1. Concept of Imitation in Greek and Indian Aesthetics Ananta Charana Sukla Rupa & Co

THE

CONCEPT OF IMITATION

IN

GREEK AND INDIAN

AESTHETICS

The idea of art as an imitation of Nature is a seminal and, probably, the starting point of aesthetics and theory of art. It emerged perhaps everywhere in every primitive thinker on art. But only in ancient Greece and India—cradles of the western and eastern civilizations—it achieved a philosophical establishment. Hence to understand the idea fully it is inevitable to study its evolution in both the countries. The present work is the first attempt to fulfil this long-felt want. In a single volume it presents a detailed study of the independent evolution of the concept in Greece and India and, by using this parallel method of comparison, attempts finally to establish a harmonious understanding of the concept.

THE

CONCEPT OF IMITATION

IN

GREEK AND INDIAN

AESTHETICS

BY

ANANTA CHARANA SUKLA

M. A. (English and Philosophy), Ph. D., Sāhitya Śāstrī

Rupa & Co.

CALCUTTA

ALLAHABAD : BOMBAY : DELHI

1977

First published 15 October, 1977

Copyright : Dr. A. C. Sukla

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Sukhadā dātr̥subhagā

Śaṅkarārdhaśarīrinī,

Granthapuṣpopahāreṇa

pritā naḥ Pārvatī sadā

( Śāradā Tilaka, XXV. 59 )

May Pārvatī, the bestower of happiness,

(the most) prosperous among the bountous,

half of the body of Saṅkara, be always pleased

with us by the offering of (this) book-flower.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

PART ONE :

I. PRAGMA MIMĒSIN 1

II. IMITATION OF THE SOUL 31

III. IMITATION OF IMITATION 54

IV. IMITATION AND CONSCIOUS ILLUSION 92

PART TWO :

I. YADVAI PRATIRŪPAM TACCHILPAM 137

II. RŪPAM : IMITATION OF THE THREE WORLDS 161

III. VĀṆMAYAM : IMITATION AND RE-PERCEPTION 217

ANALOGUE : 281

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ERRATA

P R E F A C E

The idea of art as an imitation of Nature is a seminal and, probably, the starting point of theory of poetry and fine arts. Since the time of Plato this idea has always been a controversial issue among the poeticians and aestheticians of the western world. Though Aristotle's answer to the Platonic devaluation of the imitative ( fine ) arts including poetry remained an authority for centuries to follow, his idea of imitation, the pivot of his aesthetics lost its essence during its progress through the different elucidators and theorists, most of whom tried to justify their own theories on the ground of Aristotelian authority. Hence it became necessary for the scholars of the second half of the present century to recover Aristotle from among the masked Aristotelians. The attempts of learned scholars like Richard Mckeon, G. F. Else and D. W. Lucas are very much commendable. But when Aristotle himself is not always free from ambiguity in his laconic work, it becomes almost impossible to search for Aristotle in only the Aristotelian texts. Unless we read the first chapter of the book—explore the entire gamut of the Hellenic thought journeying as far as the beginning of the Creto-Minoan culture and the very environmental situations conditioning the peculiarities of this thought—all our attempts to understand the last chapter, the culmination of the Hellenic thought in Aristotle, will necessarily fail. Here and there scholars have tried to fulfil this want in connection with Aristotle's idea of imitation. But we believe, their attempts and success both have been partial ; and the first object of the present study is to fulfil this long-felt want.

Secondly, by understanding the Aristotelian or

Greek concept of artistic imitation it is not expected that one

can appreciate the universality of the idea. As among all

other ancients only the Indians have talked of it and

debated upon this problem, it is quite profitable to explore

their ideas on the topic for a better understanding of the

concept itself, and for examining its possibility for universal

recognition. Here again only partial attempts have been

made by scholars like K. C. Pandey, while others are of

opinion that the idea of imitation is alien to Indian

aesthetics except for Śaṅkuka, whose views cannot be

accepted as authentic as they are only excerpts from an

adverse critic like Abhinavagupta. Hence our object in the

second part of this volume is to trace the origin of the idea

of art as an imitation in the Vedic literatures and to show

its evolution through many other texts and authors on

architecture, literature and fine arts accepting Śaṅkuka's

views as authentic on the ground which justifies the authen-

ticity of the materialism of Cārvāka, whose views are

gathered only from the adverse criticism of his philosophy.

Such an attempt—a systematization of a whole

course of thought on a particular topic requires ample illus-

trations of new points and re-arrangement or re-interpretation

of some known points and facts in support of our argument.

This may, at times, appear long-winded or as a rehash ; but

we believe in their relevance.

It is obvious that this present parallel study of the

growth and development of the concept of imitation that

flourished in classical Greece and that of a similar, but also

somewhat different, concept of imitation that found its way

in Indian aesthetics, is not out of mere historical or archae-

logical curiosity ; nor is it a history of terminology or idea,

nor a contribution to lexicography. A comparative study of

this type — of two otherwise unconnected and independent

( iii )

theories of the idea and their various elaborations is rewarding in that it clarifies some of the obscurities in either and supplements some of the partial understandings of each by bringing corrective light from the other. One must admit that in any such parallel study the similarities are as important as the dissimilarities. They show two different cultures, inspite of springing forth from the basic differences in the environments, temperaments and their world outlooks, share with the key-words of aesthetic thought of human beings as a whole contributing finally to a world harmony.

This method may baffle those who are accustomed with influence-studies or think that comparative studies are possible only in case of similarities. But we believe, our method is justified.

The present volume was originally written as a thesis entitled The Concept of Mimesis in Poetics for the degree of Ph. D. in Arts of Jadavpur University. The work was started under the supervision of Dr. S. C. Sen Gupta, the then Professor of English, and on his retirement in 1968 Dr. Jagannath Chakravorty, Reader in English became my supervisor. I acknowledge my deepest gratitude to these revered teachers and scholars of international repute. Besides, late Dr. Sisir Chatterjee, Professor of English, and many other learned scholars are remembered with kind regards in this connection. Shri N. C. Padhi, Shri D. K. Padhi and Shri Jagadish Prasad have actively co-operated in its publication and Shri D. Mehra has finally published the book. Shri B. Sahoo, M. A. has read the proofs ; my pupil Shri B. S. Baral, M. A. and my wife Dr. Indulata have prepared the index ; I feel greatly obliged to them. I wish also to express my gratitude to sister Yogamaya and to many other friends of mine for their sincere good will and co-operation in diifferent spheres of my studies and researches.

A. C. S.

PART ONE

CHAPTER I

PRAGMĀ MIMESIN

i. The geographical settings of Greece inspiring a homely attitude towards Nature–naturalism in the myths of creation and concrete anthropomorphism in the myths of gods making men dependent on the gods in form, character and activity–all their technai an imitation of those of the gods like Hephaistos and Athene. ii. Naturalistic art forms of the Creto-Minoan and Mycenaian cultures–their descriptions in the Homeric and Hesiodic shields of Achilles and Heracles–the dawn of the Greek taste for an art object representing a natural phenomenon as exactly as possible–the homely attitude towards Nature responsible for this taste. iii. Absence of any word to denote an art-figure in Homer and Hesiod–Homer’s use of Xoanon for the aniconic figure of Pallas Athene indicating only a wooden figure in general without referring to any life-like form–agalma used for a portrait statue of a victor in the Olympic games–a motive for memorization displayed in the preservation of the statues of heroes, victors in games and pious people–a combination of the naturalistic tendency and the motive for memorization leading to life-like portraits–use of words like mimēsis, eicōn and eidōlon in connexion with these portraits–later extension of the use of these words for any art-figure–Nature’s supreme artisanship–human artist as an imitator of Nature–imitative elements in sculpture, painting, poetry, dance and music–imitation versus duplication–the belief that an artist is an imitator and not a duplicator. iv. The belief versus the practice–mimēsis versus a mirroric reflection–the imitation of Nature by the artist not passive–imitation involving observation and imagination–inductive method followed in deriving the principles of beauty–the canon of Polycleitus–imitation involving selection, idealization, and symbolization–examples from the activities of the artists–Pheidias, Zeuxix, Polycleitus, Parrhasius, Apollodorus and others in Phiny’s Natural History.

i. Ancient Greece was neither a vast land nor was it a land of extreme climates. Though it began where the Balkan mass of land tapers and thrusts into the midland sea, it possessed no range of mountains thick with forests. Here and there shot up the hills, proud of their independence, flaunting their peaks upward. But their surfaces were almost bare-‘only the bones of the wasted body.’1 Rivers were scanty, and none of them were either long or wide. Though torrential in winter, they became only gutters full of boulders in summer. The land was not fertile except the valleys below the hills where food crops could be grown by excessive efforts with water preserved in pools and wells in winter. Meat and milk were not plentiful as the country was unable to feed the flocks on a large scale. Life, in short, was quite hard and, therefore, the Greek people took great care to control even their small population.

As was the land so were the seas—the Aegian in the east, the Ionian in the west and the Cretan in the south—all narrow watery areas easily crossable by boats. Up to the time of Herodotus, the world to the Greeks centred around the Mediterranean not beyond Persia in the east, Italia in the west, Scythia in the north and Lybia in the south. Just as the Greek world was limited so was the Greek climate temperate. Even in winter when the gust of the west wind was horrible, the Greeks could enjoy warm sunshine; and in summer intense heat could not exhaust their energy and effort. Rainfall was neither heavy nor continuous and did not damp their vigour into lethargy or

1. Critias, 3

visionary habits of mind. Every season called for a hard struggle either on the land going up and down the hills with heavy loads, ploughing the stony fields, irrigating the tilled lands, taming horses and mules, and driving away the attacks of the beasts or on the seas reaching the neighbouring countries with a trading mission or sometimes repelling the attacks of neighbours with determination. The Greeks found Nature not beyond their comprehension. Their busy hard life made them practical in their attitude to everything and prevented them from indulging in negative thoughts and idle speculation. Any irregularity or disturbance in natural occurrences, in their physical or psychic states, or in their failures and successes in the struggle for a happy existence were guided, they felt, by some powers, though invisible to ordinary eyes, not without physical forms or bodies like their own; and these powerful beings, they believed, could be appeased by invocations and sacrifices and induced to make their life happy and easy-going.

In an earlier age when the Greek thought was not established independently, when it shared the native Creto-Minoan culture that had amply adopted the thoughts of ancient Egypt, these powers were thought to have bodies of animals or birds. Faint echoes of this stage are found in the Homeric myths where Athene is owl-faced, Hera cow-faced, Zeus takes the shape of a bull, Appllo is associated with wolves and mice, Poseidon with horses and Artemes with bears2. But the more the Greeks became matured in thought and independent in their speculation, the more their gods became concrete with bodies and nature like those of themselves. This was so because their untiring labour, strong impulses and heroic struggles made the Greeks confident of the possibilities of human power.

2. C. M. Bowra, The Greek Experience, A mentor Book, New York, 1963, P. 56.

"Wonders are many and none is more wonderful than man," sings Sophocles, "the power that crosses the white sea, driven by the stormy south wind, making a path under surges that threaten to engulf him…….And he masters by his arts the beast whose lair is in the wilds, who roams the hills ; he tames the horses of shaggy mane ; he puts the yoke upon its neck, he tames the tireless mountain-bull. And speech, and wind-swift thought, and all the moods that mould a state, hath he taught himself ; and how to flee the arrows of the frost, when, 'tis hard lodging under the clear sky, and the arrows of the rushing rain ; yea he hath resource for all ; without resource he meets nothing that must come. Only against Death shall he call for aid in vain"3. There was, besides, the intoxicating beauty of the Greek body. If men with their hard manual labour developed a sturdy and muscular frame, women likewise without sitting idly at home worked in the fields with males joining them even on ships and in sports, developed stout figures with hard breasts and shapely buttocks. The mediterranean climate made their eyes blue, cheeks rosy and lips red enriching them with a sound sexual urge. One would hardly find a man or a woman with a swelling belly, wrinkled face, flat chest or loose arms even years after youth had expired. The Greeks were so fond of the virile charm of a feminine figure that they dreamt of a war-loving race of charming woman in their myths of the Amazons.

Beauty and power–these two ámong the values were the most attractive for the Greeks and they believed that their supreme manifestation was possible only through human forms. Thus their gods were all human in form and character, born of the same mother earth of which the mortals are moulded. In humanizing their gods the Greeks felt themselves more intelligent than any other

3. Antigone, 332 ff.

neighbouring races. "The Hellenic race", says Herodotus, "was marked off from the barbarians as more intelligent and emancipated from silly nonsense"; 4 and this silly nonsense of the barbarians was displayed through their formation of gods as a grotesque combination of beasts, birds and human beings. The Greek gods have bodies of flesh, blood and bones and they have the same passions of love, jealousy and anger as the mortals have; and like the earthly kings they have their heavenly kingdom on the unsurpassable mountain of the Olympus. Cronus could castrate his father Uranus and blood would flow from his wound. 5 Aphrodite could be enamoured of gods other than her husband and of the mortals and could even bear children to them6 and could be wounded by the arrows of human warriors. 7 No more holy were they than human beings as their indiscipline in the affairs of sex, power, vengeance and cruelty even surpassed those of the latter. The distinction between these two races of beings, it seems, would have completely ceased unless two fundamental points stood in the way. The physical bodies of the gods are invisible to the ordinary human eyes for the extreme lustre of their appearance; and the strength, beauty and longevity of these bodies knew no decay. The flow of blood that came of the wound of Uranus was no ordinary mortal blood as it ran from heaven to earth and Ares could never be arrowed to death by human beings. Pindar summarizes the distinction between the gods and the mortals thus :

"Single is the race, single Of men and of gods;

4. 1. 60, 5. Robert Graves, The Greek Myths, Vol. I, P. 37. 6. For her love affairs with Ares, Odyssey, Viii. 266-367 ; with Anchises, Iliad , V. 280 ff; the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite. 7. By Diomedes, Iliad, V. 325 ff.

From a single mother we both draw breath.

But a difference of power in everything

Keeps us apart;

For the one is as nothing, but the brazen sky

Stays a fixt habitation for ever,

Yet we can in greatness of mind

Or of body be like the Immortals,

Though we know not to what goal

By day or in the nights

Fate has written that we shall run" 8.

So one the Greeks felt with their gods that they believed that the gods could be invoked to be present physically in their religious rites and to share food with them. Their rites were acts more of hospitality than of expiations 9.

If the gods possess forms similar to those of human beings, both the races must have the same process of generation. The Pre-Hellenic creation-myth suggests that creation is not possible by a single being, it is the result of a union of two separate bodies. Eurynome the Goddess of All Things rising naked from Chaos found no support for her feet. So she divided the sea from the sky and danced towards the south and the wind blew behind her. She thought of creating the universe with this wind which was something new and separated from her. Turning about she caught it within her palms, and a serpent came out of it with which she copulated and having assumed the form of a dove she released the universal Egg on the waves. 10

8. Nemean Odes, VI. 1-7, quoted by Bowra, op. cit. P. 57. 9. Bowra, op. cit. P. 59. Herodotus suggests that paganism necessarily involves a belief that the gods and human beings possess the same nature-"They (Persians) have no images (agalmata), no tempies, no altars and consider the use of them a sign of folly. This comes, I think, from their not believing the gods to have the same nature with men, as the Greeks imagine." 1. 131. 10. Graves, Op. cit. P 27.

The Homeric myth, essentially a version of the Pelasgian myth, narrates that the gods and all living creatures originated in the stream of Oceanus which girdles the world.11 Sometimes mystic attitude to the problem is also noticed in the Orphic myth of creation in which black-winged Night and Wind are said to be the primeval parents.12 But in all this a matured Greek concept of creation is absent. "Whence the gods severally sprang", says Herodotus, "whether or no they had all existed from eternity, what forms they bore-these are questions of which the Greeks knew nothing until the other day so to speak."13 This myth came into vogue. Mother Earth, according to this, emerged in the beginning from Chaos and bore her son Uranus as she slept. He showered rain upon her secret clefts and she bore plants, beasts and birds ; rivers flew upon her and hollow places were filled up with water forming lakes and he fathered Titans upon her and from the Titans Cronus and from him the Olympian gods and goddesses were born.14 It seems, beginning from Uranus all the gods including Titans and Olympians were of human form and they created human beings after their own model. Hesiod15, Euripides16 and Aristophanes17 agree with a definite physiological origin of the world. Some gods were there from time immemorial and the mortal and the transient world were born of a union similar to that of men and women of Gaia and Ouranus. Plato records18 that the gods were there from an unknown time, devoid of decay and change. Once when they felt the mortals should be created they created them out of earth and fire just as potters make earthen pots and harden them in fire.

11. Ibid. 30. 12. Loc. cit. 13. II. 53. 14. Graves, op, cit p. 31 ff. 15. Theogony, 116 ff. 16. Fragments, 484, Collected in The Pre-Socratic Philosophers, ed. and com. G. S. Kirk and J. E. Raven, See Chap. I. 17. Birds, 693. 18. Protagoras, 320.

dorus makes this myth more definite.19 Prometheus the Titan being asked by Zeus moulded men out of earth and water after the images of gods into which Athene breathed life.

In attributing thus to the gods a similar form and a similar process of generation as they possess themselves the Greeks have narrowed the scope of the cosmic creation into a mechanical process and that of human activity into a mimicry of divine activity. It is suggested that as human beings are themselves made after the image of the gods, nothing can they perform which has not already been practised by the gods previously. All the glories of human body, beauty and workmanship that Sophocles sings of are possessed in a perfect degree by the gods, and being mercifully contributed to human beings are controlled and guided by them. A hero cannot display his heroism unless the god of power is in his favour. It is even believed that the activities which they perform in order to facilitate the happiness and prosperity of their life, are taught to them by the gods directly or through the Titan Prometheus. These activities are called technai derived from the root technazō meaning to contrive cunningly or to deal subtly.20 The technai include all the useful crafts together with pleasing arts and any activity that needs skill and contrivance. Among the gods two technicians are there–Hephaistos21 and Athene.22 The former is the smith god of Olympus, who was ugly and weak at his birth for which his mother Hera dropped him from heaven, and falling on the sea who was brought up by the goddesses Thetis and Eurynome and devised there all sorts of useful and ornamental ‘objects’. One day Hera found him among his nursing goddesses and

19. Bibliotheca, iii. iv. 4. 20. Greek laxicon, 21. Graves, op. cit, P. 87. 22. Ibid P. 96; Pindar, Olympian Odes, VII. 34-52; Homieric Hymn to Aphrodite, 10-14.

realizing his skill from a brooch of his workmanship took him to heaven where he was facilitated for practising much finer smithy. Among his achievements notable are a set of mechanical women talking and working and a set of three-legged tables with golden wheels which could run by themselves. Hephaistos seems to be more a technician than an artist with a sense of beauty ; for the strength, usefulness, and automatic mechanism of his works are emphasized. Following the capacity and forms of the goddesses he made the mechanical women whose beauty is not so much mentioned as strength and working capacity. The Greeks perhaps were not satisfied with only the useful products. Their strong sensitivenses towards beauty made them imagine a marriage of Aphrodite the goddess of love and beauty with Hephaistos the god of technai so that a good technician might possess an ample sense of beauty by a combination of which he could produce technai worthy of praise and preservation. Their purpose was successful in Hephaistos’ moulding of Pandora of clay by the order of Zeus. He constructed the body of this woman, fairest of all ever created, even tending to surpass the beauty of Aphrodite herself into which the four winds breathed life and whom the goddesses of Olympus adorned with their own special charms.

Athene’s artisanship is more pronounced by the Greeks. She is thought not to be born par vaginum but to have sprung up from the head of Zeus fully armed. Thus she is always associated with wisdom and intellect-the activities of head, and is held as the goddess of wisdom. By her wise speculation she contrived the flute, the trumpet, the earthenware pot, the plough, the rake, the ox-yoke, the horse-bridle, the chariot and the ship. All house-hold feminine arts and mathematics, the science of number, also are her inventions. She remains ever a virgin almost hating the sexual relation ; and although she is always

fully armed as a goddess of war, her function differs from

Ares, the god of war, in settling the disputes rather than

getting pleasure in them. Her mercy is profound, and it

seems, her arms signify rather her smartness, the capacity

of controlling the senses than any ferocious love for war.

Out of her mercy, it is told, she taught all the artistic

devices to human beings. Sometimes Prometheus is also said

to have stolen fire, together with all the principles of arts

that are practised with its help, from heaven and by teaching

them to mankind to have made them cultured.23

The myths of the divine artisans suggest that any

piece of art or craft is a technē and its maker must be an

intelligent being. With a strong and stout body he must

possess enough mental power to control the sense organs.

Generosity of heart, sensitivity of soul and smartness of mind

are not less important. Gross sexual passion, it seems, is not

favourable for art creation. That is why perhaps Athene is a

virgin and Hephaistos is unable to cope with the vigorous

lust of Aphrodite, for which, most probably, she remains

engaged in adultery with the gods and mortals. The Greeks,

of course, have imagined a sexual union of the two artisan

divinities–Hephaistos and Athene.24 When the latter went

to the former with a request that he might make some

arrows, which she needed in the Trojan war, he asked her

love as the cost and applied physical force which she avoided

strongly. But such incident is very strange in Hephaistos’

character. He would never feel so much passionate, had not

Poseidon informed him falsely before that Athene would go

to him for his violent love under the pretext of begging some

arrows. Athene remains a virgin ; and it seems, her artistic

inventions are subtler and more attractive than those of

Hephaistos as she is sexually more restrained.

23. Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, 109-13. 24. Graves, Op. cit. P. 96.

The characteristics required for a divine artisan are also applicable to a human one, in a limited amount. Although the latter works in imitation of the former, cunning and intelligence are required in full measure, for to imitate a divine principle is not a small task for a mortal. Applying their limited power the human artisans produce the technai which are far inferior in splendour and glamour to those of the divine ones; and the more the human product is akin to the divine one, the more is the success of the artist.

ii. The Pre-Hellenic Creto-Minoan Culture that developed in Crete, Archipelagos and the Aegian islands, contained arts like gem cutting, gold and silver smithy, metal carving, painting on terracotta, coffin and vases, frescos on the walls of palaces and houses and modelling in terracotta that show strong native characteristics although borrowed here and there from the styles of oriental culture especially of Egypt. Its style is remarkable for its naturalism in details, especially in plants and natural forms. Human figures are, however, conventionalised with unnatural slim waists and elongated limbs. A realistic rendering of landscape in the representation of sacred mountains are favourite subjects of gem-paintings. But the artists here representing the figures of divinities have not been sufficiently successful to indicate a distinction between these and human figures except by signs and attributes. Rudely fashioned terracotta images of divinities are also found in Crete, Mycenae and in the main land of Greece.25

Naturalistic tendency is more obvious in somewhat more developed sculptural style of the late Minoan Culture. Bronze figures of men and women show a liveliness that could have been attained only by modelling directly on wax.

25. Raymond S. Stites, The Arts and Man, Mcgraw Hill Book comp., New York, 1940, P 147-59.

The chryselephantine statue of the little priestess found in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts is full of expressivenss with arms held out as if to protect the face from the two-hooded snake, head held erect and attention pulled downward by the mass of the breasts. 26

Arts like painting and carving are chiefly decorative in the Mycenaean culture and the subject matters of these arts are natural phenomena and affairs of daily life both agricultural and religious. The decorative artist is extremely conservative and imitative in the use of his available repertoire of groups and figures. Free invention is hardly noticed except in cases where no familiar type could be adopted.27 The decoration upon the Homeric shield of Achilles seems to be more a Mycenaean product than Hellenic for the Greeks had not developed their independent art style at or before the time of Homer. Their poetry is earlier than their sculpture or painting. Five layers of metal are superimposed on the shield of Achilles–two of bronze, two of tin perhaps alternating, that in the centre being gold. Four things are thus formed around the inner circle each covered with sculptural decoration. Within the golden disc there is wrought–“the earth, the heavens, and the sea ; the moon at her full and the untiring sun with all the constellations that glorify the face of the heaven ; the Pleiads, the Hyads, huge Orion and the Bear…..which turns round ever in our place facing Orion and alone never dips into the stream of the Oceanus”.28 Upon one side of the concentric band is shown a city in time of peace with a wedding procession and a court of justice ; upon the other a besieged city with a rumble of defenders and a general engagement.

26. Ibid. 159. 27. E. A. Gardner, Encyclopaedia of Ethics and Religion, ed. James. Hastings, Edinburgh, 1925 vol. 1. P 866-71. 28. Iliad, XVIII 473 ff.

Upon the second ring are the four seasons indicated by ploughing, harvesting the vintage and by a band of peacefully grazing cattle, attacked by lions. A harvest dance of youths and maidens, before whom stands a singer decorates the third ring; while the fourth and the outermost is ornamented with waves representing the sea, which according to the ancients surrounds the circular earth.

The vividness and liveliness which Homer's poetic fancy reads into the shield is not really found in the samples of such decoration on the vases of the Mycenaean Age, the fragments of which are now kept in the museums of America and Europe.29 No touch of such realistic character is seen in the figures, as it was impossible for the manufacturer of this age to work so. No sign of carving is also there. The artist of the Heroic age cut his figures from the sheets of metal and pasted them upon the surfaces of the shield, filling up the middle spaces with ornaments. The metals were chosen out of colours different from that of the band to which those were to be fixed, thus approaching to some extent the art of painting. Homer's observation of a vivid naturalistic glamour in such a shield opens the Greek way of tasting a piece of fine art. In fact, he read into it what he desired to see-the transient beauties of Nature stabilized with its vitality; and the excellence of such art, he considered, consisted in creating the exact appearance of the subject through the materials quite different from those of the originals. The ploughing scene on the shield of Achilles is an excellent work of art not so much for its details as for the artist's bringing the exact likeness of a ploughed land on the surface of gold. "The earth looked dark behind the plough, and like to ground that had been ploughed, although it was made of

29. See the cover of Dodwell's vase, History of Ancient Art by Franz von Reber, New York, 1882, P. 271.

gold ; that was a marvellous piece of work30. The figures wrought by Hephaistos do not appear as mere statues or painted pictures before Homer ; they are all enlivened and full of expressiveness. The artist has captured some moments of life and has made them imperishable and changeless. Homer can see the figures dancing ‘Keeping time with skipping feet’31 and can listen to a boy ‘who made sweet music with his lyre and sang a dinos with his clear boyish voice’32 and can feel the alertness of the besiegers when they heard much noise among the cattle as they sat in council, sprang to their horses and made with all speed towards them.33 It is not a poet’s evocation of his own individual feelings at the sight of the objects he likes, for Homer’s voice is not the voice of an individual, but that of a race, of a dawning nation which could inculcate its characteristics at its very outset.

The same naturalistic attitude of Homer may be detected at the breast plate of Agamemnon where serpents of cyanus reared themselves up towards the neck, these upon either side like the rainbows which the son of Cronus has set in heaven as a sign to mortal men,34 and at his shield on the centre of which is a gorgon’s head fierce and grim with Rout and Pain on either35 side. His Helen embroiders 36 the battle scene of the Greeks and Trojans in detail and Penelope weaves textures which are quite elaborate. 37

This taste for a naturalistic art is enhanced in Hesiod’s description of the shield of Heracles. A gap of a century separates Homer from Hersiod. The Greek mind began to crystallize gradually. Religious ceremonies and

30. Iliad, XVIII. 548. 31. Ibid. 559 ff. 32. Loc. cit. 33. Ibid. 517 ff. 34. Ibid. XI. 31. ff. 35. Loc. cit. 36. Ibid. III. 120 ff; see also the decorations on the aegis of Athene and her self-embroidered robe, Ibid. V. 730 ff. 37. Referred to by Franz von Reber also, op. cit. p. 269.

myths were more systematized and popularized. So along with scenes from Nature such as the seasons, the sea and the affairs of human life, cities peaceful and besieged, pictures from legends such as the combat of the Lapithae and Centaurs, and from religion such as Apollo among the Muses are also wrought on this shield.38 Although basically it adopts the plan of the Homeric shield, it is an improvement upon that in so far as the subject matters of its decoration are more Greek. But the Greek mind had not yet found an art-form suitable for its special choice. It demanded a form as vital as the form of life itself with its throbbing sensation and expressive emotion. They dreamt such a form in the products of Daidalos39 a legendary artist, Athenian by birth, who could make walking and talking statues which were so lively that one would distinguish those from their natural counterparts. He made a cow, it is said, that when it was left on the field where cows graze, a bull came up to it and copulated. Similar was the power of Cyprian artists. The king Pygmalion found a statue of Aphrodite that aroused his passion, and he felt so enchanted that he took the statue to his bed.40

But the Greeks had no intention to make art a substitute of Nature. They were rather well aware of the impossiblity of such substitution. In praising the naturalistic character of art they praised the genius of man, which, although inferior to Nature, could produce things having forms no less enlivened than hers, and such forms indeed were attained by the Greeks in a Xenocrates who painted a runner in a race in full armour that seemed to

38. The shield of Heracles, 315 ff. 39. Diodorus siculus, IV. 76 ff.; Apollodorus, op. cit. III. 1. 3-4, XV. 8. 40. Arnobius of Sicca refers to the lost ‘Cypria’ of Philostephanus; for the myth, see VI, 22.

sweat actually with his efforts 41 and another runner in full

armour taking off his arms, so life-like that he could be

perceived to be panting for breath 42 ; or in a Pythagoras

whose 'lame man' so accurate and exact in construction that people looking at it felt a pain from his

ulcer in their own legs. 43 Critics suggest that the Greeks

with their friendly attitude towards Nature evolved such an

art type. "If there is a difference of potential," writes Hulme,

"between man and the outside world, if they are at different

levels, so that the relation between them is, as it were, a steep

inclined plane, then the adjustment between them in art

takes the form of a tendency to abstraction. If on the

contrary there is no disharmony, if they are on the same

level, on which man feels himself one with nature and not

separate from it, there you get a naturalistic art." 44

iii. Although a remarkable artistic taste developed

among the Homeric and Hesiodic Greeks, they possessed no

word for the artistic representation of figures. If technē

was the common word for all the arts and crafts, the root

poieō or 'to make' was the common word for all sorts of

making without distinguishing a figure-maker from a poem-

maker, or a weaver from a potter. All of them were

makers for the Greeks. Homer and Hesiod both have used

this root to indicate Hephaistos' representation of figures on

their shields of Achilles 45 and Heracles. 46 It is quite un-

certain what was exactly the shape of Pallas Athene

worshipped by the Trojans. It was dropped from the

sky 47 ; and was mostly an aniconic wooden symbol like

that of the thunder bolt of Zeus, worshipped by the Cretans.

41. Pliny, XXXV-V. 71. 42. Loc. cit. 43. Pliny. XXXIV. XIX. 59.

42. T. E. Hulme, Speculations, P. 87. 45. Iliad XVIII. 560. 46. The

Shield of Heracles 315 poiēde. 47. Bibliotheca III. 12. 3.

Homer's word for this is xoanan4 8 indicating a wooden form in general without necessarily emphasizing a statue in human shape. It is not at all a statue in the sense that prevailed in the sixth and fifth Centuries B. C. Agalma occurs to be the earliest word used for a statue which literally means glory, delight or honour.4 9 The Olympic games began in about 724 B.C. and they attained their full form in about the middle of the 7th century.5 0 The participants in these games came of very high societies and the Greeks honoured the victors by making their statues in the public places. Thus the statues were the signs or the mementoes of glory of the victors, and in a later period agalma or glory was identified with the statue itself. Such use of the word became quite popular in the fifth century B.C.5 1 Along with the naturalistic bent of the Greek mind a motive for memorization was thus combined. Victorious heroes, sportsmen, kings and benefactors of society were to be remembered by the generations present and to come. It was believed that the statues could serve this purpose to a great extent as metals like bronze and other hard substances like stone survive a long period. “I am a maiden of bronze and rest upon Midas's tomb'', Diogenes quotes an epitaph, “So long as water shall flow and tall trees grow and the sun shall rise and shine, and the bright moon and the rivers shall run and the sun wash the shore, here abiding on his tear-sprinkled tomb I shall tell the passers-by Midas is buried

48. Iliad, VI. 84, 295. Xoanon was used later for any life-like image also. Strabo used it for the statue of the Olympian Zeus by Pheidias; see Strabo, VIII. 3. 30. 49. Iliad, IV. 144. 50. Everybody's classical Dictionary, ed. John Warrington, Lond, 1961, P. 370. 51. Herodotus, 1. 131, II. 86, 182 ; Aeschylus, Seven Against Thebes, 258 ; Euripides, Helena, 262, 705 ; Plato used it for something in painting or words ; Symposium, 216; Republic, 517 ; Farnell suggests that agalma was used for an aniconic image in the Homeric age which was replaced by eikōn later when idolatry developed ; see L. R. Farnell, Outline History of Greek Religion, P. 61.

here."52 Although there is no statue of Midas himself here, motive for memorization is clear from the speech of the statue of a maiden. Besides, it became a tradition that the pious contributors to the religious institutions had to offer their own portraits either plastic or graphic as he would be remembered by the institutions themselves and would remain an ideal for others. Herodotus records such offerings of King Amasis to the Greek temples.58 Memorization seems to be the origin of the Greek statuary and portrait painting from the legend recorded by Pliny. Butades, a potter of Sicyon at Corinth, invented modelling from clay which was the first stage of sculpture. He did this owing to his daughter who was in love with a young man ; and she when he was going abroad, drew in outline on the wall the shadow of his face thrown by a lamp. Butades pressed clay on this afterwards and made a relief by hardening it in fire.54 Lysistratus of Sicyon is the first man to mould a likeness in the plaster of a human being from the living face itself and established the method of pouring wax into this plaster mould and then making final correction on the wax cast.55 Similar was the process of painting also beginning with tracing an outline round a man's shadow.56

The Egyptians also had a system of preserving the statues of their great persons and high priests after their death and statues of the dead persons were kept inside the graves with a belief that they would remain immortal there. This system is more religious than sentimental and more practical than emotional in character. As the sensuous aspects of a human body are perishable, the statues of the Egyptians were devoid of all this ; they were stiff and static, and their geometrical and abstract style, the Egyptians believed, would escape the clutch of death.57 But the Greeks did just the

52. Diogenes Laertius, I. 89. 53. Herodotus, II. 182. 54. Pliny, XXXV. XLiii. 151. 55. Ibid, 153. 56. Idem. XXXV. V. 16. 57. See Supra N. 54.

opposite. A sentimental motive such as theirs to remember the heroes and benefactors and to be inspired at the sight of their statues made them preserve all the sensuous aspects of a man in his statue by making it as life-like as possible. Butades had to mould the figure of his daughter's lover in such a lively way that she would forget his absence, and the foster-father of Aktaion had to carve his statue in such a way that his dogs could not realize the absence of their master.58 So the artists had to be faithful to the originals and to preserve all the sensuous aspects through which the character of a man must definitely manifest itself. Any freedom of the artist in inventing or omitting a point was always conditioned by this motive. So it was quite natural that a statue was called an 'imitation' when in the end of the sixth century B. C. the Archaic static style changed into the classical vitalistic form ;59 and later on the use of the word imitation with its various synonyms such as eikōn and eidōlon was not limited only to the portrait-statues.60 Its denotation extended to the entire gamut of plastic and

58. Apollodorus, iii. IV. 4. 59. For the history of this transformation of the Archaic art in to the Classical one see Stites, op. cit. P. 164-65 ; Franz von Reber, Op. cit. P. 282 ff. 60. Mimēsis, the Greek word for imitation is derived from the root mimēlazō meaning to mimic, represent or emulate, the earliest use of which is most probably in the Hom. Hymn to Delian Apollo, 160-65 ; see quoted infra No. 91. H. Koller derives the mimēsis-group of words from Mimos, the ritual dancer who embodies, impresonates and by his dancing expresses the influence of the god, such as the 'bull-voiced terrible mimos' of Aeschylus in his lost Edoni (see Strabo, X. 470). Thus the primary meaning of mimeisthai is not to copy or imitate but to give expression. See D. W. Lucas, Aristotle : Poetics, P. 270. But the above passage from the Hymn certainly suggests a sense of imitation or mimicry. For the root's sense of emulation see Thucydides, The Peloponnesian war, II. 37. -the speech of Pericles "We live under a form of government which does not emulate (mimouemnoi) the institutions of neighbours." Eikōn is derived from the root eikazō meaning

graphic art-figures,61 and still further, it even denoted poetry, dance and music. As the chief subject-matters that the Greek artist took to represent were human shapes, whether gods or men, whether actually visible or heard of, it seems, that, there was no essential difference between a portrait-statue and a human figure in general. If the former imitated an object of Nature specifically mentioned the latter imitated the same according to his own choice. Thus the work of both the artists became the same- imitation of Nature. When Lysippus the coppersmith asked Eupemphos the painter which of his predecessors he took for his model, he pointed to a crowd of people and said that it was Nature

to represent by a likeness or to portray. The word in the sense of image was already in use at the time of Herodotus, eikōn graphē eikasmenē, II. 182. The root also means to describe by comparison, Hdt. VII. 162. Pliny records a history of the use of eikōn -“It was not customary to make effigies of human beings unless they deserved lasting commemoration for some distinguished reason, in the first case, victory in the sacred contests and particularly at Olympia where it was the custom to dedicate statues of all who had won a competition ; these statues in the case of those who had been victorious there three times, were modelled as exact personal likenesses as of the winners what are called iconical (eikōn, eikōnakos) portrait-statues. I rather believe that the first portrait-statues officially created at Athens were those of the tyrranicides Harmodicus and Aristogiton” (510 B. C.) XXXIV. IX. 7. 17. Eikasia is another noun from eikazō meaning likeness ; Xenophon, Meorabilia, III. 10. I.

Eidōlon is derived from eidō which ordinarily means a phantom or a hazy appearance in dreams etc. such as the vision of the gods before the mortals. Iliad, V. 451 ; Odyssey, IV. 796 ; Hdt. V. 92 ; in the sense of an unsubstantial form, Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 839 ; a reflected image on water or mirror, Plato, Sophist, 266 ; its use in the sense of an idol (Eng. Deriv.) is profunse in Hdt. 1. 51, VI. 58 ; Apollodorus, iii. IV. 4 etc. 61. Herodotus uses the root even for the Egyptian wooden figures of the dead bodies used for funeral rites which are hardly life-like- II. 78.

herself, not an artist whom he ought to imitate.62 In fact, Nature was the supreme artist63 before the Greeks to which they could never be equal, and even to imitate it one needs its gift. Thus Pindar sings of Nature's supreme artistic power.64 that makes a true artist by her gift.65 If all the technai were wrought by them in imitation of those of the gods, the techne of constructing statue also was an imitation, for the original inventors of this art were Hephaistos and Prometheus - the god and the Titan. The latter moulded human forms imitating the physical form of the gods but could not provide them with divine qualities such as immortality, undecaying strength and beauty. So does the human artist—imitates living human forms in statues without embodying them with life. His art, in fact, happens to be an imitation of imitation—already a popular idea which Plato used in his dialectics in a later age.

