors. But it is like the UnionScience (yoga-..stra)
which is the means of attaining spiritual freedom (mok.a); and the reason why it has come to be regarded in such a fashion is that it is by movements of the body
(a.gikâbhinaya) that the lineaments and interplay of the hero and heroine, etc., are clearly exhibited, so as to direct men in the way of righteousness, and to reveal an
esoteric meaning, obtaining

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the appreciation of connoisseurs and those who are learned in the lore of gesture. But if we understand this science with finer insight, it will be evident that it has
come into being to set forth the sport and pastime of .r. Krishna, who is the progenitor of every world, and the patron deity of the flavor of love (...g.rarasa); so
that by clearly expressing the flavor, and enabling men to taste thereof, it gives them the wisdom of Brahm., whereby they may understand how every business is
unstable; from which understanding arises aversion to such business, and therefrom arise the highest virtues of peace and patience, and thence again may be won the
Bliss of Brahm..
"It has been declared by Brahm. and others that the mutual relations of hero and heroine, in their esoteric meaning, partake of the nature of the relation of master and
disciple, mutual service and mutual understanding; and therefore the Bharata ..stra, which is a means to the achievement of the Four Ends of Human Life, Virtue,
Wealth, Pleasure, and Spiritual Freedom, -- and is a most exalted science, practiced even by the gods, -should also be practiced by ourselves."

32
(page 45). S.hitya Darpa.a, III, 9. V.san., as "affect-ion," "perfuming," is the latent memory of past experience, and consequent present sensibility. Alike from the
aesthetic and generally human point of view, v.san. may be considered a necessary evil. Regarded as an affective aptitude, a liability to direct sympathy for, or
prejudice on behalf of, ourselves or others, it represents a hindrance equally to enlightenment in general and to aesthetic experience in particular; but as the necessary
basis for such ideal and disinterested sympathy as we feel at the spectacle of joy and sorrow represented in art, it is prerequisite to aesthetic experience. Cf. note 47.
The ideal character of poetic sensibility, that is to say the disinterested nature of aesthetic contemplation, is constantly insisted upon in the Ala.k.ra literature. It is
pointed out, for example, in the S.hitya Darpa.a, III, 5 and 6, that even in the

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case of works of art of which the themes are in themselves distressing, no pain is felt by the spectator, but only delight, to which those who take intelligent delight in
art bear unanimous witness.

33
(page 46 ). For rasa, etc., theories applied to painting or sculpture, see JAOS., LII, 15, n. 5, and Basava Raja, .iva Tattva Ratn.kara (ed. Madras, 1927), VI, 2,
19.

34
(page 46 ). K .vya, specifically poetry (prose or verse), also embraces the general idea of "art"; essential meanings present in the root k. include "wisdom" and
"skill." One may compare Blake's use of "Poetic Genius" as equivalent to "Imagination" in the broadest sense of the word, and to the analogy of Greek .......,
denoting to the making of anything, for example, "creatures" or a ship.

35
(page 46 ). For example in the M.lat.m.dhava, I, 33, 9-10, where the purpose of a portrait (.lekhya-prayojana) is consolation in longing (utka..h.vinodana), or
Priyadar.ik., I, 3, where the play has "desired fruit," v.ñchita-phala.

36
(page 46 ). S.hitya Darpa.a, I, 3. Cf. "As to the fact that the soul of poetry is flavor, and the like, there exists no difference of opinion" -- Vyaktiviveka; and "All
poetry lives by rasa" -Abhinavagupta.

37
(page 47 ). Meaning or utility is the indispensable motive of all art, but from the Indian point of view that is not art which does not also subserve the ultimate end of
aesthetic experience, which is not so, or is so only to the most limited degree, in cases of bare efficacy, bare descriptive statement, or even "illustrative poetry," citrak
.vya. For example, a piece of corrugated iron may keep out the rain, and may be called art inasmuch as it is a product of knowledge and technical skill, but it is
scarcely a roof, architecturally speaking; in science, mere illustration and classification are scarcely art, but an elegant mathematical equation,

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or any well-designed tool such as a telescope, is art. Any use of words or application of intelligence is art of a sort, but bare statement and efficacy are the crudest
kind of art, not "primitive," but elementary, inasmuch as they are not far removed from functional exclamation. It is here if anywhere that a distinction of degree can
be drawn between "fine" and "servile" art. But it is beneath the dignity of man to maintain his existence on a level of bare utility and functional necessity, and, as has
been well said by Ruskin, "industry without art is brutality."

38
(page 47 ). To call a work of art rasavat, or ideally beautiful, is not strictly legitimate, but simply a manner of speaking and by projection, imputation, or inference
(anum.na) or figuratively (upac.ra); for it is constantly insisted that rasa is not an objective quality present in the work of art or any of its parts. Cf. Mukherjee, Essai,
etc., p. 66; De, Sanskrit Poetics, II, 205, and note 43, below.

39
(page 48 ). S .hitya Darpa.a, III, 20 b, ff.

