the iconology of hindu oleographs- linear and mythic narrative in popular indian art

7/27/2019 The Iconology of Hindu Oleographs- Linear and Mythic Narrative in Popular Indian Art

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The President and Fellows of Harvard College

Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology

The Iconology of Hindu Oleographs: Linear and Mythic Narrative in Popular Indian ArtAuthor(s): Christopher PinneySource: RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, No. 22 (Autumn, 1992), pp. 33-61Published by: The President and Fellows of Harvard College acting through the Peabody Museum ofArchaeology and Ethnology

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The iconology of Hindu oleographs:Linear andmythic narrative inpopular Indian artCHRISTOPHERINNEY

Religious narrative isoften discussed in terms oftheproblems posed by the use of multiple perspective in thedepiction of narrative sequence. Inboth East and West, thehistorical evolution of an answer to these "problems" hasinvolved a linear unfolding of narrative that privileges theunity of time and space.1 Once such solutions becomeformalized within a cultural tradition, they take on theappearance of a "natural" order, which proceeds to offeritself for distortion or even obliteration. This paper exploresexamples of contemporary Indian ritual art?popularHindu oleographs2?to show how this "naturalized" line

can be subject to mythic infractions. Incontemporaryoleographs the transcendance of mundane linearitythrough the "obliteration of time" (L?vi-Strauss 1970:16)takes the form of complex nonlinear spatial representationsof narrative events.3

The oleograph?known inHindi simply as citr ortasvlr? has enjoyed widespread popularity throughoutrural and urban India over the last one hundred years.Oleographs play a central role inmuch Hindu ritual andhave encouraged traditions that stress the importance ofrepresentations of deities that can be honored asembodiments of divine power (see Eck 1985: 46-47).4

1. The earliest narrative in theWestern tradition was depictedthrough what Weitzmann, following Carl Roberts, calls the simultaneous method; different time frames or events are superimposed in asingle perspective. For instance, in the example used by Weitzmann(1947: pi. 1), Polyphemus isdepicted on a Spartan cup simultaneously

eating one of Odysseus' companions, drinking wine, and receiving a jabin the eye from a long pole held by Odysseus. Inmuch Australian

aboriginal art, narrativeis frequently represented by this means, for

example, as in a bark painting from Groot Eylandt (Berndt 1964: pi. 52)and a scene from the Yirawadbad myth (Urbar cycle) reproduced inBerndt (1970:159).

The simultaneous method that transgressed the "unity of time"(Weitzmann 1947:13) was displaced in the West in 400-300 b.c. by the

monoscenic method that accompanied the emergence of classicaldrama (ibid.: 14); the cyclic or continuous method fol lowed. Once the

monoscenic method was mastered, multiple events could bereintegrated into cyclical narratives.

In the continuous method, changes in time are plotted spatially.Continuous narrative was increasingly represented inoblong frames readfrom left to right and became reducible to spatial organization along ahorizontal axis. This method reaches its peak inTrajan's column, whichstood between two libraries among Trajan's buildings in Rome; itwaspurposely designed to be "read" (Strong 1980:144). Examples ofthecontinuous method, such as the murals at Dura Europus (R. Du Mesnil duBuisson 1939), the Joshua Rotulus (Weitzmann 1948), and the BayeauxTapestry, share much in common with what remains of classical Indiannarrative depictions. For example, in depictions of the Shaddanta JatakainCave X at Ajanta, Challasubhadda is shown repeatedly in various states

of grief following the slaying (at her behest) of an elephant (her husband,the Bodhisattva) (Singh 1965:144; Hackin et al. 1932: 86). Likewise, inthe rendering of the Syama Jataka (approximately 150 years later than theShaddanta) in the same cave, the figure of King Piiyakkha of Benaresreappears numerous times hunting the Buddha, who has assumed theform of Suvanna Syama.

2. The term "oleograph," a chromolithograph imitating an oilpainting, will be used throughout this paper, although some of theseimages are now produced by other means. It should also be pointed out

that the originals are not necessarily oils; B. G. Sharma's work (published by Sharma Picture Publication) is chiefly in gouache. However,they are nearly all still laminated or varnished in order to imitate thetactile appearance of oil paintings, and this marks their descent fromRavi Varma's true oleographs of the later nineteenth century. The term"oleograph" also seems to capture something ofthe historical andcultural specificity of these representations. Similar ?mages are else

where referred to as "calendar art" (Uberoi 1990), "bazaar art," or just"popular illustrations" (Basham 1977: ix).