What is true of the visible arts is equally true of the verbal art—poetry. The Greeks found a close relation between poetry and painting as Simonides says ‘Painting is silent poetry, poetry is painting that speaks’.66 Homer's epics were to them as the Bible is to the Christians full of facts and narration of actual events. The gods described therein are not the creation of Homer's poetic fancy-mere by phantastic stories. The poet records a true history of the

62. XXXIV. 19. 62. 63. The Greeks believed that even the activities of lower animals of Nature are imitated by men in their several technai. Plutarch cites the view of Democritus, "It is ridiculous that we should pride ourselves on powers of learning superior to those of the lower creatures, since Democritus proves that in the most important matters we are their pupils imitating the spider in weaving : and the swallow in building and melodious birds like swans and nightingales in song. De sollut. anim. 20. 974. 64. Pindar, Olympian Odes, IX. 103. 7. 65. Ibid. II. 86. 66. Plutarch., De Gloria Atheniensium, 3, quoted by Bowra, op. cit. P. 155.

gods 67 and heroes and he is an imitator in so far as the subject-matters of his writings are not his own invention, but true pictures of facts already existing. What Homer did through words, Pheidias did through stone. The Zeus of either Homer or Pheidias was not an imaginary figure. If Pheidias imitated the Zeus of Homer, Homer did imitate the divine figure of Zeus. But his perception of Zeus was not an ordinary one, for he was blind and the gods are not perceptible to ordinary eyes. Homer was a divine seer. Like a sooth-sayer he could perceive all the divine affairs by his extraordinary power as clearly as an ordinary man perceives the sensuous world. For this he requires no ordinary eyes. That is why perhaps the Greeks thought Homer and Tiresias blind. 68

The Greeks loved dancing because in dance the body with regular gesture and motion looks more beautiful than when it is without them, 69 and it is this body in regular rhythm which attracted the attention of the ancient sculptors and painters. But when they could capture only a moment of this rhythmic motion a dancer could do the whole of it. Gestures and postures, rhythms and motions are all the means of expressing the emotions of a being. Eurynome the first goddess is perhaps the inventor of dance as her desire for creation was expressed through her dance consisting of wild gestures and postures displaying a throbbing sensation of her soul. In fact this gesticulation is the earliest way of expression and communication before the discovery of language. Even when language replaced gesticulation it took its new role in expressing the sorrows or

67. Kathleen Freeman Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers, P. 22. 68. Homer's blindness is well-known : Apollodorus gives the myths behind the blindeness of Tiresias, iii. vi. 7. 69. Xenophon. Sypm. II. 15 ff. Statues made by the artists of old are relics of the ancient mode of dancing. Also see Athenaios, XIV. 629.

joys of people's daily affairs and in their performance of rites and magic. Returning from fights soldiers showed their friends the activities of war and how they killed their enemies by dancing fights, and similarly before going to fights they practised it by dancing. People tried to remember their heroes and benefactors by re-performing the deeds of the dead. When they suffered any natural calamity causing shortage of corns, epidemic death of domestic animals, they believed, they could drive them away by enacting what they desired. Agricultural mimetic rites found in every country are of this type. In Athens, for example, the vine god was married to a queen in order that the creeper may be loaded with bunches of 70 grapes ; and there and elsewhere people imitated thunder and lightning by gestures with some instru-

ments such as blowing bull-roars ( rhombos ) and throwing torches towards the sky. 71 Not even a single Orphic mystery was there in Greece wherein such imitative gestures were absent. 72 In the popular rites of Dionysus people were enacting the deeds and adventures of the god, and the Greeks used Orchēsis to denote such gesticulative perfor-

mances which cover any series of rhythmic movements 73 whether of limbs alone or of the -body and limbs taken together. Gradually Orchēsis made itself free from the religious anchors and in its secular form it became imitative in so far as it narrated a story both serious and ludicrous. Thus what Homer did through words, dancers did through

70. Frazer, J. G. The Golden Bough, ed. 1900, Vol. II, P. 133. 71. Strabo, X. 470 ; for imitative elements in religious rites and magical practices see Jane Ellen Harrison, Ancient art and Ritual, P. 47 ff; Stanely A. Cook, (ed.) Encyclopaedia of Ethics and Religion, Vol. X, P. 674 ff. ; Frazer, op. cit. Vol. I. Chap. 3. 71, Lucian The Dance, 15. 72. For the rite of Dionysus see Harper's Dictionary of Classical Literature and Antiquities, Ed. P. 1403 ff. 73, A. W. Pickard-cambridge, The Dramatic Festivals of Athens, P. 253.

gestures. Sometimes even dancers imitated gestures only without narrating a story, as for example, the angelikos,74 dance was a mimic of the gesticulations of messengers. The Skepias,75 was a form of dance in which the dancers twisted their necks in imitation of birds and in the forms such as 'the lion', 'the Sileni'76 activities of the animals concerned were imitated in as lively a manner as possible. The dance "String of Beads" was so called because in the dance the boys and girls moved in a row resembling a string of beads. The boys had to proceed with the steps and postures of youngmanhood and those they would use in war, while the girls followed showing feminine gestures properly. Thus the string was beaded with modesty and mainliness.77 But the Grœks were not satisfied with the imitation of gesticulations only. As the myths and legends gradually developed, they tried to dance a story also. On such occasions a group of singers sang a song and the dancers dressed up with proper costumes78 suitable for the characters narrated in the theme of the song, danced it with gestures and postures. Such a song was called a Hypor chēma or interpretative dance.79 Thus dance stood as a separate form of art parallel to drama and even the Emmeleia dance with its serious theme surpassed the charm of tragedy, for, as Lucian comments,80 in the representation of tragedy a sense of unnaturalness was displayed when man acted in the roles

74. Pollux, Onomastikon, IV. 103. 75. Loc. cit. 76. Ibid. 104. 77. Luc. op. cit. 12. 78. Use of masks was a popular costume in the performances of Greek drama and dance see Luc. op. cit. 27 ; Pollux, op. cit. IV, 140. Pickard—Cambridge Collects (op. cit. 203-8) certain types of masks of old men and women, young men and women, rustic people and slaves suitable for different roles. Masks had open mouths in plays, for the actors had to speak ; so they looked horrible while in dance those. having closed mouths looked more natural. See Luc. Iot. cit.; for dresses see Pickard—Cambridge, op. cit. p. 214. 79. Luc., op. cit. 16. 80. Luc. op. cit. 27—29.

of woman and the actors in general wore masks with open mouths that inspired a sense of detestation in the visitors, whereas in dance all this was absent— “the themes of tragedy and dance are common to both and there is no difference between those of the other (sic) except that the themes of the dance are more varied and more unhackneyed and they contain countless vicissitudes.”81 And the imitation of emotions with their proper gestures are so vivid in dance that neither Pheidias nor Apelles could surpass it in their sculpture and painting.82

Such dances had three parts—Phora, schēma and deixis.83 The story or the character to be danced with its proper gestures was called Schēma, and the motions in general without any specification were phorai. It seems, the Greeks used their hands more in such gestures than any other limbs, for Lucian notes a remark of Demetrius, “I hear a story that you are acting man, I do not just see it, you seem to me to be talking with very hands.”84 And sometimes there were some conventional gestures to indicate a particular emotion ; for example, those of tragic dance were to stretch out hand with palm upwards forming a concave ( the posture is technically called kalathiskos, literally “little basket” ) to stretch out hand with palm downwards, to jump up crossing the legs in tangfashion and to roll over.85 The third part deixis was “not an imitation but a plain downright indication of the thing represented.”86 The poets use proper names to indicate some person or a thing such as Achilles or Heracles, but in dance the dancers by certain order and method indicated exactly what schēma they were performing. It served the same purpose to dance what a name-plate would serve to a painting.

81. Ibid. 31. 82. Ibid. 35. 83. Plutarch, Symposiac Questions (Moralia, ed. W. W. Goodwin, Vol. III P. 457 ff.) IX. 15. 84. Luc. op. cit. 63. 85. Pollux, op. cit. IV. 105. 86. Plutarch, Symp. Quest., loc. cit.

It is for this vivid imitative character of dance that the Italian Greeks called the dancer a pantomime87 ( panto mimon literally meaning one who imitates everything ) who must cleave close to his subject-matters and can form himself to each detail of his plots in enacting characters and emotions, introducing now a lover, and now an angry person, one man afflicted with madness, other with grief and all this within fixed bounds.88 Lucian even goes to define dance as a "science of imitation and portrayal, of revealing what is in the mind and making intelligible what is obscure" and suggests90 that a dancer should know all the stories of the myths and legends and should so clearly imitate them through his gestures that even without any interpretative song the audience could understand the Schēma.

The Greek vocal music in its primary state consisted of singing the stories with tones proper to men and women in their various moods-an art resembling that of a rhapsode like Demodocus ; and the excellence of the musician was judged by his power to imitate the voice of the character of whom he was singing. The poet of the Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo appreciates this power of the girls who sang to Apollo and Leto -"they can imitate mimesthisasin the tongues of all men in their clattering speech, each would say that he himself were singing, so close to truth is their sweet song."91 Three modes were later developed-Dorian, Aeolian and Ionjan-according to the typical characters of these three Greek races.92 The Dorian mode exhibited the quality of manly vigour of magnificent bearing, not relaxed or merry but sober and intense, neither varied nor complicated. In the Aeolian were the elements of ostentation and turgidity displaying a lack of affection in

87. Luc. op. cit. 67. 88. Loc. cit. 89. Ibid. 36. 90. Luc. cit. 91. Hymn to Delian Apollo, 160–65. 92. Athenaios, Deipnosophistae XIV. 624–25.

their character. So the mode so called was neither

bright nor cheerful, but austere having a seriousness for

which it was suited to tragedy very well. Appropriate themes

were to be sung in their respective modes and the singer was

also required to possess the suitable character, for a man of

Ionian character could not sing in the Dorian mode befitti-

ngly, nor could an Aeolian sing in the Ionian mode. Thus

Damon the ancient master of music showed a close relation

between the soul of being and music "Noble souls are

produced by noble and Vulgar by Vulgar song."93 The souls

produce their appropriate music and music likewise reprodu-

ces its appropriate souls. The Greeks thus considered music to

be the most imitative of all arts in the sense that it could

represent the emotions of a soul more appropriately and

perfectly, being itself of the character as the soul's ; and as

such, in influencing the soul more deeply than other arts it

was also a means to instruction and mystic purification.

The tendency of doing something very close to

Nature noted in the ploughing scene on the Homeric shield

of Achilles and in the music of the Delian girls, was a typical

feature of the Greek character ; in a successful achievement

of this tendency they found perhaps the utmost success of

human skill. The thought was probably this : although they

are inferior to Nature in power, yet they can produce some-

thing with their limited agility which will be so close to the

form of its natural counterpart that a distinction between

the two will be rare. They call this product an imitation,

but not a duplication, for their 'creation is by no means

another thing exactly existing in Nature. The statue of man

is not exactly a man, nor does a dancer's representation of a

lion become exactly the activities of a lion, nor is a singer's

imitation of voice of a bull the roaring of a real bull. Pollux

records the popular view of the Greeks that they call an

93. Ibid. 628.

artist an imitator because he cannot be a simulator or duplicator, for his product is not similar to that of Nature, only a likeness of it. A painted figure is ‘a being made like’ (pragma mimēsin) or ‘imitation’ (mimēma) or ‘likeness’ (homoeōsin) or ‘a figure painted to life’ (eikona eipois auto-pragma).94

IV. Owing to a serious misunderstanding of this popular belief of the Greeks their arts especially sculpture and painting have been notoriously misinterpreted by the critics of various countries and ages. Their belief that a work of art is a mimēsis and eidōlon or an eikōn does by no means indicate that their artists have produced only the reflected copies of Nature. Many things are represented in their arts the counterparts of which are absent in Nature. The figures of satyrs and monsters, for example, are purely imaginary. Even when they believed that they were imitating the superb vision of the poets they were not really holding a mirror to it, rather it shows that they shared an equal vision with the poets and in this sense visible arts become complementary to verbal art. The artist embodied his own vision of what a god or a monster ought to be. The highest degree of power and beauty that he conferred on the image of a god and all the disparate limbs and features that he combined in a monster could not be derived from any single instance. For that he had to enlarge the scope of his

94. Pollux, op. cit. VIII. 126-27. Pollux also describes the artistic activity (especially painting) as Poiēsin or creation and takes it as a substitute for mimēsin. But this sense of the word is completely distinct from that of the English word used to-day. Poiēsin means any making in general including even the imitative activity. Pollux here records the popular Greek sense of the word which should not be confused with any free creation. As the word is used as a substitue for mimēsin, it must mean mimētikē poiēsin or ‘imitative creation.’

observation and to enrich the power of his imagination. In fact, all this required much more than a servile imitation. The artist looked freely at Nature with a deep sensitive soul and felt the points of beauty, features of qualities divine or monstrous; human or beastly and deduced principles therefrom by an inductive method. The principles such as "beauty consists in the proportion not of the elements, but of the parts, that is to say, of finger to finger, and of all the fingers to the palm, and of these to the fore arm, and of the fore arm to the upper arm and of all parts to each other,"95 and a statue "must be neither very tall and inordinately conky, nor short and dwarfish in build, but exactly the right measure, without being either fat which will be fatal to any illusion, or excessively thin that would suggest skeletons and corpses,"96 were not found by Polycleitus a priori. These he obtained by his thorough and careful observations which escape ordinary eyes.

Pheidias had only a few lines of Homer before him serving the model for his Olympian Zeus : "Kronian spake and nodded assent with his dark brows, and then the Ambrosial locks flowed streaming from the lord's immortal head, and he caused the great Olympus to quake."97 But it was not sufficient for a combination of 'the powerful' and 'the beautiful'98 that Pheidias accomplished in his statue which was so majestic in size and glamour that the big temple was unfit to contain it -"If Zeus arose and stood erect he would unroof of the temple."99 Arnobius of Sicca, a Christian theologist, with a severe detestation for the

95. Galen, De Temperature, 1.9, quoted by Bowra, op. cit. P. 170. 96. Luc. The dance, 74. 97. Iliad, 1.5.528., quoted by Strabo, VIII, 3.30. 98. Upon the finger of the Olympian Zeus was written : "Pantarces is beautiful." "Pantarces' means all-powerful and incidentally it was the name of Pheidias' boy-beloved who sat in front of him while he carved the statue. See Arnobius of Sicca, The Case against the Pagans, VI. 13. 99. Strabo, loc. cit.

Greek paganism condemned the statue identifying it with Pantarces, the boy-beloved of Pheidias who sat for his model.100 Such a remark shows not only want of aesthetic sense, but of a common sense as well; for a boy would not be of such a colossal size. Far from being identified with him the statue was hardly in the likeness of the boy. Pheidias' model undoubtedly was Homer as he has himself said to his nephew;101 he made the boy Pantarces sit before him just to inspire his sensibility. The same is true with his statue of the Great Athene at the Parthenon of Athens.

Zeuxis the painter did not copy any single Woman to paint his Helen, but held an exhibition of maidens, who paraded naked, and chose five wherefrom he selected the best points of beauty.102 Even a realistic picture like his bunch of grapes whereto birds flew up, or the curtain of Parrhasius which Zeuxis himself confused with a real one103 were not reflected images of their natural counterparts. They embodied all the best features that the painting could possess in order that they can be lively. 'The symbolic representations of thunder, lightning, victory, the nude heroes which even challenged Nature herself,104 the statues like a mad man in bronze by Apollodorus105 that would appear not a human being, but anger personified and many other examples of painting and sculpture that Pliny records106 prove sufficiently that an 'imitation' was no mere imitation.

100. Arnobius, op. cit, VI. 13. 101. Strabo, loc. cit. 102. Pliny, XXXV. 5.62. 103. Idem. loc. cit. 104. See his records of painting by Apelles and Protogenes. Apelles painted a picture of horse seeing which the living horses began to neigh. XXXV. 5.39. Protogenes wanted that his art should contain the truth itself, not merely a near-truth, XXXV. 5, 102-3. 105. Pliny, XXXIV. 19. 74. 106. See his detailed description of the Greek sculpture and painting in Books XXXIV and XXXV. Pliny records that the Greeks modelled many imaginary likenesses also, XXXV. 2. 11.

CHAPTER II

IMITATION OF THE SOUL

i. The philosophical background of the pre-Socratic Greek thought--change of mythical outlook and rise of rationalism--Thales, Anaximenes and Heracleitus--their challenge of the anthropomorphic cosmology of the myths, but agreement with it in holding an imitative relation between the microcosm and the macrocosm, ultimately implying an aesthetic principle that art imitates Nature--the principle made explicit in the Phythagorean philosophy--art as an imitation of the principles of the structure of the universe--the cosmic and aesthetic thoughts of Empedocles--painting, an imitation through colour of the visible and the invisible objects.

ii. The medical philosophy of Hippocrates--the microcosm as an imitation of the macrocosm--organic bodies built in imitation of the organic function of the universe--in production of art man's imitation of his own inner organic function--with the practical attitude of a classical Greek and of a medieval scientist, Hippocrates' depreciation of statuary as an imperfect imitation of the body without the soul and organic function--the pragmatic thought of the Sophists--Gorgias--fine art having no practical value--only producing an illusion of the reality and giving pleasure by the excellence of its illusory shape.

iii. Socrates the sophist--his pragmatic thought--similarity and dissimilarity with other Sophists--the beautiful and the useful--fine arts imitating visible objects--imitation versus symbolization--artistic imitation as ideal not photographic--imitation of the beautiful involving selection--plastic art imitating invisible gods in giving visible shapes to the poetic description--the emotional gestures of the body making the invisible soul visible--imitation of the soul by the artist through the imitation of these gestures--Socrates' refined sensitivity hampered by his bias towards the useful.

i. Sometimes it is held that in Greece aesthetics originated in the ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy to which Plato refers.1 The Ionian philosophers of the sixth century B. C. defied the mythical concept of the universe in the first stage of the Greek rationalism, and tried to substitute a scientific explanation for it. Up to this period the works of Homer and Hesiod were read not for any aesthetic interest. They were source-books of knowledge—of science and philosophy, “Since from the beginning,” writes Xenophanes, “all have learnt in accordance with Homer.” But the Greek mind of the 6th century B. C. was not in a mood to concede any scientific value to the work of the poets. They challenged it, or sometimes tried to read some allegorical sense into it. The first thing they attacked is the understanding of the universe in the light of human activities that it is created by the gods in a process similar to either sexual generation or artistic creation. The Anthropomorphic view of the gods was criticized by Xenophanes.3 The gods, he thought, have no resemblance to man, either in their shape or in their character ; and these humanized divinities have not created mortals, nor have they revealed to them all things from the beginning—“The cosmos which is the same for all, was not created by any one of the gods or of mankind.”4 Disbelief in the existence of gods would be heretic at this stage, liable to terrible punishment and the philosophers, indeed, did not try to prove themselves atheists ; rather on the contrary, they searched for an ultimate reality, all-powerful, ever-existing and omnipresent,

1. Plato, Republic, 607. 2. Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers, P. 22. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid. P. 26.

which would be self-sufficient to bring an order in the dive-

rsities. It would have no birth, no death, no suffering nor

any of the human passions, "there is one god", says Xeno-

phanes,5 "among gods and men, the greatest, not at all like

mortals, in body or in mind....He sees as a whole and hears

as a whole. But without toil he sees everything in motion,

by the thought of his mind....And he always remains in the

same place, not moving at all, nor is it fitting for him to

change his positions at different times." But what can be the

nature of this God?

The Greeks were conscious of the fact that only like

can produce like. "How can hair come", says Anaxagoras,

"from not-hair and flesh from not-flesh ?"6 The nature of the

cause must be inferred from the nature of the effect. The

mythical thinkers also proceeded on the same line when

they equalized the nature and shape of the gods with those of

men ; thus the point of difference between the philosophers

and the myth-makers was not so much of a method as of an

outlook. The philosophers undervalued the sensuous aspects

of the reality in details, and argued that the effect with all

its detailed sensuous aspects is not anticipated by its cause,

it inherits only the essence of its cause. God has not shape,

for while a sensuous shape is fluctuating, God must be

changeless to retain order among the changing effects. It

is thus a substance for Xenophanes.7

The Primal substance is water according to Thales;8

he holds this notion perhaps, as Aristotle suggests,9 observing the fact that the nutriment of all things is moist, and

that heat itself is generated from the moist and kept alive

by it ; and the seeds of all things, further, have a moist

nature and water is the origin of the nature of moist in

5. Ibid. P. 23, 6. Ibid. P. 84. 7. Diogenes Laertius, IX. 19.

6. Aristotle, Metaphysics, 983 b 20. 9. Ibid.

things. A later surreptitious fragment10 informs that he

was aware of the much discussed four substances–earth,

water, fire and air and held water as the chief one. Air

was the first principle for Anaximanes–“As our soul, being

air holds us together, so do breath and air surround the

whole universe”;11 and according to Heracleitus Fire is

the primary substance. As a contemporary of Pythagoras,

he was probably influenced by his concept of harmony or

measure as the organizing principle of the universe ; and for

that his “ever living” Fire is “kindled in measure and

quenched in measure”.12 Fire first changes into sea ; and

“of sea, half is earth and half fiery water spout…earth is

liquefied into sea, and retains its measure ‘according to the

same law as existed before it became earth’”.13

This shows that although these philosophers attacked

the way of understanding the universe in the light of human

affairs–their process of procreation with its concrete

sensuous aspects, yet they agreed with the mythic cosmology

that the sensuous commonplace world is so related with the

ultimate reality that the substances of both are the same in

kind though not in degree. Mythology says that the form

and substance of the mortals participate in or are imitation

of those of the gods, their creators, only with the difference

that mortals lack the degree of longevity which the gods

possess. The philosophers now say that the objects of the

common sensuous world participate in or are imitation of the

ultimate reality which is one and unending in so far as their

substance is one in kind. The difference of shape among

phenomena is due not to the creation of the Reality but to

its transformation or modification by purely natural processes

such as rarefaction and condensation. This may be the

ground of a quarrel between poetry and philosophy, accor-

10. Anc. PS. Phil. P. 19. 11. Ibid. P. 19. 12. Ibid. P. 26. 13. Ibid.

P. 27.

ding to Plato, but the philosophers concerned did not think so. The object of their conscious attack was neither poetry nor paganism, nor even religiuos ideas. They simply attacked the current beliefs regarding the nature of the ultimate reality. This attack was like the challange of one philosopher or school of philosophy against another. They would not do so had Homer and Hesiod been read not as philosophers but as poets in the modern sense of the term.

Throughout the whole course of the development of Greek philosophy one may notice the change of the notion of this Reality and the process of its transformation, but the relation between the commonplace particular objects and the universal reality was always the same—the particular participates in the universal or the microcosm is the imitation of the macrocosm. Ultimately it coincided with an aesthetic principle, sometimes implicitly and sometimes explicitly, that the artistic creation is an imitation of the commonplace reality.

Pythagoreanism, perhaps for the first time, more explicitly mentions the imitative character of the fine arts. Pythagoras is said to be a pupil of Anaximander who was also influenced by Anaximenes. Pythagoreans represented the world as inhaling ‘air’ from the boundless mass outside it and this air is identified with ‘the unlimited.’14 But this system differs from the earlier doctrine in holding that the process of transformation of this primeval substance is not natural such as rarefaction and condensation. The unlimited matter takes forms by the influence of Limit or Form, and this limit consists of elements like proportion, order and harmony which are all brought into effect by number. Thus Pythagorean philosophy occupies an eminent place in the history of Greek thought in discovering the importance of

14. Arist. Metaph. 983 b 25,

‘form’ without which matter cannot be transformed into various shapes. Matter and form both are necessary for the cosmic creation. Plato and Aristotle were later influenced by this thought to a great extent ; and for the student of aesthetics it is one of the crucial points of emphasis. As in the cosmic creation, so in the artistic product, form and matter both are necessary. But unfortunately this school was so much allured by this ‘form’ and its aspects – proportion, order and harmony based upon mathematical numbers that it undervalued greatly the presence of matter. Later Pythagoreans thought air as a kind of moist and still later a void.15 Thus number became the ultimate reality and the happy balance of the earlier thought was lost. Things according to this school exist by imitation of numbers16 ; and mathematical principles are the principles of all things. Pythagoreans tried to justify this mathematical nature of the universe by examples of the arts like music and medicine which, they thought, are imitations, like other existing things, of the universe. It is the business of the physicians to bring a proportionate blend of different humours. Similarly musical harmony is founded upon numbers. “The difference of notes is due to the different numbers of vibrations of the sounding instrument. The musical intervals are likewise based upon numerical proportions. The model of this human music is the harmony of the Celestial bodies.”17 The pitch of the notes in this heavenly harmony is “determined by the velocities of the heavenly bodies, and these in turn by their distances which are in the same ratio as the consonant intervals of the Octave.”18 The soul is also an imitation of the celestial harmony being itself an attunement, based on musical proportion ; and it takes so much pleasure in music, an imitation and vehicle of

15. GP, P. 51. 16. Arist, Metaph. 985 b 25. 17. CHGP, P. 35. 18. EGP, P. 306.

the divine melody, as both are of the same nature. On this basis Pythagoreans held medicine and music as purgatives for the body and the soul respectively.

Pythagoreanism may differ from the previous thought regarding the nature of the reality, but agrees with it in admitting an imitative relation between the universal and the particular—the microcosm imitates the macrocosm, the human art imitates the divine art. Some might smell a mythic symbolism in the Pythagorean explanation of the universe especially when it attempts to identify different qualities with different numbers. One, for example, is point, two is line, three is plane, nine is justice, ten perfection and so on. But these are all the whims of the immature thinkers all of whom were not of the same opinion19 in matters of detail. When they are counting the ten rotating heavenly bodies on the basis that number ten is perfection and heaven is also perfection, the argument is based upon an invalid analogy. Pythagoras was, as it seems, involved in the mythic exercises of the Orphic sect and at Delos he was influenced by the idea of catharsis of the soul of the Apollonian religion20. That is why music and medicine hold an eminent place in his philosophy. But he was more a rationalist than a mystic. He differed from the Orphic sect in holding that philosophy is the highest music,21 and that rational thought also can purge the soul. In fact, the tone of mysticism is very weak in Greek thought. It was rather more prominent in the past Creto–Minoan culture—in the worship of the thunderbolt and in the dance of the kouretes. Even the attempt of Anaxagoras to explain Homeric epics as allegorical expressions of truth indicates no mysticism or symbolism. He has rather tried to prove that the epic poets are scientists, they have personified the scientific facts only for the easy under-

19. Arist. Metaph, 985. b 25 ; CHGP, P. 37. 20. GP, P. 41 21. GP, P. 41 ; CHGP, P. 82.

standing by the masses. The Pythagorean doctrine is essentially an attempt to give a physical explanation of the universe. Their lesser emphasis on matter ( e.g. air ) may point to their more longing for the formal characteristics of the universe, but yet it will be probably wrong to say that they wiped out the matter completely, for how can sound be produced unless air is there?22 The example of human music does not contain merely a metaphorical interest. It is no metaphor at all as being causally connected with the celestial music, it becomes a microcosm, a human attempt to imitate the macrocosmic melody, in order that the soul having the same harmonic structure in imitation of the universe will take pleasure in it. For the Pythagoreans, then, art is an imitation of the principles of the structure of the universe in a smaller scale.

Empedocles suggests this idea more strongly. But before turning to him we need a discussion of some fundamental points here. In the myths the position of human beings is very poor ; they are merely puppets in the hands of the divinities. This complete control of human power by the divine beings undervalues the human talent. Out of their own accord the mortals can do nothing. They would remain uncultured had not Prometheus, the Titan given them fire and provided them with the skill of the divine arts. A reminiscence of this view is in the voice of Epicharmus, a comedian of the 5th century. B. C.—“The human logos is sprung from the divine logos, and it brings to each man his means of life and his maintenance. The divine logos accompanies all the arts, itself teaching men what they must do for their advantage, for no man has discovered any art, but it

22. The idea that sound is produced as being the concussion of air is said to have been first mentioned by Archelaus of the fifth century B. C. Diog. Laert, II. 17. It may not be improbable to say that the idea was already present in the Pythagoreans which Archelaus made explicit.

is always god."23 But his is not the voice of the age ; it contains little philosophical value, since Epicharmus is more imaginative than reflective in his temper. A demand for human freedom becomes acute as the Greek civilization proceeds. As human shape takes prominence in art, so human talent becomes prominent in all human activities. The Orphic sect busies itself in practising the rituals by which the human soul will gradually be free from the fetters of mortality and will become immortal ultimately. Thus the scope of humanity is no more limited and restricted by the supremacy and whims of the divinities ; it ventures to have an equal place with gods. This is obvious in the voice of Xenophanes the Ionian—“Truly gods have not revealed to mortals all things from the beginning ; but mortals by long seeking discover what is better."24 It should not be assumed that the mortals have so much independent power as to produce something totally new. But at least this much freedom and power they have that they can improve to some extent upon the creation of God by their talent, which is itself a gift of god. This humanism develops gradually and reaches the apex in Socrates who draws the attention of the philosophers, busied in reflecting upon the nature of the universe by a mathematical or astronomical calculation or physical investigation, to the interest of men, and invites them to determine the nature of only those things which are related to practical human interest.

Empedocles determines the artistic activity with a striking insight into the individual talent of the artist in producing the resemblances of physical objects. As a philosopher his eclectic character is obvious in his borrowing the thoughts of eminent predecessors and blending them into a new one. His concept of cosmic creation is based on the cosmology of the Ionians, Eleatics, Pythagoreans and

28. Anc. PS. Phil. P. 39. 24. Ibid. P. 22.

Heracleitus. The Ionians referred to two primeval elements - water and air, and Heracleitus to fire; Empedocles now adds one more - earth. He agrees with Parmenedes that "what is Is".25 The Being cannot pass into not-Being, nor becoming can ever be Being; for example, Fire cannot become Water, nor Earth Air. He also supports Heracleitus in that change is possible, although he differs from him in holding that the Reality is not a flux, but a solid matter. Although the root principle is solid and indestructible it is yet capable of transformation, as for example, water can become brass or iron, and mixing with fire it can be air. Here he is more akin to the Ionians - than to the Eleatics; and differing from the Ionians he holds that the force required in such transformation is not coming from within the roots themselves, such as in rarefaction and condensation it comes from outside. He asserts that there are two forces - Love or harmony and Hate or discord in addition to the four roots. Parmenedes, of course, admitted the force of love before.26 Love is the force of creation, and the resemblance of this cosmic Love can be found in the sexual urge for union among the animate beings in a smaller scale. Hate is the force of destruction or separation. But these two are not diametrically opposed, rather Hate supplements love. It is because male and female are separated that they long to unite. Thus separation is the cause of union, and in creation both act with equal prominence. This separation and union, however, do not occur arbitrarily. There is a law or principle following which these two actions make creation possible; and here come the Pythagoreans. To explain this, Empedocles gives a concrete example of a painter's activity: "As when painters decorate temple-offerings with colours; men who following their intelligence are well-skilled in their craft; there when they take many-coloured pigments in

25. Ibid. P. 43ff. ; CHGP, P. 82 26. Anc. PS. Phill. P. 45

their hands and have mixed them in a harmony taking more of some, less of another, create from them forms like to all things, making trees and man and women and animals and birds and fish nurtured in water, and even long lived gods, who are highest in honour27 ..." The passage suggests obviously that a painting is fundamentally an activity that produces likenesses of objects animate and inanimate, either visible such as trees, birds (flying beings), fishes (swimming beings) and human beings (that live on lands) or invisible beings such as the gods. But this production of likenesses is not merely a passive act of imitating something blindly as a mirror reflects an object. The role of the artist's intelligence is emphasized here - painters are "men, who following their intelligence are well-skilled in their craft". Thus an artist does not merely copy the objects of Nature. He collects some colours and mixes them choosing more of one and less of another in such a harmonious way that it appears like an object of Nature. This choice of colours and the process of mixing require the talent of the artist. While compared with the cosmic creation the colours seem to be materials, the process of mixing is the cosmic harmony, and the forces of union and separation come from the artist himself. The artistic likeness, thus produced, cannot be said to resemble the original in both form and matter ; The artist's materials are considerably different from the materials of the cosmos ; and in this respect, the artist is incapable of imitating Nature perfectly. It is the form of the cosmic creation which contains harmony and order that the artist imitates. Artistic imitation, then, is only formal. The order, the process of arrangement of the parts with the whole, which makes a man or a tree in Nature, must be the same in painting ; and as the painter varies regarding the material of his creation, it is impossible to find an exact counterpart of the painted man

27. Ibid P. 55

or fiish in Nature. Thus a painted man's colour may be so

bright, the entire construction so muscular that in Nature

its original may be rare, but it must not be so painted that

it will be unlike a man in its formal arrangement i.e. the

fixation of eyes, proportion of the head to the body and the

place of the hands must have the same order as we find in

Nature. This is, as it seems, the nature of artistic imitation

according to the Empedoclean passage quoted above,

wherein the genius of the artist is obvious in his production

of the likeness out of materials that are very unlike those of

the original creation. It might have cast immense influence

upon Polycleitus whose Canon of sculpture suggests that

beauty consists in the proportion of the parts to the whole.28

ii. In the writings of Hippocrates, however, it is

strange to notice that the intelligence required in the artistic

imitation is overlooked. The cosmic creation for Hippocrates

too, involves matter and form. There are only two mate-

rials-water and fire, and form involves the process by

which the two materials of opposite nature unite so as to

create the universe. The very essential principle of creation

is the combination of contraries such as hot and cold, giving

and receiving, increasing and diminishing, union and separa-

tion, visible and invisible, conscious and unconscious, right

and left, ups and downs and so on. All the opposites are

only verbal and apparent. In truth, they are the same. While

two men saw a log, one pulls it downward, and the other

upwards, but they do the same thing i.e. they cut the log.

So the two opposite elements, fire and water or hot and

cold, mix in various proportions and the world is created.

What is true of the cosmos, is also true of man, the mirco-

cosm. He is like all other animals composed of two opposite

elements-fire and water. His breath is cold and body is hot.

28. See quoted Pt. I, Chap. I, supra.

In the belly the two elements—water and fire mix to digest his food, and both moist and dry are necessary for his life. The soul is intelligent and conscious while the body is unconscious and non-intelligent. But the whole being of man is possible for the proportionate combination of these two opposite elements. The soul cannot be conscious unless the belly takes food and the belly cannot be active unless the soul is in the body.

Everything is changing. A child grows to manhood, and in this process of change he gives up the childish habits ; and in this sense diminishes. But in this diminution he increases also—he grows in figure, knowledge and experience. The becoming ceases to be what it was, and becomes something what it was not, and the being loses something in not being the becoming. Such is the outline of the physiological philosophy of Hippocrates. It is obvious that he was greatly influenced by his predecessors. The Ionians, Eleatics, Pythagoreans and Heracleitus equally contributed to his philosophy with whom he agreed in holding that the microcosm is an imitation of the macrocosm.

Regarding the creation of arts and crafts Hippocrates agrees with Xenophanes30 that these are all human creations not given to man by the gods wholly. Of course it is not completely something new as it is an expansion of the fundamental formula by which he himself is created. The principle and materials are supplied to him by the gods upon which he improves. Thus fundamentally his thought is very much like the mythical explanation of the artistic activity. “But men do not understand,” says Hippocrates, “how to observe the invisible through the visible. For the arts, they employ, are like the nature of man, yet they know it not. For the mind of the gods taught them to copy (mimeisthai) their own functions, and though they know what

29. Regimen, Passim. 30. Regimen, XI.

they are doing yet they know not what they are copying (mimeontai.)"31 The sense is that a practising artist carries on the function of imitation within himself, but is not aware of the nature of this function rationally. The artists are thus only blind imitators of the truth ( principle of the universe ) whereas the philosophers ( including himself ) possess the rational faculty of knowing this truth.

we get the idea, then, that man in producing arts imitates the function which runs within himself, and this function in human hody is an imitation of the cosmic function, for Hippocrates says that the construction of human body is a copy (mimēsin) of the earth.32 As function is the union of the opposites, it may be said that Hippocrates agrees with Empedocles that artistic imitation is formal in nature. But a great difference is to be noted also. For the latter, the artist imitates directly the cosmic function, while for the former, he imitates the human function which is itself an imitation of that of the cosmos ; the artist thus imitates an imitation.

Hippocrates is trying to prove his thesis ingeniously by citing the function of certain arts and crafts.33 Seercraft combines the visible with the invisible as it passes from persent to future ; a physician's art unifies the opposites such as hot and cold into an organic whole so as to produce a balanced proportion to cause good health ; when carpenters saw, one pulls and the other pushes, "imitating (mimeontai) the nature of man"34, who draws breath in and expels out. "From the same notes come musical compositions that are not the same, from the high and from the low, which are alike in sound. Those that are most diverse make the best harmony, those that are least diverse make the worst. If a musician composed a piece all on one note, it would fail to please. It is the greatest change and the most varied that

31. Loc. cit. 32. Ibid. X. 33. Ibid. X. 12. ff, 34. Ibid. XVI.

please the most."35 A cook mixes vegetables of different

kinds and spices of different tastes to produce a single curry.

The arts of the seller and the actor are combinations of

deception and admiration-the seller is admired if he can

deceive the customer, and in acting the actor is admired by

the audience when the actor deceives them and the

audience are deceived consciously.36 Similarly the

"statue-makers copy (mimēsin) the body without the soul, as

they do not make intelligent things, using water and earth,

drying the moist and moistening the dry. They take from

that which is in excess and add to that which is deficient,

making their creations grow from the smallest to the

tallest. Such is the case of man. He grows from his

smallest to his greatest, taking away that which is in excess,

adding to that which is deficient, moistening the dry and

drying the moist."37 A statue-maker's ( in fact, of all the

artists ) way of imitation is obvious and it is undervalued by

Hippocrates for it copies only the body without the soul and

even that body built with clay and water is quite inferior to

a body of flesh and bones. One can see here how practical

is the motive of Hippocrates which is very natural for a

physiologist. He suggests that every art is essentially imita-

tive, such as music, acting in a play and statuary. But

while other arts are described with a tone of appreciation,

only statuary is depreciated bitterly, the only cause

being, most probably, its uselessness. Sculptural imitation

is merely formal as it imitates only the outward form without

the inner organic activity, while the imitation of music

is connected to some extent with the soul. He recognises

the pleasing effect of music and it is not improbable that he

believed in the purgative power of music as it was a familiar

notion at that time ; and as a physician he recommended

music on the very ground that made him recommend

35. Ibid. XVIII. 36. Ibid. XXIV. 37. Ibid. XXI.

medicine. Both of them have the healing power—if medicine heals the body, music heals the soul, and the soul is the very essence of life. But a statue is of no use ; it is even inferior to a dead body.

Here is noted a considerable change in the Greek classical thought from that of the myths. Pygmalion was once allured by the charm of a statue of Aphrodite which he took to his bed avoiding even the fairest of the living women of his age, and Butades' daughter got enough consolation from the statue of her lover in his absence ; and Empedocles, a philosopher, appreciated a painted likeness as a work of genius. It is not permissible to think that the statuary of the time of Hippocrates lost its charm, which is contained in the early times. History rather tells us that the Hellenic art was on its śummit in the middle part of the 5th century B. C.

It is from about the late 5th century onwards that the Greeks began to be more práctical in their attitude to life and more rational in their speculation on the systems of the universe. A plain belief in the things and a frankness in the expression of emotion lost their strength now. So the statue of a woman that once attracted Pygmalion seems now hate-ful, as it lacks the warmth of a living body, in the eyes of Aeschylus' Menelaus in the absence of Helen :

"The grace of shapely statues Is hateful to her husband, And in the eyes' starvation All love drifts away."38

This pragmatic outlook can be well marked in the cosmology of Anaxagoras, who believed with Empedocles that the forces acting upon the root materials come from outside.39 These forces were physical or material according to Empedocles and the atomists. But for Anaxagoras these were non-

38. Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 416-19 39. Anc. PS. Phil., F. 59. 11-12

physical. It is intelligence which produces these forces, for these are directed towards some particular purpose. The world is not a chaotic organisation governed by chances. Our observation shows that Nature adopts some means to acheive an end ; and this purposive function cannot be carried out by blind physical forces. An intelligent power or mind is the controller of Love and Hate directing them to create harmony, order and beauty to bring a rational cosmos out of chaos.

From this rational and practical outlook sprang forth the Sophistic philosophy. It was least concerned with the astronomical or physical problems of the universe. With an awareness of the limits of man's knowledge the sophists were led to preach a sort of pragmatic philosophy. Man's main concern is with the society in which he lives, and his best object of life should be to live with an establishment, both social and political. As they confined themselves only to the sensible means of getting the knowledge of reality of the world, they became sceptic. "About the gods," says Protagoras, "I am not able to know whether they exist or do not exist, nor what they are like in form ; for the factors preventing knowledge are many : the obscurity of the subject and the shortness of human life."40 Thus any attempt to know the reality behind the sensible shape will end in a deception. As for example, when one tries to identify the works of arts with the reality beyond it, he is deceived. Of course he gets pleasure in such deception ; but it is in no way the pleasure derived from the knowledge of the reality. "Tragedy by means of legends and emotions," says Gorgias, "creates a deception in which the deceiver is more honest than the non-deceiver, and the deceived is wiser than the non-deceived."41 A play is not real, but it only appears as real or rather imitates the reality in a concrete sensuous shape. The

40. Anc. PS. Phil, P. 126. 41. Loc. cit.

moment we try to consider it as real we are deceived. So the path from appearance to reality leads to illusion or error. Thus art, as is suggested by the sophists, has no practical value which is well preserved by crafts. It is an imitation either of the thing directly perceived or of the facts told in the legends ; and their imitations, in order to be, successful, should be so vivid that they would allure the observer to accept it as the real and thus will deceive him ultimately. The aim of these imitative or rather ‘deceptive’ arts is only to give pleasure and, far from being useful, its value is strictly limited to emotion only, for none will like to be deceived in the practical field.

Gorgias admits, too, the emotional value of painting and sculpture. "Painters," he says, "however, when they create one shape from many colours, give pleasure to sight ; and the pleasure afforded by sculpture is divine."42 We may conclude on the basis of the above passage of the philosopher that he admits art to be imitative, and that both painting and sculpture give pleasure by the excellence of their illusory shape. While comparing Gorgias with Hippocrates one finds that according to Hippocrates all arts are fundamentally imitative. Among them some are useful while others are not. Music is most probably included in the useful class for the reason mentioned above ; and although acting has some value, it is regarded as deceptive. "The actor's art," he says, "deceives those who know."43 Gorgias, on the other hand, gives almost the same view regarding the actor's art or rather the art of drama. But he would not hold that all arts are imitative, agreeing with the fundamentals of Hippocratic cosmology, for as a sophist he would be sceptic regarding the nature of the universe. His classification of arts seems to be two-

42. Ibid. P. 133. 43. Hippo., Regim. XXIV.

fold, useful and deceptive or imitative. Thus the separation

of fine arts from the useful arts or crafts seems to be present

in germs long before Plato, who only categorically mentions

it.

iii. Socrates, too, is a sophist,44 and so he deals

much with the useful. He agrees with other Sophists that

it is no part of man's business to search after the astronomi-

cal or physical mysteries of the universe. For him the best

object to know is himself. He differs from other Sophists on

the point that while they denied any possibility of an objec-

tive standard of knowledge in admitting sense-perception as

the only means of knowing that led to consider all knowledge

subjective, Socrates founded knowledge upon reason which

must have an objective standard : "all knowledge is

knowledge through concepts", and a concept means the

universal characteristics. But he was not a metaphysician to

apply this formula to the knowledge of Reality. With a

very practical motive he started his career as a philosopher,

and that motive was to acquire goodness. Among all arts

the royal one was to know how to live well. To live well

depends upon the attainment of Good which is equal to

virtue including all the human qualities such as tempe-

rance, prudence, foresight, benevolence, kindness etc. Thus

the beautiful is identified with the good and ultimately with

the useful. He discusses with Aristippus45 that the good

and the beautiful are the same and they are judged by their

usefulness. A golden shield may not be beautiful if it is not

useful, while a useful basket of dung can be considered

beautiful. The sāme thing, then, may be ugly and beautiful

according to the purpose it serves. What is beautiful in

regard to wrestling, is ugly in regard to running.

44. G.P., Chap.VIII ; CHGP, Chap.X. 45. Xenophon, Memora-

bilia, III. 8.1-7 ; IV. 6.9.

In his discourse on arts like painting and statuary he observes, however, that they are imitative, because they represent visible objects. In fact, the object of imitation must be sensible, otherwise imitation would be impossible. The sensible representation of something imperceptible is called a symbolol ; the abstract quality of virtue, for example, is represented by white colour and courage by a lion. So white colour is not an imitation of virtue, nor is the lion an imitation of courage. They are symbols. The Greeks worshipped the statue of Zeus not as a symbol, but as an imitation, for, as we saw, they thought, the poet had seen the god through his divine eyes and the statue-maker imitated this perception which the poet had expressed in words. But when the Cretans worshipped Zeus in the mystic rites of Kouretes of the Creto-Minoan culture in the shape of a thunderbolt, it was a symbol-worship. The Greeks would never agree that the thunderbolt is the imitation of Zeus. It is for their love of the concrete shapes that they substituted images for the symbols.