40
(page 48 ). M.lavikâgnimitra, I, 4 , bhinna-rucer janasya, "people of divers tastes."
"What Aesthetic, which implies thought and concept of art, can have to do with pure taste without concept is difficult to say," Croce, "The Breviary of Aesthetic," in
Rice Institute Pamphlet, II ( 1915), 305.

41
(page 48 ). Da.ar.pa, IV, 90 . The opposite view, that art (especially drama, music, painting, and sumptuary arts) is nothing but a luxury, a tickling of the senses, is
maintained only from a monastic, puritanical, and really naïvely materialistic view, mainly in early Buddhist and Jaina works, to a more limited extent in the Dharma
..stras, and in modern times as a result of European influence; cf. note 31. Amongst Buddhist and Jaina texts might be cited Brahma-J.la Sutta, I, 1, 13; Visuddhi
Magga, 38; and .y.r..ga Sutta, II, lect. 13.

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42
(page 50 ). Cf. Maritain, Introduction to Philosophy, p. 263, n. 1: "the word aesthetics is derived etymologically from (the Greek word for) sensibility (...........
= feel), whereas art, and beauty also, are matters of the intellect, quite as much as of feeling." Were this more generally realized, much sentimentality in current
thinking about art might be avoided.

43
(page 50 ). Da.ar.pa, IV, 47, 50. Cf. La.kâvat.ra S.tra, II, 117, 118. Ra.ge na vidhyate citra. na bh .mau na ca bh .jane . . . tattva . hy ak.aravarjitam, "the
(real) picture is not in the color, nor in the surface, nor in the surroundings (but in the mind) . . . the principle transcends the letter." In this passage bh.jana may be
the painter's saucer of color, as means or material cause of the work, but more abstractly considered as "receptacle" means the environment of the work of art, or
even the physical world; cf. the cosmos as bh.jana, "receptacle," Vasubandhu, Abhidharmako.a, III, 44 ( Poussin, p. 182 f.).
Cf. Confucius, Analects, XVII, xi, "Are bells and drums all that is meant by music."; and Walt Whitman,
All music is what wakes in you when you are reminded of it by the instruments,
It is not in the violins and the cornets . . . nor the score of the baritone singer,
It is nearer and further than they.

44
(page 50 ). Dharmadatta, cited in S.hitya Darpa.a, III, 9 a, commentary.

45
(page 51 ). S.hitya Darpa.a, III, 2 and 3, and commentary; Dhvany.locana, Nir.aya S.gara ed., p. 11.

46
(page 51 ). Da.ar.pa, IV, 51; S.hitya Darpa.a, III, 19-20.

47
(page 52 ). S.dh.ra.ya is analogous to empathy, Einfühlung; v.san. ("perfuming") is innate or acquired sensibility, an emotional tendency which, though it may be
developed as sentimentality, is nevertheless essential to the possibility of s.dh.ra.ya as ideal sympathy. S.dh.ra.ya is another aspect of that

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"consent" which we have already recognized as s.d.sya, s.hitya, s.r.pya, tad.k.rat..
To continue what has been said in note 32: aesthetic sympathy is ideal, without any ethical element; that is to say, it is felt equally with respect to good and evil,
pleasure or pain, as represented. An ethical sympathy may indeed be legitimately felt with regard to such a hero as R.ma represented as a model of conduct in a
poem, play, or painting, but such sympathy belongs to the proximate value of art in relation to dharma, not to aesthetic appreciation (.sv.da), wherein the spectator
sees as if with the eye of God, who "regards neither the good nor the evil works of anyone" ( Bhagavad C.t., V, 15), but makes his sun to shine alike upon the just
and the unjust," for the vision of God transcends virtues," Eckhart, I, 273. The impartiality of aesthetic reproduction, the fact that art as such is related rather to law
than to equity, is well brought out in the N..ya ..stra, I, 112 ff.; see translation in the Mirror of Gesture, p. 2.

48
(page 52 ). Da.ar.pa, IV, 45 .

49
(page 53 ). Dhvani is literally "sound," especially sound like that of thunder or a drum, hence "resonance" or "overtone" of meaning. A striking analogy can be found
in the first canon of Hsieh Ho as written with the character yün (13843), that the essential in art is "the reverberation (yün) of the spirit in the forms of life," the idea of
sounding rather than of mere sound being present both in dhvani and in yün (13843). Significant synonyms of vyañjan., lit. "revealing," are dhvanana, "echoing," and
gamana, "motion." As to the latter, it may be observed that when anything is spoken of as represented in an image, it is said to be citragata, "gone into
representation"; cf. Eckhart, "to be properly expressed, a thing must proceed from within, moved by its form," and Leonardo, "That drawing is best which best
expresses the passion that animates the figure." Vyañjan., however, viz. in Buddhist usage, means only the "letter" as opposed to the "spirit" or "meaning" (attha =
artha). The later

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sense endows the "letter" with a suggestive significance beyond the literal.

50
(page 53 ). See Dhvanik.ra, Dhvany.lokalocana ("The Eye of Perception of Content"), cited by Mukherjee, Essai, etc., pp. 85 - 90 .