3. Such an avowedly structuralist approach to pictorial composition,which denies the intentionality ofthe individual creator in favor ofthetranscendent longing of langue, will find little favor with many arthistorians. Charles Hope recently attacked the trend in Renaissancestudies that isolates topical, political, and structural meanings inRenaissance art. According to Hope, narrative cycles that display artisticbeauty are unlikely to be "equally subtle theologically" (1986: 811).Hope dismisses one nonnarrative sequence in a particular narrativecycle?Masaccio and Masolino's original designs for the Brancaccichapel (ca. 1420)?as a "trivial mistake": "there isone minor anomaly onthe altar wall: in the top two registers the sequence is from left to right,

whereas at the bottom it is from right to left. This isdifficult to explainexcept as a trivial mistake" (Hope 1986: 811). This paper, however,

while not in any sense wishing to deny the importance ofthe trivial andinconsequential, will demonstrate how popular religious art in Indiapresents pictorial structures as complex as the metaphysics that underpinthem. A structural and iconological analysis is, however, premised on asubconscious production, not on theological deliberation. Panofskyviews this "intrinsic meaning' as a product ofthe "essential tendencies ofthe human mind" (1955:40-41, original emphasis). L?vi-Strauss

maintains that myths cease to be "mythical" once their structures areconsciously manipulated?he castigates the modern novel for trying tocapture an illusory mythical form and describes serial music (with itsformalized inversions and transpositions) as "like a sailless ship, drivenout to sea by its captain who has grown tired of its being used only as apontoon" (1970: 25).

4. In India, oleographic works have also been important in

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34 RES22 AUTUMN 1992

Figure 1.Oleographs used inLaksm?p?ja in the town of Nagda, D?v?l?Photo: Christopher Pinney.1988.

Although considerably less empowered than consecratedtemple images, mass-produced oleographs of deities areused inpuja (worship) (fig. 1); therefore (ideally at least),the oleographs should eventually be "dismissed" or"cooled"?immersed in a river or tank?in the same

manner as large three-dimensional festival images.The following analysis of oleographs in terms ofstructures that contrast with conventional linear narrativeforms does not collude in the Orientalist construction of an"Indian" type of narrative or perspective.5 The structuring

of sequential narrative in the manner discussed here canbe seen as a form of "mythic" thought that cuts throughprofane temporality. This ischaracteristic ofthe temporalmanipulation performed within and by all ritual (Leach1961:132ff.;Gell 1975: 334ff.; Bloch 1986: 184-185):there is nothing particularly "Indian" about it.Neither, itmust be said, does itby any means represent the dominantcharacteristic of Hindu oleographs; in fact, the majority areportraits lacking overt narrative elements.As illustrations of a category of ritual thought, one canfind similar structures in the "religious" art of many othercultures.6 Apparently, the demands of religions inwhich aencouraging what Walter Benjamin (1973) termed the

"democratization" of the ?mage and the pantheon?mass-producedprints enable images ofthe deities to be both portable and collectible.Because oleographs imitate the surface of an original oil painting, theyalso share the tangible and possessable characteristics John Bergeridentified inoil painting and color photography (cf. P. Uberoi 1990: 40).

5. Itneeds to be made clear that the pictorial forms discussed in thispaper are not in any sense created by peculiarly "Indian" categories ofthought or conceptual paradigms. Although the broadly structuralistapproach proposed here presupposes a universal ism, caution isnecessary in the light of other analyses of Indian art that stress culturaldifference and because my own analysis, which compares the earlyBuddhist art of Sanchi and contemporary Hindu oleographs, runs thepotential danger of subsuming two thousand years of stylisticdevelopment and discontinuity under a static Orientalist vision of India(seelnden 1986).