Socrates suggests that a painter imitates, not symbolizes. But this imitation is not an exact copy of the visible object point by point,46 for such copying is impossible only through the use of colours. Besides, as the painters aim at an ideal imitation i. e. an imitation of the object, beautiful ( and the beautiful is the useful ) in the physical world, his function should differ from that of a photographic camera, for it might be difficult for him to find an object perfectly beautiful which he wants to imitate, and for that he would have to select some points here and some there. So imitation of the beautiful involves selection, and this selection is guided ultimately by the standard of the useful for a practical purpose. Hence this standard of choice is, to a great extent, objective.

46. Ibid. III. 10. 2.

If imitation requires a visible object, invisible spirits such as the soul cannot be imitated. “How can they be imitated (mimēton) Socrates,” says Parrhasius, the painter, “which has neither proportion nor colour, nor any of the qualities you just mentioned now, and is not ever a visible object ?”47 Parrhasius is a painter, he has no power of speculation over his work. He simply imitates what he sees before him. He can well imitate emotional expressions in a man such as friendly looks etc. ; but he cannot think of imitating the invisible soul. Socrates' here makes clear that the painter does not know what he does. He, in fact, imitates the soul which is concretized through the emotional expressions of a man ; and if the painter can imitate these expressions successfully, he will be said to have imitated the soul.48

Hippocrates, we saw, condemned the art of a statue-maker as non-intelligent, because it imitated only the body without imitating the soul. That was a natural voice of a physician for whom the soul is the fount of organic action, such as breathing, digesting, talking and perceiving. But for a philosopher emotional expressions are much more powerful than the physical reactions. A man may not actually kill a person, but if any emotional sign to kill him is seen in his face

47. Ibid. III. 10.3-4. 48. Dr. Pande, however, suggests (Comparative Aesthetics, Vol. 2, P. 10; 551-2) that this imitation of the soul is symbolization. But this interpretation is confusing for, as we saw, mysticism, the fount of symbolic attitude was mostly alien to the Greek thought, and besides, where they could see the images of the gods as the imitation of the concrete shapes of the divinities viewed by the poets, and held that nothing can be imitated in art which is invisible to the eyes either directly or indirectly, it is doubtful to say that they attempted to symbolize he invisible soul. If the gods were visible through the poet's eyes, souls were also visible through the actions of the bodies and in following the words of the poet and the actions of the body they were imitating, not symbolizing, they believed, gods and souls.

or is suggested in his gestures, then he should be rightly judged a murderer. A painted figure, if it imitates these emotional activities, or suggests their physical reactions, would be lively and would give pleasure. "Do you make your statues," Socrates asks to the statuary Cleiton, "appear more life-like (ap-eikazōn) by assimilating your work to the figures of the living? ...Do you not then make your figures appear more like reality and more striking by accurately imitating (ap-eikazōn) the parts of the body, that are drawn up or drawn down, compressed or spread out, stretched or relaxed by the gesture ? ...And the exact representation (apo-mimeisthai) of the passions of men engaged in any act does it not excite a certain pleasure in the spectators....Must you not accurately copy (ap-eikasteon) the menacing looks of combatants ? And must you not imitate (mimētea) the countenance of conquerors, as they look joyful ? A statuary, therefore, must represent (pros-eikazein) in his figures the activities of the soul."49 This shows how Socrates thought that a successful product of art must have a soul, a view that develops over the Pythagoreans and Empedocles who gave emphasis upon the imitation of the proportion only. But this proportion or formal imitation is not sufficient; art must be an emotional imitation as well, and one can imitate the emotion of the soul by imitating the actions of the body. This outstanding suggestion of Socrates regarding the mystery of art creation was taken up and developed over by Aristotle which shines as the light post of the Greek aesthetic thought.

Inspite of a fine sensitivity, Socrates, however, could not be a perfect aesthete for the idea of the good or useful was haunting his mind. Being allured by his pragmatic attitude he considered that painting and coloured decoration of the walls give us less pleasure than the walls

49. Xenop. Mem. III. 10. 7 ff.

do.50 For him wall paintings are useless and hence less pleasurable than the useful. Similarly, painting imitating good-looking men gave him more pleasure than those imitating bad only.51 The common taste of the Greeks was, of course, of this nature throughout the Hellenic period. Thus guided by the contemporary taste Socrates lost the balance of his sensitivity to the fine arts. It is said, "he used to express his astonishment that the sculptors of marble statues should take pains to make the block of marble into a perfect likeness of a man (hopos homoiotatos) and should take no pains about themselves,52 lest they should turn out mere blocks, not men."52 This is why perhaps he left statuary, his paternal occupation and devoted his entire life to the attainment of the Good, the Supreme goal of human beings ; but unfortunately having been misunderstood he lost his life in prison.

50. Ibid. III.8. 3. 51. Ibid. III.10. 5. 52. Diog. Laert. II. 33.

CHAPTER III

IMITATION OF IMITATION

i. Plato an Apollonian - an outline of his cosmology - the sensible imitating the intelligible - wide denotation of the term imitation - its connotation in general - role of imitation in cosmology, psychology and linguistics. ii. Cosmos, a product of divine art, God's creation out of a play - its creatures, puppets in His hand - human creation imitating the divine creation - division of human creation into purposive ( or practical ) and imitative ( or fine ) arts - the specific notion of imitation in the imitative arts - two principles of artistic imitation - qualitative and quantitative proportions - these proportions more empirical than mathematical - imitative character of sculpture, painting, music, dance, poetry and drama - psychology of aesthetic experience involving an imitative process - its two factors transportation and identification. iii. Proportional correctness not enough for artistic imitation - necessity of beauty - beauty of artistic imitation not consisting in only a perfect likeness - necessity of formal attractiveness - Platonic conception of beauty in general - artistic beauty inferior to Natural beauty. iv. Plato's polemic of imitative arts not from an aesthete's, but from a metaphysician's and a statesman's point of view - Collingwood's argument - criticism - Verdenius' argument - Criticism - conclusion.

i. Plato was a representative of the Apollonian aspect of the Greek culture. The Greeks believed that he was Apollo himself in a human birth and was born with the purity of heart and clarity of expression, both pleasing and rational. It has been said1 that Plato's father was very

1. Diog. Laert, III 2.

much keen about a sex relation with his mother before the child-birth at which Apollo appeared to him in a vision in fear of which he left the attempt ; and Plato was born on the birth-day of Apollo. Besides, Socrates saw in a dream a cygnet on his knees which flew away with a sweet voice ; it was on the next day that Plato was introduced to him.2 He was indeed a white swan that sang a song of reason. Poetry and philosophy were perhaps for the first time blended up uniquely in the history of European culture. He was an Apollonian as opposed to Dionysiac in the sense that he preferred reason to emotion. But nonetheless he was sensitive to art. It is said that he brought Sophron's mimes for the first time to Athens, and his genuine love for it can be deduced from the account of its copies being found under his pillows.3 He read all the extant works of his literature and modelled the dramatic forms of his dialogues on the style of Sophron, for he wanted to popularize philosophy.

As a philosopher Plato was hlghly eclectic.4 Although he was a disciple of Socrates, his philosophy arose from the unique combination of the ideal of the Pythagoreans, Eleatics and Heracleitus. Plato agreed with Socrates' view that all knowledge is knowledge through concept. But while this concept or definition was for Socrates a rule of thought, Plato made it a metaphysical substance. Knowledge of truth ( or substance ) is possible only through reason or intelligence, while no knowledge of the sensible things is possible, as they have no stability of existence. How can one know a thing which changes every moment ? Plato's physical object ( phainomenon ) is thus Heracleitus' flux or Parmenides' becoming. Parmenides' Being is Plato's truth or eidos ; and the relation between phainomenon and eidos is one of imitation,6 a relation which his predecessors traced

2. Ibid. III. 5. 3. Ibid. III. 18. 4. III. 8. cf. Arist. Metaph. 987b 10. 5. Stace, op. cit. 183. 6. Pl. Parmenides, 132 ; cf. Burnet, op. cit. P. 338ff.

between the macrocosm and the microcosm. Phenomenon imitates the idea, its very essence. Thus there are many phenomena but one Idea. White objects are many, but the reality i.e. whiteness is only one. For every class of physical objects, then, there is one Idea. Thus Plato's system of Reality starts with an idealistic attitude but ends in a pluralistic realism. That is so because he could not be free from the essentially realistic outlook of the Greeks. His Ideas were only the abstracted forms of the mythical divinities existing in a world of their own, invisible to eyes but intelligible to reason. Although the world of the ideas and of the Olympic gods are not the same, the hierarchy of the former is analogous to that of the latter.

The imitative relation between the sensible or becoming and the intelligible or Being is the essential point of the Platonic philosophy. This establishes Plato's typical bias for an imagistic way of thinking which was unique in the formation of the Greek thought.7 We have seen how the cosmologists conceived of an imitative relation between the microcosm and the macrocosm, but Plato extended the area of this relation to other spheres such as linguistics, dialectics and aesthetics. Hence the word imitation (mimēsis) or a class of words having the sense of imitation is used not within a limited circumference. As Theactetus says, imitation is a very comprehensive term which includes under one class the most diverse sorts of things.8 Its scope is universal and application is indeterminate owing to its use in several contexts. Plato uses ordinarily three roots—eidō, ( its derivative eidōlon), eikazō (eikon, eikazein, eikastikē or eikasía etc. ) and mimēlazō (mimēsis)9 to indicate the sense of imitation irrespective of any specific choice of words, as if taking them as synonyms.

7. G. F. Else, Aristotle's Poetics : The Argument P. 27. 8. Pl. Sophist, 234. 9. Else, Op. cit. P. 26.

Although it is highly risky to give any absolute definition of the term imitation by counting limited numbers of its use in the texts, we can, nevertheless, suggest the most essential aspects of its sense following two important passages occurring in Plato's writings. Socrates argues in the Cratylus10 that an image is something necessarily different from the original of which it is an imitation; and, as an imitation, it must lack some essential characteristics for which it is inferior to the original. If a thing contains all the characteristics primary and secondary, essential and contingent, that are contained by some other thing, then it would not be an imitation, but a duplication. If an artist, for example, would make a body of flesh and bones with all the organic features of a human being, it would be, then, another being, not an image of him. So in the Statesman11 true imitation ( here true imitation means reproduction ) becomes itself truth, not imitation. Similarly in the Sophist12 the stranger asks Theaetetus to give an idea or definition of any image, and after citing examples of water reflection, sculptured and painted figures, Theaetetus holds that an image is an apparent duplication of a thing—something fashioned in the likeness of the true ; and the stranger makes him admit that an image is not a real or true thing, but produces an illusion of truth. Thus the Platonic concept of imitation means essentially an inferior activity. Even when imitation would be understood in the sense of emulation, Plato would give the same notion—a person emulates another because he feels inferior to the person, he imitates in certain respects, at least he lacks that quality which he imitates ; and, in fact, it is a feeling of want that arouses an urge for emulation. Plato believes in the degrees of this inferiority in the sense that an imitation may be more or less like the original and can be divided as good and bad.

10. Cratylus, 432, 11. Statesman, 297 12. Sophist, 239.

Plato's dialectic, psychology and cosmology are closely connected. As he divides the faculties of mind into two—

reason and sensation, so also he considers existence itself to be comprehended by these two faculties of mind. The inte-

lligible are the areas of truth, while the sensible or the phenomena of the physical world are not, and as science is

concerned only with truth, cosmology is not science for it is concerned with the changing world. It is only a 'likely

tale',13 a kind of play (Paidia).14 Cosmology is related to

science in the same way as sense is related to reason, phenome-

non to reality and particular to universal. The universal

phenomena constitute the reality and an account of them

is science, as they are rational in character. If cosmology

is a 'likely tale' or opinion, objects of the physical world are

also likenesses. Thus becoming is an eikōn of the Being15

or the physical object is an imitation of the Idea. White

objects are many, put the idea of whiteness is only one ; and

if the object is an imitation of the idea, the particular is

also an imitation of the universal.

The divisions of mind into sense and reason and of

existence into being and becoming or intelligible and sensible

led Plato to hold that every creation is an appearance as

opposed to reality, and every created sensible object involves

three factors17—the material, the pattern (Paradeigmaton)

and a moving or efficient cause which impresses the idea

upon the matter. This Platonic matter is, indeterminate

like the Pythagorean void. A piece of gold is so because the

idea of goldness is impressed upon it. If the idea is taken

out, it ceases to be gold or any thing else. Its name and

nature are both determined by the presence of the idea. But

the exact nature of this matter — whether the matter of a white

house, a black swan and a yellow flower is the same, and

13. Burnet, op. cit. P. 340. 14. Laws, 803, 644 ; Cf. Burnet, op.

cit. P. 340. 15. Burnet, ibid; 16. Timaeus, 29. 17. Ibid; Cf. F.M.

Cornford, Plato's Cosmology. P. 27 ff., 39ff.

whether the thing differs only in accordance with the difference of ideas present in them-is not sufficiently developed by Plato. This is done perhaps intentionally, for Plato believed that nothing can be spoken categorically or assuredly of the physical world as it is to be comprehended only by the senses, and in the senses there is no truth, but only confusion.

The physical world thus becomes a formal imitation of the truth or the world of ideas which existed independent of any other world of creation. God is the efficient force who has impressed these ideas upon matter. To the question-what motive had God in creating this world-Plato gives a mythical answer that God is good and self-ordered, so he brought order in creating the sensible world out of the visible mass of matter, moving in a disorderly fashion, by impressing the forms, existing independent of him, on matter. But this impressed form and the original paradigm are not the same. The former is only an imitation of the latter. These are 'imitations of what is ever.' 19 For Plato the concrete figure of geometry and its ideal form are not the same. Plato says in the Seventh Letter 20 that three factors are required for the knowledge of any existent thing-the name, the definition and the image or concrete shape. But the Idea of this is beyond all. The form of a circular figure on a piece of paper is not exactly the same as the Form or Idea of a circle. The former is an imitation. Thus the order in the creation or created world is an imitation of God's order and its objects are imitations of the forms, and as such are inferior to both.

If a phenomenon is an imitation of Idea, time is a moving image (eikōn) of eternity 21 ; and the same is true in

18. For a critical estimate of Plato's doctrine of Ideas see Stace, op. cit. P. 234ff. 19. Burnet, op. cit. P. 342. 20. The Seventh Letter, 342 a. 21. Timaeus, 37; cf. Diog. Leert., II. 67; Burnet, op. cit. P. 342.

the sphere of linguistics. In the Theaetetus Socrates says that an explanation has three meanings—“In the first place the meaning may be manifesting one's thought by the voice with verbs and nouns, imaging an opinion in the stream which flows from the lips as in a mirror or water”.22 Singular letters are nothing but imitations of emotions which the speaker wants to convey and ultimately words and speeches are images of thought. A name is a vocal imitation of that which it names or imitates23 This linguistic imitation is different from musical imitation. Music imitates a sound while a name imitates the essence of a thing.24 The letter P (ro), for example, imitates motion and all the words containing this letter indicate a sense of motion ( such as tromos-trembling ; traxus-rugged ; Kroiein—strike ; thrauein crush etc.)25 A name is an imitation of the thing, not the thing itself. As the portrait of a man cannot be attributed to a woman, so the name of one cannot be used for the other ; and ultimately a name cannot be given to something which is not of its nature. So the primitive names were almost pictures.26 Representation by likeness is infinitely better than that by any chance-sign.27 If the name is to be like things, the letters out of which the first names are composed must also be like things ; and in producing a correct likeness one must execute all the appoopriate characteristics.28 Some omissions or additions may give a likeness, but not a good one. Besides, these words or vocal gestures and bodily demonstrations are also imitations of thought or of the nature of the thing in action, for example, the raising of our hands to heaven would mean lightness and upwardness, while letting them down would indicate heaviness ; in describing running horse or any moving thing we produce physical gestures, as far as we can, in likeness of movement.29

22. Theaetetus, 206. 23. Cratylus 423. 24. ibid. 426 25. loc. cit. 26. ibid. 431. 27. ibid. 434. 28. ibid. 431. 29. ibid. 423

As anything expressed is thus an imitation, its correctness should be judged by the original, and if the original is ordinarily visible, the imitator is to be cautious in its execution, for even a slight touch of inappropriateness will expose its failure before the public who are capable of comparing the original and the imitation. But when the original is invisible the imitator is more free.30 To speak something or to paint a picture of a man is more difficult than to do that of a god, for in the former case the folly of imitation can be more easily detected than in the latter case.

A correct imitation, then, necessarily involves the knowledge of the original. But both kinds of imitation—accurate and inaccurate—are inferior to their original, completely so in kind, although they may be similar in degree.31

The psychological processes of memorization and recognition also involve an element of imitation. Memory is nothing but a stock of imitations. There exists in the mind of every man a block of wax, which is of different sizes in different men; and are hard, moist and pure of varying degrees.32 On this block are impressed the perceived sounds and sights, their strength and concreteness being in accord with the quality of the material and the force of the impression. Memory is possible when this impression is strong enough to present itself before thought, and recognition is possible when the thing perceived before is assimilated to its imitation on the mental block properly.33 But all these evanescent images are far from giving us any knowledge of truth.

ii. Plato's account of the cosmic creation, then, stands half way between myth and science. When God creates the

30. Critias, 107. 31. Cratylus, 432. 32. Theaetetus, 191. 33. Ibid., 193.

entire world by impressing the ever-existing Forms on the disordered matter, He is reminiscent of the mythical creator, but his way of creation is not that of Prometheus, who created the world out of water and clay. This part of Plato's cosmology tends towards science although he never intentionally tries to make it so. As God's creations, we are puppets in the hands of our creator, who creates us out of a play,34 and it is difficult for us to know with any certainty whether there is any purpose behind it or not. But man is not spoken of by Plato with any low opinion. God has imparted certain freedom or will power to man and an automatic force to the entire universe. As an ordinary potter he is not always personally present in the creative and destructive processes. He has just started it and all things change imitating and following the condition of the universe and of necessity agreeing with that in their mode of conception and generation and nurture.36 Similarly God created man; Prometheus gave them fire and taught them the arts of Athene and Hephaistos,37 “and then they had to order their course of life for themselves and were their own masters, just like the universal creature whom they imitate and follow, ever changing as he changes, and ever living and growing at one time in one manner and at another time in another.”38

Among human beings a disciplined society was formed, for a single man cannot fulfil all his needs. Food, shelter and cloth are the bare needs of man, and for them several things like the implements to build a house or cook food with, or to make vessels to keep things in are necessary. Moreover, human beings are not mere pigs to remain satisfied with these bare needs, they strive to become civilized, and in a civilized community fashionable houses of delicate designs with painted walls, embroidered clothes

34. Laws, 644, 803, 804. 35. Statesman, 274. 36. ibid. 37. Protagoras, 320 ff; cf. Philebus, 16. 38. Statesman, 274.

and shoes, cosmetics, music, plays, poetry, rhapsody, acting, chorus-training and sculpture etc. are necessary as well. Thus the arts (technai) were created, not created exactly, rather were developed, on the basic art activities that prevailed among gods. Thus Plato divides all the arts into two primary classes–divine and human according to their origin. The entire world with its minute parts including human beings, animals, natural phenomena and heavenly bodies was created by God ; this is divine art.41 To this may be added the decorative household arts of Athene and manufactured arts of Hephaistos. Human arts, on the other hand, are all that are wrought in imitation of the models of divine arts.41 This, again, is divided into two subclasses productive or useful and imitative or fine arts. Those that are required in the everyday life of man are productive arts such as tools like chisels and sickles, vessels, vehicles, dresses, arms, walls, and enclosures.43 To them should be added the activities like productions of materials such as papyri cords, corks gold etc., growing food-grains and preparing food out of them and others like slaving, herding animals and so on.44 These arts do thus have a serious purpose–serving human beings in their practical needs of life, but the other class has no pragmatic interest. This is connected only with the emotional aspect of a human mind, and is solely meant for pleasure. It is not productive, but it imitates a production, either divine or human. A painter, for example, may paint a man, which is a divine product, or a cot, a human product ; but in both the cases they are only imitations of the originals. That is the only purpose, if there is any, which the imitative arts serve. Music, dance, poetry sculpture, rhapsody etc. besides painting, fall into this class.45

39. Republic, 369, 372. 40. Ibid. 373. 41. Sophist, 265. 42. Ibid, 265-66. 43. Statesman, 287. 44. Ibid. 287. 45. Imitative arts are further divided into two sub-classes. Some like painting and sculpture imitate through instruments like chisel, brush etc., others like acting without such instruments. Sophist, 267.

This is an outline of the Platonic idea of the origin of art. What we call fine arts Plato classified under imitative arts ; and critics46 suggest that he did not improve upon or modify the conception of imitation as it was prevalent among his predecessors, he simply elaborated it. The influence of the traditional Greek thought upon Plato is obvious47; but to limit Plato's creativity only to the elaboration of the prevalent ideas would be an erroneous judgement. Plato's power of assimilation and modification was unique as we saw in the general foundation of his philosophy. Similarly in his speculations on aesthetics he grounded the popular ideas on a philosophic system.48 The common concept of imitation received in him a psychological and metaphysical scrutiny, although it is very difficult to say how far Plato's views on art are systematic. In fact, he had never an intention to formulate a system of aesthetics. Except a few passages in the 'Republic' all other references to artistic activity and aesthetic experience occur only as analogies to simplify the abstract ideas of dialectics and politics. Nevertheless, these scattered passages contain certain elements which, taken together, suggest Plato's ideas in this regard.

We noted that according to Plato a sensible thing is created and every created thing is an imitation as it imitates a Form, an absolute ever-existing entity, the impression of which upon the sensible receptacle makes it what it is to our sense. Thus the entire universe, the work of divine art is also an imitation and so are the art products of Athene, Hephaistos and human manufacturers both purposive and pleasure-giving, as they are all sensible. But among these only the fine arts are specifically imitative. Imitation is

46. K. C. Pande, Comp. Aesth., Vol. II. P. 19. 47. See our Chap. I, Part. I for the trend of traditional thought. 48. Treatises on aesthetics are said to have been written in the Pre-Platonic period which are now lost, See Diog. Leert. III. 84, 122-23.

more a process of emulation in the human productive arts as they imitate the useful arts of the gods. A painted or sculptured figure is an imitation in the same sense as the ordinary sensible objects are copies. In fact, the process of God in creating the world and that of the artist in creating his work are the same. Both of them have models first, and then they imitate or copy these forms in impressing them on matter. But the distinct sense of imitation in the fine arts should be gathered by contrasting it with the purposive production.49 Critics very often misunderstand this concept in contrasting it with the modern notion of the nature of artistic function i.e. creation or expression, and read the confusing conclusion that the Platonic imitation refers to a slavish50 copy. It is equally confusing to consider that the Platonic imitation and the modern creation are the same. Plato's distinction of the imitative arts from the productive arts was based on a pragmatic view. We use the objects of the physical world —we write with a pen, sleep upon a cot, smell a flower, live in a house and enjoy a woman physically. But artistic representations of these things are mere copies of these things completely without any purposive value. From this point of view they are like reflections on water or in mirror or are like shadows and dreams. All these are on the same physical level, for all would be illusions of the same type. A stick looks bent under water, a face is reflected in a mirror and a tree casts a shadow. These effects are due to the media such as water, mirror and sunlight ; when we remove the media, the effects are also gone. Similarly a cot is painted or man is sculptured through the media of colour and stone; and when these media are disturbed the things also vanish. A poet can

49. Cf. Bosanquet, A Companion to Plato's Republic P. 380 ff. 50. Verdenius, Mimesis in Plato ; see the discussion of Wilamowitz and Otto Apelt.

narrate in his epics the stories that have no truth ; and a

sketch of a house by a painter is a sort of daydream. All

these transitory and illusory objects are placed by Plato

under the name of eikasia, as opposed to pistis. If the God-

made physical phenomena like trees and hills etc. are pistis

the man-made productive arts like cots and houses etc. are

also so, and their reifections, shadows or imitations in art

are all eikasia.5 1 From the metaphysical point of view

also, a shadow, a reflection and a picture of a cot are on the

same level, for they are thrice removed from the Idea of

cot.5 2 But are they on the same level from the aesthetic

point of view ? Do the painting and the reflection of a cot

involve the same process of generation ? Do they have the

same type of similitude to the original ? And do they appeal

to our sense of beauty in the same way ? Plato seems to be

aware of a distinction here.

Imitative arts use pistis or the concrete visible

objects, both divine and human products, as models of

their imitation. These are eikons - the objects of eikasia -

as they possess certain affinities to other objects of this class

such as reflections and reveries. But whereas the divine

eikasia is an exact image of the pistis and produces an acute

sense of illusion, human beings are incapable of achieving

that excellence in their imitative products (arts). As the

man-made house would be inferior to the god-made house

at Olympia, so also human eikons would be less accurate

copies than the divine eikons.

The principles of artistic imitation5 3 involve both

qualitative and quantitative proportions. In painting one

does not produce the exact counterpart of living man with all

51. Sophist, 266 ; cf. H. J. Paton, Plato's theory of Eikasia, Proc.

Arist. Soc. Vol. XXII, 1921-22 P.76. ff. 52. Republic, X. 597.

53. Sophist, 235 ; Cratylus, 432 ; Laws, II. 667-68 ; for the necessity

of measurement in art, see Statesman, 284.

the details regarding the exact height of his body and limbs and its exact colour which a mirror can reproduce. The imitation is concerned with the essential characteristics of the physical construction-the number of the limbs, their independent construction, their relation with each other, and with the whole body. This is what Plato understands by the principles of quantitative and qualitative proportions. Thus a painter may not represent the exact height of a man in his painting-a man of six feet height, for example, may be represented within the compass of one foot only, but the ratio of the relation of one part to the other, and of all the parts to the whole body must be exactly copied. The same is true in case of colour. The extant Greek paintings show that the use of colour was not sufficiently developed at that time. Cicero counts only four colours and no evidence is available regarding the skilful technique in producing shades and lights.54 So one cannot expect that the Greek painter of Plato's time could produce the exact colour of a human body. Plato says that a good picture must possess appropriate colour. It will be ridiculous to paint the eyes with red colour on the ground that among the limbs eyes are the best and so is red among colours. The proper colour for the eyes is black.55 Plato would thus admonish that a good painter must know first what he is going to imitate-whether a man or a god or a dog, what are its essential or universal features; and then he has to represent it according to the aforesaid quantitative and qualitative principles.56 Imitation of a visible thing thus requires more care than that of an invisible thing, for in the former case the artist has to bring out a perfect likeness of the thing visible, a slight difference otherwise may make the observer depreciate its value as an image, while in the latter case, the original being invisible,

54. Reber, op. cit. p. 368. 55. Republic IV. 420. 56. Phaedrus, 261

such as the things of past and divinities, the artist is more free to add or omit without destroying the capacity of his product to be convincing as a likeness. But he must follow the principles of propriety here.57 The image of a god must differ from that of a man with the former's superiority in grandeur, grace, and physical structure.

It is significant to note that Plato with his deep insight and sensitivity realizes from the practice of his contemporary artists that the artistic propriety is not strictly limited to the mathematical measurement. Artists may not observe the proper measure in all situations. As the object of these arts is to produce an illusion of reality, consisting thus of an empirical value only,58 an artist may not make his images always of the same proportion. What will look, for example, proportionate from one perspective may not look so from another. Small statues and painting, finely executed may serve their purpose if kept near the observer, but will be almost invisible, if placed some thirty feet high and so will fail to serve the purpose. Two parallel lines look like one line from long distance, so look the ceilings of a long hall. But in this case the architect does not prefer sense experience to mathematical measurement, nor does one demand that the ceilings of a house should always seem apart from whatever part of the house it may be looked at. So architecture needs a strictly mathematical proportion.59 But if the concave lines on the pillar of a Greek temple look bent in its upper parts, its execution is valueless, for these are made only for a show without having any relation with its strength. It is a decoration to arouse a pleasure in the observer by its regular geometrical pattern. So the architect should not make these lines accurately perpendicular but slightly bent and irregular upwards, so that they may look regular to a man standing below. Similarly, statues kept in

57. Republic, III, 382. 58. Sophist, 236. 59. Philebus, 55.

the friezes or metopes would look quite disproportionate and unlike a thing which it imitates if they are constructed with a correct proportion judged from a normal distance. It has been said that Pheidias was wise in calculation of the physics of sight. Once, in a competition with his disciple Alcamenes, his statue, built to be kept on a high place, was quite disproportionate seen from a normal distance and thus was laughed at by the spectators, but when it was raised to the height on the proper place it looked quite proportionate.60 Hence Plato observes that the empirical proportion must be preferred to the mathematical proportion in the imitative arts.61 And on this point he classifies the imitative arts as 'likeness proper' and 'appearance of likeness'.62

Like visual art music also is, according to Plato, an imitation. It imitates character (good and bad) through sound. The proportion in music is empirical since "sounds are harmonized not by measure, but by skillful conjecture; The music of Flute always tries to guess the pitch of each vibrating note, and is, therefore, mixed up with much that is doubtful and has little which is certain".63 Music is more celebrated than any other kind of imitation, and it consists of words, modes and rhythm.64 Mode and rhythm suit words and words must suit the character of the object of imitation-that is man should use manly words while the words used by women should be keeping with the feminine character. Very often the writers of the words of music (i.e. poets) fail to observe this propriety of words whereupon they assign mainly language to woman and with the language of a free man they would mix melody and words of a different character.65 Mode is the way of speaking words which depends upon rhythm and rhythm is the order

60. A Hist. Aesth., P. 34. 61. Philebus, 55. 62. Sophist, 236. 63. Philebus, 56 ; cf. Laws, III. 793, 64. Republic, II. 398. 65. Laws, 669.

of motion. A mad man, for example, should speak the words suitable for him when singing, keeping a proper manner of speaking with a particular distance between one word and another.

Dance is also imitation. In both dancing and singing one adapts the character of the object, he imitates.66 According to its character dance is divided into two classes serious or honourble and ludicrous or ignoble.67 The serious one imitates the character either in a vehement action such as attacking or avoiding attacks, archery, hurling of javelins and all sorts of blows, or in a peaceful state when a man bears himself naturally and gracefully in his state of prosperity. The former is called pyrrhic and the latter Emmeleia. In this type of dance, one derives more pleasure, if there is more movement. The other type which imitates the ludicrous, is intended to produce laughter in comedy. Besides these two, Bacchic dances imitate the actions of drunken men, Nymphs, Pan, Silenis and Satyrs.68 Choric dance is a mixture of dance and music which imitates manners that occur in various actions, fortunes and dispositions.69 Plato thinks that the gymnastics and dances originate in a tendency for rapid motion which exists in all animals. But as the lower animals have no sense of order, only human beings can imitate this internal motion through harmoious rhythm.70

Similarly poetry, both narrative and dramatic is, according to Plato, an imitation. If anything expressed in language, whether a speech or a word (including even the writings of a philosopher) is imitation, it is necessary that poetry should be imitative, as it imitates actions of gods, human beings and the creation of God in general. A philosopher imitates through language the Form or truth, but a

66. Laws, 655. 67. Laws, VIII. 814ff. 68. Laws VIII. 816. 69. Laws, II. 655, 665. 70. Laws, II. 653. 71. Republic, III. 392ff.

poet imitates the events of the sensible world through the same medium.72 Although both are imitators, a poet is inferior to a philosopher in so far as his product is thrice removed from the Form. A philosopher directly imitates the Form; but a poet imitates a sensible object which is itself an imitation of the Form. So Plato says, "...his art being imitative he is often compelled to represent man of opposite disposition and thus to contradict himself, neither can he tell whether there is more truth in one thing that he has said than in another".73 Although a poet and a historian both imitate the sensible objects, a poet is inferior to a historian as his imitation has no factual truth. Self-contradiction is possible in the case of a poet, but not in the case of a historian.

Drama is more imitative than narrative poetry as its manner of imitation is direct. A dramatic poet does not speak himself anything about the event concerned. The agents therein speak and act their own stories, "Drama represents," says Plato, "human beings in action, either voluntary or compulsory ; in that action they fare, as they think,...well or ill, and experience joy or sorrow."74 Drama thus can imitate its object more accurately.

Acting and rhapsody are two offsprings of the poetic art. An actor playing in the roll of a character assumes his personality, modes of talking and acting in several situations. A rhapsode who recites epic poems, similarly, adopts the personality of the character concerned and walks with the force and intensity with which the poet narrates the subject matter. This he does by the processes of transportation and identification.76 He forgets himself and being transported from the normal state feels himself as one among the persons and belonging to the time depicted by the poet. It will not be un-Platonic, perhaps, if we consider these two processes as the basic principles of all imitative arts. A poet, a dancer,

72. ibid. 73. Laws, IV. 719. 74. Republic, III. 395. ff. 76. Ion, 535.

a painter and a sculptor all go out of themselves. The poet

in describing the fight between Hector and Achilles feels

himself present inside the Trojan fort looking at the ferocious

battle. Not only that, he feels within himself the strength

and revenging force of Achilles in one and the loss of heroic

vigour in Hector in another moment. Such conscious self-

unawareness, the germ of artistic creation, is due to pos-

ssion of the Muses.77 An artist like a prophet and a lover

is half mad, and his imitative creation is operated in a state

of such madness which involves transportation and identi-

fication. Thus as a mad man and a technician are essentially

different, it will be impossible for an artist to produce an

exact copy of an object. Plato thus frequently mentions

that artistic copy possesses only quantitative and qualitative

similitude of its object.78

77. Laws, IV. 719 ; Ion, 533; Phaedrus, 244-245. 78. Critics often tend to

interpret Plato's idea of imitation by extending its meaning to include

even symbolization. The things of real life are, in this sense, symbols

of forms or Ideas. But such notion of symbolization cannot be

ascribed to Plato. Symbolization is a convention. White colour, for

example, is conventionally associated with virtue, for we simply

assume that this abstract quality is manifest through white colour, as

this sensible thing contains a freshness (the sign of purity) which is

the essential characteristic of both. But there is no place for

such convention in Platonic conception of physical objects, as the

relation between the Idea and an object is not conventional, but

causal. Plato does not connect the Idea of whiteness wiih white

object in the same way as we connect virtue with white colour. "The

artist'', as Sengupta says, "has the power of penetrating to the heart

of reality and giving it an ideal but living shape." ( Towards a

Theory of the Imagination P. 13-14.) But this modern view is ours,

not Plato's.

Verdenius thinks that Plato's concept of imitation is bound up

with the idea of approximation and does not indicate a true copy.

This is true. But it seems he is inclined to extend the sense of imitation

to suggestion or evocation ; nay, even more than that "I have agreed,"

he says, "that Plato's doctrine of artistic imitation is based on the

Plato's psychology of aesthetic experience also seems to be an imitative process involving the two factors mentioned above, namely, transportation and identification. The listeners of a rhapsody forget themselves and their personal and social consciousness is lost, and being transported to the world of art they identify themselves with the characters of the art and thus enjoy in sharing their sorrows and pleasure, pity and wonder.79 This identification is, further, regulated by the personality of the spectator.80 A good man enjoys a play in identifying the sufferings and victories of the good character of the play with his own. An old man enjoys the dance that manifests youthful movements, for he associates it with his past vigour of youth.81 Plato agrees with the distinguished musician of the 5th century B. C. who held an imitative correspondence between art and its appreciators.

"Song and dance," says Damon, "necessarily arise when the soul is in some way moved ; liberal and beautiful songs and dances create a similar soul and the reverse kind creates a reverse kind of soul."82 That is why in regulating the appropriate music for a well ordered state Plato lays more emphasis upon the moral goodness of the musical imitation. As the imitation of bad is easier than that of good most of the people will enjoy bad, and as imitation and enjoyment

conception of art as an interpretation of reality and that this principle is still a sound basis for our theory of art. This is not a new discovery" op. cit. P. 36. Interpretation of reality requires a knowledge of reality; and the modern theories of 'creation', 'expression' or 'interpretation' believe in the existence of such a power in the poet, by which he can establish a relation with reality manifest in the sensible objects. But Plato never allows this power to the imitative artist. (Some scholars think that Plato divided between fine arts proper and mere imitative arts which are pseudo arts. This point has been discussed in the 4th section of this chapter.) He only copies the sensible thing, although this copy is affected by the human limitation and subjective vision of the artist. 79. Ion 535. 80. Laws, II. 655. 81. Laws, II, 657. 82. A Hist. Aesth., P. 71.

are closely connected, they will soon become bad imitating the bad character.

iii. The artistic imitation is not, then, a slavish copy of a sensible object. It is to be only “likely and analogous” to the object it imitates, copying its quantitative and qualitative proportions only. Now it is necessary for us to judge two fundamental questions—first, what is the value of this imitation ? We know, Plato did not assign any practical or metaphysical value to it. But does it have any emotional value ? Plato answers in the positive. As the foundations of art—creation is essentially empirical, its object is also strictly an emotional experience. Artistic imitation causes a perfect and harmless pleasure that springs from enjoyment of beauty. Hence this imitation is also beautiful. The Athenian stranger realizes in the Laws83 that only the proportional correctness is not enough for the fulfilment of the purpose of art; it has to be beautiful also. “But even if we know that the thing pictured or sculptured is a man, who has received at the hand of the artist all his proper parts and colours and shapes, must we not also know whether the work is beutiful or in any respect deficient in beauty ?” This beauty in the artistic imitation does not consist only in the similitude with respect to the original, the work must be well executed through its proper medium : through words in poetry, melodies in music, rhythm in dance and colour in painting, and ultimately aesthetic experience is not limited to the recognition of similarity between the model and its imitation. It involves three factors : knowledge of the object of imitation, correctness of its qualitative and quantitative likeness and finally, its formal attractiveness.84 As this attractiveness is something beyond the mathematical factors, its execution will not be the same by all the artists.

83. Laws, II. 668, 669. 84. Laws, 669.

A picture of a man will differ in different paintings regarding this beauty as all of them cannot apprehend the same points of charm of the original. Two artists using the same model will give us two different images with the same proportional factors, but differing in the formal charm. This shows that in Plato's aesthetics the term 'imitation' is not equivalent to a slavish copy. He uses the word for the products of fine arts mainly as a contrast to productive arts or crafts. A product of fine art is not something absolutely new, absent in the phenomenal world previously, nor is it 'produced' in an ordinary sense as a cloth or pot or other things are produced to serve a practical purpose. It has no independent world and separate standard of reality. It is an image of a thing already created by God.

The second question is - what is the level of this beauty of the imitative arts? Is it equal to or a development over or inferior to the beauty of Nature? And ultimately, what is its relation to the Idea of Beauty? The whole of the Hippias Major deals with this problem of beauty. Socrates asks : "what is the beautiful itself?" and Hippias, the sophist misunderstanding his question describes some of his personal likings85: that (1) a beautiful girl is something that is beautiful, (2) gold is beautiful and (3) the most beautiful thing for a man is to reach old age rich, healthy and honoured by his country men. The first case is not completely free from a sexual bias, the second is a useful material substance and the third is a sound social and physical state of living. But neither any of these three taken separately, nor all of them taken together, can lead us reach at a satisfactory definition of beauty. The beauty of Pheidias' Athene86 does not consist in its feminine charm or golden ornaments or in its offering of good health and social

85. Hippias Major, 286-87. 86. ibid. 289-91.

status. Beauty, according to Plato, involves three factors—appropriateness, usefulness and pleasurableness. 87

The Greek word prepein or fitting and its derivatives euprepēs, prepōdēs refer to an order of things and to a harmonious structure in all fields whether visible or invisible.

The Greeks were highly sensitive to this orderly arrangement of things. "How good it is," says Xenophon, "to keep one's stock of utensils in order and how easy to find a suitable place in a house to put each set in... And what a beautiful sight is afforded by boots of all sorts and conditions ranged in rows ! How beautiful it is to see cloaks of all sorts and conditions kept separate, or blankets or brazen vessels or table furniture ! Yes, no serious man smiles when I claim that there is beauty in the order even of pots and pans set out in neat array, however much it may move the laughter of a wit. There is nothing, in short, that does not gain when set out in order. For each set looks like a troop of utensils and the space between the sets is beautiful to see, when each set is kept clear of it just as a troop of dancers about the altar is a beautiful spectacle in itself and even the free space looks beautiful and unencumbered."88 The last portion of this passage suggests, obviously, that the speaker would be sensitive more to the circular form of the orderly arrangement of the dancers than to the mimetic character of the dance itself.

Similarly we know how the Socrates of Xenophon identified the beautiful with the useful. So in defining beauty Plato did not actually invented something very new. He gathered the prevalent notions of beauty from different Greek tastes and gave them a systematic expression. Beauty is inevitably connected with two subjective emotions love and pleasure—whatever is beautiful is lovable and pleasurable. Pleasure in beauty is,

87. Diog. Laert. II. 89. 88. Xenophon, Oeconomicus, VIII. 18. 20

then, an automatic outcome of the combination of two objective factors–propriety and usefulness.

Ordinarily something is useful if it serves a purpose and if in this sense ‘useful’ is identified with ‘beautiful’, then for a robber a sword, that helps him in killing a man, will appear as beautiful. But Plato’s idea of useful does not include all kinds of service. His useful (chresimon) is necessarily advantageous (ōphelimon)89 or that which produces good effect only. In the Republic90 and in the Timaeus91 good is, therefore, identified with beautiful–the perfect ‘good’ is the perfect ‘beautiful’ which produces harmless and sound pleasure. The combination of these two factors is brought out by the typical Greek concept of measure and symmetry which plays an important role in the Philebus92 in determining the nature of the beautiful and the good.