51
(page 54 ). From the point of view of the La.kâvat.ra S.tra, the two chief hindrances are kle.âvara.a (sensual attachment) and jñeyâvara.a (mental or systematic
hindrances), one might say affections and prejudices. Cf. Blake, "man has closed himself up. . . . If the doors of perception were cleansed, all things would appear as
they are, Infinite." It must be borne in mind that from the Indian point of view enlightenment and perfection are always virtually present, that is, not to be "acquired by
any means but only to be revealed when the mirror of the soul is cleansed from dust. This is a metaphor particularly applicable in the aesthetic field; aesthetic
contemplation cannot be taught; all that can be done is to break down the barriers that stand in the way of realization.

52
(page 56 ). A clear distinction is here drawn between the functional means of perception as they are in themselves (for example, the eye's intrinsic faculty), and their
use determined by intelligence; voice (v.c = vi.aya .abda) in this passage is to be distinguished from speech (v.c) in the B.had.ra.yaka Upani.ad, IV, 1, where
speech is identified with discrimination or pure intellect (prajñ.), and in Ch.ndogya Upani.ad, VII, 2, where speech "makes known" name.
"Name and aspect" (n.ma-r.pa) are the fundamental conventions (respectively intelligible and sensible) by which phenomena are knowable (discriminated). Thus in
the .atapatha Br.hma.a, XI, 2 , 3 , name and aspect are treated as the two manifestations of the Brahman, whereby He is known in the contingent universe, "aspect
being intellect, inasmuch as it is by intellect that one seizes aspect," and "name being speech, inasmuch as it is by

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speech that one seizes name," and these two are not distinguishable in nature, for "whatever is name is indeed aspect." The last passage really asserts the identity in
principle of all arts; cf. Eckhart, "form is a revelation of essence" (380) and "the soul knows only in effigy." Further, "As far as there are name and aspect, so far
indeed extends this world" ( .. Br., ibid.). Cf. Kau..taki Upani.ad, I, 3, where Mãnas. and Cãk.u.., "Intelligence" and "Perception," are personified as the
consorts of Brahma and immediate causes of the phenomenal universe. But in Brahman, called Spectator or Overseer (paridra...), name and aspect as human
modes of perception and representation are transcended ( Pra.na Upani.ad, VI, 5). There are in fact three modes of vision, that of the functional fleshly eye
(m..sa-cak.u), the angelic eye (divya-cak.u, the intellect), and the eye of transcendent wisdom (prajñ.-cak.u, gnosis), respectively functional, all-seeing, and seeing
in simultaneity. The last is the third eye of .iva, which destroys, or rather trans-forms, appearance by its nonperception of duality. So, in the last analysis, "It is not
aspects that one should seek to understand, but the Seer (dra...) of aspects" ( Kau..taki Upani.ad, III, 8): "seeing Whom, nought else remains to be seen, yad
d...v. n.para. d..yam" ( .a.karâc.rya , .tmabodha, 55). He who thus attains the world of Brahman becomes a "Seer without duality (dra... advaita.), this is
man's highest path, his highest bliss, etc." ( B.had.ra.yaka Upani.ad, IV, 3, 32).
It should be noticed once for all that, just as in English, so in Sanskrit very many words, for example v.c, r.pa, are necessarily used in two senses, empirical and
ideal, or even in three senses, literal, ideal, and transcendental. R.pa, however, when correlated with n.ma, has always to be rendered by "aspect" rather than by
"form"; it is really n.ma, "name," or "idea," that is the determining principle or "form" of the species. Thus with respect to man, n.ma-r.pa is "soul and body"; the soul
being the "form" of the body. To render n.ma-r.pa by "name and form" is tautological.

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For the distinction of speech from sound cf. Chuang Tz.: "Speech is not mere breath. It is differentiated by meaning" ( Giles, Chuang Tz., 1889, p. 16).

53
(page 56 ). Ibid., IV, 1 , 7 , the heart (h.daya) is said to be the support of all things, the highest Brahman; cf. note 3. The heart is thus a synonym for the centre and
entirety of being. This has to be borne in mind in connection also with the term sah.daya, "having heart," equivalent to rasika and pram.t..

54
(page 56 ). Atthas.lin., p. 317; Woodward, Gradual Sayings, I. 159, n. 2; Keith, Buddhist Philosophy, p. 169.

55
(page 61 ). Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, p. 1 .

56
(page 61 ). Meister Eckhart was born in Saxony or Thuringia about 1260. He became a professor in Paris, and later held very high clerical positions in Bohemia and
Germany. He was suspected of heresy, and condemned in 1329, two years after his death. He taught not in Latin but in the vernacular, and has been called the
father of the German language. St Thomas had died ( 1274) while he was still a youth; Tauler and Ruysbroeck were his contemporaries, and had probably heard
him preach. The materials cited in the present essay are derived from Meister Eckhart, translated by C. de B. Evans from Franz Pfeiffer's collected German edition
of 1857, in two volumes, London, 1924 and 1931; the page references are to the first volume unless otherwise stated.
Eckhart presents an astonishingly close parallel to Indian modes of thought; some whole passages and many single sentences read like a direct translation from
Sanskrit. See from this point of view R. Otto, Mysticism East and West ( New York, 1931), and my New Approach to the Vedas ( London, 1934).
It is not of course suggested that any Indian elements whatever are actually present in Eckhart's writing, though there are some Oriental factors in the European
tradition, derived from neo-Platonic and Arabic sources. But what is proved by the

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analogies is not the influence of one system of thought upon another, but the coherence of the metaphysical tradition in the world and at all times.