Commentators have identified distinctively Indian forms ofcomposition and perspective throughout the history of Indian artisticproduction. Auboyer, for instance, argues that in the Ajanta wall

paintings and the Sanchi St?pa 1 reliefs there is a "specialcharacteristic of composition in ancient Indian art" (1948: 21), theconnecting-link composition, which unfolds "like a panorama" and in

which elements such as "city-gates, sanctuary entrances, pavillions,trees, pillars" are used as "punctuation marks" (1948: 22). This is aform of the continuous method, although the viewer must be mobile toappreciate the "multiple vision" of the mural (op. cit.: 26). Inmanyrespects this analysis parallels Christine Buci-Glucksmann's (1986)

description of Western baroque compositional styles. Auboyer'sobservation of "the apparent absence of any form of separationbetween one subject and another" (op. cit.: 21) finds an extremeexpression in Judith Mara Gutman's discussion of a nineteenth-centuryphotograph of a fair at Simla, which she takes to be paradigmatic of an"Indian way of seeing": "With no 'invitation' into the picture, my eyesdid not know where to enter... there were no leads as you find in

Western imagery, to other parts of the ?mage" (1982: 6).6. For example, Dura Europus (see n. 1 for details); early illuminated



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Pinney: The iconography of Hindu oleographs 35

pantheon actively intercedes in the affairs of manprecipitate such visual contrivances. In such religions,ritual narratives relate the continual conjunction ofthesacred and the profane, or inother words, the repeatedinfraction of mundane temporality by divine intercession.Where the mundane and the ultramundane conjoin inpictorial representation linear narrative breaks down. Insuch instances linear sequence is necessarily replaced byovert spatial and geometrical play in the form of mythiccorrespondences and transpositions whereby meaning isproduced outside of the ordinary flow of events.

Although stylistic analysis suggests that contemporaryHindu oleographs both express and reflect culturalchanges produced partly by British colonization duringthe nineteenth century,7 the narrative conventions in theoleographs that shall be discussed below have closeaffinities with classical Indian forms and the living folktraditions of Rajasthani par painting (O. P. Joshi 1976;Smith 1991 ).A section of the carved relief of the

Vessantara Jataka8 on the northern gateway of St?pa 1 atSanchi (Madhya Pradesh) will demonstrate that inprinciple the mythic infraction of linear narrative haswide application.

The Vessantara Jataka at SanchiConsider the images that comprise, in Foucher'sscheme (see Marshall and Foucher, n.d.), episodes 16-21on the back ofthe central section ofthe lower lintel. Note

that scenes 14 and 15, which precede these, show twoalmost identical scenes ofthe Buddha as Vessantara andhis wife Maddi (Madri) living the ascetic life in the forestnear Mount Vamka (fig.2). It is not clear whether scenes14 and 15 present a repetition of the same hermitage, orwhether they depict the two separate huts created byVissakamma (the celestial architect);9 ineither case theduplication creates a pause before the complex action ofthe succeeding scenes. Likewise, scenes 22 and 23,which come afterthe central segment, exhibit this samedevice by replicating the narrative's final episode?aprocession that enters from the left to collect Vessantaraand then exits toward the rightwith appropriate pomp.Thus two pairs of images, before and after episodes 1621, by their temporal duplication and visual similitudeestablish the structural boundaries that frame the figuraiinterpretation ofthe intervening scenes, which will nowbe discussed indetail.

Set within the central section ofthe Vessantara Jataka(fig. 3), scene 16 shows the Good Hunter (the Cetanforester) attempting with the aid of a bow and arrow toprevent J?jaka (a local Brahman) from ascertaining thewhereabouts of Vessantara. Scene 17 shows Indradisguised as three lions delaying the mango-laden Madd?from returning to the hermitage,10 where she would seeher husband giving away their two children (J?liand

Bibles (such as the Paris Psalter depictions of Moses on Mount Sinaiand the Prayer of Jonah); the "Fall of Man" from Les Tres RichesHeures o? Jean Duc de Berry (Henderson 1978: pi. 79).

7. Although chiefly concerned with Hindu religious themes,stylistically oleographs are a product of the "Romanization" processadvocated by Sir Charles Trevelyan and Lord Napier (W. G. Archer1959: 21). From the 1880s onward, two broadly parallel andsimultaneous developments inwestern India (focusing on the work of"Raja" Ravi Varma) and eastern India (centered on the work of ex

Calcutta School of Art graduates in the Calcutta Art Studio) led to agrowing saturation of urban and rural India with increasingly "realist"mass-produced oleographs. Ravi Varma was criticized byCoomaraswamy for his "lack of Indian feeling" (Chaitanya 1960: 5), andHavell derided the "most painful lack of poetic faculty" in his art (ibid.).Ravi Varma, who learned oil techniques from an itinerant Europeanartist in the Travancore court, proceeded to win many prizes atexhibitions inMadras, Vienna, and elsewhere from the 1870s onward.Such was the demand for his work that he was encouraged to havethem mass-produced as colored oleographs. Produced first by Europeanpresses, and later by his own Ravi Varma Press based near Bombay,many ofthe designs from this period survive relatively unchanged in theproducts of studios based in Bombay, Delhi, Madras, and Sivakasi. Oneofthe oldest surviving companies?S. S. Brijabasi and Sons (founded inKarachi in 1922)?currently has approximately 1,500 different designsavailable (Ravi Agrawal, personal communication, 1991).