Perfect pleasure, the necessary effect of beautiful is, according to Plato, absolute and unconditional.93 Pure pleasure is distinguished from the sensual pleasure which one enjoys in every day life such as in drinking water while one feels thirsty, or in scratching his body while he feels itching. But here pain and pleasure are mingled, and pleasure is relative to pain. Scratching gives pleasure so long as one feels the pain of itching and one delights in drinking only when he feels thirsty. Hence sensual pleasure of this sort is impure “... there are combinations of pleasure and pain in lamentations and tragedy and comedy, not only on the stage, but on the greater state of human life and so in endless other cases... anger, desire, sorrow, fear, love, emulation, envy and similar emotions.”94 True pleasure is derived from the love of Beauty. The soul loves the transitory beauty of the sensible things because they bear copies of the ideal Beauty, and it passes gradually to the Idea of Beauty through the love of the

89. Hippias Major, 295-297. 90. Republic, VI. 506. ff 91. Timaeus 29. 92. Philebus, 64 ff. 93. Ibid. 51 ; Hip. Maj. 303-304 ; Laws, 667. 94. Philebus, 50.

beautiful souls of persons like philosophers and priests etc. and beautiful sciences like laws.95 Hence the trinity of pleasure, goodness and beauty is absolute in one source which only a philosopher is able to realize.

Although sensible objects have no absolute beauty and, therefore, do not cause pure pleasure, simple forms or units of which the whole thing is an aggregate or enlargement, are said by Plato to yield true pleasure. "True pleasures are those which are given by beauty of colour and form and most of those which arise from smells ; those of sound again, and in general, those of which the want is painless and unconscious and of which the fruition is palpable to sense and pleasant and unalloyed with pain...I do not mean by beauty of form such beauty as that of pictures, which the man would suppose to be my meaning ; but says the argument, understand me to mean straightlines and circles and the plane or solid figures which are formed out of these by turning-lathes and rules and measures of angles ; for these I affirm not to be relatively beautiful like other things, but they are eternally and absolutely beautiful, and they have peculiar pleasures, quite unlike the pleasures of scratching. And there are colours which are of the same character, and have similar pleasures...When sounds are smooth and clear, and have a single pure tone, then I mean to say that they are not relatively but absolutely beautiful, and have natural pleasures associated with them... the pleasures of smell are of less etherial sort, but they have not necessary admixture of pain."96 It is not a particular thing or tone or smell but the general object that gives us pleasure. Voice, for example, pleases us not because it is the voice of a cuckoo but because voice in itself is pleasing. Similarly it is not the Lily flower as such, but the freshness of its white colour that appears as beautiful.

95. Stace, op. cit. P 205. 96. Philebus, 51.

The same is true in the case of human creations. Geometrical drawings, for example, are more beautiful than the likeness paintings because they are more 'formal', and in the picture of a flower, beauty does not lie so much in the accuracy of its imitation as in its colouring. This colour, of course, is an imitation of the Natural colour pattern.97 Thus regarding the relations of Natural beauty and artistic beauty, Plato's view is that the human art cannot surpass the divine art in beauty - an imitation in itself can neither be more beautiful nor more pleasant than its original. It is rarely equal, but very often inferior as a painted imitation, inspite of its vivid attitude of life, is incapable of organic function.98

iv. It is for its practical uselessness and metaphysical unreality that Plato condemns the imitative arts in the "Republic". There Plato is mainly a statesman and a metaphysician. Hence one should hardly expect a sound aesthetic judgement from him. In the second Book99 Socrates realizes the need of imitative arts in a civilized state which would facilitate the education of the soul. Arts, especially poetry and music, were included in the Greek school curriculum. Epics had a theological function in teaching the

97. E. F. Carritt is right to hold that Plato does not even seem to hold that imitation is pleasing in itself, but only when it imitates pleasant things. The Theory of Beauty, P. 41; cf. Republic, 599. 98. Plato writes in the Phaedrus, (270) that however vivid may be the attitude of life in a picture of a man, it will keep quiet if one asks a question, cf. Bosanquet, op. cit P. 31. Plato agrees with the contemporary naturalist thinkers (Laws, 889) in believing that the greatest and fairest things are works of Nature, and those of art are artificial, less in beauty and greatness, being moulded and fashioned after the Natural models. The objects of Nature are of divine birth while arts are-born of mortals, which are but images-only imperfect copies of truth having an affinity to one another, as if produced in a play; See also No. 34 supra. 99. Republic, II. 373.

nature and accounts of the divinities. The students had to recite epics and dramatic poetry, to play on lyres and to sing 'lyric poetry.100 Plato attacks in the Third Book101 mainly this system of education and those portions of the epics which are fictitious from philosophical point of view. We noted how the Greek thinkers of the 6th century B. C. attacked the anthropomorphic notion of the divinities and how Plato changed the gods to abstract ideas following this tradition. In fact, the growing rationalism of the age felt a necessity for wiping out the gross emotional appeal of the mythical religion. Plato demands the propriety of the epic character, that is, the gods must be godly and the heroes heroic. It is an act of serious imposture to make the gods human attributing all the human follies and pollutions to them. Indeed such a religion was suitable for an age, vigorously heroic in temper, and fit to amuse and inspire its people. Plato, instead of correcting the entire epics, demanded a considerable change in these portions only. He could not discard poetry altogether for he was conscious of the powerful emotional effects of poetry that could teach the abstract truths to young ones in pleasing manner. Plato, in fact, did not condemn the force of poetic style of the epics, which had enough justification for its popularity, but condemned their content - the philosophy they taught. "It is not that they are bad poetry or are not popular, indeed the better they are as poetry, the more unsuitable they are for taking 'care of children or grown-ups."102 Plato concludes his comment upon the immoral and improper character of the gods and heroes with striking sympathy of a statesman and of a lover of poetry. If it is necessary for a poet to depict the immoral character of a god either as an allegory or as a matter of fact, then this portion should not be allowed

100. F. M. Corn ford, The Republic of Plato, P. 65. 101. Republic, 377 ff., specially for the attacks on drama, see ibid. 396, 398. 102. ibid. III. 387.

by a statesman to be read publicly. Its reading must be limited to a selected few, only those persons who are initiated with a very heavy expense, so that it cannot be handed over to the persons unworthy of understanding its deep sense.

Drama is, according to Plato, the best of all imitative arts in imitating the actions, sorrows and enjoyments of human beings. While other arts like choral song, lyre-playing and dithyramb are invented wholly for emotional pleasure, tragedy does not aim merely at gratification or flattery. It is more philosophical in the sense that instead of giving only pleasure to the spectators "it proclaims in word and song truths welcome and unwelcome."103

Through the vice like incestuous love of persons such as Oedipus and Theastes, and through the agony resulting from these vices such as the blindness of Oedipus and suicide of Theastes, the tragedians make their specific audience realise the truths of life104, and as the stranger says,105 the Athenians love tragedy because it shows them the pictures of the noblest life, the emulation of which is the very basic principle of the Athenian state. Likewise comedy through its caricature of the base and ignoble persons does not contradict the seriousness of tragedy, rather intensifies it through its contrasting picture.106

It is for its high seriousness that Plato banishes it from the syllabus of the Greek school boys, who with their immature minds, instead of understanding the pitiful and fearful results of incest etc. will rather try to practise the acts, because it is a common feature of human psychology that imitation of the base is easier than that of the serious; and children always like the easy and sensibly pleasant things.107 Plato does not ask here108 the tragedians to change their subject–matter condemning the vicious

103. Gorgias, 501. 104. Laws, VII 838. 105. Ibid. II. 817.

104. Republic, 604, 401-2 108. Republic, 396.

actions of the great persons like Oedipus (as he does in the case of criticism of epics) which would be improper for them. Rather, on the other hand, he realizes the deeper significance of these situations and the probability of their happening even in the case of noble persons. In fact, it is in such situations that their nobility is best expressed. That is why instead of suggesting any thematic alteration he totally banishes them from the syllabus, without reading which children's education would not at all be impoverished.

So far we see—Plato does not attack art at all. He attacks the improper use of art in the system of education and the misconceptions of the gods and demigods in epics. But in the Tenth Book of the Republic the situation changes apparently. Plato seems to condemn all the imitative arts on the same ground as found in Book III, and adds only one point more to strengthen the same ground. He cannot admire Homer as an educator of Greece, although Homer's epics were considered the true records of the gods and heroes. He can admit that Homer is the best of poets and the first of tragedians, but regarding the factual reality Homer is no authority at all.109 Similarly all the artists, who boast of being wise in speaking of so many things, are all vague, for their creations have no more factual and meta- physical value than those of the mirroric reflections. One artist can produce only one real thing. But in trying to produce every thing he creates only unreal reflections, not actual things.110 Plato's credit in the history of Greek aesthetics is not so much in affirmation of some theory as in attacking the pseudoaesthetic approach to the arts. Plato rightly reproached the prevalent attitude towards arts—the

109. ibid. X. 606. 110. Rep. X. 600, 596-7 ; Protagoras, 347; Apology 22. Pater, Perhaps, following these passages reads the 19th century creed of “Art for Art's sake” into Plato. This leads to a confusion.

attitude that attributed a factual reality to it, and rightly denied a metaphysical value of the works of painting, sculpture and poetry. But at the same time he committed a serious mistake in judging the aesthetic truth by the standard of metaphysics.

Thus Plato's polemic of art has no conscious or affirmative aesthetic basis; if it presents something of that sort, that is only what automatically follows from the factual, moral and metaphysical elements of his argument. But scholars have tried to put it otherwise; and it is necessary to discuss some of them here. Collingwood, for example, "imitation is bad; arts are imitations, therefore, arts are bad"111 and argue that Plato banished all the arts from his ideal state. Collingwood thinks that Plato attacks art from an aesthetic point of view, and he never attacks all the fine arts, but only the representative or imitative arts that showed a sign of decadence in the Greek arts of his own time.112 He understands that the germ of the above misconception of the scholars (i.e. Plato banished all the fine arts from his ideal state) lies in Jowett's defective translation that reached the hands of Croce, (perhaps through Bosanquet) and grows to an established argument in this Italian aesthete. Croce's point is that113 Plato attacks all kinds of fine arts as they deal with the base elements of human mind - its emotions which have no power of achieving the knowledge of truth; and as a seeker of truth Plato assigns credit to the intellect or reason as the only faculty for acquiring knowledge and forgets 'intuition', the other powerful way of knowing. In Croce's philosophy this

111. R. G. Collingwood, The Principles of Art, P. 46. 112. ibid P. 47 ff; cf. idem. Plato's Philosophy of Arts, 'Mind' 1925, vol. 34, P.155 ff; in P. 161. he speaks against Croce and holds in P. 168 that Plato's conception of imitation in the Rep. BK. X, is equal to imagination. 113. B. Croce, Aesthetic, P. 158-59.

'intuition' occupies a prominent place as the means of metaphysical knowledge and aesthetic activity. But against Croce Collingwood argues that Plato never considers the intellect as the only tool of knowing ; opinion is also for him a form of knowledge. He thinks that the whole trouble arises from the mistranslation of the Greek Phrase "hē pros hēdonēn poiētikē Kai hē mimēsis" in the passage where Socrates (Plato) challenges any defence of the poetic art.114 Translators here forget the importance of the adjective-'hē mimēsis' and write simply 'poetry' although the entire discourse is concerned with the mimetic poetry (mimētikos poiētēs) which aims at mere amusement. Hence he concludes that Plato banishes only that class of poetry (from the ideal state) which is mimetic in nature and amusing in its function, but never the poetry as such or true poetry. Collingwood accuses Plato of a serious defect in argument as he has discussed the species (representative poetry) without giving an idea of the genus (true poetry). In other words, he has nowhere given his own definition of poetry as such.

But this ingenious attempt of Collingwood ends in a conclusion which is untenable. He is, of course, rightly against the critics who misunderstand Plato's notion of imitation in general, its specific sense applied to aesthetics, and his real purpose and ground for attacking art. This we shall not repeat here as it has already been discussed in detail. Plato does never say that imitation as such is bad, rather the imitation of the noble is the very core of the Athenian ideal ; and secondly, his polemic on the imitative arts is in no way conducted from an aesthetic point of view.

Collingwood's attack on Croce is also untenable. Of course we cannot agree with the latter, if he thinks that

114. Republic, X. 605, this challenge is against visual arts also-"for he (painter) resembles him (Mimetic poet) in that his creations are inferior in respect of reality."

Plato's attack on art is on the aesthetic ground, but in every way he is right to say that reason is the only means of apprehending the Platonic truth. If Collingwood were conscious of his bias of reading his own view into Plato and thus of committing a serious mistake of attributing romantic thoughts to the pioneer of classicism, he could easily see in the simile of the "Divided Line"115 of the Republic that, according to Plato, reason is the only means of acquiring Truth. Opinion is not at all a "form of knowledge", its object being only the appearance of truth such as physical objects and shadows etc. It is pseudo knowledge, the object of the Sophists, not of the philosophers.

Collingwood's next argument is that Plato condemns only the bad elements in the contemporary decadent arts; and by badness he means, as he explains later, its imitative character or the tendency towards creating illusions of physical objects aiming merely at amusement. Plato indeed says that the artists in their imitative products give us only the illusion of truth - the statue of a man is not a man himself, but it is executed so realistically that it deludes the spectators; and the pleasure that this illusion gives in the exclamation: "Oh, how exactly it looks like a man!" is no better than that derived from the ignorance of a child, and is in no way equal to the perfect pleasure in knowing the truth.

But his conception of bad and good art is something very different. He does not classify fine arts, as Collingwood thinks, into imitative or pseudo (bad) art and art proper (something non-imitative) or good, nor does he require any more definition of this art proper, for all the fine arts have sufficiently been defined by him as imitative. While Plato's polemic is directed even against the Homeric epics, it is highly controversial to urge that he criticizes only the contemporary arts. Plato's contemporary art, far from being decadent, richly develops towards a completion of

115. Republic, VI. 509. ff.

highly realistic style achieving its specific Greek character with a craving for novelty freeing itself from the Egyptian conventionalism, expressed in the ancient Archaic art. "I do not sing," proclaims Timotheus the writer of dithyrambs with his innovating spirit, "what men have sung in the time past. In novelty is power.....Far from be the muse of the old days."116 A dramatic character of Antiphanes considers Philoxenus the best of the song-writers for "he has terms that are his alone, words wholly new and that constantly. As for melodies with what art he conveys and modulates; He is truly a god among men; he knows true music". 117 Experiments in creating new metres and new musical tones are being carried on. (Phrynis mixes hexametres and lyric verses and prepares a new kind of lyre that sounds like a trumpet.118 Dramatists like Euripides want to expose the reality as such (viz. the character of man as it is), may it be morally justified or otherwise, ideal or ignoble, beneficial or harmful. Art now starts its secular expedition. But Plato foresees in all these attempts for novelty and realism a powerful germ to rot the moral plinth of his ideal state. Phaedra, a character of the Hippolytus of Euripides, indeed, expresses this fear of Plato, "We know the good and we recognize it, but we are unable to stand by it."119 This human weakness, Plato fears, will necessarily draw the common audience of Aeschylus, Agamemnon or 'Sophocles', Oidipus towards adultery and incest. His statesmanship here suspends his powerful aesthetic taste and he cannot but prefer the Egyptian religious conventionalism to his contemporary Greek realism. When Cleinias exclaims120 "How extra-ordinary !" (is the conventional attitude of the Egyptians), the stranger corrects it "How statesmanlike ! how worthy of a legislator !"121

116. A Hist. of Aesth. P. 30. 117. Loc. cit. 118. Loc. cit. 119. Euripides, Hippolytus 380 ff. 120. Laws, II 65-7. 121. Nandi misunderstands the true nature of the Greek arts of Plato's time when he says

Thus Collingwood's view that Plato condemned only the pseudo (imitative) art of his time, not art proper, seems to be imaginary. Translators vary concerning the above confusing phrase quoted by Collingwood. Lee writes122 "drama and poetry written for pleasure" taking "drama' for 'mimēsis' and "poetry for pleasure' for 'hēdonēn poiētikē.'" But it is not clear whether the function of drama is to give, pleasure or not. Cornford's version is—“dramatic poetry whose end is to give pleasure123"; and Jowett's124

"The then Greek art in being purely imitative in the literal sense, gave Plato a long hand in condemning contemporary arts. He saw imitative art only and condemned it." (An Enquiry into the Nature and Function of Art P. 12.) Greek art. we know, was luxuriantly realistic. But that was, by no means purely imitative in the literal sense. No art of this literal imitation is possible. Chaudhuri writes, "Plato, while he denounced art as imitation, and took imitation as the slavish copy of Natural objects, denounced only what he held to be bad art." (Studies in Aesthetics P. 20.) But we saw Plato never took art as a slavish or exact imitation of Nature and did not place it on the same level with the mirroric reflection from aesthetic point of view.

John Warry remarks that Plato possibly lacked sympathy with the art of his time. In criticism of art he appeals to the standard of formal beauty, which is apparently lacking in the work which he has in mind—(Greek Aesthetic Theory P. 52.) He gives, indeed, in the Philebus sufficient emphasis upon the formal beauty which we have already seen above. But it is rather more probable to hold that Plato derived this judgement from his experience of the contemporary art (which was, as just noted, developing with full force) by an inductive method. In fact, he did not lack sympathy with the art as such ; but as a statesman he was afraid of the artist's love for novelty, producing more pleasure by that to gain popularity, which, he thought, might effect the moral character of the citizens. Koller's views, as is stated by warry, p. 62, that the Greek word 'imitation' before it fell into the hands of Plato was always positive, and commendatory and that it never had the meaning of deceit and imposture, which it receives in the Bk. X of the Republic, seems to be controversial, for we have seen, Hippocrates, before Plato understood it in the sense of falsehood and Socrates conceived the artistic imitation as useless. 122. See the Penguine ed. 1965. 123. Cornford, The Republic of Plato, Oxford ed. 124. See the Oxford ed.

"Sweet friend and sister arts of imitation". But all these three are confusing. Jowett is very light in translating Poiētikē into "sister arts" and both Cornford and Lee inconsistently introduce dramatic poetry here. Shorey's translation - 'the mimetic and dulect poetry'125 is more literal and closer to the original than the other three mentioned. But Collingwood's translation "poetry for pleasure's sake i.e. representation" is quite fanciful and leads him astray to accuse Plato of a fantastic fault of identifying the amusement and representative art, for he thinks amusement art is not the only representative art, magic is also a kind of representative art (in other words imitative arts may not necessarily be amusing, for magic, a kind of imitative art is not amusing). But Plato, perhaps, had not dreamt of the fact that this simple idea would be interpreted in so startling a way. He took the common popular idea, as we have noted in detail, in distinguishing human arts into two broad divisions - productive arts that fulfil day-to-day needs and imitative arts that give emotional or sensual pleasure (not rational or philosophic). All kinds of poetry whether narrative or dramatic are included here. In the Third Book of the Republic he specifically mentions drama as imitative for its impersonating character. The excessive emotional pleasure of these arts, Plato thinks, is harmful for a good society and so he tries to delimit the scope of its circulation by arguing against it from a purely philosophical point of view that it has no factual truth and that the pleasure which people derive from it is not absolute and pure. It is on this ground that he demands a defence of poetry and of art in general.

There is another school of critics which tries to read Plato with an unnecessary sympathy. It admits that Plato's notion of artistic activity is imitation. But following a passage in the Laws126 it suggests that Plato believed in two

125. Loeb Classical Library ed. 126. Laws, II. 668.

kinds of imitation - good and bad, hence thought of two kinds of art - good and bad, and it is this bad art which he condemns everywhere. Concerning some passages of the Symposium (211), 'Timaeus' (29) and the Laws (668) Verdenius thinks that art is inspired by divine voice and that it refers to an ideal pattern of beauty.127 Accordingly (true or good) art is not confined to the limits of its visual models. True art does not lapse into flat realism, but it strives to transcend the material world - in its poor images it also tries to evoke something of that higher realm of being which also glimmers through phenomenal reality. It is true that Plato attaches much value to likeness in art, but this likeness does not refer to common-place reality, but to ideal beauty. Verdenius thus translates the phrase "Kalou mimēmata" in the Laws as "representation of Beauty"128 with a capital 'B'.

But the whole thing ends in an attempt to modernize Plato - to introduce a romantic conception of art into him. Plato, of course, holds that the creation of the world by God is the fairest of all sensible things, because God himself is Good, Beautiful and Unenvious. He makes the objects of the world "as like as himself as they could be". This indicates that the world (or the divine creation) is not perfectly like creator, but only analogous to it ; and the more perfect is the pattern (according to which God creates it) the more is the perfection and longevity of the creation. The phenomena of the world are thus more analogous to the Ideal Beauty and Good as their patterns are direct Ideas. But this likeness of the particular to the universal can be detected only by a philosopher who through the sensible goes to the intelligible, while the souls of the ordinary people are attracted by the external beauty of things being unconscious of the proper relation between the idea and its image. An imitative artist

127. Verdenius, op. cit. P. 18. 128. ibid.

is far inferior to the philosopher exercising his rational power, and for that Plato places him on the sixth step according to the degree of reason.129 He is neither perfectly good and unenvious like the divine creator, nor are his patterns perfectly beautiful, since they themselves are copies. His activity being mostly emotional, he is unable to apprehend the intelligible Beauty. It cannot be possible for him, therefore, to represent true beauty. It is on this metaphysical ground that Plato says—“Art is a poor child born of poor parents”.130 No emotional activity such as the creation and appreciation of arts can apprehend the highest truth and beauty...Plato clarifies it further: “...the greatest and highest truths have no outward image of themselves visible to man which he who wishes to satisfy the soul of the enquirer can adapt to eye of sense, and, therefore, we ought to train ourselves to give and to accept a rational account of them; shown only in thought and idea and in no other way.”131 Similarly concerning the passage in the ‘Laws’ it is difficult to agree with Verdenius in reading a metaphysical sense into the phrase ‘Kalou mimēmata’ because it is not fitting to the context, where Plato argues that pleasure is not the only standard of music and all other imitative arts. “When things have an accompanying charm, either the best thing in them is the very charm, or there is some rightness or utility possessed by them”132; for example, food is not only for pleasure, it is meant for nourishment, and the excellence of arts the correctness of imitation (according to the qualitative and quantitative proportions) is the first requirement, pleasure being its necessary outcome; and as a correct imitation, is good imitation, Jowett is right to translate the above phrase

129. Phaedrus, 248. 130. Republic X 603. 131. Statesman, 285, 286; cf. Phaedrus, 259. 132. Laws, II. 667.

into 'imitation of the good'133 (the Greek word 'Kalos' means both good and beauty, and good does not express here strictly a moral sense which is expressed by agathos. Good is almost equivalent to truth here. By no means it indicates the ultimate good or Beauty, for no question of the universality does arise here. The stranger discusses here only the nature of sensible arts.) which should be understood as a 'good imitation' or 'correct imitation'.134 The stranger, indeed, just in his next speech explains the phrase in this sense : "And those who seek for the best kind of song and music ought not to seek for that which is pleasant, but for that which is true; and the truth of imitation, as we were saying, in rendering the thing imitated according to quantity and quality."135

133. Jowett's trans. of the Laws, Encyclopaedia Britanica Inc. 134. Carritt is right to suggest (op. cit p. 40) that Plato had an idea of a good moral imitation in his mind i.e. imitation of a thing or a man of good moral character—which he would gladly allow to his state Cf. Rep. 397, 400ff ; Laws, VIII. 812. 135. Laws, II. 668.

CHAPTER IV

IMITATION AND CONSCIOUS ILLUSION

(i) Aristotle’s compromise between sense and reason, Idea and phenomenon, form and matter—naturalistic explanation of causation and cosmology—cosmic creation not an imitation of any Idea external to it but a creation by itself applying its own form and matter—Nature a dynamic force leading towards the best of its creation—its adaptation of human creation as a means to it—the distinction between human and Natural creations casual not absolute—human creations or technai being ultimately creations of Nature—human creation an imitation of Nature not in producing its poor copies only, but in developing over it following its principles of creations—imitation versus emulation—art (techne) partly imitating and partly completing the creation of Nature. (ii) Aristotle’s division of technai into productive and imitative—imitative artist not only a follower of the process of Natural creation in common with the productive artist—but also a maker of likenesses of Nature-products—artistic likeness not a mirroric reflection in involving selection and elimination still an imitation for creating nothing absolutely new, absent in Nature—imitative arts not motiveless—psychology of imitation—imitative impulse inherent in man helping him in advancement of learnnig—the purpose of imitative arts to delight in displaying the artistic skill expressed through the vivid likeness of Nature-product—the beauty of Nature versus the beauty of art—both the ugly and the beautiful of Nature equally pleasing in art—Croce’s argument—criticism—artistic imitation a sort of conscious illusion—(iii) Aristotle’s division of imitative arts according to their means of imitation—the object of artistic imitation being man-in-action—conception of action—ethē, pathe and praxeis—imitative character of music, dance, sculpture, painting and narrative poetry—the nature of poetic imitation analysed—probability and necessity the principles of poetic (and of all the artistic) imitation—a more perfect imitation in dramatic poetry—Aristotle’s concept of ‘imitation’ and the modern concept of ‘creation’.

i. The wide circumference to which Plato's concept of imitation extends is absent in Aristotle's thought. That is because the methods of approach to the philosophical problems are notably distinct in two cases. Plato, we saw, drew an uncompromising line between the realms of sense and reason, form and matter, Idea and phenomenon. If science was to be achieved, only reason had to be developed and sensation deva-

lued, for sensation deceives human knowledge. The objects of sense were undermined to a point that their existence was denied completely and the relation between the phenomenon (or a sensible object) and the Idea (or intelligible object) was that between a copy and the original object. And as the relation of the Idea and the phenomenon was not always of the same type (i. e. same type of copy), the sense of copy gained its wide scope -if here it is reflection of a thing on water, there it is expression of thought in words. The half mythic and half rational character of Plato's notion of cosmic creation is also an outcome of this imagistic approach. If God creates the sensible world by copying the ever-existing Idea, all human creations are only copies of this divine creation. The question of creation, then, stands to be a question of copying or imitating; and whether divine or human, all creation is base as the real essence or substance remains apart from it.

It is from a polemic against this imagistic way of thinking that the philosophy of Aristotle emerges. Plato is reported1 to have been shocked by this charge of his dearest pupil who spurned him "as colts kick out at the mother who bore them". The most untenable point in Plato's philosophy

1. Diog. Laert. V. i. 2ff.

is, for Aristotle, the separation of the essence of a thing or the Idea and the sensible object. The Idea or the Form of a horse cannot be intelligible without its embodiment in a particular sensible horse, similarly a particular horse is a horse only because it contains the essence of a horse. To separate these two is to universalize a particular. Thus a sense-object is not a copy or imitation of the Idea ; it is not mirroric or watery image without any solid existence of its own ; it is a combination of both Form and matter. Aristotle, then, removes the Platonic scorn from sensation - it is not a way to deception, but a source of knowledge. It creates memory and several memories of the same thing produce finally the capacity for a single experience, and science and art (art of theorizing) come to men through experience.2

With this notion of sensation Aristotle denies the existence of any pure abstract form known by intelligence only and pure matter known by sensation alone. No such distinction as pure form and pure matter is possible. Every matter possesses a form and a form must be a form of some matter. Thus both the elements require sense as well as reason for a successful apprehension. Goldness and a piece of gold are not distinct entities. A piece of gold is gold because it contains goldness, and although it does not have a desired shape i.e. that of a necklace or a bracelete, it must have a shape, the one which it contains at present, say a circular or a rectangular one. Matter is not always matter, nor a form form. A piece of wood is the matter of a particular part of a chair which is its form, and again that part becomes a matter for the formation of the whole chair. Form, of course, does not mean only shape in Aristotle's philosophy. A proper understanding of the idea of form and matter discloses all the branches of his thought. It is on this point that he has tried to solve the Eleatic problem of the being

2. Arist. Metaphysics i.ii. 980a lff.

and becoming. Becoming, according to the Eleatics, cannot be being, for it is not-being. Plato makes it more complicated when he thinks to have solved it by making 'becoming' 'nothing' or unreal, following Heracleitus, and 'Being' the absolute real. But this distinction cannot explain the changes that occur in the world. Ideas are sterile, and if the sensible things are the copies of these ideas they also should be static—a fact which contradicts our experience. So becoming is not absolute nothing, nor only Being the absolute reality. Becoming is "that which comes to be" or a formative stage of being, for example, a boy is the becoming of a young man and the spring is the becoming of summer. To explain this movement a moving force and the purpose or motive of this force are necessary. Hence of any creation there are four causes — formal, material, efficient and final. The building of a ship necessarily requires the proper materials, a builder, the motive or purpose and the form or final shape which will serve this purpose. The builder, the motive and the final shape are all included later in a single cause by Aristotle which he calls formal, for it is this final form of the thing which the builder bears in his mind while making the object. He cannot surely cherish the shape of a chair in his mind, the production of which, he would think, can carry things across the seas. So the force, purpose and final shape are all one — the formal cause.3 Like form matter also possesses broad notion. If form or "being" is actually something, matter or "becoming" is potentially that thing. A boy is actually a boy, while potentially he is a young man. A piece of gold has a potentiality of being a necklace and so on.

The value attributed to each and every particle of the creation, to its reality and purpose is the necessary result of Aristotle's unique compromise between sense and reason. This naturalistic element in his philosophy makes him more

3. See Stace, op. cit. for details PP. 262ff.

a Greek than any of his predecessors. For Plato creation means change, and as it is accessible only to sense, it must be an imitation of the Idea, being false in itself. But in Aristotle's philosophy there is no need that every creation must be an imitation. Natural creations, especially, are by no means imitations. Needing no external model for its creations Nature follows its own models that are not existing outside its arena, but are necessary outcomes of its dynamic progress which tends to fulfil a purpose.4 Nature means both form and matter,5 and Physics, that branch of knowledge which deals with the studies of natural phenomena, must study both these elements. The sense of Nature as matter is obvious when we say, a chair by its nature is wood, or an animal - body by nature is a combination of flesh and bones. or a pitcher is a lump of heated clay by nature. Nature is also a form in the sense that it includes the motivating form finally achieving a specified shape through a dynamic force. Nature is, therefore, “a course or cause of being moved and of being at rest, in that to which it belongs primarily, in virtue of itself and not in virtue of a concomitant attribute”6 The sprout comes out of a seed under certain conditions and grows up unceasingly until it reaches its mature stage at which it rests. In this process no help external to Nature is necessary. The seed itself, the conditions necessary, such as water, air, light and earth, the force within the plant and the final shape of the mature tree– all are Natural. The whole process is spontaneous and this spontaneity is also a sign of Nature.7

When Aristotle says that ‘Form’ is also Nature, he means by Form ‘that for the sake of which’ or ‘the end by which’; this end is defined not as the last stage of a progress,

4. Arist. Physics, ii. 8. 199 b 25ff ; ii. 2. 194a 12ff. 5. Ibid 191bff. 6. Ibid. ii. 1. 192. b. 20. 7. Ibid ii. 2. 194 a 12ff.

but as the best one.8 And if one asks how to discern this best stage, he would most probably answer that there is no final word about it. In fact, if through the long course of time Nature would have found out the best stage of its creation, the world would have been completely static now. There is no satisfaction of this thirst for the best in Nature and it is this unquenched desire which is the root of creation. Nature created trees with their beautiful and fragrant flowers, sweet fruits, and delicate creepers to decorate them, and fertile valleys for their growth. Similarly it created caves and grottoes for the refuge of animals and primitive men. But this stage of creation was obviously not the best. Nature desired to develop its creation further, and so gave power of thought and reasoning and genius to man and following the models of the caves, man built houses, and through ages man has been developing further and further the forms and models of houses to which there is no end yet, because the best or optimum form has not yet been achieved. This is, according to Aristotle, the origin of human production. Although there is an apparent or casual distinction between the products of men and those of Nature, human product is, as considered by Aristotle, ultimately Natural, for human beings are themselves Natural products. But this casual distinction between the two types of production is not like the mythical gap between the divine and the human creations which can never be bridged. The Olympian palaces made by Hephaistos are always far superior, in the mythical thought, to those of the earth, made by mortals, directed originally by Prometheus in imitation of the divine architect. Plato's myth, as we have seen, was a bit more developed. But the sense of inferiority of the human art is still there with him. Although the mortals developed their creations following the direction of Prometheus, they could

3. De generatione et corruptione 336 b 25ff; Physics 194a 12ff.

by no means surpass the original creation, and as imitations their creations are always below the level of reality.

Against this background Aristotle's conception of human creation seems to be a challenge to all preceding thoughts in Greece. "Much in error......are they", he says, "who say that the construction of men is not only faulty, but inferior to that of all other animals, seeing that he is, as they point out, barefooted, naked, and without weapon of which to avail himself."9 With such a high opinion of human capability Aristotle evaluates fine arts, the creation of men.

Art or technē indicates, in general, for Aristotle as for any other Greek, the product itself as well as the knowledge and skill of its production. In showing the relation between the Natural creation and art Aristotle repeats the traditional view that the latter imitates the former. This he says in a passage in the Physics where he clarifies the conception of Nature by comparing it with the function of a doctor. Health is a form the materials of which are biles and phlegm etc. and it is the business of a doctor to know both because it is in and through these materials that the form is realized. Health means a proportionate arrangement of the humours of the body. What is true of the art of a doctor is true of Nature also and to know Nature one must know both form and matter, because art imitates Nature (hē technē mimeitai tēn phusin).10 In the Mateorlogica he writes, "......broiling and boiling are artificial processes, but the same general kind of thing, as we said, is found in nature too. The affections produced are similar though they lack a name, for art imitates nature."11

But in what respect does art imitate Nature ? and in what sense ? Some critics12 find here a sense of emulation as if in Nature there is some ideal in view which it follows to

9. De partibus Animalium, 687a. 10. Physics 194a 12ff. 11. Meteorlogica 381b4.

make good its own deficiency or want. In case of emulation the emulator is inferior to the emulated and there is every doubt whether he can acquire exactly all the characteristics of the ideal. In Aristotle's deffnition, emulation involves a feeling of “pain caused by seeing the presence in persons, whose nature is like our own, of good things that are highly valued and are possible for ourselves to acquire ; but it is felt not because others have themselves, but because we have not got them ourselves.”13 This cannot be, according to Aristotle, the relation between art and Nature, for the former is a betterment of the latter. There is a sinilarity between the two in some important respects. Both of them are causes, creative forces, operating for some definite purpose, and the faculty of operation in both is so equal that “if a house had been made in the same way as it is now by art, and, if things made by nature were niaade also by art, they would come to be in the same way as by nature.”14 But these subjunctive expressions also suggest the imipossibility of such interchange of products - Nature cannot produce what art produces, nor art what Nature does. And in fact as the process of operation is distinct i. e. Nature uses its own materials, whereas art depends upon Nature for these, such difference is bound to be there. The above comparison indicates only the point of similarity between the two regarding their general active force and the gradual procedure where each “in the series is for the sake of the next.”15 The particular process of making a chair or a house is not in imitation of Nature, because such things are not there. It is the development of art over Nature. That is why Aristotle corrects his own view “art imitates nature” into “art partly completes what nature cannot bring to finish and partly imitates her.”16 Hence art does not suffer from any want

12. A Hist. Aesth. P. 63, see the marginal note. 13. Rhetorics, 1388a 30. 14. Physics 199aff 15. Ibid. loc. cit. 16. Loc. cit.

itself. It rather completes the want of Nature.17

(ii) Art has another advantage over Nature. It can

make the objects which Nature makes, while Nature cannot

make what art produces. Natural products such as trees,

seas, sky, flowers, animals all can be reproduced in art,

though not in the same materials in which Nature realizes

these forms. Art makes an animal in stone or clay, a tree or

a flower in lines and colours. It is thus only the form of the

Natural product which art reproduces and as its material

is completely different from that of the Natural, the form

reproduced must be conditioned by the new materials used.

The function of art is not, therefore, an exact reproduction

of Natural objects with the same practical value as they

have in their original, nor is it meant for the fulfilment of

any practical purpose which Nature cannot do (e.g. building

of houses etc.) ; it is simply a likeness or mimicry. We saw

how the Greek tradition admits of two types of art — the

productive or purposive and imitative. This imitative art

is not, of course, completely without any end ; its aim is to

give pleasure and it refers to those objects which we call

fine arts now-a-days, although the ideas about this branch

of human activity are not the same for an ancient Greek

and a modern European. Nevertheless, it will be wrong to

say that a distinction between these two types of activity

(productive and imitative or crafts and fine arts) was quite

unintelligible to a Greek mind as Randall writes, “For

Aristotle and the Greeks, the aritist is a maker, a craftsman,

like the ship-builder or the physician. The different and

separate arts are distinguished by the fact that they make

separate kinds of things — the ship-builder makes ships, the

physician makes health, the poet makes plays.”18 It is true

17. He means here a ‘likeness’ which he defines himself—‘Things are

like, if not being absolutely the same, nor without difference in

respect of their concrete substance, they are she same in forms.’

Metaphysics, 1054b. 18. Randall, Aristotle, P. 278.

that all of them were makers, but the distinction among these makings was not merely a question of the 'kind' of objects that they made ; the nature and purpose of the products were also to be considered in order to distinguish them. We saw how on this ground Socrates suggested a distinction between the practically useful and the emotionally pleasing human products and Plato obviously distinguished between productive and imitative arts. Aristotle has no need to explain it again. But the valuation which he makes of these imitative arts remains the first and the last throughout Greek thought. Philosophers wrote treatises on painting, poetry and music even before Plato and after Aristotle.19 But none could achieve his standard of scientific and impersonal method of investigation for which only he among the Greeks gained so great an admiration even in the flowering age of Arabic culture. It was only he who could create a tradition which still continues in the 20th century. This is mainly because of his proper valuation of sense and sense-objects and a compromise between reason and sense. And secondly, because, as a critic rightly comments,20 while for Plato the analysis of poetry or imitative art in general cannot be considered without any reference to education, politics or ethics, Aristotle considered the study of imitative arts as an independent branch of knowledge, each of the varieties of which again may have its separate sub-branches.

Neither Plato nor Socrates nor Hippocrates could think of judging independently the reality of imitative arts by a standard of their own. Hippocrates, Socrates and Plato had a very clear notion that the arts have only a formal likeness to reality, whereas materially they are unlike, and

19. Diog laert. II. 84, 122, 124 ; IV. 13, 18 ; V. 22, 24, 26 ; Vii. 174 ; IX. 48. He gives a list of books written by Xenocrates, Aristippus, Simon, Simias, Melantheus, Democritus and Crito. 20. Mckeon, Literary Criticism and the Concept of Imitation in Antiquity, in Critics and Criticism. P. 166.

as such are inferior to reality, lacking organic action,

practical use and factual existence which reality has.

In fact, except music which imitates a sound through

sound, and drama that imitates action through action, no

other art has a material resemblance to the original. The

medium of poetry is language, that of sculpture is stone, clay

and wood etc. and that of painting is colour. Dance is rather

a mixture of music and drama. The philosophers realised

this fact, and Plato's realization, as we have seen, was the

deepest of these three. But they had to realize something

more. The common point between two things on which one

rivals the other should alone be taken into consideration

while judging their excellence or success. If form is the only

common point and if it is the form which alone the artists

imitate, the philosophers ought to have examined how much

real this imitated form was : but instead of that they consi-

dered both matter and form in judging the reality and worth

of the works of art, as if they were judging just another

physical object. This is, most probably, the reason why art

had not its separate standard of judgment, and thus was

judged ill. But in spite of the adverse comments by the

philosophers, artists were rising step by step upto the pinna-

cle of their success. The grandeur of Pheidias' style and

the novel pose of Polycleitus were, of course, absent now, but

the life-like images of Myron and Praxiteles in sculpture,

and of Apelles, Protogenes and Apollodorus in painting brought

a new possibility in the Greek art when the Greeks were

colonizing over wide areas with new hopes and prospects.

The Greek artist was deaf to the scorn of the philosopher

with a robust artistic self confidence.21 And it is in Aristotle

21. See Bhavabhuti's introduction to the Mālati-Mādhavam "What do

they, who scorn us, know? This effort (of mine) is not for them.

(Since) time is eternal and the world is vast, (I believe that) someone

will come in future sharing my own nature ( and will appreciate me

properly )

that the Greek artist found a truely sympathetic connosisseur. With all the phases of development in Greek art before him and with his unprejudiced outlook towards the world and life, Aristotle’s defence of art was philosophically so sound that through long centuries its importance has not been diminished.

We may consider here the comment of Collingwood that Plato condemned the imitative art of low amusement and Aristotle defended only that art and not art proper. “The Poetics is, therefore,” he writes, “in no sense a Defence of poetry, it is a Defence of poetry for pleasure’s sake or Representative poetry…….Plato’s discussion of poetry is rooted in a lively sense of realities : he knows the difference between the old and the new - the kind of difference that exists between the Olympia pediments and Praxiteles - and he is trying to analyse it. His analysis is imperfect. He thinks that the new art of the ‘decadence’ is the art of an over-excited, over-emotionalized world but it is really the exact opposite……The art, in fact, of a Waste Land. Aristotle with another generation’s experience of the fourth century to instruct him corrects Plato on the facts. But he has lost Plato’s sense of their significance. He no longer feels the contrast between the greatness of the fifth century and the decadence of the fourth……a native of the new Hellenistic world, sees no gloom. But it is there.”22 The most perplexing point in Collingwood’s statement is that he thinks Aristotle’s time was a period of decadence of Greek art - the period when actually, as history proves, it achieved an international spirit without losing its original temper. If the fifth century was the climax of the aristocratic classical Greek culture the fourth century was the climax of the sophisticated Greek attitude. Decadence came after the fall of Alexander’s empire and even if there were any sign of

22. Collingwood op. cit. P. 51-52.

decadence, how could Aristotle, whose method is always comparative and historical, could miss to mark it? Collingwood is biased by his notion of ‘Expression’ and plays down the importance and significance of Aristotle's sense of imitation as the basis of all fine arts.