57
(page 62 ). In this respect, Eckhart's nearest and natural descendant is Blake; for example, Jesus and his Disciples were all Artists; Praise is the Practice of Art;
Israel delivered from Egypt is Art delivered from Nature and Imitation; The Eternal Body of Man is the Imagination; The gods of Greece and Egypt were
Mathematical Diagrams; Eternity is in love with the productions of time; Man has no Body distinct from his Soul; If the doors of perception were cleansed, all things
would appear to man as they are, infinite; In Eternity All is Vision.

58
(page 62 ). Cf. tridh., sa.hit. in the Upani.ads, for example B.had.ra.yaka Up., I, 2, 3 and Taittir.ya Up., I, 3, 1-3.

59
(page 64 ). All ritual, offices, and sacraments (p.j., yajña, sa.sk.ra) are art. For transubstantiation see Eckhart, 87, 477: "the sacrament nourishes like any other
food. But it has none of the nature of bread" (477), just as with other works of art, which may please any sense, but are to be taken in another sense, allegorical or
anagogic. The Catholic view is that though a man may be drawn to any work of art (such as scripture) causa voluptatis, he may well proceed rationem artis
intelligere. Cf. La.kâvat.ra S.tra, II, 118, 119, where a painting is said to be produced in colors "for the sake of attracting (kar.a.a) spectators," though the very
picture is not in the colors (range na citram), but subsists as the art in the artist, and by the spectator's own effort again as art in him.

60
(page 72 ). Leonardo's il pittore pinge se stesso, perhaps the first enunciation of the principle on which depends the validity of the modern game of attribution.

61
(page 78 ). This point of view still survives in Dante Chi pinge figura, si non può esser lei, non la può porre.

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62
(page 84 ). Deliberate conventionalizing, calculated search for the abstract or so-called ideal, as in the modern practice of designing, and in archaism, is a different
activity, not a "singling out the best" I can, but what I like best.

63
(page 88 ). "The heathen philosopher Aristotle says, 'Were there no house nor place and no materials it would be all one being, one matter, which being divided is
like another soul'" ( II, 290).
St Thomas ( Sum. Theol., III, Q. 23, A. 3): "the form of a house already built is like the mental word of the builder in its specific form, but not in intelligibility,
because the material form of a house is not intelligible, as it was in the mind of the builder."

64
(page 91 ). Human nature as it is in God "does not appear in the looking-glass image . . . only just the features are seen in the mirror" (51), the features being the
accidents of being, not the man as he is. Cf. the Chinese phrase for portraiture, fu shên, "portraying the divine image in a man."
The history of portraiture in Europe provides an interesting and rather unhappy contrast to the Chinese and Indian notions of fu shên, "portraying soul," and sva-r.pa,
"intrinsic aspect." In what follows, quotations are from Jitta-Zadoks, Ancestral Portraiture in Rome ( Amsterdam, 1932), pp. 87, 92f. The tendency to realism and
the use of death masks are "two coördinate consequences of one and the same mentality. . . . This mentality will bring about as well portraits of extreme realism
(so-called verism) as the practice of making moulds on the actual features" of the living model. Now, tomb effigies came into use about 1200: "These statues first
represented the deceased not as he actually appeared after death but as he hoped and trusted to be on the day of Judgment. This . . . is apparent in the pure and
happy expression of all the equally youthful and equally beautiful faces which have lost every trace of individuality. But towards the end of the XIIIth century . . .
interest turned from the heavenly Future to the worldly Present. Not how the dead

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would perhaps appear one day but how they had actually been in life was considered important. More or less likeness was now wanted. . . . As the last
consequence of this demand for exact likeness the death mask, taken from the actual features, made its appearance . . . rationalism and realism appearing at the
same time. . . . The death mask . . . really did help the artist to draw near to Nature and this it achieved by teaching him the construction of the face . . . (at last) . . .
the head is constructed from within and is created by the artist as by Nature herself." The history of post-Renaissance European art thus takes on the aspect of a
reanimation of the corpses in a charnel house (cf. Speculum, April, 1933, Pl. XI), rather than that of a Resurrection of the Dead in a more glorious form. One begins
to see why .ukrâc.rya could speak of portraiture as asvargya. "Portraiture belongs to civilisations that fear death" ( Kramrisch, Indian Sculpture, p. 134).
With respect to the representation of the deceased, not as they may have looked in real life but as they "hoped and trusted to be on the day of Judgment," compare
(1) the Indian, and more typically Cambodian and Javanese, practice of representing deceased ancestors in the form of the deity to whom they had been devoted,
and (2) in the Saddharma Pu..ar.ka the resurrection of past Buddhas and Bodhisattvas in glorified bodies -- iconographic representations always reproducing the
"exemplary elements" or lineaments (lak.ana) of these glorified bodies, rather than any of those individual accidents by which the man might have been recognized at
the time of his earthly ministry.