On the structure and iconography of artisanal production ofwoodblocks inCalcutta and for the background to the impact of massproduction in eastern India, see Asit Paul (1982). On Ravi Varma'scareer, see Tapati Guha-Thakurta (1986), and for an analysis of therelationship between artisans, artists, and the concepts of "art" versus"mass production" in turn-of-the-century Calcutta, see Guha-Thakurta(1988). Vitsaxis (1977) is a useful introduction to contemporary (chiefly

Delhi-produced) oleographs; Pugh (1986) considers such images inrelation to categories of "auspiciousness"; P. Uberoi (1990) is astimulating discussion of gender and "visibility" in "calendar art"; S.Uberoi (1991) has an interesting range of illustrations.

8. In Sanskrit, Visvantara. Translations throughout this essay are fromthe Pali (given inCowell 1957). The Sanskrit Jataka-mala of Aryasura,which Gombrich (in Cone and Gombrich 1977: xxxvi) argues isprobably derived from an earlier Pali version, has not been consulted.

9. Foucher asks, "Is this the same hut? More probably it is another;for the hermit's life in the forest required the separation of persons... atany rate, the presence of the second hut isof no service to thecontinuation ofthe story" (Marshall and Foucher, n.d.: vol. II, textopposite pi. 29). In the CowelI/Rouse translation, Vissakama isorderedto create two hermitages (1957: 269) and in Cone and Gombrich(1977: pi. 30[a])?a possibly mid-nineteenth-century mural from

Kurunegala District, Sri Lanka?Vessantara and MaddT are shown intheir separate huts. In the Sanchi carving, however, it is clear that thefigures outside the hut in both cases are Vessantara and Maddi.

10. In Foucher, the children are given away after Madd? is delayedby Indra disguised as three lions ("taking advantage of the mother's



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Figure 2. Vessantara Jataka, northern gateway St?pa 1, Sanchi (Madhya Pradesh). Photo: Christopher Pinney.

Figure 3. Scenes 16-21, Vessantara Jataka, Sanchi. Photo: Christopher Pinney.



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Pinney: The iconography of Hindu oleographs 37

Kanh?jin?) to serve as servants to J?jaka's wife. This gift,which inevitably flows from Vessantara's perfectgenerosity, is shown in scene 18; J?jaka is seen leadingaway the children and beating them in scene 19.Vessantara gives Maddi away to another beggar in scene21 ; in scene 22 he reveals himself as the god Sakka(Sakra) and the couple are reunited.The sequential narrative of scenes 16-21 proceeds in aclockwise fashion that conceals the rationale of its

visualization:21

20

16

19 ?

-* 17

18But an alternative viewing that reads the episodes as threegrouped pairs suggests why the narrative has beenrepresented precisely in this order: the scenes present aset of simple inversions and transpositions that arereplicated by the block of scenes when taken as a whole.

21 17

For example, in scene 17, the moral qualities embodiedby the figuresofMadd? (good)and the lionsblocking herpath (threatening and evil in this context) are transposedin scene 18 just below where Vessantara (good) givesaway his children to the (bad) J?jaka. Likewise, J?jaka ison the left in scene 16 and on the right in scene 19below, and the two children are placed diagonally to theGood Hunter above. Within the column 20/21, Sakka isdepicted disguised as a Brahman to enable Vessantara to"attain the supreme height of perfection" (Cowell 1957:

292) at the bottom left (scene 20); he is then revealed inhis true form with his thunderbolt and pot of ambrosiadirectly above in scene 21. The two figures of Vessantaraand Madd? are also transposed in these two frames. Thusthe god undergoes a transformation (literally in that hechanges from Brahman to revealed deity) and Vessantaraand Madd? are transformed spatially (in other words,transposed). 21 19 17

Qw

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