Now concerning Aristotle's aesthetics we have to discuss the following problems : If the sole aim of imitative arts were to delight, then what are the objects they imitate and in what is that imitation done? Secondly is it that only the imitations of objects delight, but not the objects themselves? We have seen how human art in general (both imitative and productive) imitates the essential process of Nature i.e. its force and method in the realization of a form in matter, and the Aristotelian sense of imitation in this respect is not equivalent to simple emulation but an adoptation of a process to produce something better than in Nature. But an imitative aritist in common with the productive artist not only adopts this natural process but also imitates the Nature-products such as tree, flower and men-in-action etc. and imitation here means production of the mimic counter-parts or likenesses, not just duplications of things in Nature. According to his notion of likeness, as quoted above, a painted horse is not exactly like a real horse with its size, flesh and bones, skin and hairs, but its form is similar to that of the living one - so that it may be recognized as a horse, not something else. The Platonic distinction between a particular and a universal, we know, is absent in Aristotle. The artist cannot see the abstract idea of horse isolated from the concrete, particular one. The universal form with all its sensible qualities impresses itself in the imagination (“Phantasia” of Aristotle should not be identified with the modern notion of “creative imagination”) of the artist.23 An imitative artist, further, is not compelled to imitate a thing

23. For Aristotle's notion of Phantasia see De. Anima, 428a ff.

exactly as he perceives it.24 He may make it better or worse without changing its common characteristics by which it is realized as so and so. An artist, for example, may not find a single horse in his country with a full grown muscular body, thick and hairy tail, smooth and over-flowing manes and capable of swift movement ; but it would not be improper for him to paint such a horse. But objections would certainly be raised if the artist fancied that a horse possessing two horns would be more attractive. The picture here may look very strange but cannot be called a horse. This is what is suggested by Socrates as ideal or selective imitation, and called by Aristotle as "better imitation".25 Similarly he can make the horse in his picture weaker than the horses he generally perceives, instead of making it stronger as in the former case. The question of artistic imitation is not thus a question of mere sense-activity, of a mirroric reflection. As it involves addition and elimination, reason functions here very strongly. The functions of an artist and a scientist are essentially the same - applying their senses they gather and store up memory, memory gives back experiences to them, and from experiences a scientist establishes a general

24. Aristotle sometimes compares a memory impression with a picture, see De Memoria et. Reminiscentia, 450a 20ff. But there is no literal similarity as is found in Plato. He wants to say that a thing or an event is impressed upon memory as a picture is painted upon a blank sheet of paper ; but not that a picture is painted in the same way as memory gets impressed. Else writes, "—there is no evidence that Aristotle regarded poems as images or the poet as an image-maker. It can hardly be an accident that apeikazein appears only here, in direct connection with the visual and vocal arts, and that neither eikōn nor any word like it is ever used in the Poetics to describe any aspect of the poet's work - a likeness is not an image, at least for Aristotle ; and it is obvious that a melody or a rhythm cannot be a 'picture' of courage or anger in any direct sense." Op. cit. pp. 27-28.

25. Comp. Xenoph. Mem. III. 10. 2 ; and Arist. Poetics 1448a5.

proposition, while an artist constructs the form of his work in his mind which he realizes later in matter. Philosophy and art do not belong to two opposite spheres of human behaviour such as rational and irrational ; they are rather two sides of the same rational behaviour. “Art, a form of making, together with doing, belongs to the practical, while philosophy or science belongs to theoretical side of it.”26 But this virtue attributed to imitative arts, by Aristotle, should not be interpreted as effects or results of creative imagination, for the idea of imagination was not very clearly expressed even in the Roman thought before Philostratus. Besides, some critics27 unnecessarily attempt to bring here the word poiein or “to make” used by Aristotle to justify their view that arts both visual and auditory are not imitations but creations. Poiein certainly means ‘making’, but in Aristotle’s as in any other Greek’s view, it refers to making in the very general sense ; and in this sense even a photographic copying will be a poiein because it is also a making. Aristotle as well as Socrates could think of an artist painting a beautiful woman, whose real existence might be doubted, but they could not think of painting something which does not exist at all, the idea of which is completely invented by the artist. The particular woman he paints may not be present, but the idea of his woman he derives from the common world, and on the solid ground of this common idea of woman he builds the structure of an uncommon or extraordinary woman in his art. Similarly, the animals like Medusa, Mermaids, Centaurs and Satyrs may not exist in the real world and may not thus be perceived by the artists, but they exist in the legendary worlds from which the artists derive their ideas. Bywater’s suggestion, that the artists’ work in ancient Greece was not so much a creation as a copy, more or less faithful, of something already existing in

26. Schaper, Prelude to Aesthetics, P. 58. 27. Gomme, The Greek Attitude to Poetry and History pp.54-56

legend or life 28 happens to be quite justified here because such was the actual belief and practice of the artists, and Aristotle's generalization here, as always, follows an inductive method.

An imitative artist thus, according to Aristotle is not less intelligent than either a philosopher or a productive artist. But why should the artist engage himself in this mimicry at all ? To this question Aristotle's answer is very plain. No human action is for nothing. Mimicry is an inherent activity of man, and of all the animals he is the most apt for this act. In a way his entire cultural development occurred through mimicry. It is a common knowledge that without any external direction whatsoever babies become habituated with imitation. If somebody laughs, if he utters a word they also do that ; they try to make themselves the postures and gestures which others make, although they understand nothing ; they play at house-keeping, shop-keeping, fighting etc. which are quite ordinary activities and customs of the society they are born in. They have, of course, no conscious motive behind these imitative actions. They just do them out of the very imitative impulse in man like other rudimentary impulses such as hunger, thirst, sleep, sex etc. And out of this imitative impulse a sense of emulation grows later on which forms in a way the basis of their ethical, political, economical - in a word their entire cultural development. Aristotle says man learns by imitation.29 That is quite true. Further, when children perform mimicries they enjoy them and this enjoyment comes from a feeling of rudimentary curiosity without any intellectual involution. Similar was, perhaps, Aristotle would suggest, the origin of imitative arts. An ancient cave-man sitting in an isolated mood drew or tried to draw the

28. Bywater, Aristotle on the Art of Poetry P.III. 29. Poetics 1448b5.

face of the animal, he had killed, just being instigated by the imitative impulse inherent in him, and when the work was done, he delighted in the resemblance, he had effected, of the animal in his drawing. From this primary stage art developed through a series of modification upto Pheidias, Praxiteles and Polygnotus where it achieved the value of an intelligent human activity.30 From a mimicry it developed into a deliberate art not because it was necessary in man's daily life or served any practical purpose, but because it delighted him. The more was the degree of resemblance of this imitative product with its real counterpart the more was the pleasure in the observer. The source of this pleasure is not necessarily beauty,31 because the most realistic

30. Cf. ibid 1448b20, 1449a 5-10. Where Aristotle also believes in such a historical process of the development of other arts such as poetry in general and tragedy. Some scholars include magical activities in the origin of this representative arts and distinguish it from true art (Collingwood, op. cit. p. 49). But Aristotle had no idea of such origin or distinction. 31. Aristotle has not formulated a Systematic view on beauty. It seems he gives emphasis upon the elements such as order, sy mmetry and definiteness. Metaph. 1078a36; Problemetica, 915b36 ; for proportion see Pol. 1284b8ff. In the 'Poetics' he combines these three elements 1450b35ff, an orderly arrangement of parts together with definiteness of size is necessary for the beauty of a living organism or any other object. Neither a Lilliputian nor a Brobdingnagian will appear beautiful before Aristotle, however proportionate may be the arrangement of their limbs. The effect of this beauty is necessarily pleasant although the inverse is not true (See Rheto. 1369b33ff., Prob. 920b30, 921a5ff for a definition of pleasure and an enumeration of the causes of pleasure) and Aristotle would add this pleasing character to an ordered and definite form in order to give a fuller definition of beauty, otherwise we doubt whether he would say that a thing must be practically beneficial in order to be beautiful (Rheto. loc. cit). When he says in the Pol. 13040a15ff, "if any one delights in the sight of a statue for its beauty only, it necessarily follows that the sight of the original will be pleasant to him", he understands this sense of beauty ; for example, if one delights in the statue of a woman exclaiming "how beautiful is this woman !" he will surely delight in the original woman.

representations of even the ugly objects (which arouse hatred) give pleasure. And as Aristotle admits that a thing-imitation does not change its original quality,32 an object, ugly in its original form, cannot be beautiful in imitation. It is not beauty but a realization of the artistic skill through a recognition of similarity between the original and its imitation, which gives pleasure. One might think from this statement that Aristotle ignored the formal beauty of art, well recognized by Plato, had he not also added the following : “.....if one has not seen the thing before, one's pleasure will not be in the picture as an imitation of it, but will be due to the execution or colouring or some similar course.”33 But it seems he gives more stress upon the realization of the artistic skill in bringing a perfect likeness, which he repeats in other texts. “For if some have no graces to charm the sense”, he writes in the De partibus animalium; “yet even these by disclosing to intellectual perception the artistic spirit that designed them, give immense pleasure to all who can trace links of causation and are inclined to philosophy. Indeed it would be strange if mimic representations of these were attractive because they disclose the mimetic skill of the painter or sculptor, and the original realities themselves were not more interesting, to all at any rate who have eyes to discern the reasons that determined their formation.”34 And again, “things as acts of imitation”, he repeats in the Rhetorics, “must be pleasant—for instance painting, sculpture, poetry—and every product of imitation, this latter even if the object imitated is not itself pleasant.”35 These statements of Aristotle are the results of his enjoying the realistic paintings of the Hellenistic artists such as Apelles, Protogenes and Dionysus. Besides, this is not only his statement ; highly realistic arts of the age gave rise to

32. Politics, 1340a15ff. 33. Poetics 1448b15. 34. De part. Anim. 645a4. 35. Rhetorics, 1341b

similar opinions among other thinkers also. The Cyrenaics, followers of Aristippus, who was a contemporary of Plato, state - "At all events we listen with pleasure to imitation of mourning, while the reality causes pain."36 We do not know why Else is not prepared to allow these statements (the latter he does not count) to be the effects of the inductive judgement of the contemporary arts. He doubts whether Aristotle could see such representations of ugly things as Dionysus' Apollo killing a lizard, in his life time. He suggests that Aristotle has drawn this conclusion from the diagrams of a Zoology-lecture class.37 It may be true of Aristotle, who refers to painting and sculpture, but it does not suffice to explain the statements of the Cyrenaics who speak of the audible arts in the same way as Aristotle does of the visible arts. The truth is rather the fact that realism reached its climax in the Hellenic Age, and these statements are sound aesthetic appreciations of the Hellenic Greeks which is absent in Plato. Lucas' suggestion, that Aristotle might have drawn this conclusion from the most ancient paintings and sculptures of mythic subjects among which corpses would appear from time to time (e.g. children of Heracles and Niobe), and the swines of Circe might have served him the examples of lower animals,38 is rather more inspiring than Else's. In fact, it is not the realization of Aristotle alone, rather it is the voice of the entire Hellenic Greece. But one needs something more from Aristotle to

36. "Tōn goun mimoumenōn thrēnous hēdeōs akonomen, tōn de kat alētheian aēdōs." Diog. Laert. II.90. 37. "What kind of eikones has he in mind? I suggest that he means drawings, models or sections of animals and human cadavers ; i.e. reproductions used for biological teaching or research laboratory equipment, not works of art." Else, op. cit. P. 123. 38. Lucas, Aristotle : Poetics P. 72. Besides, as the history of Greek art is itself not fully clear to us, it will be improper to make it a premise ; rather from the views of the ancient writers the history should be inferred.

avoid the danger of a supposed Aristotelian division of art itself and the beautiful in art, which seems to follow from the statement that one may enjoy an art-product even if it is not beautiful.

Croce suggests that the later Roman writer Plutarch vivifies what Aristotle has kept hazy.39 Plutarch would ask40 a young man to know two main principles of poetry before going to read it; if it happens otherwise, then he would fail to enjoy the art and thus would be deprived of the proper result of his action. The first principle is that poetry tells us deliberately a fabulous story. One should not expect to learn the truth from it, because it is not metre or diction which makes poetry, but it is through an illusory likeness that poetry as any other art pleases us - ".....just as in picture colour is more stimulating than line-drawing because it is life-like, and creates an illusion, so in poetry falsehood combined with plausibility is more striking, and gives more satisfaction, than the work which is more elaborate in metre and diction, but devoid of myth and fiction."41 Secondly, he should not think that as in the ordinary world only morally good and beautiful things or actions please us, in poetry there must be an imitation of only these things and actions. For in artistic imitation nothing absolutely depends upon the original; may it be ugly or beautiful, vicious or virtuous it delights if the imitation is beautifully done; and the sense of this adverb 'beautifully' does not mean to transform the ugly into the beautiful - "......it is not the same thing at all to imitate something beautiful and something beautifully, since beautifully means faithfully and properly and ugly things are fitting and proper for the ugly."42 In the actual world objects like lizards and apes, and actions like killing

39. Croce, op. cit. P. 165. 40. Plutarch Moralia, Vol. I. "How to study poetry". 41. Loc. cit. 42. Ibid. 18.

one's own children and mother or a hero's showing feigned madness must be venomous, but when their likenesses are presented in arts they give pleasure. One should not think that the ugly things become themselves beautiful in the hands of the artists, as for example Medusa takes such a form in the picture of Timotheus that her ferocious shape is transformed into a beautiful woman ; the artist rather should try to make it more ferocious. Thus the source of pleasure is not the same in the real and the artistic worlds. Pleasure comes from an artistic imitation not because its formal construction creates such feelings as it should do in the real world, but because its likeness is so vivid that it convinces one to realize its resemblance with the original and we utter the words—“look here ! how the artist has constructed an exact lizard in marble !” This realization of Natural form in an alien matter is here the artistic skill—a development over Nature's power which brings some feelings of wonder and thus causes pleasure.43 Aristotle believes, as we know, even the most ancient Homeric connoisseur did so, that this realization of the resemblance between the imitated and the original object is the primary source of pleasure which has some psychological justification in the faculty of our imagination. In the real world objects

43. Aristotle mentions (Poet. 1448b 10-20) another reason of delighting in a picture. If one has not known the original his interest is not in the recognition of the points of similarity which leads to the realization of the artistic skill, he will enjoy the formal beauty such as execution and colour or something like that. But to the realization of the artistic skill Aristotle adds another point (which should not be taken as another cause owing to the confusing composition of the passage) i.e. the knowledge by inference. Suppose that a man has only heard from the myths that Perseus cut the head of a terrific she-dragon whose hairs were dreadful snakes ; but he has no concrete idea of the dragon or of the whole fact by direct perception. Now when he sees it carved on the metope of a Greek temple, he would exclaim— “Oh, this is then Medusa ! and this is how

with their factual reality compel us to remain attached with them. The ugly irritates us and the beautiful pleases us ; as some gain encourages, so certain loss discourages in real life because we are practically attached to it. We are quite conscious that a lion will devour us if we are both face to face ; so a living lion will rouse fear in us and will compel us to try for the safety of our life. But in art this sort of practical attachment is absent, because we know that what we see has no factual reality. It is a sort of illusion, though not illusion proper, for while illusion can arouse the sensation of a real object e. g. the appearance of rope as a snake can frighten us, artistic imitation of a snake only delights us. We are always conscious throughout our whole course of perception that what looks like a snake is not really a snake ; hence art turns out to be a conscious illusion - neither a subject nor an objective truth absolutely- rather a combination of both subjective belief and an objective resemblance.44 Aristotle very strongly suggests

Perseus cut her head ! Now I see it. What a puzzle it was to me !" The same view is again mentioned in the Rhetorics 1371b- "It is not the object itself which gives delight ; the spectator draws inference ( that is a so and so ) and thus learns something fresh" ; and this is connected with the realization of the skilful imitation of the artist. This gathering of knowledge (it is not of course quite fresh; Aristotle, it seems, uses the word loosely) is not of course equal to the aesthetic pleasure as mentioned above, but is sub-ordinate to it since all are not capable of aesthetic sensitivity and they delight in art for other reasons -i.e. its formal execution etc. Aristotle would most probably explain the matter in this way (Lucas, op. cit. P. 72). But one cannot have this typical knowledge unless he believes that what the artists carve or paint are true to the fact forming an analogy as follows :-

Artists imitate the facts truly.

This fact (e.g. Perseus' killing of Medusa) is imitated by an artist (in this way).

Hence this fact is imitated truly.

44. An art product must have a strong similarity to something in

this in his distinction of discursive thought and imagination. The former forms an opinion that something must be either true or false absolutely45 and, naturally, will produce a reaction in our body immediately. If we are convinced by our perceptive experience that there is a snake, immediately we become afraid, but we remain unaffected if we imagine that there is a snake "......but when we merely imagine we remain as unaffected as persons who are looking at painting of some dreadful or encouraging scene."46 The reality of art, then, for Aristotle, is purely imaginative, and here he differs from his predecessors47 who tried to judge it by the standard of fact; and as a product of imagination it is neither true nor false like an illusion. But the difference between an illusion and art is that the former is true so long as it is identified with something real, but becomes false when the truth is realized; in case of art there is no end to this illusion - it is ever true and ever false. It is an awareness of this fact that is quite essential in aesthetic experience.

If the standard of judging the reality of the factual and the artistic world is not the same, the standard of judging the beauty of these two worlds must also differ. Aristotle has not indeed separated beauty from art, as

original and the subject must be conscious that it is not a true thing but a likeness of this or that in order that the product as a whole should be effective; that is why Aristotle emphasises upon the subject's knowledge of the original, as Plato did. 45. But in forming opinions we are not free. We cannot escape the alternative of falsehood or truth. 46. De Anim. 427b15-20. 47. Aristotle makes it clear that he was sufficiently conscious of the common distinction between the Nature-product or reality (with its practical utility) and imitative art creation or artificial product. See De part Anim. 640b30; also comp. Diog. Laert. V. 33.

Croce does ; he rather suggests that in order to serve its

purpose ( i.e. to delight ) the product of imitative art may

not be necessarily beautiful ( i.e. may not imitate the

beautiful real objects ) in the sense in which a thing is

beautiful in the factual world. If only the beautiful ( not

the ugly) pleases in the real world, every thing pleases

in the artistic world. In other words, the entire realm of

the imitative art is beautiful.48 The ugly of the common

world is purged of its ugliness, not by losing its ugly

character in the artistic world but by creating a conscious

illusion in the mind of the connoisseur. (iii) But not all

the objects of art, produced in whatever way the artist

likes, are equally beautiful. Beauty varies according to

objects, manners and means of imitation chosen by the

artist and according to the sense organs of the connoisseur

which he uses to appreciate it. The form is always condi-

tioned by the nature of its matter. The shape of a man

made of different materials such as clay, wood, stone and

wax etc. will not be equally graceful. Nor even a statue

and a coloured painting of a man will have the same charm.

So Aristotle divides the imitative arts into five categories

according to the means of their imitation.49 Sculpture

uses form ; painting both form and colour ; actors and

rhapsodes use their voice ; music adopts both rhythm and

harmony ; dance only rhythm ; and poetry's means of

imitation is language i.e. words with their meanings. The

48. A difference is there between two exclamations - 'how beautiful

is this women !' and 'how beautiful is the image' ! The former expression

may not be purely aesthetic. The latter expression is the result of

a realization of the order and definiteness of the form and the skill

of the artist which has brought the points of similarity in general.

No hint to any practical utility or behaviour of the object imitated

is there. It is in this sense that Aristotle would say, all art is beautiful.

This would also be an explanation of Plutarch's division between

the 'beautiful' and the 'beautiful imitation', provided he follows

Aristotle faithfully. 49. Poetics, 1447a15ff.

objects that these arts imitate are the actions of men either good or bad, since all the actions of men are determined by these two moral qualities.50 Actions do not mean only the gross physical activities such as running, killing, eating etc. As the external motor function of the body is the manifestation of internal thoughts and desires of men, it includes ēthē, pathē and praxeis. Ēthē means "the characteristic moral qualities, the permanent dispositions... which reveal a certain condition of the will"51 such as anger, love, pride and infatuation and jealousy etc. which are deep-rooted in the mind of every man more or less according to his individual nature ; pathē means particular transient emotions that arise out of these permanent characters - "the passing moods of feeling" ; and praxeis is "an inward process, a psychological energy working outwards ; deeds, incidents, events, situations, being included under it so far as these spring from an inward act of will".52 "Hence this broad sense of action will refer even to a thought or determination to do something which can be accurately expressed by some characteristic look of the eyes only. In other words, art imitates human actions both mental and physical, the latter being the outward manifestation of the former. Again, where the object and the means are the same, arts may differ according to the manners of their imitation.53 Poetry, for example, is divided into epic and drama on this basis. Homer sometimes imitates the actions of better men such as heroes of extraordinary power in language now through narration and then through the speech of the hero himself. Sometimes it may be purely narrative and at other "the imitators may represent the whole story dramatically as though they were actually doing the things described."54

50. Ibid. 1448aff. 51. Butcher, op. cit. P. 123. 52. Loc. cit. 53. Rhetorics. 1448a20ff. 54. Loc. cit.

Aristotle states that the object to be imitated in all arts is man-in-action -neither a static man without any expressive gesture nor inanimate beings-in-action. This is because the same was the practice of the Greek artists. We know how the Greeks loved the form and power of human body and how they did not like the Egyptian conventional style that lacked a lively expressiveness. In their hands the images of men both in sculpture and painting were rich in rhythmic lines expressive of emotions. That is why the critics of antiquity have marked an affinity between dance and sculpture of their country. The Greeks were an active people and found pleasure in action which could stir their entire beings. So things static have no place in their pleasurable stuff. This love for human action was so strong that they displayed no natural landscape or used no motifs......of inanimate beings independently except only as back-grounds to the former. This characteristic habit of the Greek artists makes Aristotle think that action of movement is more attractive55 as it is expressive of moral ( mental ) character ; but not all the actions, only those which are natural -"things akin to each other seem natural to each other, therefore all kindred and similar things are usually pleasant to each other."56 Man will take interest in the actions of man, not of a horse and vice versa. Besides, Aristotle thinks that artistic creation is a result of chance57 and is not spontaneous. Water, for instance, flows down, smoke rises up and fire burns spontaneously. They are not capable of chance or deliberate intention so that one cannot accuse fire of burning a house, as he can accuse a man of killing his mother. Chance is not, of course, diametrically opposed to spontaneous action-"Every result

55. Problemata, 919b26-36. 56. Rhetorics, 1369b33ff. 57. Ethics, Nich. 1140aff ; Physics 197b.

of chance is from what is spontaneous, but not everything that is from what is spontaneous is from chance."58 Water could not flow down if this action would not be spontaneous or in other words, it could not be naturally capable of that action, so also a man could not kill his mother if he would not be able to do so. But the difference between these two is that a man does the action with some definite purpose - he would not do that without his will, while water does not possess this will-power-there is no other way for it than to flow down. "What is not capable of moral action cannot do anything by chance",59 and moral action is that which can be judged as either good or bad. The productive artist constructs a building for a definite purpose, and this action is good. So the action which the imitative artist represents must be either good or bad.60 Thus art is necessarily an action by chance. As inanimate objects, lower animals, children and mad men etc. cannot do anything by chance, because they are incapable of deliberate intention, so the objects of the artists' imitation must be actions, performed by man of conscience only.

Nature's basic function is to evolve harmony out of contraries, not out of similarities.61 It joins, for instance, the male and female together, not the members of the same sex for creation. So also is the construction of human soul which philosophers compare with a tuning,62 an orderly arrangement of different contrary characters such as anger and gentleness, love and hatred. Our soul is attracted by music for this natural affinity between them. As our soul is an imitation of the harmonic character of nature so also is

58. Physics, 197a36. 59. Ibid. 197b. 60. Loc. cit. 61. De Mundo, 396b (Scholars sometimes doubt the authenticity of this text, and attribute it to Poseidonius -- See the 'preface' by E. S. Forster to his English translation of the text in the Oxford series). 62. Politics, 1340b5.

the art of music ; and Aristotle says music is the most imitative of all arts. This is for two reasons : one is which we have just hinted, that is, it imitates Nature–its harmonic character more vividly than any other art. Every particular mode of music consists of a single definite characteristic which is brought out by an orderly combination of contrary notes and like Nature it is the most dynamic of all arts and hence is unique in imitating the movements of human souls and their moral characteristics which are the objects of imitation for all arts. Secondly, rhythm, the means of this art imitates the moral character (ēthē) directly.

How music imitates the moral characters directly or what Aristotle really means here is, of course, very difficult to understand for one who has not listened to the ancient Greek music himself. By music the Greeks did not mean either the vocal or the instrumental music alone. It was chiefly connected with words and was, in a sense, one of the accessories of poetry. Much of its meaning was derived from the associations it called up and from the emotional atmosphere which surrounded it. Associated with instrumental music, dance and particular religious functions alongwith their separate tones, music was effective as a whole. Plato He thinks, without this "it is very difficult to recognise the meaning of harmony or rhythm, or to say that any worthy object is imitated".63 But Aristotle emphasises upon rhythm —“Even if it is unaccompanied," he says of music, "by words yet has a character",64 and again— “supply imitation of anger and gentleness and also of courage and temperance, and of all the qualities contrary to these and of other qualities of character, which hardly fall short of the actual affections as we know from our own experience,

63. Laws ii. 669. 64. Problemata 919b26.

for in listening to such strains our souls undergo a change".65

It seems, Aristotle is more sensitive than Plato in realizing

the force of music. In fact, pure music has no need of any poe-

tic composition to display its meaning and to effect the mind.

Aristotle rightly judges the importance of rhythm (without

any assistance of word) from its moving effect upon souls.

A rhythmical voice only can express (or imitate) a parti-

cular state or feeling of mind. When, for example, one is

angry his mind will be so agitated that its movement will be

a rapid up-and-down and the voice imitating this state will

have the exact rhythm corresponding to the movement of

the soul. The same can be said of other characters and

feelings. The melody of the voice imitating love (a character)

and repentance (a feeling) will be very calm and its rhythm

also slow, although in different ways. The melody of patri-

otism is grave and the corresponding rhythm is fit for the

expression of this gravity. Mental modes of movements are

thus imitated in music through rhythm and melody possessing

the exact characteristic movements. That is why, perhaps,

Aristotle considers music as a direct imitation, for which

it is most appropriate and so most graceful. As rhythm

and tunes produced by voice resemble moral character

more aptly because both of them are movements,66 so the

ear which perceives them is more capable of understanding

65. Politics. 1340a15. 66. Problemata, 920a. But this imitation of

character in music is very general in nature. In the imitation of

anger, for example, there would be no distinction between the anger

caused by the deception of a friend and that caused by the disobedi-

ence of a servent. Orestes' anger roused by the adultery of his

mother, Achilles' for the loss of his friend and Medea's for her

husband's deception, shall all have the same rhythmic form in music.

Similarly in case of love whether filial, fraternal or conjugal. Aristotle

further states that the music sung by a single voice is more imitative

than that sung by many people for perfect imitative music contains

the moral character than any other sense organs,67 and for this reason the Greeks used music as a means of moral instruction. Neither sculpture nor painting, nor even poetry could serve this purpose so suitably.

All the musical instruments are not, however, imitative in character. The voice of the flute, for example, is by nature too exciting. It is, therefore, effective when used in the time of relief of the passions.68 Aristotle reflects over the natural attractiveness of human voice and of the musical instruments.69 Human voice may ordinarily be more pleasant than instrumental sound, but when man's meaningless warbling devoid of melody or rhythm is compared with the similar sound of an instrument the latter will appear more attractive for it strikes notes better than human mouth.70

Dance is regarded by Aristotle, as by any other Greek, as imitative of human action by means of rhythm only without melody. Pyrrhic dance, for example, exploits the character of anger through battling activities. But dance is not so imitative as music, since its pantomimic character is always interpreted by its accompanying music. Sculpture and painting are, according to Aristotle, the least imitative, for the means - form and colour, they use, are only signs of human character.71 By a sign he means just an accepted mark without having any causal connection with that which it imitates. It is distinguished from probability in the respect that a probability is always true

many changes of voice so as to create an appropriate melody corresponding to the character to be imitated. But many people cannot change their voice together keeping the melody uncorrupted. So chorus is less imitative than nome and dithyramb, each sung by single virtuoso. 67. Prob. 919b26-36 ; cf. Politics. 1340a 15ff. 68. Politics.1340a20. 69. Problemata, XIX. 10. 70. See 66 supra and consult Prob. XIX. 15ff. 71. Politics. 1340a28.

while a sign is in most cases true, but not always.72 A comet, for example, is not causally connected with famine, but it is generally approved that the appearance of a comet is the sign of famine or the death of some important person etc. It is obvious that no visual art can be perfectly expressive of human action. From the rhythmic lines, gestures of limbs and facial figures we have to imagine only what has happened to the man previously and will or may happen to him afterwards. It imitates a particular state of action so to say. Painting, however, has an advantage over sculpture since it uses colour whereby it can depict certain expressions of feeling more accurately than the latter. The feeling of love, for example, manifests blush on the cheeks of a woman, and a painter can imitate it successfully by using red colour. Again sculpture, being three-dimensional, can produce a statue in round more life-like than painting.

The place of poetry as an imitative art is next to music. The object to be imitated by poetry is man-in-action and the means is language consisting of words - which do not directly imitate action like rhythm. Plato, we saw, tried to trace the onomatopoeic origin of73 words. Spoken words are, according to him, mostly imitations of mental expressions. But according to Aristotle they are symbols, not images74; and similarly written words are symbols of spoken words. It is just a convention that we give a particular shape to the letter sigma (∑). There is no reason that it could not be written otherwise. Mental expressions are just like the sealed impressions of the external world and they are always the same in all men. But as they do not use the same word for the same thing either in speech or in writing, no onomatopoeic origin can be traced here. A Greek and an

72. Analytica prioria, 70a 4ff. 73. Cratylus 425,426. 74. De Interpretation 16a 3-7.

Egyptian have, equallly, the same image of a horse, but they express it by two different sounds and words. Hence a world is a symbol, not an image of the experience ; and poetry imitates an action through the meaning which the sounds or words convey.

Another distinction between Plato and Aristotle may be noted here. While for Plato history, philosophy and poetry are all imitations of some event, for Aristotle only poetry is an imitation ; and it is only on this basis that he distinguishes Homer from Empedocles and Hesiod. Both Homer and Empedocles write in metre, but it is only Homer who imitates for which his art is called poetry. He imitates the actions of good men only sometimes in his own words narrating the story and sometimes in the speeches of the agents themselves who partake of the action. The word ‘Good’ does not necessarily involve any ethical sense here for the entire action of the Iliad is motivated by the moral degradation of Agamemnon which aroused the anger of Achilles. The word ‘Good’ here means ‘serious’ with manly vigour and gravity as opposed to ‘ludicrous’, and ‘imitation’ indicates a likeness as in sculpture, painting and music. There is no compulsion that the action of poetry should have its exact counterpart in the same place and time of the real world. It may not have any exact counterpart at all and in this sense may be an invention. One should not seek for the factual truth in poetry, for which he should read history. Aristotle even ventures to say that poets are liars. But they lie with such cleverness75 that we believe the lie to be true. In other words, like visual arts it produces conscious illusions. While we have every right to doubt its truth we cannot but believe it. We have no attachment to this action as we would have, had it been historical. Poetry may not have factual truth which history possesses ; but it must be

75. Poetics. 1460a15-20.

more philosophic than history,76 the word 'philosophic' meaning here universal or general. It is the duty of a historian to record all the particular events that happened in a particular place to a particular person, may they be causally connected or not. But a philosopher observes many individual events and tries to find out a general principle through the causal relation which connects them. A historian, for example, in his annual records of a country will mark the unruly nature of a king and the political and social revolutions that follow it, while a philosopher reading the histories of many countries, and noting the same events occurring regularly in the same order will draw a general principle that political and social disorder follows the unruly nature of a king. Similarly, a poet observes many actions of men of different character, gathers some general notions about what type of actions a hero performs or in which way the actions of men are controlled by the will of some divine power and so on. The discovery of these general principles in both the cases of a poet and a philosopher is possible by an observation of the laws of probability and necessity in Natural events. "Probability", writes Aristotle, "is a generally approved proposition : what men know to happen or not to happen, to be or not to be for the most part thus and this is a probability e.g. 'the envious hate', 'the beloved show affection'."77 But this generally approved proposition is not just a convention ; it is not observed only by a particular class of people as is in the case of the symbolic use of letters. This proposition is necessary being universally true in every time, past, present and future, and in every place. Though Aristotle sometimes defines 'universal' as a matter of quality - "that which can be predicted of more than one",78 he corrects it elsewhere by saying that it is a

76. Poetics 1451b5. 77. Analpria, 70a4. 78. De Interp. 17a39.

matter of necessity— “the value of the universal is that it reveals causal connection”.79 But the difference between a poet and a philosopher lies in the application of this general principle. A philosopher remains satisfied with the principle derived from the sensuous events, while a poet represents this principle through a sensible form which may be false (a ‘lie’) as there is no guarantee that its exact counterpart can be found in the Natural world, but is true since it embodies a “true idea” or principle.80 It may be false that there was a man named Oedipus who killed his father and married his mother and begot children, or another man named Orestes who killed his mother for her adultery ; but it is true that any man of a similar character would do the same or similar act under the similar circumstances. This, then, is the way in which a poet imitates the action of men. He discovers the principle and concretizes it through another sensuous form in such a way that though it may lose its factual truth it does never happen to be false altogether.

Twining understands the Aristotelian principle of imitation as making a fiction81 which the Renaissance critics also did. The poet invents a story and presents it before us in such a convincing way that we are bound to believe that it might have happened. For this, one does not require any historical counterpart of it which people have already known. “It would be absurd, in fact,” he says, “to do so as even the known stories are known to a few, though they are a delight none the less to all.”82 Aristotle, of course, does not pass an absolute verdict that historical events with the true names of the agents should never be adopted by a poet. Rather as it was the common practice of the tragic

79. Analytica posteriora. 88a4. 80. One can agree with Butcher's 'true idea' if he interprets it without reading any Hegelianism into it as some critics suggest. See Warry, op. cit. P. 106. 81. Thomas Twining, “Aristotle's Treatise on Poetry”, P. 37 82. Poetics, 1451b20-25.

poets, he admits that these facts are surely convincing owing

to their possibility—“what convinces is the possible; now

whereas we are not sure as to the possibility of that which has

not happened, that which has happened is manifestly

possible, else it would not have come to pass.”83 The old

iambic poets were dealing with the particular person existing

factually in the same place and time. But the later comic

writers made their plots on probable incidents and invented

the names of the agents. Even when a poet imitates true

history, he should not, like a historian, make the plot discrete

and indefinite. It should be definite in the sense that

attention must be given to a single event which he wants to

display and all other events must be necessarily connected to

it so as to vivify it.84 Homer, for instance, has not narrated

the whole story regarding the abduction of Helen, from

beginning to end. As his subject is the anger of Achilles he

has dealt only with the events that are causes and effects to

this main incident.

Full attention of the poet must be focussed upon

making the plot of his poem appear as true, may it be a true

event, happening in history, or his own invention; and this

he can do perfectly by his knowledge of the general

principles. Aristotle compares here poetry with painting85

to clarify this point. An artist may not know from his

personal experience that a hind has no horns, but he

must be careful in depicting a hind which must be

recognised as a hind; that is to say, with just the

general marks which make a hind a hind, and a horse a

horse.86 Similarly a poet might describe a running

83. Ibid. 1451b15. 84. A plot must not be episodic. See ibid. 1451b30.

84. Ibid 1460b25-30. 86. But if the artist adds horns to a hind in a

picture, will it look like a hind? Is it merely a technical error?

Aristotle is not very much careful here to give this example. However,

the sense is clear.

horse with its two right legs thrown upwards, which is no doubt a technical error, for at the time of running it cannot be the real situation of the legs. But this error is, however, less serious than the error in describing a horse as an ass - "If the poet meant to describe the thing correctly and failed through lack of power of expression his art itself is at fault."87

As the action imitated must be probable, so also should be the characters. Aristotle prescribes three principles for the observation of this probability of characters.88 First, they should be appropriate i.e. a free man (opposed to a slave ) must be manly, a woman like a woman and a slave like a slave. A free noble man behaving in a faminine or slavish manner would be quite improper as would be the cleverness or bravery of a woman. Melanippi's clever speech is unsuitable for her sex and Aristotle could easily have cited Medea's murdering her children as unwomanly. Secondly, they should be like the reality89 (Butcher 'true to life', Else - 'natural). Else suggests90 here two senses of 'reality' that (1) characters are to be like their mythical prototypes as presented by the tradition and ( 2 ) they are to be like men in general. He lays stress upon this second meaning, for as we have seen, Aristotle emphasizes upon the general character of the incident and of the names. If one gives the names of the known heroes to the characters, he must make them heroic without necessarily giving any attention to their exact nature in the myths. In the Iphigenea in Tauris, for example, Iphigenea is "sister-priestess", not the particular Iphigenea of the myth and Orestes is "brother-in-exile". This is mostly agreeable. But we should note another important point - that in

87. Poetics, 1460b15. 88. Ibid 1454 a 20ff. 89. Loc. cit. 90. Else op cit. P. 460.

the cases where the stories are widely known to the people or where the traditional belief has been deep-rooted no change is possible.91 The gods in the Iliad are quite ungodly. They are neither 'like us' nor as they should be. The poet here depicts them so because they are widely known to possess such nature and if they are portrayed otherwise, that will be quite 'unconvincing. As the artist brings a sense of conscious illusion by the force of the convincing capacity of his products that they are true, there are cases, such as this, where the mythical prototypes should be followed faithfully. But in these cases invention is sometimes possible. The story of Aphrodite and Adonis is not heard in the Greek myths as Ovid depicts it.92 But had he been a Greek author, even the most orthodox Greek would believe his story, because it is not improbable for the "laughter-loving" goddess who had enjoyed many a good and even many a mortal before, to have indulged with a charming shepherd boy. The third principle of the probability of character is consistency. Throughout the plot a particular man must have the same manner of behaviour and action. Even if some change occurs the poet must show that the change is necessary,93 otherwise it would be unconvincing. Aristotle has cited the apparent inconsistency of Achilles' character in his quick change to anger and gentleness.94 He cuts off his 'relation with Agamemnon, who rapes his concubine, and refuses all the requests of the leader for a compromise. But abruptly after the death of his friend he jumps up to join the battle. Again, while with a terrific anger he drags the dead body of Hector behind the car, Priam's request melts all his rage and he is made even to weep (Iliad, XXIV).

91. Poetics. 1460b. 35ff. 92. Metamorphosis, translation in the Penguin Books, 1955, pp. 289ff. 93. Poetics. 1454a25-30. 94. Ibid 1454b10.

But Aristotle justifies here the characterization of Achilles by Homer on the ground that Achilles is "consistently inconsistent" i.e. his frequent change of mood is an essential feature of his character.

Human action imitated in drama is more perfect than in any other form of poetry. For here action is imitated through action ; and tragedy, again, is more perfect than comedy for its action is serious and in that respect more true to life.95 The life we see before us is problematic and full of serious events. The laughter-provoking and light actions as we find in comedy are very rare in life, hence they are less universal ; sometimes even they are quite incredible. Tragedy would be even more imitative than music, according to Aristotle, in the sense that it uses all the means of the imitative arts such as language, rhythm, melody, colour and form. With its elaborate materials its imitation is vivid and so easily moving; so that its effect can be felt even by reading only, without a stage performance.96 The Greeks before Aristotle believed in the instructive power of music, for music can imitate the moral characters forcibly. Aristotle tried to show that tragedy is healthy and instructive in freeing one from the troubling effects upon the characters such as pity and fear by a sort of cathartic process. The cause of this catharsis lies in the vividness of imitation which is unique in tragedy. The real events such as a mother's murder of her children or a son's sex-relation with his mother will increase pity and fear. But in tragedy a purgation of such

95. Critics sometimes say that tragedy has another specific merit that it is 'a mingling of many things in an ordered form and as such it gives more pleasure than the arts which adopt only one means (cf. Prob. 921b5) and secondly, as this harmonious combination is the characteristic feature of Nature, tragedy happens to be more imitative than other arts in this respect. A Hist. Aesth. P. 72. 96. Poetics. 1450b15-20.

characters is possible because of our detached interest in it. Even if the exact historical event, which the audience have known, is represented on the stage perfectly, they would not believe that they are actually happening before their eyes. Oedipus-on-stage is not the real Oedipus, but some Eudoxus or Philolaus (the Greek actors). So the spectators are not agitated in that way in which they would be at the sight of the real events. Again the skilful composition of the dramatist and the performance of the actors produce before them so powerful an illusion that they are compelled to believe, as if all this is happening really. 'Thus they are conscious that they are believing in an illusion. And catharsis does not mean here a complete driving out of emotions in such a way that they go away from the spectators for ever, or at least for the time being in the manner as medicine cures disease. They rather feel these emotions as forcibly as they would feel in the real cases they would be really moved to terrific agony, whereas in the auditorium they do not suffer from such pain. As the action of the play is as true as false, so also is their feeling of pity and fear. The Aristotelian audience would exclaim - 'look, how marvellously they do it! It is so convincing that it seems to be quite real.' Plato suggests, we know, that one delights in a rhapsody by identifying himself with the character. If the character suffers he also feels himself suffering and cries with the rhapsode,97 and in enjoying a tragedy one identifies oneself with the character of one's own nature, bad with bad and good with good; but Aristotle thinks that it is not identification, but a sympathisation that is neither true nor false or in other words, as true as false98 which gives birth to aesthetic pleasure.

