The art and architecture of India - Buddhist, Hindu, Jain (Art Ebook)

PREHISTORIC
50
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AND EPIC PERIODS
by hymns and sacrifices without idols or temples.
Our knowledge of this religion is derived
from the Vedic hymns which were composed at
some time between 1500 and 800 B.C. 3
Among the Aryan deities was Indra, at once a
personification of the Aryan warrior, god of the
atmosphere and thunder, and chiefof the thirtythree
Vedic gods. He is usually represented riding
on an elephant, the age-old Indian symbol
of the swollen rain-cloud. Surya, the sun-god,
like Apollo of the Hellenic tradition, is shown
driving a four-horse chariot trampling the
powers of darkness. Other Aryan gods, like
Varuna, a sky deity and a moral god related to
Ahura Mazda, and Mitra, another solar god, are
probably the same divinities that we encounter
as the Hittite arunas and Mithra as assimilated
into Greek or Roman mythology. 4 From the
very earliest 'commentary' on the Vedas, Yaska's
Nirukta, dating from about 500 B.C., we learn
that the Vedic gods or Devas were classified
according to their positions in the sky, the atmosphere,
or earth - the threefold division of the
world-system in ancient Indian cosmology,
which also included the empyrean above the
sky and the infra-cosmic waters below the earth.
The vertical direction or axis was of great importance,
too; it was sometimes thought of as a
pillar of fire formed by the fire-god Agni, who,
in his kindling, bears the aroma of sacrifice upwards
to the gods. He is never represented in
anthropomorphic form until the period of the
Hindu Dynasties. In certain aspects of later
Hindu and Buddhist iconography the axis is conceived
as a great mountain pillaring apart heaven
and earth, or as a Great Person who contains
within his magic cosmic body all elements of the
universe and supports the firmament above him
(Mahapurusa).
In connexion with the Indian concept of the
world system, something should be said about
the quality of Maya. Maya is at once existence
and the cosmic flux and creative power that
animates all things; it is a kind of all-pervading
essence uniting the myriad atoms of a teeming
universe, and in art, Maya may be regarded as
the representation of the emergence of material
things from this formless primal substance.
Maya is the only mirage-like concept of ultimate
reality that mortals can attain.
'Hinduism' conjures up for the Western reader
images of fearful, many-armed gods, the terrible
car of Jagannatha or 'Juggernaut', and the
iniquities of the caste system. Actually, the
Hindu religion is all this and much more, and is
one of the oldest philosophical and religious systems
in the world, that has produced some of the
world's greatest kings, poets, and mystics. The
entire Hindu tradition is founded on the Vedas
and, indeed, the religion might be called Vedism,
so entirely is it based on Indo-Aryan tradition.
It is a development, in other words, from a
system in which there was no one great god, but
many personifications of natural forces in which
the gods were represented as in eternal conflict
with the powers of evil. As will be seen presently,
some of the gods of modern Hinduism are
descended from Dravidian, rather than Indo-
Aryan sources.
By the period of the early Upanishads (800-
600 B.C.) there had already developed the
principal aspects of modern Hinduism in the
evolution of sacrifice destined both to please
and to coerce the gods through sacrifice and formulae
; the concept of a disciplined, even ascetic,
life; salvation through knowledge: perhaps
most important of all, the possibility of winning
everlasting peace through devotion or bhakti to
a particular divinity makes its appearance in the
Mahabharata (c. 400 B.C.). It is also generally
acknowledged that this was the time when modern
Hinduism assumed the character of a polytheistic
pantheism which the religion maintains
to-day. This same period saw the development
of the idea of samsdra or 'wandering'- the soul's
transmigration through endless reincarnations
in human or animal form as a result of good or
Of extreme importance
bad conduct (karma).