Ritual

Ground-plan of the temple of
Sixty-Four Yoginis (Chausatti
Yogini), Bheraghat, Madhya
Pradesh, c. 12th century.
86
thus they participate, either directly or indirectly, in the concentric layout
of the diagram. In this way all parts of a composition are connected
with the central point. 20
Yantras and mandalas also influenced the ground plans of Hindu
temples and the lay-out of the cities. As early as the third century
BC, the shape of the Buddhist stupa, originally a monument over
the relics of the Buddha, was based on the circle and the square.
Ground plans of later temples indicate that they were based on a
regular arrangement of squares on a strict grid plan. The three
principal geometrical shapes, square, equilateral triangle and circle,
on account of their symmetry were related to each other as in a
yantra diagram. In one of the earliest references in the manuals of
architecture can be found the Vastu-Purusha mandala which
according to that treatise can be drawn in thirty-two ways. The
simplest one consists of a square, while all the others can be made
from the division of the square into four, nine, sixteen, twenty-five
and so on up to 1,024 small squares. In accordance with tantra's
original thesis, the spatial orientation of the temples served to
create a microcosm in the image of the macrocosm and its
governing laws. While these are few examples of tantric influence
on Indian art, further research has yet to bring to light all the
aspects in which the tantric doctrines left a mark in this field.
Image-making
In tantric art, the image must correspond to the original canonical
text; any omission, error or oversight is attributed to imperfect
absorption or considered a sign of slackening of attention. In such
an event, the image is discarded and the process of composing is
deferred. The initial impetus to visualize is invariably provided by
the dhyana-mantra, or the auditory equivalent which enhances
concentration and functions as a trance-formula. For example, the
trance-formula of the goddess Bhuvanesvari, one of the tantric
dasa-mahavidyas, reads:
I worship our gentle lady Bhuvanesvari, like the rising 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 dhyanam of Bhuvanesvari.
The artist's visualizations begin with mental construction and there
is little attempt to find a syn-visibility in external models. For
example, Shilpi-yogin has resolved the anthropomorphic image of
Kali into a simple geometrical pattern - a triangle within a circle.