97. Ion, 535. 98. Thus catharsis is possible not in the case of tragedy only, whether performed or not, but in every other type of art that

Aristotle also mentions another source of pleasure in tragedy: “Dramatic turns of fortune and hair-breadth escapes from perils are pleasant, because we feel all such things wonderful”.99 But a feeling of this type of wonder is not the real aesthetic feeling. It is as if one enjoys the wonderful actions of a hero in a modern cinematic thrill-picture; and it is meant for those people who cannot judge the imitative nature of the work (i.e. cannot know what object it imitates), just as one enjoys the colours and forms only in a picture, rhythm and melody in poetry and music out of a curiosity only without realizing its imitative character.100 Aristotle thus seems to agree with Plato that the enjoyment of imitative art requires a knowledge of reality; and Aristotle would specialize the meaning of this knowledge of reality as the experiences of human life — the thoughts and actions of human beings in general.

Studying Aristotle's aesthetics one feels his sense of imitation runs parallel to the modern notion of creation. But the two senses never meet. By the 'creation' of art he would have meant 'completion'. For him the source of both the arts — productive and imitative is Nature; and although he would not have agreed with Democritus or Heracleitus that human being's pride and feeling of superiority to lower animals for his learning is ludicrous,101 he would have admitted the truth that the spider's weaving and the swallow's building gave him the impulse for developing crafts, and the charm of the

imitates the same action e.g. in sculpture, Medea's killing her children and Oedipus' making himself blind, although a difference of degree is present there according to the force of movement or action which the art is capable of displaying. 99. Rhetorics, 1371b. 100. He says, human being's curiosity in rhythm is natural for his soul is also a tuning. Poetics, 1448b20. 101. Warry, op. cit. P. 103.

swan's melody inspired him to form musical tunings. Human arts and crafts are neither exactly like nor completely unlike those of Nature. Human intelligence has modified them. The principles of probability and necessity which have created so much confusion do in no way tend towards a theory of creation. It is not a mark of distinction between Nature and art, but between history and philosophy. Art may develop over particular objects of Nature, but the general principles of both are exactly the same, and Aristotle warns the artist that this principle must be faithfully followed (or imitated) when he is developing over the particulars. Besides, there is no object in imitative art whose counterpart does not exist in Nature ; and whether an artist is by nature incapable of any invention, Aristotle does not specifically mention. But he suggests implicitly that on principle an artist should not invent something completely new ; for pleasure, the only aim of imitative arts, comes from an awareness of the illusion of reality that the artist's skill produces or in other words, from realising a likeness between the original and the art.102 If by keeping the general features the same as in Nature the artist develops the characteristic points of the particulars, it gives more pleasure. That is what Aristotle calls — "what is ought to be". A woman, for example, is first of all a human being with two hands, two eyes, one mouth etc. which are in common with a man's body. But what are attractive in her case, as special features

102. Scholars sometimes try to interpret imitation as 'duplication of reality' which is quite unlike the view of Aristotle ; and more improbable is their fancy to explain Aristotelian sense of aesthetic enjoyment as an intellectual process of singling out the unity in the duality ! "To single out unity in variety is to discover essence. To discover essence is to be intelligent. The highest product of intelligent is form. And form is symmetry and order and definiteness which are essential attributes of beauty or harmony." A Hist. Aesth. P. 73.

absent in men, are her womanly signs such as developed breasts, massive hips, sharp glances of eyes and so on. But all these signs that indicate a woman's perfect beauty are not generally present in one woman. So when Zeuxis painted the picture of Helen103 he paraded a group of women, selected the beautiful portions from several bodies, and combined them into one. One might say this is a new creation. That is true. But Aristotle would say this is not altogether new. A woman is there, and her particular limbs also are there in Nature. The very fact that the picture is recognized as a woman is enough to prove that somehow or other its original exists there ; and further, when an artist follows the principles of Nature to bring certain changes, there is no change essentially. Aristotle would have held the same opinion of the images of Minotaur, Centaur, Medusa, Sphinx and Satyr which are but combination of the animals common in Nature ; and one delights in such images as he recognizes the points of similarity between the animals and their corresponding parts imitated in the image, and, above all, realizing the harmonic combination of the particulars into an organic whole. Aristotle's comment, therefore, that art partly imitates and partly completes Nature, remains his last word on imitative and productive arts.104

103. Pliny. XXXV. V. 67. 104. Physics. 199a.

PART TWO

CHAPTER I

YADVAI PRATIRŪPAM TACCHILPAM

i. Geographical situation of the Āryāvarta inspiring mysticism and forming abstract notions about the cosmic creation and forces guiding it - cosmic creation not following a natural or mechanical way - but coming of a spiritual contemplation - its model not something other than the creation itself - the creation of the previous Kalpa absorbed into a psychic form by the supreme spirit and manifested again in the next Kalpa having the same course - its source being the desire for self-expansion and the way being mediation - no physical semblance between the created beings and the ultimate spirit or other gods - so no need of a physical model in creation - the psychic unit or an idea assuming a sensible body appropriate for its complete manifestation.

ii. Hazy ideas of the artistic creation expressed through the Vedic god Tvaṣṭā - his gradual evolution into the divine artist Viśvakarman, the originator of all arts in the epics - divine art or devalpa - the nature of artistic creation expressed somewhat more concretely in the myth of Tilottamā - Viśvakarman's teaching of arts to human beings - a distinction between divine art and human art - silpa in general meaning a skilful representation or likeness in the Samhitās - its meaning as a skilful arrangement in the Brāhmanic literature - human silpa being an imitation (anukrti) of divine silpa - different senses of anukrti used in the Vedic and classical literature - human art imitating divine art in two ways - its adaptation of the principles of its creation in the Brāhmanic text - further judged by the Vedic definition, every art, whether divine or human, being a representation or pratirūpa not in its limited sense of physical likeness - self-manifestation being also a pratirūpa - cosmic creation a silpa in this sense - human arts being also likenesses of either material objects or spiritual symbols of cosmic creation - this likeness, not a mere mimicry but a strange transformation of the prototype through the skill of the artist.

iii. The word Kalā used for arts in later Sanskrit literature - its derivation and connotation - indicating any product of skill with a purpose to give pleasure - its origin in sex-attraction - its wide denotation - silpa and Kalā being synonymous - recapitulation.

i. The world before the Indian Aryans was wide and vast and its frontiers undefined. The sky-kissing range of the Himalayas spreading from west to east was a store-house of mystery and awe. Covered with snow, its pinnacles appeared as grey-haired sages grave in contemplation from time immemorial. It was unsurpassable and immeasurable with its thick forests and ferocious beasts. Trees in these forests were tall and stout ; the luxuriant devadārus and Śālas competed, as it were, with the growth of the mountains and in the tempestuous nights sang to them songs of divinities.

A feeling of awe and wonder at the sight of such prolific growth made the ancient Indian thinkers form an abstract view of the universe which they failed to seize up properly. In the primary state of their speculation, of course, they tried to apply the mechanical and sexual or natural principles to its origin. It was so because these were the means of their own creation. They built a house, to live in and copulated with the opposite sex to carry on generation. So was their conception of the universe, a house built and inhabited by several invisible gods and goddesses, surpassing them far in force and agility. The Vedic house was made of wood, so they thought, the raw material for the universe was also wood. The question was raised regarding the tree and wood which might possibly be the material, and the answer was Brahman, for they were conscious that no ordinary wood of which they built their abodes could suffice for building the universe. Thus the conception of the universe as a house ends only in a poetic metaphor, the examples of which are enough in the Vedic verses. The doors of the cosmic house are the portals of

1. A. A. Macdonell, Vedic Mythology, P. 11.

the east through which the morning light enters. Savitṛ made fast the earth with bands, Viṣṇu fixed it with pegs and Bṛhaspati supported its ends. The agents are gods either collective or individuāl. But their rōle as agents is never so concrete as is the construction of the house itself. All these are only metaphors. When Indra measures

the six regions and constructs the earth and the high dome of heaven or Viṣṇu measures out the terrestrial spaces and makes fast the abode on high,2 it seems the gods themselves are more emphasized than the nature of their activity. Whether and how far the universe is really constructed in a process similar to their own was not so much important as the characteristics they tried to attribute to their gods. Their descriptions simply mean that gods like Viṣṇu were creators and sustainers of the universe. The

actual processes of these activities were not, however, clear to the Aryans. Had the processes been clear to them the question would not have cropped up again and again through the later saṁhitās and Brāhmaṇas up to the age of the Upaniṣads.

By way of explanation, natural principles were suggested, but ultimately they were left out as unsatisfactory. When Dawn generates the sun and morning and she herself is born of Night,3 neither the generation nor its process is exactly sexual. Their dissatisfaction with this explanation is obvious in their paradoxical views that the generated one begets the generator. If Heaven and Earth have begotten the gods, the gods also have made heaven and earth. Indra begets his father and mother from his own body.4 Sometimes the chief or the most prominent member of a group becomes its parents. So Vāyu is the father of storm-gods. Abstract qualities also are parents of those in whom those qualities are embodied. The

2. Ibid. 3. Ibid. P. 12. 4. Ṛgvedasaṁhitā I.159.2, X.54.3.

gods are the sons of Immortality as well as of the Skilful (Dakṣa), Agni of strength, of force, Pūṣan of 'setting free' and Indra of truth and Might and so on.5 Divine-parenthood is not thus the counterpart of the human parenthood. It would be ludicrous to think that the gods, who can measure the vast expanse of the universe and can sustain it, are born of a bodily union as it happens in cases of human beings and animals, who are much too limited in their force and scope. So the body loses its importance and the spirit comes to predominate. It is the desire or Kāma of the spirit which appears to be the sole source of creation. In the beginning there was neither existence ( sat ) nor non-existence ( asat ). It was this Desire from which the universe with its various phenomena came out.6 No bodily union was required. Even if sometimes a body is conceived,

it is so prolific and omnipresent with its thousands of eyes and legs7 that the physical element almost becomes identical with the vastness of the spirit itself. A foot of that body covers the whole world, three cover the entire heaven and by other legs it surpasses the entire universe. With such a colossal body no female counterpart is apt to copulate. By its will only Virāṭ came out and Adhipuruṣa from Virāṭ, from him came this world with its various phenomena. The sun is born of the eyes of the original Being ( Puruṣa ), the moon of the mind, airs both cosmic and vital of the ears and of his mouth, and so on.8. No conception of body is formed in the Ṛta sūkta.9 Meditation (Tapas) is described as the ultimate reality. From it came Honest Desire (Ṛtām) and Truth (Satyam), and also night and day and ocean. Time (Kāla) which holds night and day in the form of a year came out and controlled the world of moving animals and stationary objects. The sun, the

5. Macdonell, op. cit. P.12. 6. RV. X. 129. 7. Ibid. X. 90. 8. Śuklayajurvedīya Mādhyandini Saṁhitā, Chap.31. 9. RV. VIII. 8.48.

moon, the heaven, the earth, antarikṣa and maharloka all came out of it according to the process, imagined in the previous Kalpa by the creator (dhātā yathā pūrvamakalpayat). Here the creation is without a beginning and an end. It comes of a spiritual contemplation and goes into it again in the same way as it happened before. A model for creation is suggested. But it is not something other than the creation itself which exists purely as a mental form in the creative spirit. Creation means only an externalization or manifestation of this form. Again this force is nothing but a desire for creation. So the process is rather cyclic-the model is manifested in the creation and the creation is absorbed into the model, desire being the root of both. This is perhaps the last word of the saṁhitās regarding the conception of creation that is essentially a spiritual evolution.

The earlier naturalistic approach was attempted again in the Brāhmaṇas in making Prajāpati or personal Brahman the father of all gods, demons and human beings.10 Sometimes his desire only begets offspring, he himself being self-born, and at other times he is floating on the primeval waters in the shape of a golden egg. Hiraṇyagarbha came out of the egg breaking the shells which became heaven and earth.11 But at once this natural process suffers a set-back when some texts make Prajāpati the begetter of the gods and the gods the begetters of Prajāpati.12 This paradox is finally avoided in the upaniṣads. Though some texts make Prajāpati the father of the gods, demons and human beings,13 he is not here the personal Brahman of the Brahmanas. He is identified with heart (hrdaya)14 and ultimately with absolute reality - formless (akāya), spotless (abrana), veinnless ( asnāvira ), pure (śuddha) and sinless (apāpaviddha).15 He is merely

10. Macdonell, Op. cit. p.14. 11. ibid. 12. ibid. 13. Chāndogya Upaniṣat I.2, VIII. 7 ; Bṛhadāraṇyakopaniṣat, V.2. 14. Bṛhad. Up. V.3 15. Iśāvāsyopaniṣat, 8.

a sound ( Omkāra ). He is truth, mind, electric current,

word ( vāk ), fire ( Vaiśvānara ), food ( anna ) and vital

airs.16 He is the ear of ears and the eye of eyes,17 and no

eye, no mind, no word can conceive Him.18 That formless

Reality created this universe from desire, and this desire

for expansion was wrought by meditation whence the

creation sprang forth.19 Nay, it will be wrong perhaps

to separate these two ; meditation is creation itself.

Sometimes attempts have been made to personify it with

fire as its head, the sun and the moon as eyes, spaces as

ears, the Vedas as expressed words and air as vital spirit ;

the expanse of the entire universe is heart, from its two

legs earth is born and it exists in all the creatures as the

soul.20 It is not at all anthropomorphism. Like the body of

the Purusa sūkta, mentioned above, it is just a metaphor,

possibly with veiled criticism to those who like to form it

after their own human image. If one gives it a human

shape, then that figure will be such a colossus as to rule

out the location of a conceivable sense organ. It is not

the form by which a human being resembles this Reality ;

as the effect resembles the cause it is only the spirit, the

soul, that is the common substance of the both. The later

epics, however have compromised between a slight anthro-

pomorphic tendency and the mystic evolutionary conception

of creation. The ultimate Reality is formless and it ejacu-

lated in water, an existence subsequent to it. A golden

egg was born of water out of which came the personal

Brahmā who begot seven sons from his mind. For a rapid

and automatic procedure of generation he divided his

body into male and female shapes. The actual sex-relation

thus comes very late in the process of evolution and even

16. Brhad Up. V.Iff. 17. Kenopanisat, 2. 18. ibid. 3,5,6 ; Kathopanisat,

II. 3.12. 19. Aitareya Up. I.1.1,3;I 3.1, Praśna Up. VI. 3 ; Taittiriyo-

panisat II.6. The order of this evolution is not without a slight difference

cf. Aitareya Up. I.4, Praśna Up. VI.4. 20. Mundaka Up. II. 14.

that sex union presupposes a prolonged period of austerity and meditation, for Śatarūpā, the first woman, not sex-born, observed penance for many years to get Manu the first man as her husband.21 In other places the self born (Svayambhū) desired creation and the offspring of this desire was Nature ( Prakṛti ) from which the universe with its varieties sprang forth gradually.22

In any case, the cosmic creation is not possible in either a mechanical or a natural way. Such a big universe as was before the ancient Indian thinkers could never be wrought in a process in which the limited power of living creatures operates. It comes of a desire through meditation and this desire or Kāma is the common source of all creation whether divine or mundane.

As regards the shape of the Vedic individual gods, some scholars23 trace anthropomorphism on the basis of some instances. Gods are sometimes called ‘the men of sky’ (divonaras) and are attributed with the epithet nṛpesas (having the form of men). The images of gods such as Indra are referred to. But no concrete descriptions are given. Yāska gives a summary view of the mythical conception of gods of which there were two opinions. Some held that gods were of human form, for in the Vedic hymns they are praised as sentient beings. Their limbs also are mentioned. They are described to possess certain things which are appropriate only for a human being. But others speak against this view, their chief argument being that although the gods like Fire, Air, Sun, Earth and Moon are praised as sentient beings, our very experience says, they are not so. “...The gods which are actually seen do not resemble human beings in form.

21. Brahmapurāṇa, Chap. I. 22. Vāyupurāṇa Chap. 3. 23. J. N. Banerjea, The Development of Hindu Iconography, Calcutta; 1941, Chap. II pp. 39 ff.

As to the view that panegyrics of the gods are like those of sentient beings (they reply that) inanimate objects beginning from dice and ending with herbs are likewise praised. As to the view that human limbs of the gods are referred to in the hymns (they reply that) this (treatment) is accorded to inanimate objects......As to the view (that in their hymns gods are associated) with objects with which men are associated (they reply that) it is just the same in the case of inanimate objects..."24 Yāska simply records the ancient views of the Vedic age without inserting his personal interpretation into it. "This is the opinion of those who know the legends",25 he says, and expresses a feeling of uncertainty about the matter, "the gods may both resemble and not resemble human beings in form or the gods who do not resemble human form exist in the form of Karman."26 Sometimes the actions of the gods are compared with those of lower beings : the sun is conceived as a bird having beautiful wings (suparno garutman),27 the fleet footed horse is no other than the sun himself 28 and Rudra is likened with a bull.29 Scholars think, even with such adverse evidences at hand, that Yāska supports anthropomorphism in the Vedas for he likes to trace the metaphorical senses of the four horns, two hands and three legs of Fire.30 But it is a serious error to confuse anthropomorphism with poetic metaphor which only indicates some common aspects of things which are not always necessary in forming the definition of those things. A face is merely compared with a flower as it possesses softness and beauty which are common to both; but these qualities are not necessary characteristics of a face. A face is not a flower. Anthropomorphism, on the other hand, indicates a concrete shape.

24. Yāska, Nirukta, VII. 6 ff. 25. Ibid. 26. ibid. 27. RV X. 114.5 also J. N. Banerjee op. cit. 28. RV, VII 77.3. 29. RV, II. 33. 6, 8. 30. J. N. Banerjea op. cit.

The Indians, indeed, were conscious of various functions and shapes of a natural phenomenon, which it performs and assumes from time to time. So Rudra is sometimes a bull and sometimes a man. The Sun is now a bird and then a horse. The gods are all jugglers (Māyāvins). Indra assumes many forms by his māyā-power31 that human beings lack. All this results from the realization of a vast and indefinite natural arena with its multifarious changing aspects. Macdonell rightly observes this indefiniteness of outline and lack of individuality as the distinct characteristics of the Vedic gods. They are nearer to the physical phenomena which they represent than the gods of any other Indo-European people. Their anthropomorphic nature is shadowy, for it often represents only the aspects of their natural grounds, and only figuratively they illustrate their activities. The arms of the sun are simply its rays and the tongue of Agni its flames.32 Sometimes this indefiniteness is caused by an identification of several gods as they share the same attributes - "Thou at thy birth, O Agni, art Varuṇa, when kindled becomest Mitra, in thou, O son of strength, all gods are centred ; thou art Indra to the worshipper."33 As the gods were free from human shapes so were they above all human weaknesses and limitations. Long life, regularity, non-violence, immense power and profound impartiality and generosity are attributed34 to them. Varuṇa is the holder of Ṛta,

31. Yāska refers to a Ṛgvedic Verse, rūpari rūpam maghavā bobhavīti māyāḥ kṛṇvā nistanvam parsvām and suggests that a god may assume any form he desires ; he has no specific shape. Nighaṇṭu, daivatakāṇḍa, see under the god Vāṣpati ; Brahman of the Upanisats also assumes many forms according to Its desire, although essentially It is formless. Bṛhadāṛiyaka UP. II. 5.19; Kathaop II 2. 10. 32. Macdonell, op. cit. p. 16. 33. ṚV. V. 3.1. 34. Sometimes gods are said not to be immortal from the beginning. They have acquired it by drinking soma. Indra

the cosmic law, which all of them must follow.35 The cyclic order of the seasons, and the regular movement of the sun and the moon are signs of their regularity. They are invoked to confer long life, regularity, wealth and power on human beings.

In denying thus a human form of the gods and a natural or mechanical way of cosmic creation Indians show their belief that creation is not an exact representation of some pre-existing model. The cosmic creation and natural creation have no similarity other than a desire of the creator. Thus if living creatures imitate anything of the cosmic creator either consciously or unconsciously, it is only this desire, an emotion only. Similarly gods do not create living creatures, especially human beings, of both sexes after the form of their own or of some other pre-existing beings. Their form is something very new, a form as if imagined by the creator with a specific purpose which could not be wrought out except by that one. Here indeed an idea assumes a form appropriate to it. When Brahmā divided himself into a male and a female36 he did not follow any sensible form for them; ( even if it is argued that he was of a male sex, then at least for the female one there was no sensible model ) it was an invention. He realized that by generating beings from mind ( Viz. his seven mind-born sons ) he could not expand the creation to its required size at ease. An automatic creation could serve this purpose. So beings of

has conquered the heaven by austerity, Macdonell, op. cit. pp. 16 ff. Mahīdhara mentions two kinds of gods — some were born (ājānadevāh) and some have achieved divinity by performing deeds like sacrifices ; see his commentary on SYMS 31.17. 35. SB,3.3.4.29. 36. Brhma-purāṇa, referred to supra ; also the story of creation in the Kālikā-purāṇa, referred to infra.

opposite sexes and a force of attraction ( Manmatha ) between them were thought of.

ii. Now, searching for a concrete notion of artistic creation we find only hazy ideas, expressed through the character of Tvaṣṭṛ in the Vedic myths. The name stands for a maker. But literally it means an artisan who forms shapes by cutting and chiselling with an instrument such as an axe. Yāska derives the name from the root takṣ which means to cut or chisel forms as a carpenter does especially of wood.37 But very often he is identified with the creator gods such as Savitṛ, Dhātṛ, Prajapati and Viśvakarman,38 thus ultimately a name standing for the cosmic-creator, the originator of gods, animals, and men in general.39 Sometimes he appears as the sun god also and is associated with the nourishing god Pūṣan. Divine females become his attendants while he is thought to guide conception in the wombs.40 It is perhaps the earliest stage of his evolution as an artisan god (rūpakṛt). He possesses enough semen and bestows it to heroic sons, who can release human parents from a ṛṣic debt41 by bringing forth progeny. He also forms embryos of both animals and human beings42 and constructs the sex-organs both male and female.43 In a Ṛgvedic verse44 different functions in procreation of the living beings are distributed among different gods; Viṣṇu is invoked to form the female sex-organ, Prajapati to ejaculate, Dhatṛ to conceive the embryo, and

37. Nirukta V.21; also Uvaṭa's com. on the SYMS 20 44 38. RV. III.55.19; X.10.5. 39. Macdonell, op.Cit. pp.116.ff. 40. Uvaṭa identifies' him with the personal Prajāpati Brahmā and Mahīdhara with the sun as the originator of Natural creation ; see their commentaries on the SYMS 31.17 41. SYMS 29.9. 42. Tvaṣṭā rūpāṇi vikaroti, Kṛṣna Yajurvedīya Taittirīya Saṃhita I. 5.9.1. 43. Tvaṣṭā yeṣāṁ rūpadheyāni Veda Atharva Veda Saṃhita II. 26. Sāyaṇa comments, "garbhagata Vatsarūpāni Kartuṃ Jānāti" and refers to the Taittirīya Brāhmana ‘Tvaṣṭāvai paśūnāṁ mithunanam rūpakṛt’. 44. RV. X. 184.I.

Tvaṣṭṛ to give a distinct sexual shape to the embryo either as a male or as a female. Sāyaṇa here makes Tvaṣṭṛ stand for a body maker (Tanukartṛ). In another Verse45 where Agni is invoked to make the human bodies luminous and beautiful as is the form chiselled by Tvaṣṭṛ, Sāyaṇa traces the artisanship of Tvaṣṭṛ by describing him as the divine carpenter and vivifies his character as a technician46 by identifying him with Viśvakarman, the divine architect of the later epics. In the Atharva Veda also he appears as an artisan shaping wood into beautiful forms by an axe.47 But in all these places no concrete description of the process of his working is given. We do not know in what way he made the thunderbolt or the wooden shapes, nor do we know what were the exact designs of those things. The Vajra of Indra48 rather stands for his immense power than for any particular weapon. Different gods partaking in the organic procreation are rather personifications of different stages of this function than persons having distinct roles of their own. For if Viṣṇu can make ( lit. imagine ) female sex organ and Prajāpati can ejaculate, performing thus the sex functions prior to the formation of embryos, the specific function of Tvaṣṭṛ in developing the sex-organs of the embryo does not seem to be original.

Tvaṣṭṛ is completely identified with Viśvakarman in the Mahābhārata49 and loses his Vedic name hence forward. His individuality as an artist god is brought out concretely and his function also is sufficiently distinguished from that of Prajāpati—Brahmā, the cosmic-creator. In the epics he is the divine goldsmith,50 the father of arts and craft

45. RV. VIII 102.8 46. RV. I. 32. 2, I. 85. 9 47. AV. XII. 3.33 48. RV. I.8.5. 49. Vanaparva 100.23-24, sometimes he is the son of Tvaṣṭṛ also. Vāyupurāṇa 65.85, Bhāgavatam, VI.6. 50. Viṣṇu purāṇa I.9.104.

( Śilpāni ),51 an author on architecture 52 and himself an expert architect. It is in this stage that the Indian thinkers achieved a more concrete idea about art and architecture which were considered to be counted under words like śilpa, and Kalā or combining both the words into one as Śilpa-kalā. And from the myth of Viśvakarman we get the idea of the artistic creation. The idea that an artist is a maker of forms (rūpakṛt) both sentient and insentient was already present, as we have seen, in the Vedic age; and in the age of the later epics this tradition continued although emphasis was laid upon making insentient objects. Contemplation on an artist's relation with form makes the epic poets imagine Ākṛti or Form as the wife of Viśvakarman.53 Sometimes he is also told to be born of Vāstu or an architectural Form.54 If he is taken to be a personification of art-products or a representative of master artists, his birth from Brahmavādinī, a sister of Bṛhaspati, signifies that artistic creation is associated with a yogic austerity, deep contemplation and a detachment from the ordinary worldly affairs ; for Brahmavādinī herself was profoundly learned and having succeeded in meditation she was detached from the sensual world and was a virgin for a long time.55 Further, in the myth of Viśvakarmaṇ's constructing Tilottamā56 it is assumed that an artist must have a thorough knowledge of the world and its various objects and affairs. He should know the characteristic features of those things and must be aware of a deep sense of beauty, and beauty here means that quality or those characteristics of a thing which attract both the eyes and the minds of its observers.57 Such a beautiful object can be had not by creating anything similar to that which already exists in Nature.

51. Vāyu purāṇa 65.85 52, Matsyapurāṇa 252.2. 53. or Kṛti, Bhāg., VI.6 1. 54. ibid. 55. MBh. Ādi, 206.27ff (Deccan readings). 56. MBh Ādi 210, 11-18 57. ibid.

It must be something new. The principle of achieving such a form is to combine uniquely ( rūpenāpratimā ) all the attractive qualities of the natural objects, an action which presupposes profound knowledge, powerful sensitivity, deep contemplation and skilful constructive faculty. The name Tilottamā itself suggests the nature of this function. It means a combination of all the points of goodness present in the objects of the world5 8 and Viśvakarmman did it by a continuous contemplation ( cintayitvā punah punah ). He who has a knowledge of the entire universe, combined in Tilottamā "whatever was sublime, worthy of looking at in the objects moving or static of the three worlds."5 9 The same prominence of the knowledge of the universe, power of contemplation and skill in performance is also traced when Viśvakarmman makes the chariot of Śiva.6 0 Works such as painting portraits, making weapons, building marvellous abodes for gods and demigods, etc. go to his credit. He is the originator of all these and he circulates them among the mortals through his son Aparājita or king Nagnajit.6 1 But as a divine being he possesses certain power by which he surpasses the limited human capacity ; and so all that he can do cannot be done by the mortals ; for example, it is impossible for human biengs to construct a living being like Tilottamā or a colossal building like Indra's or Pāṇḍavas'. Hence if Viśvakarmman is the originator of all these śilpas, a distinction between divine arts or devaśilpa and human arts or 'mānusa śilpa' is natural. Guṇāḍhya, indeed, marks the inferiority of the latter as the former surpasses it in splendour.6 2

58. tilaṁ tilañ samānīyaratnanam yadvinirmita tilottameti tattasya namacakre pitamahah. 59. ibid.13. 60. MBh. Karṇa 34. 16-18. 61. Aparjita is the son of Visvakarman in Bhuvanadava's Aparajita pṛccha chap. I; for Nagnajit see H. D. Mitra, Contribution to Bibliography of Indian art and Aesthetics pp 38ff. 62. Kathasaritsagara, 25.175.

But what exactly does the word Śilpa connote? It is not a new word in the epics denoting the works of Viśvakarman. Its first occurrence probably can be traced in the Yajurvedic sam்hitās63 where the white and black spots on the skin of a black deer ( Krṣṇājina ) are called śilpas meaning ‘likenesses or representations’. Sāyana narrates a story that once after being present at a sacrifice the representative gods of the Ṛg and Sāmavedas went away from the place and hid themselves being transformed into the white and black spots respectively on the body of a black deer, as their characteristic colours are such. Both Mahīdhara and Uvaṭa explain śilpa as representation or likeness65 in support of which they quote a Vedic definition of the word—“ That which is a likeness is śilpa” (Yad Vai pratirūpam tacchilpam).Sāyana here uses the word citra or painting as the synonym of śilpa and Mahīdhara suggests the necessity of skill (cāturya) in such representation. The vedic word pratirūpam as a synonym of śilpa means the same as pratikṛti representation or likeness–something imitating either the external form or any particular feature of the character or action of a being or a thing. Pāṇini finds no distinction between a Pratikṛti and anukṛti66 or between a likeness and imitation. Thus white and black spots are śilpa in the sense that those are symbolic likenesses of the gods representing their characteristic colours. In a Brāhmanic passage67 the word occurs in the sense of a composition or arrangement, being thus derived from the

63. SYMS IV.9 and KYTS I.2.2. “Ṛksāmayoh Śilpasthaste Vāmārabhe.” 64. See his commentary to the above KYTS. 65. Their commentaries to the above SYMS. 66. “ive pratikṛtau kan”, the affix ‘Kan’ means also ‘like this’ when the imitation of a thing is to be expressed. Thus ‘aśvaiva ayam aśva pratikṛtiḥ aśvakaḥ’ (an imitation of horse in wood or clay etc.) V.3 96,97;V.3.100. 67. Aitareya Brāhmaṇa 30. I.

root Śil 68 or Śil (to glean, collect or pick up) with an affix pak. Here the word stands for a hymn technically called Stotra. The Ṛgvedic hymns in their usual form of composition are inaccessible to a musical tuning and so cannot be sung in order to rouse an emotional state in the sacrificer or in the priests performing the sacrifices, wherein they can see the forms of the gods in an ecstatic vision. These hymns are called technically Śastra.69 Different Śastras are collected from different places and are arranged into a verse so as to facilitate a musical tuning. This new integrated verse is called a Stotra and is a work of Śilpa, for it is the result of skilful choice, arrangement and decoration—the activities denoted by the root śil ; and a Stotra is a divine art (meant for the divinities, and not produced by them) for it pleases the gods.70 All the human arts (śilpa) including weaving, glass making, pottery and clay works etc. are stated in this Brāhmanic passage as the works produced in imitation of the divine art i.e. a stotra. 'It is in imitation of the divine works of art that any work of art is accomplished here; for example a clay elephant, a glass object, a garment, a gold object and a mule-chariot are works of art. A work of art is indeed accomplished in him who comprehends this (knowing the process of making a stotra one becomes expert in vocational or non-vocational arts). These works of art stotras indeed elevate the self (of the Sacrificer) and by them the sacrificer purifies himself (so as to enrich him) with the knowledge of the Vedas.'71 Śilpa thus suggests a product,something more

68. Sidhānta Kaumudi VI. 70.;SC. Basued Vol. II pp. 400. 69. Ait Brā 29. for the definitions of Stotra and śastra see Jaiminīya Nyayamaātā II. 1.5. Apragītamantrasadhyā stutiḥ Śastram, Pragītamantrasadhyā stutiḥ stotram. 70. Sāyana comments on the above passage of the Ait. Brā II Nābhānedisṭhani yani śilpani santi tani devanam pritihetu-tvād devaśilpaniti Ucyate Nabhanedistha refers to a tūkta seen by the sage of that name. 71. It seems, Coomaraswamy misunderstands the passage since he confuses Saṁ+kr̥ with Saṁ+dhā and traces a similar-

than being only a likeness. It is a skilful arrangement also. Sāyaṇa traces a wonderful feature of such arrangement (śilpaśabdaśca āścaryakaram karma brūte).72 Sometimes when Śilpa is said to be derived from Śil in the sense of deep contemplation73 (samādhi), it is suggested that the act of composition in such works needs meditation also. As Pāṇini freely uses the word for any work of vocational or non-vocational art,74 it seems, before him the word was already associated with a type of work in which a representation or likeness was wrought by a skilful composition of various elements, which for its uniqueness and newness creates a sense of wonder in the observers and thus pleases them. Amara also includes arts like painting under it (citrakalādi-karmasu).75

Now, in which sense are human arts said to be imitations or anukṛti of devine arts in the above Brāhmanic passage ? The prefix anu means after and Kṛti means a work or action. Hence literally the word means a work done following some other work or object. A sense of emulation and mimicry is natural to this word. In a passage of the Ṛgveda the sage inspires his fellows to emulate the heroism and zeal of Indra,76 and in the Atharva Veda imitation also means magical mimicry.77 In the

ity of sense in the Jaiminīya Brāhmana (III.II) where Prajāpati reinte-grates his self after creation. He has not tried to consider the context of the passage also. We have followed Sāyaṇa's Commentary. Compare this with his translation of the passage, Transformation of Nature in Art p. 8 and note 8, P. 178. 72. See Sāyaṇa's com. on this Brā. passage. 73. Śabdakalpadruma vol. Vp. 77. 74. IV.4.55. The affix "thak" comes in the sense of 'this is whose art' after a word denoting art (Śilpa) such as to beat a mṛdanga or to blow flutes in III. I. 145; according to him dancing, digging ground and painting also came under Śilpa. 75. Śabdaklpadruma Vol.VP.38 . 76. RV, X, 103.6 77. XII. 2.2. Here most probably a magical performance is referred to wherein the singers are trying to drive away diseases and death by ritual connected with the funeral fire (Kravyāda) "aghaśaṁ-

Taittirīyopaniṣat anukṛti is used in the senses of repetition,

assertion or corroboration.⁷⁸ Pāṇini used the word anukarana

in the sense of exact imitation or a mimicry,⁷⁹ and

Kālidāsa, when he says⁸⁰ that clouds escape through the

latticed windows of the mansions of Alakā skilfully imitating

the shape of smokes, (dhūmodgārānukṛtinipunāḥ) used the

word anukṛti in the sense of a formal likeness or to assume

the appearance of another thing. Thus anukṛti or anukarana

indicates any imitation of work or object with all its

characteristics or with a few necessary or contingent ones.

When in the above Brāhmanic passage human art is said

to be performed in imitation of the divine art, only the

principles of accomplishment are the objects of imitations.

The imitative relation here is not formal as the clouds

imitate the shape of the smokes or a shadow imitates a body

or a reflected image imitates the original object, for there

is no similarity of shape between a stotra and a piece of

cloth or an earthen elephant. The principles such as choice,

skilful arrangement of parts in a single unit through

contemplation and tuning it in a pleasing manner so as to

please gods and to elevate the soul of the sacrificer are

imitated or adapted by a human artist, say a weaver, who

saduḥsaṁsābhyāṁ Karēṇānukarenaca Yakṣmañca sarvaṁ teneto

mrtyuñca nirajāṁasi." Whitney translates, "By evil-

plotter and ill-plotter, by actor and helper both all yakṣma

and death do we hereby drive out from here. "It seems, 'helper'

is not the proper word for anukāra'. As the singers aim at

driving away diseases and death even by the same man or

spirit who plots evils and ills against them, a sense of

counter magic is obvious. The singers further clarify the

plotters-who may either be an actor (actually bringing evil)

or be imitator (performing imitative magic such as doing ill

to their images, shadows or to any of their bodily

possessions such as hair, nailese.) Such practices were in

vogue in ancient India. See. J. C. Frazer, The Golden Bough,

vol.I.o.16. ⁷⁹. V.4.57. Here an exact mimicry of an

inarticulate sound like patat patat is referred to.

⁸⁰. Meghadūta .57.

chooses some threads of different sizes and colours and in a skilful way joins them together ultimately producing a fine piece of cloth attractive with its embroidered borders. Similarly an artist in making an elephant of a lump of clay and a carpenter in making a chariot of wood and iron arrange parts into a whole through a considerable exercise of thought and skill.

Judging, on the other hand, by the Vedic definition of Śilpa that it is a formal likeness, all the arts, whether divine or human, must be imitations of some form. Not only that, if śilpa means a likeness, the entire universe seems to be a work of Śilpa, a product of Brahman’s meditation wherein He manifests himself sensibly in names and forms81, the sole end of this manifestation being pure bliss. As an earthen pitcher and a pot differ from each other in names and forms, although essentially they are lump of clay,82 so also each and every particle of this vast universe essentially represents the supreme reality or, in other words, is its pratirūpa or a likeness. The Jaiminīya Brāhmana indeed compares Brahman’s manifestation into names and forms with the transformation of a piece of gold into ornaments of different sizes and names, and suggests that this manifestation of Brahman is also a śilpa.83 The vedic hymns are not merely metrical compositions of words ; they also represent their respective gods. No difference is observed between the god and his hymn. The Śastras is only to vivify this representation more powerfully. Similarly principles as well as models either spiritual or material are there in this cosmic śilpa in adaptation of which human śilpas are wrought. The Śāñkhāyana Āraṇyaka suggests that a human lyre is an imitation of divine lyre.84

81. Brhad, Up I 4.7;I.6.I 82. Chand. up. VI.I.4.6 83. III. I 84. atha khalu ivam daivī vīṇā bhavati, tadanukṛtiṣu mānuṣīvinā bhavati VIII·9.

Here divine lyre is just a metaphor. Normally a lyre consists of three elements which are necessary for its playing—a stick of wood fitted with some wires that are visible and touchable, human hands that touch them and the vibrating sound that is produced. Thus three sensations are there — visibility, touchability and audibility (rūpa, sparśa and śvara). The earth forms the visible aspect, the ‘antarikṣa’ the touchable and the ‘div’ or the higher heaven the audible aspect, their respective representative gods being Fire, Air and Sun the corresponding Vedas being Ṛk, Yajur and Sāma, the ṛsis being Rathantara, Vāmadeva and Bṛhat, and the Vital airs being Prāṇa, Apāna and Vyāna. The sage here imagines all the objects such as stick, wires, holes and fingers85 necessary for playing a lyre in this spiritual image and suggests that it formed a model for the human artisan who first constructed the lyre. Similarly it seems the Kathopaniṣat suggests86 that the model for a chariot was a human being himself, his body being the body of the chariot, sense organs horses, mind the rein, intelligence the driver and the soul the man in the chariot. In this sense living organisms like elephants, which are products of divine śilpa (i.e. cosmic creation) may be said to have served models for the human art, the clay elephant, for example, referred to in the above Brāhmanic passage. It is easy to imagine that the sages at this age would suggest that artisans made clothes after the model of a piece of bark, a mirror after the surface of water and soon. But after all, when genuineness, skill and novelty are said to be constituents of an artistic activity no hint is there in these texts to call a work of śilpa a servile imitation. The manifest universe is neither an exact image of Brahman for He transcends it, nor is it inferior to Him for it is the very sign of His sentient nature, and further because He delights in it. Human arts are a

85. ibid 8-9 86. I. 3.3.-4

further expansion of the primeval cosmic creation through which the desire of Brahman is working. So a human lyre is not a mere mimicry of its divine proto-type nor a mirror of the surface of water, and a piece of cloth of bark. These are all new objects. The artisan in making a clay elephant or a chariot shows rather his power of realising the principles of the universe and his skill of forming objects, not exactly present before.

iii. In later literature, the word kalā stands for art. It occurs in the Upaniṣadic texts in the sense of a mathematical unit87 and is derived from the root Kal — to enumerate or count. The Vācaspatyam indicates its another meaning to know.88 It may be also derived from the root lā meaning to receive or give. Thus that which gives ( lāti ) pleasure ( Kam ) is Kalā.89 On the whole the word refers to a kind of activity which needs knowledge and skill or in its passive implication, a product of such activity that gives pleasure.

The earlier purāṇas such as Viṣṇu and Vāyu do not give any account of Kalās, but in the Kālikā, a later work, the story of the origin of sixty-four arts is found.90 The personal Brahma first created Prajaptis and the mind-born sages. Then Sandhya a charming goddess and Manmatha, the god and love were created. In order to expand this creation Brahmā conferred a boon on Manmatha that no being in the universe, even he himself or Viṣṇu or Śiva could withstand his power which he had to display through arrows of flowers in creating an attraction between the opposite sexes so as to carry on a process of automatic generation. Having received this boon Manmatha pointed his arrows towards Brahma, the first victim of his own boon. While Sandhyā and

87. Sk vol. II chap.I, sut 526, Praśna Up VI.5. 88. Vol. III. pp. 1783ff. 89. K. C. Pandey. Comp. Aesth. Vol. I.p.513. 90 II 28, 29

Brahmā experienced thus a sex attraction, forty-nine feelings like love, anger, fear etc. were born of him and the Hā vas like bibboka ( the coquettish indifference and pride of a woman in love ) and sixty-four arts were born of her. Feelings have, hence, a masculine origin and arts and coquettish expression have a feminine origin, all of them being associated with libido. For the thinkers of this age arts are the results of a sex-desire, not of its gross physical aspect, but of the subtle feeling, throbbing sensations and their physical expressions such as glance, horripilation, tear, swoon etc. which inspire the desire itself. And ultimately as this desire is an urge for creation, arts indicate a creative spirit indulging in and getting inspiration from its own products.

These arts are mostly sixty-four in number ; but sometimes it is even eighty-seven.91 The Lalita Vistara counts eighty-six.92 Kalpāntara-Vākyāni counts seventy-two including five arts as painting, sculpture, music, dance and poetic composition as well as other skilful displayings including even dreams. Magical and agricultural activities also are enumerated under it by Ramachandra. The Śukranītisārh mentions all the household crafts such as toilets, wrestling, and different skilful poses of sexual union, Pāñcālaan authority of Indian sex-science gives a long list of those poses,93 Vatsyāyana's collection of the sixty-four arts, taken as an authentic source for Indian arts, includes gambling, mechanism, architecture, mining, animal training, curing plant diseases etc. also besides all other fine arts and household crafts.94 In short, any activity whether of Natural science or of emotional experience skilfully performed is called art and it aims at making life easy-going and pleasurable.

