indological studies dedicated to daniel h. h. ingalls || when Śiva dances

When Śiva DancesAuthor(s): Ernest BenderSource: Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 105, No. 3, Indological StudiesDedicated to Daniel H. H. Ingalls (Jul. - Sep., 1985), pp. 391-395Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/601514 .

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WHEN SIVA DANCES*

ERNEST BENDER

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

Here is discussed a variation in the theme of the Cosmic Dance of the Indian god, giva, as portrayed by a bronze statue in the collection of the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania. The sculptor is shown to have manipulated the legend to propagate a victory by giva over His adversary, Balakrsna, the Child-god, Krsna.

IT CHANCED ONE DAY, last year, that the weekly luncheon of the South Asia Regional Studies depart- ment of the University of Pennsylvania, rather than in its customary site, the Mosaic Room of the University Museum, was assigned to its Nevil Gallery for the Blind. The purpose of the gallery is directed to a tactile introduction to various cultures of the world through their artifacts executed in diverse materials-metal, wood, etc. The visitor enters through a doorway on the left and is guided by a handrail which curves along the walls of the room. The exhibits, positioned within hand's reach behind the rail, are, each, accompanied by a card. The card, in braille, provides a description of the item and other pertinent information. A second card serves a like function for the sighted.

When I entered the room my attention was im- mediately drawn by a graven image, readily recogniz- able as that of an Indian deity. It was a representation, in metal, of the Great God, Siva, caught in the first moments of His Cosmic Dance (Plate Ia, lb and Ila), the occasion for which A. K. Coomaraswamy relates in his version of the legend:

In the forest of Taragam dwelt multitudes of heretical rishis, following of the Mlmamsa. Thither proceeded Diva to confute them, accompanied by Vishnu disguis- ed as a beautiful woman, and Ati-Seshan. The rishis were at first led to violent dispute amongst themselves, but their anger was soon directed against Siva, and they endeavoured to destroy Him by means of incan- tations. A fierce tiger was created in sacrificial fires, and rushed upon Him; but smiling gently, He seized it and, with the nail of His little finger, stripped off its skin and wrapped it about Himself like a silken cloth.

* I am grateful to Professor Gregory Possehl for providing me with the photographs of the Museum's Nataraja and to Professor Robert Young for his permission to photograph the Balakrsna image.

Undiscouraged by failure, the sages renewed their offerings and produced a monstrous serpent, which however, Siva seized and wreathed about His neck like a garland. Then He began to dance; but there rushed upon him a last monster in the shape of a malignant dwarf, Muyalaka. Upon him the God pres- sed the tip of His foot, and broke the creature's back so that it writhed upon the ground; and so, His last foe prostrate, Viva resumed the dance, witnessed by gods and rishis.

Then, Ati-Seshan worshipped Siva, and prayed above all things for the boon, once more to behold this mystic dance; Siva promised that he should behold the dance again in sacred Tillai, the centre of the Universe.'

Coomaraswamy continues:

This dance of Siva in Chidambaram or Tillai forms the motif of the South Indian copper images of grlT Nataraja, the Lord of the Dance. These images vary amongst themselves in minor details.... The images then, represent Siva dancing, having four hands, with braided and jewelled hair of which the lower locks are whirling in the dance. In His hair may be seen a wreathing [sic] cobra, a skull, and the mermaid figure of Ganga; upon it rests the crescent moon, and it is crowned with a wreath of Cassia leaves. In His right ear He wears a man's earring, a woman's in the left; He is adorned with necklaces and armlets, a jewelled belt, anklets, bracelets, finger and toe-rings. The chief part of His dress consists of tightly fitting breeches, and He wears also a fluttering scarf and a sacred thread. One right hand holds a drum, the other is uplifted in the sign of do not fear: one left hand holds

Coomarasway, A., The Dance of ?iva, The Sunwise Turn, Inc., New York, 1918, pp. 57-58. (The essay first appeared in Siddhanta-Dipika, Vol. X111, July, 1912.)

391



392 Journal of the American Oriental Society 105.3 (1985)

fire, the other points down upon the demon Muyalaka, a dwarf holding a cobra; the left foot is raised. There is a lotus pedestal, from which springs an encircling glory (tiruvdsi [sic]), fringed with flame, and touched within by the hands holding drum and fire.2

Coomaraswamy's description of the Nataraja image is consonant with the standard four-armed style popu- lar in the south of India, and universally admired for its balanced grace.3 The Museum's bronze, represent- ing an earlier style of eight arms, is of comparatively recent manufacture (The accession card assigns it to the late nineteenth, early twentieth century and reports it to have been unearthed in the winter of 1918 in Brindavan, near Mathura.) Our focus, rather than the artistic merit of its executiion, is on a unique feature which posits a problem and gives the image a special value. I shall return to this presently.

Nataraja images with more than four arms are not common and it is to those with eight arms that we turn for the solution to the problem. One such image, noted in their published papers by three scholars, is a small4 bronze dated to c. 900 A.D.-the late Pallava or early Cola period of South India-which, while it has minor variations, is a choice well-suited for compari- son.