65
(page 100 ). For the full context see Coomaraswamy and Duggirala , The Mirror of Gesture, pp. 14 , 15 .

66
(page 101 ). It is possible, therefore, that in making var.â.hya Duryodhana's first exclamation some sarcasm is intended.

67
(page 103 ). Cf. Tri.a..i.al.k.puru.acaritra, I, 1, 360, where a man whose eyes are fastened to the (. painted) forms of beautiful women, etc., is said to stumble
(skhalati), as if the border of his

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garment had been caught on a hedge. Cf. "there is no actual relief in a painting, and yet we see it there," citre . . . natônnata. nâsti ca, d..yate atha ca, Mah.y.na
S.trâla.k.ra, XIII, 17; cf. La.kâvat.ra S.tra and see note 23.
In the .akutal., the "hills and vales" may be either those of the bodies of beautiful women represented in the picture, nimnônnata having this application in
M.lat.m.dhava, IV, 10, or those of the landscape background, prade.a having this sense in the, .akutal. itself, infra, VI, 19, and perhaps also in La.kâvat.ra
S.tra, p. 91.

68
(page 104 ). Viz. r.pa-.obh., as in Divyâvad.na, p. 361.

69
(page 106 ). Similarly in the case of the dancing competition, Vikramacaritra, HOS., XXVII, 15, the two apsarases first dance together and the assembly of the
gods is delighted, n.tya. d..tv. sa.to.am agamat.

70
(page 106 ). The text here, vv. 4, 5, and 6, is almost identical with M.lavikâgnimitra, II, 3 , 6 , and 8 .

71
(page 107 ). "Judgment" is viv.danir.ya. In the M.lavikâgnimitra, the King as connoisseur is vi.e.ajña, as judge, pra.nika.

72
(page 107 ). Ryder, in HOS., IX, 44, renders admirably the substance of Carudatta's remarks, but with a European nuance and avoiding all the technicalities. The
Mrcchakatika passage is anticipated in a briefer form in Bh.sa Daridra-C.rudatta, II, 2.

73
(page 108 ). It is constantly brought out that craftsman and critic attach principal importance to the drawing, by which the moods are expressed, but that what the
public cares about is color. As Binyon has observed, "The painting of Asia is throughout its main tradition an art of line."

74
(page 109 ). The nearest to anything of this kind in connection with the formative arts occurs in J.taka, VI, 332, where the Bodhisattva employs a master-architect
(mah.-va..haki) to build a hall such as he requires.

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The master-architect does not grasp the Great Being's idea (mak.satta-citta. na ganhati), and when corrected explains that he can work only according to the
tradition of the craft (sippânur.pena), and knows no other way (aññatha na j.n.mîti). The Bodhisattva himself then lays out the plan "as if Vi.vakarma himself had
done it." Even so, the form of the hall is determined entirely by the use to which it is to be put; the Bodhisattva's plan is not a personal whim or a piece of
self-expression, it is simply that he knows better than the architect all that is present to the mind of the divine craftsman, the "All-maker."
This supernatural virtuosity (kau.ala) of the Bodhisattva is described in the Lalita Vistara, Ch. XII: it is a command of the arts not acquired by study, na ca . . . yogy.
k.t. . . . .ilpakau.alam ( Lefmann ed., p. 156, l. 1). Cf. the Mah.y.na S.trâla.k.ra of "Asa.ga, VII", 6, where the sage (dh.ragata, "who has become a seer") is
said to exhibit a threefold nirm..na, "manifestation" or "facility," the first of these being displayed in the field of art (.ilpakarma-sth.na).
More fully in Vasubandhu Abhidkarmako.a, II, 71-72 ( Poussin, p. 320), virtuosity (kau.ala) in art (.ilpa-sth.na) and the power of mental creation are two of the
four mental activities exhibited by a perfected being on the sensible plane of manifestation (K.madh.tu, K.maloka). Of these two, the .ilpasth.na-kau.ala, or facility
of the practical or operable intellect, is naturally absent on the intelligible plane of manifestation (R.padh.tu, R.paloka), while both, of course, are absent on the
supersensual super-rational plane of non-manifestation (Dharmadh.tu, Ar.pyaloka). . . . The same idea is expressed in another way by the attribution of an absolute
pram..a to the perfected being, all other pram..as being merely as to what is correct under certain circumstances; see note 17.
There are some minor references to originality in poetry. Thus, R.ja.ekhara, K.vyam.m..s., XI (see De, Sanskrit Poetics, II, 373), discussing plagiarism (hara.a,
"theft") at some length, says that the great poet (mah.kavi) depicts something new

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(n.tana) in meaning and expression as well as what is old; and flagrant stealing (pariharana) is called unpoetical or inartistic, akavitvad.yi. An example occurs in the
Karp.ramañjari, III, 31, where the King compliments the heroine on her verses, remarking on her seizure (da.sana) of new motifs (nava-vastu), varied vocabulary
(ukti-vicitratva), and sense of beauty (raman..yat.) and on the flow of rasa.