91. Samavāyasūtra, see A. Venkatassubiah, The Kalās p.9. 92. ibid p.18 93. ibid op. 37ff. 94. Kāmasūtra chap. 30.

rable. An anonymous work even holds the knowledge of

Brahman to be the sixty-fourth art and is the supreme (parā)

one, while the other sixty-three are comparatively negligible

as they deal with mundane purposes.95 But in other texts

these arts are esteemed very highly. Patañjali even goes to

compare those with a mother.96 Bodhisattva is praised for

his mastery over arts97 and the arts are signs of skilfulness

in Dandix's princes.98

It appears at the first sight that the denotation of

Kalā is wider than that of śilpa. Bāṇabhaṭṭa, in fact includes

all the Śilpas together with epics and histories under Kalā.99

But on the other hand Hemacandra widens the denotation

of śilpa also. According to him, fundamental arts are five

in number - pottery, carpentry or architecture, painting,

weaving and barbery. Each of them was later multiplied

into twenty ending in one hundred divisions. The ultimate

creator of these arts is the supreme Man ( Mahāpurusa )

Himself who devised these for the happiness of His

creation.100 Thus śilpa and Kalā become almost synonymous

in later Indian thought. Both originate in a desire, in

a thirst for self-expression or self representation ( or forming

pratirūpos ) with an end - to enjoy the self. If the variety

of the cosmic creation is a result of the supreme spirit's

manifestation of its own self or forming its 'pratirūpas',

so also is the source of all human arts. The human artist

observes the rules of the cosmic art following ( or imitating )

which he achieves strange transformations of its cosmic

products, and thus satisfies supreme spirit's crave for

expansion that works through him. The human artist's

achievement is in no way servile to the cosmic art, it is

not a mere mimicry of it, for it is, in fact, the achievement

of the supreme artist himself. The epical Viśvakarman

95. Venkatassubiah, op. cit.pp 64 96. Mahābhāsya I.1.57. 97. Lalita

vistara pp.179. 98. Daśakumāra carita chap.II.27 99. Kādambarī

chap.I 100. Triṣaṭisalākāpurusacarita I.2.950 ff.

thus stands on the middle path between this Supreme Artist and his limited force in the human artist showing him the method of transformation. The beauty of His Tilottamā is unique, but her uniqueness does not come from a world, foreign to him. He imparts to the latter the skill of creating unique objects out of the same phenomena quite ordinary in his knowledge. He feels the points of charm in a Woman, and in a deep contemplation he forms a woman wherein all the charming points are preserved. The sensible Tilottamā is only a skilful externalization of that mental form. She is thus a śilpa — unique in her composition. She is the same woman yet a new one.

CHAPTER II

RŪPAM :

IMITATION OF THE THREE WORLDS

i. Visual art or rūpam—definition of rūpam in philosophy — views of the Vaiśeṣikas — the Mahābhārata— sculpture and painting—architecture or vāstu (or prāsāda ), essentially a likeness or Vimba — its primary form in the Vedic altar, a symbolic likeness of Agniprajāpati — Vāstu, an image of Vāstupurusa — temple, an image of the god inside — temple, analogous to human ( puruṣa ) shape, and an image of Puruṣa and Prakṛti in combination — finally an imitation of the substratum of the cosmic creation.

ii. Idea of citra — literally meaning a composition — equivalent to śilpa — citra an imitation ( anukṛti ) of Nature ( Prakṛti ) consisting of three worlds visible and invisible—citra denoting both sculpture and painting — types of citra — the imitative character of citra in the myths— artistic imitation, not merely a mirroric reflection—the object of citra—production of a semblance of an object perceived either sensibly or intuitively — six principles of artistic imitation — rūpabheda, pramāṇa bhāva-lāṅgya yojana and varnikabhanga being the constituents of the main principle— Sādrśyakaraṇa.

iii. Imitation of the objects, perceived through intuition, and of the events and objects of the remote past—the images of gods, demons, mythical personages— special application of the six principles—idealistic imitation by a selective method. iv. Art and reality—the Buddhist and Vedāntic views — art, an illusion of reality—Ācārya Śaṅkua’s view—art, an imitation of reality, measured by its own standard of truth, independent of the absolute and phenomenal realities — logical cognition versus aesthetic cognition—Ācārya Abhinavagupta’s view—visual art and verbal art belonging to different orders—visual art imitating reality imperfectly—imitation versus manifestation.

1. In India visual art or rūpam has a long glorious history. In philosophy rūpam means a visual percept. Praśastapāda defines a rūpam as anything which can be perceived by eyes;1 and the Kauṣītakê upaniṣat states that a rūpam is not merely a sensible entity (Bhūtamātrā). It has its intelligible element (Prajñāmātrā) too. It is neither merely sensible nor purely intelligible. It is a co-ordination of both. Śrīdhara says, although three elements - water, fire and earth possess rūpam, it is only in earth that a variety of rūpam exists.2 The Mahābhārata counts some sixteen types of rūpam such as shapes like short, long, square, circular and thick, colours like white, black, red, yellow, blue and aurora, and qualities like hard, soft, polished, smooth, slippery and rough.3 Vasubandhu, a Buddhist of the Hīnayāna branch defines a rūpam as a visual percept which includes both shape and colour. Shapes are of eight kinds such as long, short, round, circular, up-cast, down-cast, thin and thick; and main colours are four—white, blue, red and yellow. There are other eight kinds of form also such as cloud, vapour, mist, dust, shadow, sunshine, moonshine and fire. These are all the twenty forms.4 But the earlier Pāli Buddhist scriptures give a very wide notion of form (rūpam). It denotes four elements such as earth, water, fire and air, together with their various modifications. The Buddha himself explains that a rūpam is that which manifests (rūpyati) as cold, heat and hunger, the touch of gnats, mosquitos, the sun and snakes etc. In short, rūpam indicates

2. PPB P.251. 2. Kauṣitakī upaniṣad, III. 8; PPB P.75. 3. MBh Sāntiparvan (mokṣadharma-parvan), 184,26. 32-35. 4. Abhidhamma koṣa I. 10ff.

any sense organ (including mind) and its percept is not limited only to the visual. Thus rupaskandha, according to the Buddhists, means the aggregate of the six senses, their respective sensations and the implicatory communications associated in sense perception.5

But in art rūpam is an object of the visual organ only. All other sensations together with the mental visions are to be given concrete visual forms consisting of shapes and colours only. Accordingly rūpam has two sub-divisions Vāstu and citra. Vāstu literally means an abode ( derived from the root Vas — to settle, sit or stay ) of which prāsāda is also a synonym ( derived from the root sad meaning the same as the vas — to settle, live etc.), and it refers to all sorts of architectural forms that contain the above sixteen visual percepts of the Mahābhārata. A vāstu or prāsāda is said to be essentially an imitation or likeness (Vimba literally meaning a reflection).6 The entire universe is the abode of the Ṛgvedic Puruṣa,7 whose vast expanse cannot be fully absorbed by this abode. So he transcends his abode and, in a sense, he himself becomes the abode of the universe. If the supreme Man is the supreme abode (Vastu ) of the entire creation, it is necessary for the lesser gods to construct, in the analogy of this Vāstu, their individual abodes to support their existence.

But until the later age of the epics the individual gods had no separate dwelling places except a common abode i.e. an altar where the holy fire was to be burnt (Yajñavedi).8 This is, then, the primary form of the divine abode.

The Virāṭpuruṣa or Prajāpati, the cosmic Intelligence, the first creation of the transcendental supreme Puruṣa, who worked as the principle of activity, is the creator of the

5. H. I.Ph. P. 94-95. 6. AGP 61.17ff. 7. RV X90, Purusa sūkta 8. for Yajñatanu see KYTS 14.4.9 ; Kramrisch, The Hindu Temple P.70

perceptible world, of the objects animate and inanimate, of the gods, angels, men and demons. Having produced them he felt exhausted as if the vital air blew out of him. As he was the very base of the creation, it was felt by the gods that the entire creation would also fall asunder, unless Prajāpati's vigour were restored. Prajāpati is the food, the very source of their life; so they wanted to consume it through the mouth of Agni. They heated him in the fire and when the fire rose over him, thus heated, vital air that went out of him came again into him and he regained his vigour. The gods then raised him upright so as to stand, and inasmuch as they thus raised him upright he is these worlds.9

Prajāpati is the creator, sustainer and the destroyer of this universe. As the sustainer he is the fire, for that is the producer of vital air and cook of food; and as the destroyer he is the year of time for as the time makes progress, one loses its longevity. Prajāpati thus has no concrete form. He manifests himself through fire and year consisting of moments, days, nights, months and seasons.10 It is not a physical body of Prajāpati which the gods heated, but they built an altar of bricks in imitation of his substantial form and by putting fire over it they continued the archetypal sacrifice (i.e. Prajāpati's creation of this world). Thus the restoration of Prajāpati's vigour is a figurative process. To restore is to continue the sacrifice which he himself did in creating the universe. The gods, then, emulated Prajāpati and the mortals imitated the activity of sacrifice in order to achieve immortality. If Prajāpati could be immortal through the continuity of sacrifice, so also could the gods and human beings.

At their first attempt the gods failed to raise the fire altar i.e. the likeness of Prajāpati's substantial form; for

9. SB VII. 1.2.1-7; Kramrisch, Op. cit P.70.

10. SB X 4.3.5ff.

they were ignorant of the proper principles and so they used unlimited number of bricks. Prajāpati, out of his mercy, instructed this principle.11 As the altar is the body of Prajāpati and at the same time his dwelling place (vāstu), the very essence of his being should be imitated through the concrete materials of construction. Prajāpati is first of all a person (puruṣa). So the size of the altar must be meted out by the size of a man—“with man's measure he metes out ; man is commensurate with the sacrifice."12 This altar should lie on its back facing upwards, with its head eastward.

But as Prajāpati has no sensible body similar to that of any mortal, the altar cannot have the likeness of a physical body. Here only the essence or substances of Prajāpati is embodied. This essence being time or year consisting of a certain number of moments, days, nights etc. bricks of corresponding number must be arranged in layers following a fixed formula.

These bricks are of two types — Yajuṣmati and Lokampr̥ṇā. Three hundred and sixty Yajuṣmati bricks stand for the days of this number of a year and are arranged in five layers, perhaps corresponding to the five gross elements of which the universe is constituted. Thirty-six bricks stand for the twenty-four half moons and twelve months. The enclosing three hundred and sixty stones correspond to the nights of a year of which twenty-one are arranged round the Gārhapatya, seventy-eight round the Dhiṣṇya and the rest round the āhavanīya hearths. Ten thousand and eight hundred Lokampr̥ṇa (space-filling) bricks stand for the moments of a year. Thus the entire altar,

11. SB X.4.3. 1-8 ; Prajāpati is himself the altar. ibid X. 4.3.12 ; the principle of constructing the Vedic altar, see ibid x.4.3. 13-19. 12. KYTS V. 2·5. 1., the Āpastamba Śrauta sūtra also says -“let the altar measure a fathom across on the western side. That namely is the size of man ; man is commensurate with sacrifice." XVI. 17.8.

the abode of Prajāpati is his own image, brought in imitation of the symbolic substance of this Purusa.13

Prāsāda or Vāstu indicates the abodes of both gods and men. These are built in imitation of the body of Vāstupuruṣa, the archetypal abode (Vāstu). Vāstupuruṣa is said to be a demon. The Saivists of South India record that in ancient times when the gods defeated the giants, Bhārgava, the priest of the giants, performed a fire sacrifice by pouring oblations in which he attempted to avenge this defeat. With the oblations when his sweat of anger was also poured, a fierce demon of goat's size came out of the holy fire and asked for the order of the sacrificer that he must carry out. Bhārgava asked him to demolish the gods ; and when the demon ran after the gods, they sought the shelter of Śiva who got angry and remitted fiery rays from his third eye which chased the demon and also Bhārgava ; and both of them surrendered. While Bhārgava entered into the belly of Śiva by his power of yoga, the demon lay before him. Śiva was pleased at the cunning of Bhārgava and the modesty of the demon. He excused both of them with boons discharging Bhārgava through the channel of discharging semen. The prayer of the demon that he may have a place in the world and the gods dwelling in him may be worshipped by men, was fulfilled by the lord. As he asked for a residence (Vāstu) Śiva named him as the protector of abodes (Vāstupa).14 Varāhamihira records that once upon a time a thing unknown it its proper form and without a name was blocking heaven and earth. For its odd position the gods seized it of a sudden and laid it on the earth with

13, The image is not here of the human body, but of the order by which it is upheld. Body here means nothing but a place of co-ordinated activity, each part being the seat of special function. Kramrisch, op cit. P-71-72. 14. IŚGP III, XXVI. 93 ff.

the face downwards. Brahmā named it as Vāstupuruṣa and made it an abode of gods, each god possessing the portion of the body he held.15

Varāhamihira's record suggests that the gods had no abode before and this existence ( bhūta ) served their dwelling place for the first time. The Śaivist view seems more appropriate in holding that the body of the demon served the dwelling place of the gods on earth where they were to be worshipped by the mortals; secondly, the physical body of the demon justifies its being called a Purusa. Nārada thinks that there is no contradiction in naming it Vāstunara, Vāstubrahman and Vāstudeva simultaneously,16 for nara ( man ) is not limited here to only the mortals, as puruṣa is equally applied for the ultimate reality, Virāṭ or Prajāpati and mortals. In fact, in all these three cases, Vāstupuruṣa is a product of Prajāpati, who as the creator of the entire world was the creator of the 'Existence' ( or Vāstudeva ).

The Vedic altar is the image of Agniprajāpati in so far as it gives a concrete shape to the essence of his being. There is no physical similarity between them. Vāstupuruṣa is similary imitated in construction of an abode. Vāstu cakra or Vāstupuruṣa maṇḍala is the graphical site of a vāstu ; in its symbolical representation it abstracts the physical figure of the demon. It is a square consisting of eighty-one squares, within it, its head being north-eastward and face downward. Prajāpati lies on the back and on its navel area fire burns ; but the Vāstupuruṣa lies on the heart and the house is constructed on its back. The square is his body, the head lying stretched towards the North-east corner and the feet towards the opposite

15. BS Chap 53 ; Kramrisch, op. cit P.73. 16. The Vāstuvidhāna of Nārada, quoted by Kramrisch Op. cit. Vol:II P.427, comp. stanza 3, and 13.

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south-east corner. The straight line is the spinal cord, and the specific number of squares is imagined to represent several limbs and sub-limbs of a man. The straight vertical and horizontal lines stand for the veins and arteries of the body which carry on the vital activity. As it is a characteristic feature of the Indian thought to consider the subtle body more important and significant than the gross physical figure,17 the image of Vāstupuruṣa becomes necessarily abstract. "The body here means nothing but a place of co-ordinated activity each part being the seat of a special function."18 Indian thought here concerns itself more with the underlying law of Nature, its principles of activity, displayed in the harmonious and symmetrical relation of the parts with the whole than with the visible manifestation of this order. The image of Vāstupuruṣa in this cakra thus represents not the body of a human being but the order by which it is upheld.

Along with the vital function and symmetry of the subtle body of Vāstupuruṣa, the gods with Brahmaprajāpati in the centre are also represented. There are concrete figures of these divinities. They are said to have possessed those portions of the 'Bhūta' that they held while throwing it down. The Śaivas believe that these portions of the demon are inhabited by the gods according to the order of instruction of Śiva. Brahmā is in the centre - the portion from heart to belly. From another point of view the graph appears to be the sample of the entire cosmos, Brahmā or Prajāpati the creator being in the centre and the other gods having their appropriate places such as the four lokapālas - Indra,

17. For details see AGP Chap. 40, 105, BS chap. 53 ; SSD XI. 11-14 ; Kramrisch op. cit P. 85 ff. Rāghava Bhaṭṭa refers to the Mahākapilpañ carātra - there was a very dreadful demon previously ; the gods killed him on the earth. That demon is called Vāstupuruṣa com. to Śāradā Tilaka III. 2.ff. 18. Kramrisch, Op. cit. P. 71.

Yama, Varuṇa and Soma occupying their corresponding sides, and other forty-five gods and demons holding their portions as they are around the whole cosmos.19 This geometrical representation of a human body is also identified with the body of the sacrificer ( Yajamāna ) himself, predicting a mystic relation between the two. Varahamihira observes that the limbs and places of the householder's body will be affected if the corresponding places of the graphical plan and the site ( the former is the sample of the latter ) are not nicely drawn or are affected with pegs and weapons etc. under the ground. On the other hand, those places should be known to be affected if the householder itches the corresponding places of his body while worshipping the Vāstuckra or if bad signs appear there.20

Apart from the graphical plan, the round structure of a temple ( Prāsāda or vstu ) is an image ( mūrti or vimba ) of the deity who dwells in it. 'The temple of Śiva is no other than Śiva himself and that of Viṣṇu is also like that. In general the temple is the body of the Puruṣa or supreme spirit and is also its seat ( ālaya ) in which his essence dwells.21 The temple contains the whole manifestation in which he is beheld as Puruṣa ; and for that it should be worshipped as Puruṣa. The various portions of the temple are likened to those of a hunian body. The door is the mouth, Śukanāsa the nose, Bhadras are arms, anda or Amalaka is the head and Kalaśa the hair and so on. Lime scattered over the temple is its skin. The Garbha gṛha ( the inmost chamber ) is the belly and inside it the image ( Pratimā ) either iconic or aniconic ( like Śiva liṅga ) is the soul.22

19. BS 53. 41ff 20. BS 53. 54ff 21. IŚGP III. XII. 16 the concrete form (Mūrti) of Śiva is called devālaya, AGP 61.19 the prāsāda should be worshipped as Puruṣa SR XIV.114. The temple is both the house and the body of puruṣa. Mayamatam XVIII.1.93 22. AGP 61. 21-25

170

The Sāṅkhya School of Philosophy explains the

cosmos as the manifestation of Prakṛti due to the distur-

bance produced by the proximity of puruṣa ; its constituents

are five gross elements such as earth, water, fire, air and sky

with their essential qualities like smell, taste, visibility,

touchability and sound. Puruṣa is luminous and conscious,

Prakṛti is unconscious.23 The temple is a microcosmic,

image of this Prakṛti guided by puruṣa. Its body is earth,

on it rests the image or puruṣa ; the void within the temple

is the element of sky, the light within is the element of

fire, the air that fills the space therein corresponds

to the element of air ; and the water present in the stones

of the temple is the element of water. It possesses the

sensation of smell and touch and contains colours ; sound

is produced from the echo around the walls, and the feeling

of bliss within a temple is also a quality of Prakṛti.24

The installation ceremony of a building treats a

Vāstu as the body of a living being. Its main aim is to

establish the indwelling essence of the temple (hṛtpratiṣṭhā).

The builder architect and the priest ascend the vimāna

and with a golden needle perform the opening of eyes

( netra mokṣa ) of the building. The priest then instals

the building in its concrete shape ( Prāsādamūrti ) on the

altar or pedestal. Above the inmost chamber the golden

effigy of the prāsāda in the shape of a man (Prāsādapuruṣa)

is installed.25 This golden effigy is something different

from the deity of the temple. Apart from the deity, the

soul of the temple, any building whether of gods or of

23. See Vācaspatī's commentary to Sāṅkhya kārikā 11,21.

īs defined by Sāyaṇa as the support on which are established all

beings and things. Taittirīya Āraṇyaka III. 7.11; for the similitude of

the five gross elements see AGP. 61.19-20 25. Pratisthā is defined

by the Mahākapilapañcarātra as the perfect presence (viśeṣa sanmidhi)

of the deity in general. Rāghava Bhatta's com. to Śāradā Tilaka IV.7;

ĪŚGP IV. XXXIV. 65-69; Kramrisch op. cit. vol. II P. 359-60

human beings is considered to have a life of its own. The golden image stands for this vital essence. While the building itself is a symbolic imitation of the cosmos in general, the golden image represents the body of Virāṭ-puruṣa, the spirit of which is realized in every sphere of this cosmos. This human form is conceived as the body of Virāṭ, of vāstupuruṣa, and of a building; not because there is really a physical semblance among one another, but because the vital force which they all manifest in their essence is most perfectly expressed through a human body.26 Thus if the prāsāda is the reflection (Vimba) of the cosmos or of the vāstupuruṣa, it is in no way a replica of the physical appearance of the object concerned. It is more a concretization of an abstract principle than a copy of a physical appearance. While the Vedic fire-altar imitated the time-principle of Prajāpati, the architectural building represented his space-principle - the vital force acting through the

26. Caraka the medical scientist clarifies this fundamental relation between the cosmos and human form and justifies that puruṣa is the perfect microcosmic representation of the cosmic operation. There are six constituents of a puruṣa like those of the cosmos. The earth elements of cosmos is the concrete form (mūrti) in puruṣa, water is moisture, light heat, air vital force, sky the gaps in articulation and Brahman, the supreme spirit the soul. As Brahman's power pervades the cosmos in the form of Prajāpati, so also the soul pervades the body as vitality; similarly Indra of cosmos is the ego of human being, the sun (Āditya) is the receiving power, Rudra anger, Soma bliss, eight Vasus happiness, two Aśvins blaze of body, Vāyu the zeal and Vaiśvadeva is all the organs and their objects. The qualities of cosmos (the guṇas of Prakṛti) have their respective effects in ‘Puruṣa’ such as Tamas is infatuation and light is knowledge. As there is a beginning, middle and end of the creation, so also are birth, growth and death of a human being and his four stages of life i.e. childhood, youth, invalidity and suffering are the counterparts of the four periods (yugas) named Kṛta, Tretā, Dvāpara and Kali ; his death corresponds to pralaya V.4ff. See also IV 13. with Cakrapāṇi's com.

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cosmic form. The substratum of the cosmos and a vastu are one, the latter being an attempt to visualize the invisible essence of the former.

ii. If the architectural form is a visible substratum of the cosmos, something more is needed to make it a vivid counterpart of its archetype. Apart from the structure there are objects of the world — animate and inanimate. These are to be represented all over the body of a temple, and within a temple there must be an image not of Prajāpati, but of the supreme Puruṣa (the originator of Prajāpati) in his specific visible form, which the master or the sacrificer likes to see and contemplate over.27

Thus the arts of sculpture and painting originate in a desire to produce images of the objects and beings either visible or invisible. Varāhamihira asks to decorate the friezes of temples with auspicious birds, trees, full vessels, floral scroll works and couples in sex relation.28 Someśvara-deva allows to decorate not only the friezes of temples, but the walls of the houses of both gods and human beings with painted and carved images of all the animate and inanimate objects that the artist can see before him in the world or can think of existing in some other worlds — upper or nether, not visible directly.29 The subject-matter of these arts are further clarified by Śrīkumāra, who says that an artist has to depict the stories that bring propitious feelings and good luck to the observer. The activities of gods and giants, fights, deaths, sufferings, images of gods according to their

27. As the images are worshipped to fulfil the desire of the devotees, the specific forms are meant for specific purposes. A man of dreadful nature likes to see the dreadful image, who performs such deeds as killing of enemies, doing harm to others etc. while the images of calm appearance and beauty bring happiness and beauty to the worshipper.

28. BS.5614.5. 29. A GM I. III 138-40,158-69.

hymns of contemplation, naked human beings in copulation and hermits in sex relation may be wrought on the walls of the temples of the gods, but except only the auspicious scenes others are prohibited for a household building.30

It clarifies the Indian view that the house of god is the likeness of the cosmos and as the cosmos consists of the events divine and demonic, creation and destruction, suffering and enjoyment, scenes auspicious and evil, a vāstu may have the representations of all these on its walls and friezes.

These sculptured and painted figures outside the temple and on its inside walls, except the innmost chamber (garbhagṛha) are entitled as citra, a word derived from the root ci (to collect, to gather) which literally means an arrangement or composition. In the Vedas the word citra occurs in the sense of 'wonderful' and 'beautiful'.31 As the various events and scenes of the cosmic world manifest the expansions and diversions of the dynamic force of creation and at the same time make the world full of beauty and wonder, so also these citras beautify a vāstu. As the vāstu is essentially a representation of the cosmic structure, a citra is defined as an imitation of the cosmic manifestation. "Whatever there are in the three worlds," says Śrīkumāra, "movable or immovable, a representation thereof according to their essential property (tattvasvabhāvadṛṣṭasam) is called citra."32 The Viṣnudharmottarapurāṇa equalizes citra with dance in so far as both of them are imitations-"In dance as well as in citra imitation of the three worlds (trailokyānukṛti) is enjoined by tradition.33

Citra in ancient India stands for both the kinds of visual art - sculpture and painting. Its meaning as sculpture is clear from the inscriptions of the Mohoba Buddhist images of 11th century in which the artist Sātan, evidently a sculp-

30. SR 46.2. 31. SYMS 47. 32. S.R.46. 33. VDP III RV.35,5,

tor, is entitled as a citrakāra34 (one who makes a citra). Śrīkumāra divides citra into three classes35 —(a) citra proper, a sculpute in round in which the whole body is represented so accurately that it looks like a reflection of the reality on mirror. (b) Citrārdha is a representation, the body of which is shown in part or in half such as the reliefs on the walls, friezes, pillars, capitals and basements. (c) Citrābhāsa means painting on high or low walls and on canvas. Frescoes, canvas-painting and paintings on utensils are of this type. Ābhāsa means any unreal appearance like hazy reflections, shadows etc. If citra is a perfect likeness of natural phenomena with three dimensions, citrābhāsa indicates an imperfect likeness, for it appears to have three dimensions although possesses only two in reality. A painted figure cannot have the same life-like vigour which a sculp-tured figure possesses. With its shades and lineaments, if properly accomplished, it can only produce a likeness of citra, but cannot become citra itself. Thus, it seems, Śrīkumâra ranks sculpute higher than painting by judging the vividness of imitation involved in each.

Others like someśvaradeva use Viddha citra for a Citra in the above sense as Viddha means perfect or obvious. Any work of art in which a figure is not fully drawn with proper colours and finishing, but only an outline suggests the object it imitates, is called abiddha citra. Dhūlicitrac seems to be a sub-class of this type. The artistic figures, drawn on an altar or in the mandalas on occasions of some auspicious ceremonies with powder colours produced from unboiled rice, burnt husks, galingale, green leaves of Emblic Myrobalan ( āmalaka ) and ‘avira’ (a reddish powder) are

34. Cooumāraswamy ·History of Indian and Indonesian Art P. 110. 35. SR 46.143-146 ; Kāśyapa saṃhitā 50 ; Kāśyapa śilpa 50.3-6 Mānasāra 51.3.11. Suprabhedāgama 34. 3-4 (both quoted in A Dictionary of Hindu Architecture by P.K. Acharya P. 65

the examples of this type. A distinction of rasacitra and bhāvacitra creates some confusion, for both of them refer to perfect representations that rouse appropriate sentiments (rasa) as soon as the observer looks at them. It seems, bhāvacitra is conventionally used for the best type of Sculpture (either in round or in relief), while rasa citra is used for an ideal painting that fulfils its function through a variety of colours.36

Sometimes painting is said to originate in portraiture. Bhayajit an ancient king was so pious and perfect a judge that irregularities were rare in Nature under his rule. Accidentally a son of a Brahmin living in his kingdom died prematurely and his father accused the King of sinful and unlawful activities that, he thought, caused the early death of his son. He demanded that his son should be given back his life by whatsoever means possible. The King, thus insulted, asked Yama to return the life of the boy. But when he expressed his inability, the king started a fight against him. At last when Yama was defeated, Brahmā appeared before them and addressed the King as Nagnajit (one who has defeated the naked ghosts) by way of appraisal. To appease them both he asked the King to paint exactly in colours the body of the dead boy. That being done, Brahmā breathed life into the picture. He further granted that the unwelcome visits of the ghosts to this world should be prevented from that time. In future their paintings only should be kept here.37 The story seems to suggest that a citra is essentially a likeness, not a new creation, but representation of something either present or past. When the king requested Brahmā to impart him the knowledge and means of painting he told him that the art of painting is as old as the creation itself.38 Having

36. ACM I.III 940-944 37. Haridas Mitra's Contribution to a Bibliography of Indian Art and Aesthetics P. 38ff. 38. ibid. loc, cit.

created the Vedas, the world and human beings, he taught the art of drawing the picture of the Vedic altar (caitya), for a model was necessary for constructing the altar. He was the first artist to create men and their images ; and next he taught the art to human beings through Viśva-karman; and whatever is painted by them with or without an avowed motive following the style of Brahmā's own painting is called a citra. Thus Brahmā, the creator of this world, only can be its master imitator, for in producing the images of a thing its proper measurements must be known so that an accurate similarity between the original and the image could be brought out, and none but the creator of the original himself is perfectly knowledgeable of all its characteristics and measurements.

This story also suggests that in ancient India painting was conceived as essentially a work of imitation or production of an image of something that existed either in this world ordinarily visible or in the insensible worlds like the heaven or hell ; and secondly, this image was either a piece of utility such as the portraits meant for retaining the memory of the dear departed, or a work meant for enjoyment without any practical motive.

But artistic imitation nowhere means a mere copy of the appearance of an object. Even in the case of portraiture where the image is to be exactly like the appearance ( pratikṛti ) of a being, it is by no means like a mirror-image or water-reflection of the external form of an individual, for the Indians believe that the whole being of an object does not consist only in its appearance. Reality is the very substratum which is manifest through its appearance. One, who does not understand this, will fail to grasp the reality and will be mistaken by the appearance only. A visual artist has to enter into the very core of the object, the invisible substratum, through

its outside figure or visible aspects and it is this substratum that the visual artist imitates, not the visible manifestation only.

In the Chāndogya upaniṣad when Prajāpati is asking both Indra and Virocana to realise the soul from the reflection of the body on the eyeglass, or a mirror or on the surface of water, Virocana wrongly identifies the body with the soul. But Indra doubts it and by constant effort he realizes that the essence of a being is something that transcends the bodily appearance and even the mental states in dreams and sound sleep.39 Reality is the very essence of a being, its spirit that pervades the entire body and manifests itself through the various activities of the body. Through these activities and appearances the spirit must be ascertained first by a deep meditation. Then only the aritist will be able to make a good portrait. It is, therefore, the substratum, the inner vital spirit, the life force that the artist imitates, never only the visual aspects of the body. If he fails in his attempt to have an impression of the being owing to lack of proper concentration the portrait will be unlike the model. Agnimitra, a hero of Kālidāsa's play detects a disagreement between the lustrous beauty of Mālavikā and that of her portrait and thinks, it is due to the slackening of concentration (Śithila samādhi ) of the artist who ought to have preserved the total impression of the model's entire being before representing it on the canvas.40 For this a very powerful insight into the nature of things and a “strong retentive capacity of memory, which ordinary people do not possess, are needed. The clown of Rājaśekhara's “Karpūramañjarī” cannot retain the beauty of the heroine's form in his heart.41 Thus a painted portrait is much more than a mirror-reflection, and the activity involved therein is by no means limited to mere copying. As the artist imitates the very life spirit,

39. VIII 7.12. 40. Mālavikāgnimitra II.2 41. I.30.

he has the freedom to change the actual appearance of the model, if he thinks some particular aspects are or are not appropriate to manifest his individual character sufficiently.

In imitating a class, the artist has to keep an individual member before him as a model; but there he has to give less emphasis upon the model's individual differentia. The model stands as a representative of the whole class, and the artist imitates only those general characteristics, represented by the individual. Śukrācārya mentions the way of representing a horse as an example. An artist cannot represent anything, he suggests, which he has not seen. He must always have a mental image or an impression (Vimba) of a horse while working, not necessarily the object itself. "The artist", he writes, "having first made his visual contemplation (dhvātyā) on the horse and being attentive to its forms should do his work, embodying all the proportions of horses meet for splendour and divorced from ill omen."42 The artist is here required to be well aware of the physical construction with a proper knowledge of the physiological proportions of the horse and he must be sensitive to the portions separately and to the whole body taken together. In his work, then, the artist is instructed to copy faithfully, without any alteration, all the biological characteristics of a horse. But he is absolutely free in enriching the figure with all the points of attraction which may be phenomenally rare in any one of the individual member of the whole class.

This conception of art activity is obvious in Viśvakarman's construction of Tilottamā43 and in the Viṣṇudharmottarapurāṇas narration of the origin of painting. Once Nara and Nārāyaṇa (probably two sages or the ruling gods of Bhāratavarṣa) were in meditation to which the divine fairies set up a lot of obstacles by displaying their various attractive

42. SNS IV. Iv. 73-74 43. MBh. Ādi-270. 11-18

gestures. Nārāyaṇa then painted a picture of a fairy with mango juice, that exceeded them all in beauty, seeing which they felt insulted and fled away. The picture looked so life-like that later it really was transformed to a living woman ( as the painter breathed life into it. ) and was called Urvaśī, the most charming of all the divine fairies.44 Viśvakarman's Tilottamā, Nagnajit's Brāhmin son and Nārāyaṇa's Urvaśī all are imitations in so far as their works are not absolutely new. Their models were all created by Prajāpati long before. He was the first artist, who created the world initating the creation of the previous ‘Kalpa’. While Nagnajit produced an image of an individual, the other two studied the features of the whole class of their models and combined all the best points into each one. All these figures were so vivid that they demanded breathing of the vital airs into them. The story of Nagnajit suggests that if there be any means by which the law of Prajāpati's creation can be violated ; it is only the activity of an artist and it is by the artistic activity that one can even supersede the creation of Prajāpati. Thus the artistic imitation sometimes becomes rather a kind of invention (in case of idealistic likeness) than being merely a passive mirror like copy of an object.

The principles of artistic imitation further clarify this point. Yaśodhara in his commentary on Vātsyāyana's Kāmasūtra mentions six principles of a citra45— (a) differen-tiation of forms (rūpabheda), (b) proper measurements of these forms ( pramāṇam ), (c) application of proper emotions ( bhāva ) and (d) grace (lāvaṇya) to these forms, (e) exertion of similarity ( Sādrśya ) and (f) proper disposition of colours ( Varṇikābhaṅga ). As the main aim of citra is to make likenesses of the objects of three worlds—heaven, earth and the under world, the fourth principle, i.e. exertion of similarity,

44. VDP III, 35. 18-19; 45. SSD 71.13.15; KS. I.31;Yaśodhara's lāvaṇyayojanā and Madhuratva of VDP may be compared.

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is considered by the Viṣnudharmottarapurāṇa 46 as the principal one, and the other five subservient principles are necessary in fulfilling this main principle.

The artist has first to experience a variety of forms he observes himself or learns from other reliable sources.

The particular form which he has to represent must first be drawn in outlines on a canvas, if it is a painting, or in the materials like stone, clay, metals, or wood, if it is a sculpture.

This being the first stage of his work he should finalize what objects exactly he has to represent and having a concrete image of these objects in his mind, he should give them primary visual shapes which are distinct and differentiated.

A. N. Tagore does not accept the view47 that a rūpa is limited to the visual perception only.

On the basis of the sixteen forms given by the Mahābhārata he tries to suggest that all our five senses together with mind, the internal organ, supply forms and the mind has to analyse and synthesise these forms to acquire correct knowledge of them.

This correct knowledge of form is, according to him, rūpabheda, the first limb (aṅga) of a citra, and this correct knowledge is achieved when the artist illuminates all forms with his aesthetic taste and at the same time receives enlightenment from the forms both visible and invisible.

But it seems, this view is too subjective to suit the view of Yaśodhara.

Although the subjective taste of the artist plays an eminent role in modifying the forms he perceives, it is highly controversial to urge that right knowledge of forms emanates from this taste.

Besides, A. N. Tagore cannot justify his view that rūpa is not limited to the visual percept only.

The Mahābhārata, his authority, emphatically mentions that all the sixteen forms are the objects of visual perception only.

The mind has forms no

46. VDP III.42.48 47. Principles of Indian painting : A Review, Rūpam, Nos 19-20, 1924, P-130ff.

doubt, but these forms are only the impressions or after-images of the forms perceived by the eyes, and even when it constructs purely imaginary forms, independent of visual perception, it is called as the internal eye or manaścakṣu. Secondly, rūpabheda is not a kind of knowledge only. As it is the first stage of the artistic activity, it positively indicates an action which the artist has to work out.

Others read here48 a very subtle meaning into the term rūpa. They accept Śiṅgabhūpāla’s view that something is called a form (rūpam) by virtue of which the limbs undecorated with ornaments appear as if they are actually ornamented.49 They admit that form here refers to the visual percept, not to its external appearance only; the inner natural beauty is here indicated. This beauty is rūpam which avoids the notice of ordinary men, while the artistic sense easily discovers it, and manifests it with skilful manipulation of lines which affect division (bheda or vibhaktatā). But this view of rūpam is not appropriate here. It may more appropriately be the explanation of grace (lāvaṇya) which Yośodhara puts as a separate principle. At the very out-set of his work one cannot expect that the artist should achieve the perfect accomplishment. Proper beauty that is needed of this art-form can be manifested only when the entire course is run. No subtle meaning of rūpam is conceived here, except its ordinary sense i.e. any object that can be directly perceived by the eyes. Hence rūpabheda is not a knowledge only. It is both a knowledge and an activity. The artist first acquires the

48. Ibid, H.D.Mitra, op. cit P.48 49. Rasārṇavasudhākara I.57.180. Critics like H.D. Mitra consider this definition of rūpam and that of lāvaṇya given below as of Rūpagosvāmī. But this is misguiding, for these two definitions are found first in Śigabhūpalas Rasārṇavasudhākara of 14th century (1330 A.D. Sec T. Ganapati Sastri's preface). Rūpagosvāmī might have borrowed the definitions from Śiṅgabhūpala.

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knowledge of several forms by his sensitive eyes and after forming the images of particular forms he visualizes them in his work, first in sketches only with a distinctness of each figure therein.

These distinct figures must have their appropriate measurement of construction. Each limb should be in proportion with the others and all the limbs taken together are to be symmetrical with the entire body. This is what is indicated by the second principle. In logic the word Pramānam means the way (Karaṇam) of obtaining perfect knowledge (Pramā). Pramā is defined in various ways by the philosophers of various systems although all of them agree unanimously that truth is the essential characteristic of Pramā.50 The Buddhists have a pragmatic idea of Pramā in so far as they hold that it leads to the achievement of some end or reveals an object which serves a purpose (artha).51 According to the Naiyāyikas it makes us realize something in a place where it really exists ; and the Sāṅkhya school regards true knowledge to be in harmony with other experiences.52 "An object is known", says Vātsyāyana, "through an instrument of knowledge ; its validity is known by its workability. There is neither valid knowledge of an object without a pramāṇa nor successful action without valid knowledge of it."53 The monistic Vedantins, however, do not agree with the Buddhists who urge against all the orthodox schools that as the causal efficiency (arthakriyā kāritva) is the only criterion of reality (sattā), the same is the basic criterion of every form of right cognition.54 Even a

50. D. M. Datta The six ways of knowing P. 19ff 51. ibid; H.I.Ph. P. 15 ff; Nyāyabindu I.I; Stcherbatsky, Buddhistic Logic vol. II P. 3ff. 52. Datta, op, cit P. 20; for the Sāṅkhya theory of Pramā see Vācaspati's com. to the Sāṅkhya kārikā 51 53. Nyāya Bhāṣya1.1.1. 54. H.I.Ph P. 163ff; Gholi, The Aesthetic Experience according Abhinavagupta P. 37 Foot note.

mistake, observes Dharmakīrti, is sometimes a source of right knowledge if it does not deceive the perceiving subject. "Between two people approaching two lights", he cites an example, "the one produced by a jewel, the other by a lamp (without being conscious of what they really are) with the idea that it is jewel, there exists a difference in respect of causal efficiency, but not a difference of mistaken cognition."55 The Vedantins, on the other hand, urge that this causal efficiency cannot be the essential criterion of reality, for if even a false cognition can fulfil a purpose, how can one consider it as the fundamental characteristic of pramā or true knowledge?56 They hold that it is the uncontradictedness (abādhitatva) of our experience (anubhūti) which is important here. Anything which is cognized once as true must not be contradicted by any other experience later. This school adds novelty as a second criterion of pramā to uncontradictedness (avisamvāditatva). Knowledge proper reveals something new. It is not merely a reproduction of something already experienced. True knowledge or pramā is thus both uncontradicted and novel,57 and Pramāna is the unique means through which this perfect knowledge is achieved. Six such ways or Karanas are accepted by the different schools of Philosophy, although all of them are not accepted by each one except the Vedānta school. Perception, inference, testimony, comparison, non-cognition and postulation are these ways.

55. quoted from the Pramāṇa Vārtika of Dharmakīrti by Abhinavagupta fee Gnoli op cit P.336 56. When distant bright jewel emits lustre "We mistake the lustre for the jewel and desiring to get the mistaken object for our knowledge, approach it and actually get jewel. In this case, therefore, the knowledge of the lustre as the jewel—which is clearly a false cognition leads to the attainment of the jewel and thereby satisfies our purpose, though eventually we come also to know that the initial cognition which caused our action was itself false." D.M. Datta quotes from the Tattvapradīnikā Citsukhī op. cit P. 21.

56. D.M. dutta, op cit P. 21ff

If the logical pramāṇa is the activity of acquiring knowledge, the aesthetic pramāṇa is the acquired knowledge itself, which literally means perfect (Prakṛstam) measurement (mānam); and as such this is to be obtained by the logical pramāṇa and to possess the characteristics of pramā. But which one out of the six should be its proper way?