P. R. Srinivasan writes of the image:

Perhaps the beautiful bronze Nataraja from Nallur in the Tanjore District belongs to the earliest period of the Chola rule. Its style is however suggestive of even a slightly earlier date. In this figure, a definite step forward has been taken except for the retention of the additional four hands . .. the four main arms are en-

gaged as in the later figures. The two back hands hold the damaru and the flame of fire ... and the two front hands are in the ahhaia and the varada poses. The other arms hold other weapons and objects.5

Sivaramamurti notes, "The representation of Nata- raja in South India is normally with only four

arms.... Occasionally there is a figure having more than two pairs of arms, as in the case of the Nataraja from Nallur (PI. 9), which is a unique image and one of the two Pallava images of Nataraja hitherto known,6; while, according to D. Barrett, "This small Nataraja, still an excellent thing in spite of the recutting on the face, is in the catura-tandava mode. It is eight-armed and carries in the upper left hand the fire in the bowl. Other hands hold the drum, the bell, the cobra, the noose and what is perhaps the handle of a sula . .. the Nallur Nataraja may be dated about 900 A.D. or a little later. "7

We consider now the pertinent features of the NallUir Nataraja image the posture of its limbs and the objects held in the hands. Of the first two sets of arms, the front right hand is in the abhaj'a mudra (lit., "non-fear" gesture), the front left hand is in the ga/a hasta mudrd (lit., "elephant-hand" gesture), the back right hand holds a damaru ("drum") and the back left hand the bowl with agni ("fire"). (See Srinivasan's remark, above, in re the four arms of the later classic images.) In the remaining two sets of arms, the front right hand holds a handle (perhaps of a trisula "tri- dent"), the front left a naga ("snake"), the back right a ghanta ("bell") and the back left a pdsa ("nose"). The flat of Siva's right foot is on the dwarf's head and his bent left leg raised forward.

The Museum's Siva holds his front right hand in varada mudri (lit., "wish-granting" gesture) and front left in abhaya mudrd. His back right hand holds the agni and the back left a damaru. Of its second two sets of arms, the front right holds a handle (of a tri- sila?), the front left a naga, the back right a ghanta and the back left a pasa or an ankusa ("goad"). He stamps His left foot on the head of a small figure and raises His bent right leg forward. Other than the dif- fering positions of the feet and variations in the con- tents of the hands, the image patterns the style of the Nataraja of 900 A.D.8

It is in the small figures under the feet of the two main images that the resemblance between the two bronzes falters. Rao describes the Apasmara (i.e., the dwarf): "He should be black in colour and be playing with a snake, by keeping all his fingers in a cuplike shape, and resembling the hood of a snake (ndga-

2 Coornaraswamy, idem, p. 58. For examples of the classic Natardja image, see C. Siva-

ramamurti, Masterpieces of Indian Sculpture, National Mu- seum, New Delhi, 1971, Plate XXIII; Hermann Goetz, The Art of India, Crown Publishers, New York, 1959, plate on p. 175; and A. L. Basham, The Glory That Was India, Taplinger Publishing Co, New York, 1968, Plate LXVI.

4 The Museum bronze is 141/2" high. 5 Srinivasan, P. R., "The Nataraja Theme in Chola and

Subsequent Period," (Concluded), Roop Lekha, Vol. XXVII, No. 2, 1956, p. 4.

6 Sivaramamurti, C., South Indian Bronzes, Lalit Kal1 Akademi, New Delhi, 1963, p. 49.

7 Barrett, D., Earl/ Cola Bronzes, Bombay, 1965, p. 34. 8 See Anne-Marie Gaston, Siva in Dance, Mi'th and oCno-

graphy, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1982, p. 30, for references to variations in the position of the Apasmdra, especially the one in which it supports Siva on his head.



BENDER: When Siva Dances 393

mudrd)."9 This remark, it should be noted, refers spe- cifically to the Apasmdra in the classic Nataraja group- ing-that in which the dwarf lies lengthwise, parallel to the shoulders of the Dancing giva, flattened under his right foot. The purpose of its quote is its reference to the color of the Apasmara-black (krsna)-and to the cuplike shape of its fingers in contrast with that of the Museum which clearly grasps a ball.

This takes us back to our reaction on first viewing the Museum's giva: the Great God was not stamping on the head of the Apasmara, but rather on that of Balakrsna, the Child-God, as he crawls holding a butter-ball in his cupped hand! (Cf. Plate lIb and 1Ic). The sculptor, in the zeal of his brazen state- ment-colored, no doubt, by a partisan sentiment had fashioned a variation on the Nataraja theme by substituting the dwarf holding a naiga with the well- known representation of Balakrsna with the butter ball and his distinctive top-not. He had shifted the focus to the rivalry across the ags between sects of

Siva and Krsna.'0 In this version of the legend Siva, instead of the South Indian Taragam forest to confute heretical rsis, had invaded the northern Vrndavan" Krsna's special territory! His triumphant subjugation is proclaimed by the stamp of His foot on the head of Krsna, whose color is black (krsna), the hue, more- over, of surrender.'2

And so, the University Museum's Nataraja, not only functions as an introduction to the glory of India's culture and civilization, but stands on its own as a unique creation, a special gem in the Museum's treasure-trove.

9 Rao, T. A. Gopinath, Elements of Hindu lconographk., Vol. 1, Pts. I and 2, Vol. 11, Pts. I and 2, Paragon Book Reprint Corp., New York, 1968; Vol. 11, Pt. 1, p. 225 (Rao, originally published in 1914-16, has the Nallur Nataraja on Plate LXVII, but does not comment on it.)

'0 See Bhattacharji, Sukumari, The Indian Theogonj, Cambridge University Press, 1970, p. 306, et passim. We eschew discussion of such sectarian conflicts in historical times or speculation on the specific event which influenced the fashioning of the bronze.

" The Museum's accession card records that the bronze was unearthed in Brindavan (the ancient Vrndavan).

12 See Hawley, John Stratton, At Play With Krishna, Princeton University Press, 1981, p. 298, fn. 23, for reference to the blackening of the face as the indication of surrender. by the party defeated in battle. (See, also, pp. 222-23, where

it is Siva who prostrates himself to Krsna.)



394 Journal of the American Oriental Society 105.3 (1985)

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indological studies dedicated to daniel h. h. ingalls || when Śiva dances

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