75
(page 113 ). The printed text is that cited by Pa..it J.bânanda Vidy.s.gara ( Calcutta, 2nd ed., 1890). The only complete translation is that of Benoy Kumar
Sarkar, The Sukraniti (Allah.b.d, 1914, Sacred Books of the Hindus, Vol. XII). An introduction to this translation, by Dr. (Sir) Brajendranath Seal , entitled The
Positive Background of Hindu Sociology, forms vols. XVI and XXV in the same series.

76
(page 117 ). Masson-Oursel, "Une Connexion dans l'Esthétique et la Philosophie de l'Inde," Rev. des Arts Asiatiques, II, ( 1923), and H. Zimmer, Kunstform und
Yoga im indischen Kultbild ( Berlin, 1926).

77
((page 117 ). A. K. Coomaraswamy, "N.gara Painting," R.pam 37 , 40 ( 1929), and Vi..udharmottara, III, 41 , JAOS., LII ( 1932).

78
(page 122 ). In English, we often distinguish paroksa terms by capitals; for example, in distinguishing Self from self, both represented in Skr. .tman, or when we
distinguish Cross as symbol from such crosses as are represented in the letter x.

79
(page 123 ). yasm.d dev.h, .a.karâc.rya on Ait. Up., III, 14; more freely translated, "for, indeed, just what the Angels are is Pure Intelligences."

80
(page 125 ). Cf. B.kad.r. Up., I, 4, 17, "Verily by perception (cak.u..) He comes into possession of his human (m.nu.a) possessions (vitta)."

81
(page 125 ). Iconography (pratim.kara.a) as art in being is to be distinguished from iconography (r.pa-bheda) as a science, useful or necessary to the artist or
student.

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82
(page 126 ). Anuk.ti is "imitation" in the sense Ars imitatur naturam in sua operatione, which does not mean imitatur entem naturatam, our environment.
The same notion is implicit in many passages of the .g Veda; for example, V, 2, 11, where the artistry of the incantation (mantra, cf. mantrayanti with reference to
angelic intercommunication, ibid., I , 164 , 10 ) is compared to that of a carpenter or weaver.

83
(page 126 ). A point of view equating "criticism" and "reproduction" may be represented here, as it is certainly in later Indian aesthetic.

84
(page 126 ). Psychological Types, p. 601.

85
(page . 127 ). "Nature" here in the popular sense of ens naturata, phenomenal environment. The "worship of Nature" in this sense implies "pantheism." Needless to
say that "Nature," interpreted at a higher level of reference, viz. as natura naturans ( = prak.ti, m.y., etc.), and "Nature" as the "Mother of the Son of God" have
both the same reference (it is by Her that He takes on human nature). "To find nature herself" (in this sense) "all her likenesses must be shattered" ( Eckhart). That
iconoclasm may be accomplished in two different ways, respectively parok..t and pratyaksena: in the first case, intellectually, by making the proper references, in
the second case, brutally, by a literal "destruction of idols."

86
(page 129 ). His intrinsic manifestation (svar.pa) is the manifestation of very different things (vi.var.pa).

87
(page 130 ). When the Lord (..vara) is spoken of in His unitary aspect, the Spoken Word is single.

88
(page 131 ). Inasmuch as Wisdom is measured out into parts, it cannot be argued that "close hidden" means only in potentia, in the Godhead, Para-Brahman, solus
ante principium, p.r.a apravartin, where things are not even "thought" under the con-

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tingent aspect of distinction. "Hidden," etc., is tantamount to in principio.

89
(page 133 ). Ghana, from ghan, to strike, hinder, etc., has a primary sense of "dense mass," implying a condensation of multiple factors without extension in space.
Hence "mere" or "essential": or prajñ.na-ghana might be more freely rendered as "exemplary understanding."

90
(page 134 ). Cf. my "Par.v.tti = Transformation, regeneration, Anagogy," in Festschrift Ernst Winternitz, 1933.

91
(page 136 ). In what follows, the pratyak.a notions are again distinguished by italics.

92
(page 136 ). G. Dandoy, S. J., L'Ontologie du Vedânta ( Paris, 1932), p. 125.
In B.had.r. Up., III, 4, 2, Hume renders sâk..t aparok.a (equivalent to paramârthika pratyak.a) by "present and not beyond our ken." But the meaning is
"immediately," not as thus implied, "objectively." "Not beyond our ken" belies the sense; the Brahman, who is the Self in us and all things (as is emphasized in the text
itself) cannot be an object of knowledge.
Suzuki, La.kâvat.ra S.tra, p. xxvi, renders (paramârthika-) pratyak.a by "intuitive penetration."
Stcherbatsky, Buddhist Logic, II, 284, translating a passage from V.caspatimitra in which the presumed identity of an object known in the past and in the present is
under discussion, renders parok.a, qualifying the previous cognition, as "transcends the ken," and aparok.a, qualifying the present cognition as "does not transcend
the ken," and this in the given context seems to be quite legitimate. Again, ibid., p. 333, n. 1 , "objects are divided into (1) evident facts (pratyak.a), (2) inferred
facts (parok.a) of whom (sic) we have formerly had some experience, (3) very much concealed facts (atyanta-parok.a = šin-tu-lkog-pa) which are either
transcendental, unimaginable entities, or else facts never experienced, but nevertheless not unimaginable."

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M.nasa-pratyak.a is "attention" ( Stcherbatsky, loc. cit., II, 328, n. 2).
Muir, Sanskrit Texts, IV, 22, renders parok.a "esoterically." Paradoxical," "enigmatic," or "mysterious" would be satisfactory renderings only if taken in their strictly
technical senses.

93
(page 137 ). We do not think of the technical language of a special science as "obscure," or even as "cryptic" or "esoteric," merely because as laymen we may not
understand it. Though metaphysics is not a special science, the analogy holds good.

94
(page 137 ). Guhya ("hidden") is often the equivalent of parok.a: e.g. in Rg Veda, V, 5, 10, "Where-e'er it be, O Vanaspati (Agni), that thou knowest the hidden
(guhya) names of the Angels, there transmit our offerings."

95
(page 138 ). See note 79; and cf. padmapriy., characterising .r.-Lak.m., .r.s.kta, 25 , where again-priy. implies not "choice" but "nature."

96
(page 141 ). A very beautiful description of the creation as reflection is found in Pañcavi..a Br.hma.a, VII, 8, 1, as follows: "The Waters (representing the principle
of substance) being ripe unto conception (lit. 'in their season'), V.yu (that is, the Wind, as physical symbol of spiration, prâ.a) moved over their surface. Wherefrom
came into being a lovely (v.ma) thing (that is, the world-picture), there in the Waters Mitra-Varuna beheldthemselves-reflected (paryapa.yat)." So Genesis, I, 2,
The Spirit of God moved over the waters, and St Thomas, Summ. Theol., I, 74, "the Spirit of the Lord signifies the Holy Ghost, Who is said to move over the water
-- that is to say, over what Augustine holds to mean formless matter . . . it is fittingly implied that the Spirit moved over that which was incomplete and unfinished,
since that movement is not one of place, but of preëminent power."
The "waters" here and elsewhere in tradition represent the totality of the possibilities of being, which from the standpoint of

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existence are in themselves nothing (chaos); this "nothing" being "at large" in the First Cause, as explained in note 3. Hence "ex nihilo fit." For the waters in symbolic
representation see my Yak.as, II, and in significance, Guénon, Symbolisme de la Croix, Ch. XXIV.

97
(page 142 ). With reference, of course, to the three kinds of icons, (1) dhruva or yoga beta or m.la vigraha, permanently established in a shrine, (2) bhoga m.rti or
utsava vigraha, carried in processions, and (3) dhy.na bera, mental images used in private devotions.

98
(page 142 ). The Suprabhedâgama describes citra as sarvâvayava-sa.P.r.a-d..ya., and ardha-citra as ardhavâyava-sa.d..ya., respectively "fully visible in all its
parts" and "visible as to a half of its parts."

99
(page 142 ). Here evidently dh.tu-r.ga, mineral color, as in Meghad.ta, p. 102, where the Commentary has sind.râdi, "vermilion, etc.," not dh.tu, in verse 2 above,
as a mineral or some metal other than loha, nor dh.tu, metal, in .ukran.tis.ra, IV, 4, 72 and 153.

100
(page 143 ). Acharya, Dictionary of Hindu Architecture, pp. 63, 65, item 5 (out of place); M.nas.ra, pp. 48, 49.

101
(page 44 ). We find also pram..âbh.sa, "fallacious proof," hetv.bh.sa, "logical fallacy," pratyak.âbh.sa, "misleading appearance," parok.âbh.sa,
"pseudo-symbolism"; and pratibh.sa, "mental reflex" ( Stcherbatsky, Buddhist Logic, II, 6, n. 2, identifies pratibh.sa with nirbh.sa, .bh.sa, and pratibimbana).

102
(page 145 ). See notes 23, 67.

103
(page 145 ). See Eastern Art, III ( 1931), 218 , 219 .

104
(page 145 ). "Shade and shine," ch.yâtapa, is taken from Ka.ha Upani.ad, III, 1, and VI, 5, where there is no reference to

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any work of art; it occurs also in the Atthas.lin., p. 317, in connection with the discussion of r.pâyatana, "locus of form" defined as "colored appearance"; "it shines
(nibbh.ti), hence appearance."
Ch.yâtapa occurs also in Vasubandhu, Abhidharmako.a, III, 39. In all these passages the term bears rather the general meaning "pairs of opposites" than the literal
meaning "light and shade"; it is nevertheless actually the immediate equivalent of "chiaroscuro."

105
(page 146 ). B. March, "Linear Perspective in Chinese Painting," Eastern Art, III ( 1931); L. Bachhofer, "Der Raumdarstellung in der chinesischen Malerei, etc."
Münchner Jahrbuch für Bildenden Kunst, VIII ( 1931); L. Bachhofer, "Frühindische Historienreliefs," Ostasiatische Zeitscher. N. F., VIII ( 1932), 18; A. Ippel,
Indische Kunst und Triumphalbild ( Leipzig, 1929). The most valuable discussion of this kind is H. Zimmer "Some Aspects of Time in Indian Art," Journ. Indian
Society of Oriental Art, I ( 1933), 30-51.

106
(page 148 ). Sir J. H. Marshall, Mohenjodaro ( London, 1931), pl. XI; ASI. AR. ( 1917-18), pt. 1, pl. XVI; and Illustrated London News ( March 24, 1928);
Cunningham, The St.pa of Bharhut, 1879, and M.F.A. Bulletin175. Cf. G. Gombaz, "La Loi de Frontalité dans la Sculpture Indienne," Revue des Arts Asiatiques,
VII, 105.

107
(page 148 ) Sth.nas are defined in the Vi..udharmottara, III, 39; .ilparatna,Ch. LXIV; Basava Raja, .iva Tattva Ratn.kara, VI, 2, 55 ff. See also the general
literature on Indian iconography, for example, T. A. C. Rao, Elements of Hindu Iconography ( Madras, 1914-15). The first five sth.nas range from (1) frontal or full
face to (5) exact profile, intermediate positions being represented by 2, 3, 4. A table of the terms as given in the three sources cited follows:

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Vi..udharmottara  .ilparatna  .iva-Tattva-
Ratn.kara
1..ju, .jv.gata  .ju  .ju, Sammukha
2. An.ju, Tiryak  Ardharju  Ardharju
3. S.cik.ta  S.cika, S.cigata  S.ci
4. Ardhavilocana,  Duyardhâk.i  Nyardharju
Adhyardhâk.a
5. P.r.vagata, Ch.y.-  P.r.vagata, Bhittika,  Bhittika
gata, Bhittika  Bhittigata
6. Parâv.tta, Ga..a-
parâv.tta
7. P...gata
8. Pariv.tta
9. Samânata
 

108
(page 149 ). See my History of Indian and Indonesian Art ( 1927), pp. 25 - 27 and fig. 27.

109
(page 150 ). Style is here the datum, appearance, or authority to be investigated. "Those that attempt by means of a (given) authority (that is, from internal evidence)
to understand the consciousness (bodham) which (itself) produced the authority (prabodhayanta. m.na.) are such great beings as would burn fire itself by means of
fuel," .a.karâc.rya, Svâmanir.pa.a, 46.

110
(page 152 ). From the Sarvadharma-prav.tti-nirde.a S.tra, cited by Suzuki, Outlines of Mahayana Buddhism, p. 381.

III
(page 156 ). See my Mediaeval Sinhalese Art ( 1908), pp. 70 - 75 .

112
(page 156 ). Cf. Pope G. U., The Tiruv.agam ( Oxford, 1900), p. xxxv.

113
(page 157 ). Cf. the Hermeneia of Athos, § 445, cited by Fichtner, Wandmalereien der Athosklöster ( 1931), p. 15: "All honor that we pay the image, we refer to
the Archetype, namely Him whose image it is. . . . In no wise honor we the colors or

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the art, but the archetype in Christ, who is in Heaven. For as Basilius says, the honoring of an image passes over to its prototype." Cf. note 43.

114
(page 163 ). "It is for the advantage (artha) of the worshippers (up.saka) (and not by any intrinsic necessity) that the Brahman -- whose nature is intelligence
(cin-maya), beside whom there is no other, who is impartite and incorporeal -- is aspectually conceived (r.pa-kalpan.)," R.môpani.ad, text cited by Bhattacharya,
Indian Images, p. xvii. That is to say the image, as in the case of any other "arrangement of God," has a merely logical, not an absolute validity. "Worship" (up.sana)
has been defined as an "intellectual operation (m.nasa-vy.para) with respect to the Brahman with attributed-qualities (sagu.a)."

115
(page 168 ). Verses cited in the Tri..ik. of Vasubandhu; see Bibliothèque de l'École des Hautes Études, fasc. 245, 1925, and Lévi, "Matériaux pour l'Étude du
Système Vijñaptim.tra," ibid., fasc. 260 ( Paris, 1932), p. 119.

116
(page 168 ). The stage of partial manifestation is compared to that of the "blooming" of a painting. The term "bloom" or "blossom" (unmil) is used to describe the
"coming out" of a painting as the colors are gradually applied ( Mahe.varânanda, Mahârthamañjar., p. 44, and my "Further References to Indian Painting," Artibus
Asiae, p. 127, 1930- 1932, item 102).

117
(page 169 ). Cf. my "Hindu Sculpture," in the league, vol. V, no. 3 ( New York, 1933).

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