As the objects of artistic imitation are not always directly visible, sense perception cannot be the means in all the cases; and even in the cases where objects are visible the norm of measurement is not achieved by an inductive method, for, as we have already remarked, the Indians did not consider the outward appearance of an object as self-sufficient. It is sub-ordinate to and is regulated by the inner vital principle or Sattva. Hence instead of studying the minute particular differences or similarities of each body of a class, they thought it better to study the very vital principles; and the causal relation between these vital principles and their phenomenal manifestations is not fixed always by the dual method of agreement (anvaya) and difference (Vyatireka),58 for these are possible in case of the visible world only. The testimonial records about the things and their nature revealed to the sages by means of a mystic intuition serve a better means of acquiring the aesthetic Pramāṇa than any other logical pramāṇa.

Nature or Prakṛti in Indian philosophy is not limited to the visible world only. It is the ultimate source of vital principles and as such pervades the other worlds as well which possess life spirits, although invisible to the ordinary human eyes. Hence the ways of cognizing the visible world only are not sufficient for a perfect cognition of this nature. A strong power of contemplation and intuition in addition to these other five ways reveal that Nature has three constituents, essentially three qualities—Sattva,

58. See the Nyāya theory of vyāpti, H. I. Ph P. 345ff

Rajas and Tamas. But it is unconscious. When owing to the proximity of Puruṣa, the principle of consciousness is inserted into it, it is startled and the creation begins with the conglomeration of the three qualities in various proportions. Thus the nature of things in general and the personalities of the beings and their physical constructions are regulated accordingly. Caraka, the eminent Indian physiologist, divides the vital principles (sattva) of human beings into three types - pure (śuddha), mixed (rājasa) and impure (tāmasa). The first type again is divided into seven sub-types Brāhma, Ārṣa, Aindra, Yāmya, Kauvera, Vāruna and Gāndharva. Similarly the other two types also are divided into six and ten sub-types respectively.59 Although the bodily appearance and physical construction of the entire human race is similar to a great extent, most of the essential features, nevertheless, differ according to their vital principles. Physiologists, for example, observe that a man's length is three and a half by the length of his own hand which is equal to eighty-four angulas (the breadth of the middle finger of his own hand). This standard measure indicates happiness and longevity of man.60 But this standard length is not an exhaustive measure. It increases and decreases according to the type of the personality. The Aindra sub-type of the pure sattva class, for example, is said to be longer than the standard measure and is sufficiently rich in appearance (dīrghadaśī) and wealth displaying thus a warrior (Kṣatra) personality.61 The physical form is so much sub-ordinate to and regulated by the inner vitality, vision and volition that both Caraka and Suśruta agree with the Vedic testimony that whatever form

59. Caraka Samhitā, Śārīrasthāna IV.34. ff Suśruta ssmhitā, Sārīrasthāna IV. 73-76. 60. Vāgbhaṭa AHS. 221. 61. Caraka, op. cit. Śārīra, IV.37ff.

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the mother will think of at the time of copulation, the baby in the womb will assume it exactly.62

The bodily features including the personality of human beings are again said to be regulated by the three humours — wind, bile and phlegm. ‘Windy’ persons are thin, tall and weak ; their eyes are grey-coloured, round and ugly-looking appearing like those of a cadaver. Such persons become atheist and quarrelsome. Bile is a fiery substance. Hence the person, in whom this humour is prominent, is of fiery colour; his face, feet and nails are copper-coloured, hairs are tawny, eyes are small, reddish-brown, and he possesses small eyelashes, and so on. Personal characters also are conditioned by these humours. While the behaviour of a ‘windy’ personality is like that of dogs, jackals, camels, swallows and rats the behaviour of the phlegmatic personality is like that of Brahmā, Rudra, Indra, Varuṇa, Garuḍa, swans, lions, horses, cows and bulls.63

Vāgbhaṭa gives the standard of an ideal body that is capable of long life and happiness. The hairs of such a body are smooth, soft, subtle, strong and consist of many roots. Its eyes are clear with distinct black and white portions and eyelashes are thick ; the nose is straight, fleshy and uplifted; the lips are red and uplifted from below; the teeth are of equal size, smooth, white, closely fitted and blazing; the tongue is red, wide and thin; the shoulder is uplifted and fleshy and so on, making thus the whole body appear faultless and most attractive.64

62. Caraka, Op. cit. Śārīra II. 25 ( see Cakrapāṇi’s com ) Suśruta, VIII. 14. 63. AHS P.218-220 64. ibid; Varāhamihira suggests that a beautiful body is indicative of good character and health—“yatrakṛtistatragunā vasanti’’ BS. 70.23; for this interrelation of bodily features and personal character see BS 68.60ff. Varāha also gives some descriptions of a good physical appearance which with lotus colour, softness, closely connected fingers, veinless feet etc. is indicative of long life and prosperity.

The sage Samudra by his sublime intuition selects five best types of personality on the basis of physical features such as height ( māna ) from the top of head to feet, breadth or thickness of the body (unmāna), nature of movement ( gati ), mutual unity of the limbs with the whole body ( samhati ), colour of the body ( varṇa ), love and affection ( sneha ), voice ( svara ), nature and behaviour ( prakṛti ) and above all, the vital principle ( sattva ). These types are named Hamsa, Śaśa Rucaka, Bhadra, and Mālavya.65 Astrologers afterwards observed that these types are regulated by the characters of the planets who guide the actions of human beings. Thus a Hamsa is a Jupitarian whose height differs from that of normal bodies of eighty four angulas. By his own finger his height is ninety-six angulas. His head and eyes are round, the colour of face is golden, cheeks are fleshy and red in colour, nose straight and uplifted, nails are red coloured and the whole appearance is pleasing marked with signs of fishes, conch-shells and ‘dūrbā’ grass etc. Śaśaka is a Saturnian whose height is ninety-nine angulas, body is not excessively thick, nails are short, cheeks are full and teeth a little uplifted, and so on.66

Besides these five main types, standard measurements of pigmies, crooked ones and persons of inferior character such as Jaghanya and Mandalaka are also counted by Varāhamihira.67 Beauty and happiness, according to Samudra, co-operate each other depending upon the inner vital principle which manifests itself through a physical form which consists of a symmetry in the construction of limbs that neither sweat much nor display much veins over the skin which is soft and lotus-coloured. Fingers of hands and feet are also closely connected and the shape

65. For Sāmudrika see Garudapurāṇa 63.2.,64. 1-17; Agp chap.179, 180; for five mahāpurusa laksana see BS 69.1ff SSD. 81.90-96 66. BS 69 1-28 67. BS 69.32,33-39

of feet is just like the back of tortoise with uplifted centre lowering downwards, and hairs over the body are very subtle. Like the structure of males, that of females is also regulated by the essential life force and expresses beauty and richness if the characteristic female organs are well grown. The breasts, thighs and hips, for example, should be well developed and without hairs, the hairs of head smooth, long and blue, and the fingers closely connected with pointed tips, and the nails, copper coloured. The area of the genitalia must be wide and its shapes should be like an ‘aśvattha’ leaf. Besides, lips are to be red and fleshy, eyebrows like halfmoon, nose straight with nostrils of equal size and neck like a conch-shell etc. Thus according to their character and bodily appearance women are divided into sixtypes Mrgī, Padminī, Citriṇī, Vadavā, Hastinī and Śaṅkhinī one being inferior to its immediately preceding type.68 Not only human beings, lower animals also are classified according to their construction, their formal beauty and physical features. Although all the cows are marked with good signs, some important symptoms mark their superiority to other cows. If the hoofs are parted full, and head is longer than a normal size, neck is short and thick and back lowers to centre, a cow is not fit for domestication. Similarly the auspicious symptoms of horses and elephants etc. are also given in details.69

Now these three divisions — philosophical, physiological—and astrological—do not contradict one another nor are they on completely different grounds. Rather they are the results of different attempts made to analyse the same truth (Sattva) from different points of view. Metaphysics, astrology and physiology are three branches of the same science. While the last one is strictly limited to the sphere

68. Bs 70 1-9; ACM I.III. 1893ff 69. BS 61. 14; 62.1; 66. 1; 67. 1-7.

of visible living beings, the first two venture into the

invisible arena of creation. But as the invisible expresses

itself through the visible, physiology is supplemented by

and itself supplements metaphysics and astrology. Their

mutual co-operation is evident from the fact that the

metaphysical Śuddha Sattva type is commensurate with the

physiological phlegmatic type which includes the five

distinguished astrological types. While the ‘intelligence’

stuff (sattva) gets prominent in a being, his physical appea-

rance changes accordingly—the eyes blaze and become calm,

the entire body, free from diseases, radiates with beauty.

The prominence of the ‘mass’ stuff (tamas), on the other

hand, brings all the opposite symptoms so that the diseased

body is disfigured by projecting veins, backbone and skeleton;

and loose articulations all over signify death at an early

date.70

The above classification of visible beings, according

to the nature of vital spirits they embody, is in no way

dogmatic or merely conventional ; for classification is the

Indian way of understanding the facts of Nature and, as

we have seen, the whole process is based more upon the

yogic perception or a mystic intuition than upon any

inferential process, for the Indians believe that only a

portion of the visible world is accessible to the inductive

generalization while the yogic perception enables one to

achieve the knowledge of the entire universe and finally

of the absolute Reality, and thus it is only by this pramāna

that one’s cognition is beyond any doubt or challenge.

The artists are, therefore, required to follow these testi-

monial records in order to achieve a sound imitation of

reality in their art.

The first two principles Rūpabheda and Pramāna

concern themselves with the representation of the external

70. AHS p 230

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appearance. But as the reality of a being does not consist in its outward structure, mere anatomical perfection of an image is unable to express the inner life of the original. The representation of a warrior going to battle field cannot be perfect if the artist only differentiates the separate limbs and preserves the appropriate measurement–such as a tall figure, knee-touching arms, fleshy articulations etc. The figure must be expressive of emotions. A feeling of heroism must be displayed in it such as anger in the eyes, swelling of muscles in the body and a spirit of daring personality throughout the appearance. This is called the application of emotions (Bhāvayojanā), the third principle of an artistic imitation. It is very difficult to find an accurate English synonym of the Sanskrit word (Bhāva), the denomination of which is much wider than what the words like emotion, feeling, thought, idea and sentiment refer to. Bhāva is here defined as certain attitudes or states of citta which are productive of changes in the organ both sensory and motor.71 Citta is very often translated as mind. But it is a completely different entity in Indian philosophy ; it includes intellect (buddhi), ego (ahaṅkāra) and senses, and undergoes incessant changes like the flame of a lamp.72 Essentially it is a large stuff of pure intelligence (sattva) — substance that constantly moulds itself from one content to another. Such states of citta are in accordance with its response to the objects (artha) that the senses perceive. It becomes calm and undisturbed if it pays heed to the activities of the senses. Both the stages of citta disturbed and undisturbed — are manifest in the external appearance of the body through the sense and motor organs which are called anubhāvas73 ( after products of

71. NS VII. 1-3 see the vṛtti also. “Śarīrendriyavargāsya vikārāṇāṃ vidhāyakāḥ/bhāvā vibhā vajanitā scittavṛttaya iritāḥ, ii” source unknown qouted by H.D. Mitra, op. cit. P.49. 72. H.I.Ph. P.262 73. N.S.VII. 5 vṛtti also

bhāvas ). When one perceives, for example, a snake before him all on a sudden his citta is startled with the emotion of fear, and at once this bhāva is expressed through the movements of organs such as running away, widening of the eyes and horripilation of the body and so on. Similarly the death of a friend brings tears in eyes, choking of voice and distention of limbs. On the other hand, if the worldly affairs do not cast any impression on the citta, a state in which it is undisturbed ( niruddha ) with an indifference towards the objects of senses, the eyes become calm and vacant. The body radiates with a lustre and the activities, such as talking, sleeping and eating all become restrained. Such expressions of the body, especially of the eyes denote rasadrṣṭi.74 Thus an Indian artist is not satisfied only with the proper measurements of body. Unlike the Egyptians, he conceives of the body as a medium for expressing the vital spirit and the inner emotions through the rhythmic movements of the limbs. He takes the vital spirit as the object of imitation in his arts. Bharata, the son of the king Daśaratha is astonished at the artistic genius which can display bodily expressions of emotions vividly even in the stone images.75 Madanikā similarly detects the exact representation of Cārudatta's tenderness of eyes, the most characteristic feature of his appearance, in his painted portrait ; and by this point she appreciates the portrait as the perfect likeness of the original ( susadrśi ).76 Duryo-dhana notes the emotional expressions of the Pāndavas in their painted picture of the rape*of Draupadī's lock. Yudhiṣṭhira tries to control the anger of Bhīma by his glances, Aryuna's eyes are full of anger and his lips are trembling, and by attracting the thread of his bow he shows that he is just on the verge of attacking and will jump up if Yudhiṣṭhira gives any hint; Nakula and

74. SSD Chap 82. 75. Pratimānātaka III 76. Mṛcchakaṭikā IV

Sahadeva are showing very severe faces with their upper lips biting the lower ones; the king of Gāndhāra is smiling proudly while playing at the dice. Droṇa and Bhīṣma are hiding their faces to avoid looking at the pitifully weeping face of Draupadī. The entire picture is indeed rich in expressiveness ( aho bhāvopapannatā !). 77

A particular bhāva is exposed through its corresponding organs. Tear, for example, expressing sorrow is to be shown in the eyes, not elsewhere. Similarly sweating indicating certain excitement of nerves ( out of fear etc. ) is shown on the skin of body. But to bring the liveliness of a represented figure, emphasis should be given by the artist on the entire body. The feeling of love, sorrow or fear must spring forth from the attitude of the whole body. This is what is called applying of grace ( lāvan̄ya yojanā ). Īśvara saṁhitā, a Pañcarātra text distinguishes between grace ( lāvan̄ya ) and beauty, ( saundarya ). Beauty is caused by a harmony of proportions, but grace is something which does not necessarily accompany beauty ; it is the expression of the inner man, his thoughts and feelings and the very spiritual essence. 78 Śiṅgabhūpāla defines grace as that which manifests in the limbs just in the same way as does the liquid lustre out of the pearl-bead. It is that quality which vividly manifests a particular state of one’s citta in the whole body, not in any particular portion of it. 79 Thus lāvan̄ya denotes a quality wider than expression of emotions. Something without being rich in emotional expressions cannot be graceful while its converse is not necessarily true i.e. something expressive of emotions may not be necessarily graceful. Simply to weep, for example, is not enough to express the grace of sorrowfulness. It requires sorrowful attitude of the whole body displaying the inner suffering

77. Bhāsa, Dūta vākyam 7-12 78. Fundamentals of Indian Art P 104.

78. Rasārṇava sudhākara I.57.181

spirit. Thus the artist should try to intuit the very essence of his object in a particular state and should try to represent it as exactly as possible.

In sculpture emotional expressions and gracefulness of the figures are wrought by the lines (rekhā) and points (bindu) which are subtle but clear-cut. Weak lineament is one of the defects of a citra. Painting has an advantage over sculpture that by using proper colours it can verify emotions and grace more powerfully. Blushings, for example, the expression of shame or love can be perfectly exposed in painting only. This appropriate disposition of colours (Varnikā bhanga) is a specific principle of painting being absent in sculpture. Duryodhana praises the richness of colours in the above picture (aho asya varnādhyatā !).80

Now sādrśya, the accomplishment of which is the fundamental principle of citra to which all the above five principles are subservient, or of which those are constituents, literally means a semblance of something visible (drśya). The artist has to cognise first the object visible of which he has to produce a semblance. Visual perception of an object according to the Nyāya realists consists of two stages — indeterminate and determinate. The first stage is the immediate awareness of a real object that is a substance with qualities, movement, general and specific characteristics, but without the knowledge of a subject-predicate relation and a name appertaining to it which is fulfilled in the determinate state finalising the function of perception.81 Thus a mere visual sensation is different from perception that ends in some definite knowledge. Simply a visual awareness of a horse, for example, does not enable an observer to realize the proposition—“This is a horse”. At first he is conscious of a thing of certain

80. Bhāsa, Dūtavākyam 12. 81. H.I. Ph. P.333ff.

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size and colour, either static or moving with some characteristics which place it under a particular class and differentiate it from others. But to know what the thing exactly is, one depends upon a name that comes from the memory of his previous realization of a subject-predicate relation between the thing itself and its qualities etc., which make the perception determinate. A mental vision may be an after-image of the object just perceived physically or something constructed from memory. Purely imaginary visions also are mental and so are the mystic perceptions of the yogins.

The object of the artistic representation is thus a determinate percept — the universal ( sāmānya ) as well as the particular ( Viśeṣa ). A universal is defined as that which by its presence in two very different things (Sattā), makes them appear as the same.82 The idea of horseness, for example, consists in its essential properties such as shaggy and thick tail, strong and stout legs, unparted hoofs, muscular body and long ears etc. Its colour decoration and movement are accidental properties. A horse may be white or black, may sleep or run. An artist has to represent both the properties essential or universal and particular or individual. The choice of a model should not be made at random. It is to be suitable for the purpose the artist is going to satisfy in his work. When, for example, a king is represented as going to battle on horse, the artist should not use here a model of any ordinary horse, but only that type which is competent in war and brings victory to the rider. This type he may either realize himself by his superb experience or learn from other testimonial records. But in other cases where he has to depict a battle field and a large number of horses, he should not follow a single model. He may change the accidental properties while preserving

82. PPB. PP. 29, 742, 744; H.I.Ph. P.317

the essential ones of a warrior-horse. Similarly he is more free in imitating horses grazing on a field, where only the universal features are retained and the individual features vary according to his own choice.

While all the individual and universal characteristics of a real horse are accessible to all the sense organs of a human observer, an artist has to preserve only those characteristics that are sensible only to the visual organ. The typical smell and sound of a horse cannot be represented in a citra, and although a shaggy, tactual sensation can be preserved in a sculptured horse painting is completely unable to preserve it. Thus a citra does not aim at reproducing all the characteristics of reality, but only a semblance of it which is according to the Nyāya system an identity-in-difference. Something is similar to a different thing if it possesses some fundamental characteristics common to both. A face, for example, is not the moon itself, but similar to it as it radiates delight and charm etc. the characteristic features of the moon.83 A citra thus is a different entity from the object it imitates e.g. a horse and a painting of horse are not the same thing, the former is a living being whereas the latter is a patch of colours on a piece of paper or cloth. It shares only those features in common with the living horse that are accessible to the visual organ. These features must be displayed as exactly as a mirror reflects an object before it. Here mirroric reflection does not indicate any passive copy, for he has to represent not only the surface of the object but the very essence through its outward manifestation. Hence an artist needs an acute insight and powerful intellection to dip into

83. H.I.Ph. P.318 Footnote No.2 ; Viśvanātha quotes this definition—“Sādrśyamapi na padārthāntaram, Kintu tadbhinntve sati tadgata-bhūyodharmavartitvam” from the Līlāvatī Prakāśa, Bhāṣā Pariccheda (Padārtha Vibhāga) Vṛtti, 12.

the bottom and give physical expressions to the inner emotions and thoughts. That is why king Bhoja counts some seven indispensable qualities of a good artist — powers of intuitive contemplation or meditation ( Prajñā ), careful observation, technical skill of the hand through long practice, knowledge of the science of metre or balance, anatomy of different bodies of animals and men in steadiness, movement and under diverse passions, ready intelligence ( Pratyupanna- matitva ) and finally self-control and character.84

A mirror reflects only the things present before it, but art imitates the objects of the past and the events that may happen in future also. Nevertheless a mirror is compared with the citta of an artist, for like the transparent surface of a mirror the artist's citta must be indifferently receptive and reflective. An ancient story narrates that once two painters competed in the court of Indra in heaven. Both of them worked separately on the wall of the court behind screens. In due time the pictures were inaugurated. One of them painted the Rājasūya sacrifice of king Yajāti excellently and received its due appraisal from the gods present in the court. But the picture of the second one was more applauded, for it was an exact representation of the present scene of Indra's court. Indra awarded him as the successful competitor, for while the former painted an event from the past days, already painted by nature, this painter depicted something which was to take place in future (i.e. the artist could know the situation of Indra's court at the time of inauguration—long before the actual inauguration.) Thus it was a novelty85 of his subject-matter which was the result of his strong far-sight. At this the winner artist expressed the truth that there was no picture at all painted by him on the wall. He had simply rubbed a portion of the wall so

84. F.I.A. P. 121. 85. Novelty thus becomes an essential characteristic of both valid knowledge and an art object.

skilfully by a piece of stone that it became transparent like the surface of a mirror which not only was reflecting the court-scene present before it, but would reflect whatever would come before it in future. No picture will remain fixed on this wall. So should be the citta of the artist indifferent in receiving the objects and facts and in representing them as exactly as he receives.86

As a dirty mirror cannot reflect an object clearly so a citra is regulated by the nature of the artist's citta. A man of insipid heart, for example, is unable to realize the nature of love and to detect its expression through physical organs. Hence his representation of a couple in love will remain imperfect. Similarly an old man cannot usually realize the vigour of youth, an ugly (in citta especially) the charm of beauty, and a person sick at heart the bliss of health. That is why the Devipurāṇa comments that the mental and physical forms of an artist mould the nature of his products (Lekhakasya ca yadrūpam citre bhavati tādrśam).87

Sometimes critics distinguish the reality from its appearance and hold that art imitates only this appearance (or dṛśya), not the reality, and on this basis they distinguish real art from the art of Photography. A photograph is a copy, according to this view, of the object as it is, while a portrait is that of the object as it appears to the artist without being necessarily related to the reality of the object. The model himself and his portrait may not be exactly of the same form, but the impressions derived from both must be the same. Hence the above definition of sādrśya by the Nyāya systems holds good in case of the artistic representations only, not in case of mirroric reflection or photographic copy. That is to say, in the above sense of the term, not a

86. The story is referred to by Srimat Purnananda Brahmachari Saral yogsādhan (Bengali) P. 36-38 87. VDP 93 148-151

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mirroric reflection, but an artistic copy is a semblance ( sādrśya ) of the object concerned. But this impressionistic interpretation makes art too subjective to suit the ancient Indian idea of the artistic semblance ( sādrśya ).88 Had it been so, the mirroric reflection would not have been cited as an ideal of the artistic semblance. A reflection and an image both are different from the original objects and are similar to them in so far as they possess only those characteristics that are subject to visual perception only. But as a mirror is an inanimate object its reflection is a mechanical passive copy of the object, while the artist is unable to bring such accurate likeness in his work. A mirror can reflect exactly neither more nor less ; but an artist prefers alteration whenever he thinks that the essential spirit of the object is not sufficiently expressed through its appearance. A lover's emotion, for example, may not sometimes be sufficiently expressed in his outward appearance and gestures, which being reflected on a mirror exactly, will not give an observer the idea that he is a lover. But an artist will modify him suitably in his portrait in order to reveal his real character as a lover. The artist here imitating the real makes it ideal. That is why in India art has no such divisions as realistic and idealistic ; here the real is the ideal. To bring perfection to Śakuntalā's serene beauty Duṣyanta needs a representation of the calm surroundings such as the stream of Mālinī and on its sands swan pairs resting, foot hill lands of the great Himālaya's sacred ranges where the yaks are seen, and under the trees that bear bark hermit dresses on their high branches, a doe rubbing her left eye on the buck's horn (expressing her love to him).89 For he thinks, Śakuntalā's

88. Principles of Indian painting ; A review; Rūpam, Nos. 19-20 1924 P. 130ff.-see the criticism of A.M. “Sadṛśyam dṛśyate yattu darpaṇe prativimbabat” SR 46.145; comp. “Sādrśyam likhyate yattu darpaṇe prativimbabat”. ACMI. III. 939. 89. Kālidāsa, Abhijñāna Śākuntalam, IV.

essence does not lie only in her physique ; it is amidst this peculiar natural settings that her person is blown ; apart from this she cannot be what she is. Against this background she is rendered so life-like that it seems to the king as if she is articulate ; and Miśrakeśī praises the king as a good painter for his representation of Śakuntalā makes her see the living girl before her.90 Nevertheless, equal importance was given to the vividness of each particular object. Reality was sought not at the cost of appearance. Indian artists were well aware of the charm of physique and did their best to bring its likeness even upto a point of illusion. Duṣyanta's painting of the bee, in the said picture, that flies around the face of Śakuntalā is so similar to a living bee that both the king and the clown forget for a time that it is a lifeless imitation. The king is so deluded that he even orders the bee to leave alone the face of the girl.91 Padmāvatī in Bhāsa's play praises the picture of the heroine as having the perfect semblance (ati sadrśī) of her.92 Madanikā in Śūdraka's play judges the perfect likeness (Susadrśī) of Cārudatta's portrait, for the painter has preserved the tenderness of his eyes, which is the specific feature of his appearance.93 Rāmacandra possessed a youthful warrior figure while he broke the Śiva-bow at the palace of Janaka. Hence his representation in a painting possessing a muscular and comely body with a charming grace is highly praised by Sītā in Bhavabhūti's play, for the picture was perfectly similar to the real personality of Rāma.94 But on the other hand, although the Buddha was a prince with a warrior-like figure in his youth, it should not be retained in his portrait after achieving the wisdom. For his personality was utterly changed then. As the heroic spirit was

90. ibid VI 91. ibid IV 92. Svapnavāsavadattam, VI. II ff. 93. Mṛcchakaṭikam, IV. trans. by R.A.Oliver, ed H.W.Wells P.92 94. Uttararāmacaritam, P.361

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changed within into a meditative serenity, the muscular and sturdy figure without had necessarily to undergo a change into sombre appearance that would indicate a control over the passions and sense organs. That is why the Greek-Gāndhāra style of the Buddha's icons representing his youthful vigour was not accepted by the Indian mind, and was replaced afterwards by the later schools of Indian art.95 The likeness of dresses, costumes and colours of people are standardized according to the local features and traditions. The people of Āndhra, Drāviḍa, Kośala, Pulinda ard Southern India are brown in colour ; those of Anga, Banga ond Kalinga faint blue. Ascetics wear rags and barks, women of North tie their hair high on the head, while those of Avanti and Gauḍa twist their hair into a single ornamented traid. A woman whose husband has gone away wears dirty clothes and forbids ornamental decoration.96 Similarly representations of natural scenes are in accordance with their general appearance. The sky, for example, in day time is pale-coloured with birds flying and at night black, dotted with twinkling stars. Mountains should be shown as full of stones, peaks and covered with trees ; a city as consisting of highways, gardens and houses,97 and so on.

iii. As art is thought to imitate Nature which consists of worlds both visible and invisible, imitation of the invisible also comes within its scope. There are the objects and beings of the immortal world or heaven and those of the nether world. Among these the imitation (Vimbi,

95. It is a historical fact which can be realised by studying the Buddha types of Kuṣāṇa, later Āndhra, and Mathura periods. For the Buddha lakṣaṇa see B.S. 58-44; for pictures see History of Indian and Indonesian Art. Plate no. XXVII, picture No. 75-98. 96. NS (KM.ed) XXI 1.9, 57-69.100-114 97. VDP III.42-57ff.

literally reflection ) 98 of the gods is important, for as we know, they are the off-springs of the Virāṭpurusa or Prajāpati ( himself the creative aspect of the supreme Puruṣa which is beyond Nāture ) and are to be worshipped by the mortals in the temples ( the body of Vāstupuruṣa ) in order to enable them to achieve the Summum bonum of life through material ( artha and kāma ) and moral ( dharma ) prosperities. In fact, the worship of these individual gods is ultimately the worship of the supreme Puruṣa, 99 the ultimate reality who is absolutely formless and can be realized only by deep meditation. But as this meditation of the Formless Being is very difficult on the part of ordinary human beings, 100 the worship of the images of various gods, who are essentially the embodiments of various aspects of the supreme puruṣa, is preferred. 101

As the gods themselves are worshipped in the images ( Pratimā, literally likeness ) , 102 not in the materials like wood, stone, clay etc. 103 of which they are made, the images are required to be exactly like ( abhirūpa ) the forms of the gods, otherwise the gods won't be present in them. 104 But how can one know the exact forms of the invisible gods ? Sometimes it is believed that the gods in the first

98. For the use of the word ' vimba ' for an image ( Pratimā ) SNS IV. IV.75 99. BG IX 23-24 100. ibid XII.5 101. VDP III. 46.2-5; Kāśyapaṁhitā 35 ; " dhyānayogasya samsiddhyai pratimā lakṣa: am smṛtam " , SNS,IV. . IV.71. 102. There are other synonyms of pratimā ( in the sense of images ) also, such as Pratikṛti, sandṛśī, arccā, mūṛti etc. see J. N.Banerjee, The Development of Hindu Iconography chap II P. 39ff . 103. for the materials of images see SNS IV. IV.72; SR 46.5-71.Kāśyapa śilpa 50. 7-9 Upagupta, a Buddhist monk admits that the Hindus worship the god in an image not its materials— " Those who look at earthen images ( mr. mayī pratikṛti ) do not honour the clay as such but without record thereof honour the deathless principle ( . amarasamjnā ) referred to in the earthen images. " Dīvyāva- dāna, XXVI 104. " Yathā devasthā citre ' kartavyah prthivíśvara " VDP III 42-1

three age-cycles — Satya, Tretā and Dvāpara—were visible to human beings and no images were then required for their worship. But when the fourth age-cycle or Kali yuga approached, people became sinful for which the gods did not like to show themselves in persons. Once Lord Viṣṇu appeared before the King Ambarīṣa and asked him to make an image of his body as it was visible to him, for being overpowered by human folly and forgetfulness he might not be able to retain for long his image in his memory.105 Thence forward devotees, sages and yogins preserved the descriptions of the forms of the gods as they visualized them sensibly or by yogic perception. These descriptions have been standardized for the artists of the Kali yuga.

These gods do not invariably possess anthropomorphic forms, for the ultimate reality is without any specific form. In its desire for creation it diversified itself into various forms and names. Thus every object of the universe whether animate or inanimate, ugly or beautiful, mobile or static is in no way less or more divine than others,106 although a particular aspect of this reality is more expressed in one form while it is less in others. Although the supreme Puruṣa is himself free from the guṇas, Nature (his creative aspect, the very desire for creation, variously called as the Virāṭ, Hiraṇyagarbha, Brahmāprajāpati, Prakṛti or Māyā), being related with whom he creates the worlds, is a conglomeration of these guṇas—sattva, rajas and tamas. Every object, therefore, as a product of this Puruṣa and Prakṛti, consists of three guṇas with the predominance of any one of them. Sattva, for example, predominates in Brahmins and sages, rajas in warriors

105. VDP III chap. I, 46; T. P. Bhattacharya, The Canons of Indian Arts P. 338 (Alberuni India Part I P. 114ff.) 106. The Buddhists also believe this — “I am neither deva”, says the Buddha, ‘Gandharva, Yakṣa, nor Man’, Coomaraswamy, Elements of Buddhist Iconography, P.24

and kings, tamas in the people of lower castes who lack wisdom and heroism. Similarly, among the beasts the lion embodies the tāmasic qualities such as dreadfulness, violence and anger etc., while a cow or deer or elephant manifests the sāttvic aspects. The spring season with its quiet atmosphere and beautiful landscape is sāttvic, while the tempestuous nights of the rainy season are tāmasic, and so on.

Every form or shape has its advantage. A bird can fly in the sky, while fishes and crocodiles can live under water, and monkeys jump from tree to tree. Although man surpasses all these by his intelligence and certain deeds which others cannot perform, he at the same time is inferior to them as without a boat, for example, he cannot cross a river nor can he swim under water for long period; he lacks the power of flying in the sky and the power of running swiftly like a deer. Thus every being has its importance in the creation and its form possesses some special advantage. So the forms of the gods are not limited only to those of human beings. They can possess the forms of any beings which can suitably embody the particular idea ( Bhāva ) and aspects they manifest and serve the particular function to satisfy their devotees.107 The almighty Viṣṇu assumed the body of a fish to save the seven sages and Vaivasvata Manu at the time of the great dissolution or Deluge named Brāhma when everywhere there was water. With the body of a fish he had a human face to indicate his intelligence and to narrate to Manu the entire epic named The Matsya.108 Similarly he assumed the body of a tortoise for there was need of a certain being which could exist under the surface of water to hold the mount of Mandara upon its back at the time when the gods and the giants were churning the Milk Ocean.109 A tortoise

107. Sevya-sevaka-bhāyesu pratimā laksaram śrutam, SNS IV. IV. 159. 108. AGP Chap. 2 109. ibid chap. 3

is only fit for this purpose which is a bit round in size with a very hard back so as to resist stone. Viṣnu's incarnation in a human body with a lion's head and its violent character at the time of killing the giant Hiraṇya Kaśipu suggests the embodiment of his tāmasic aspect which is destructive in nature110 — A lion's head would be more ferocious and violent than that of any other creature. It could devour human bodies sucking its blood. A human body would be more suitable in fighting against a giant who got a similar body. Thus the gods can assume any form they like and feel necessary for a specific purpose. The peculiar combination of a human body and a lion's head is not the only form of his. He also appeared before Nārada with a fiery appearance in somewhat like a human shape.111

The deities are mostly conceived in human forms for these forms are more conceivable and lovable for human devotees. The supra human universal form ( Viśvarūpa ) of the lord Kṛṣṇa was so vast and inconceivable for Arjuna, his devoted friend, that he could not tolerate it longer and requested him to assume his previous human shape with a friendly appearance.112 But as the deities are not human beings, their images must only be analogous, not similar to human forms. The same rule is also applied when other beings, invisible in this world, are imitated (Viz. Yakṣa, Kinnara, giants and other mythical creatures). Although in most cases a mystic method was applied to fix the right proportion of the images of the visible objects, it had not to go against the direct sense perception. But for the images of the invisible beings no such external verification is possible. In the former cases the internal standard ( fixed by yogic perception ) was to coincide with the

110. ibid chap 4. 111. T.P. Bhattacharya,Op. cit P.339 112. BG XI 45-46

common sense perception; but in the latter case the testimonial records are the only source of pramāṇa and the standard of verification. In neither case, however, is the mystic perception dogmatic, for the pramāṇas are merely conventional. Like the visible beings the invisible beings also manifest their vital spirits. Hence the principles of their physical manifestation are analogous, though not exactly similar, to those of the visible ones. The height of the gods are fixed according to the superiority of power and sex ascribed to them. Lord Viṣṇu, the supreme god, is one hundred and twenty four aṅgulas (or the best ten-tāla) Brahmā, Śaṅkara, the goddesses like Śrī Umā, Sarasvatī will be of 120 aṅgulas; Indra, Aditya, Candra, the goddess Durgā, the sages Bhrgu and Mārkaṇḍa etc. of 116, giants of 108, Bhūta and Kinnara of 36, and so on. As human beings of particular size have their limbs proportionate to each other and to the whole body, the bodies of these invisible beings must contain a similar proportion also. Each figure has its separate ratio of proportion. An image of 108 aṅgulas, for example, is divided into nine parts or tālas ( one tāla=12 aṅgulas. ), each tāla being sub-divided into four parts or aṁśas. The portions from the middle of forehead to chin, from collar bone to chest, from chest to navel and from navel to hips possess one tāla each; from hips to knees and from knees to insteps are of two tālas each; and from forehead to the crown of head, neck, knee cups and feet taken together are of one tāla, each being one aṁśa.113 The same proportion is to be observed in case of human forms of equal height. But as the divine beings are superior to human beings in their spiritual power, their physical appearance cannot be exactly like that of the latter. A god thus may have five heads, ten hands and

113. For pratimā lakṣaṇa see Matsya purāṇa, chap. 259-260; Vaikhānasā-gama, 26; AgP chap. 49-52, SSD77; BS.58, 29-44; Kāśyapaśilpa chap. 46-49.

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three eyes in each head etc. as it is necessary for the perfect manifestation of his essential spirit. In this regard there is no relation between a human and a divine image.

As the scriptural testimony is the source and standard of the proper measurement of a divine image, its beauty and grace, too, should be judged by the same. Any kind of free invention of the artist is not allowed here.114 An artist is not allowed, for example, to substitute a head of a man for the elephant head of Gaṇeśa or to minimize his swelled belly into a normal human size so as to make it more beautiful by the standard of human form. In that case he rather makes the image ugly. Nevertheless the genius of the artist has to play an important roll here. First, he has to intuit the divine form instructed by the scriptures, and for the understanding of this form a very matured sensitivity towards the visible world is required. Although the exact counterpart of the form of Gaṇeśa is not available in the sensible world, yet his elephant head, a small and fat human body with a big belly are all the objects of sensuous experience, which the artist has to combine in a unique way exercising his creative imagination. Thus from the sensuos he has to pass to the supersensuous.

In many cases where the divine forms are greatly analogous to human forms, their figures are to be idealized by a process of selective imitation, the exact counterparts of which are absent in the visible world, for divine beings are superior to the mortals. All the best points of feminine beauty are selected and combined in the images of Rādhā, Lakṣmī and Durgā etc. Rādhā's complexion is like a white ‘campaka’ flower; it blazes like a crore of moons. Her abundant hair is twisted up fashionably and is decorated with Mālatī

114. SSD. 78; Pratimā “Lakṣanayuktā sannihitā siddhidā bhavati” BS. 58.29; Mānato nādhikam hīnaṁ tadvimbam ramyamuchyate, SNS IV.IV.74 “Sāstramānena yoramyah sa ramyomānya evahi” ibid 104.

flowers. She smiles slightly but attractively.115 Durgā's breasts are fully developed, round and tightly pressed to each other ; those are so high and heavy that it seems, her waist has been narrowed by thier burden. Small hairs appear above the hips as if Cupid is germinated there anew after lord Śiva burnt him by his fiery anger and the thighs are broad but soft as the trunks of plantain trees.116 Lakṣmī is youthful and extremely beautiful with her attractive and slightly curved eye brows, round cheeks, slim waist and heavy buttocks etc.117

In the images of dreadful deities, similarly, all the fearful elements of the visible objects are selectively combined. Cāmuṇḍā's teeth are displayed fiercely, hairs disarranged, fly upwards. She wears a string of skulls, skin of tiger and covers her breasts with the skin of elephant, and so on.118 The image of Kīrtimukha, a mythical figure born of Śiva's third eye is an embodiment of anger, a terrible being with a face like a lion's, a protruding tounge, eyes burning with fire and hairs flying upwards etc.119 These is, in fact, not a single counterpart of this figure in the visible world which is to be copied directly ; but a number of dreadful animals are here combined in an idealized form.

Sometimes it is held that the divine images must always be depicted as young, never old, although rarely infant like.120 But it seems this view is not invariable. As the Hindus give emphasis upon the essential spirit and idea of a deity, none of its outward form can really be standardised. The same authority classified the images in accordance with the vital state they embody. An image

115. Nārad pañcarātram II. 3-4. 116. DP 32. 19ff 117. Kāśyapaśilpa; see under “apsaro lakṣaṇam” 117-120. 118. ibid.46.83-86 119. For the myth of Kīrtimukha see chap. 17. kārtikamāsa māhātmya of the Skandapurāṇa. Viṣṇukhaṇḍa; for its representation in art see Rūpam No. 1, 1920, P.16, plates 20-30. 120. SNS IV.IV. 201

which expresses a tranquil inner state in its sombre appearance sitting in a Yoga posture ( yogamudrā ) and being worshipped by others is called Sāttvikā. That which is in active attitude holding weapons ready to kill the enemies is Rājasi, and an image actually destroying giants assuming a dreadful appearance, displaying thus a tāmasa bhāva is called Tāmasī (also samhāra mūrti).121 On his own principle Śukrācārya cannot urge that a deity with elderly bhāva within will assume a youthful appearance without. Brahmā is alwyas old for he is the eldest of all the created beings as he was first born in the beginning of creation.122 Dhūmāvatī is similarly depicted as an old, ugly widow, for she embodies the tāmasa aspect of the goddess Durgā.123

An artist in imitation of the thing invisible (adrṣṭa), thus, should give special attention to these two principles of visual art — pramāṇa and sādrśya while the other four principles are to be regulated accordingly.

iv. Besides the above mentioned characteristics of visual arts according to the general Indian tradition, some specific outlooks regarding the imitative relations between the reality and art are noted in some important philosophical systems and eminent art critics. The Buddhists deny the existence of a permanent reality. Every reality ( sattā ), they say, is causally efficient ( arthakriyākāriī ) and as such is momentary, for the same object cannot produce the same effect more than once ; a seed which has germinated once, for example, cannot do so again, and an ordinary seed and a seed fit for germination are not the same.124 Every object is again either sentient or insentient (or matter). The latter consists of the Rūpa Skandha only, while the

121. SNS IV. IV 76-30. 122. That is why he is called “Pitāmaha” (the grand father) 123. Tantrasāra, see the hymn to Dhūmāvatī P.365 124. Sarvadarśanasaṅgraha P. 38ff.

former consists of five skandhas such as vedanā ( feeling of pleasure, pain or indifference), samjñā (conceptual knowledge), samskāra ( synthetic mental state, synthetic functioning of the compound sense affections, compound feelings and compound concepts. It includes memory impressions and the impressions of the actions of a previous life or birth also.) and vijñāna.125 The Jātaka stories suggest that even the lower animals possess all these characteristics, although in a lesser degree while compared with human beings,126 among whom a few can only achieve perfect wisdom, the supreme development of samjñā and vijñana by a continuous, sincere practice of meditation such as the Buddha did. Thus although the Buddhists deny the existence of a permanent soul127 they supply the latter four skandhas as the differentia of sentient beings. Now, the materials of art such as canvas, stone, colours etc. consist only of the rūpaskandha and as such they are unable to produce likenesses of sentient beings consisting of five skandhas. They are still more unable to produce a likeness when the being in question has attained perfect wisdom and sublime consciousness. When the king Vimbisāra asked his court painters to paint the likeness of the Buddha whom they had already seen before, they expressed their inability to paint without his bodily presence before them, for, they said, they had not been able to retain in their memory the impression of such a super being. At their request, then, Buddha was brought to the palace; but still they were unable to grasp his brilliant essence. At last the Buddha asked them to bring a canvas on which he cast his shadow and instructed them to fill in the outline with colours.128

125. H.I. Ph. P 93ff. 126. The Buddha in the previous births in assuming the dodies of various animals such as elephant, deer etc. possessed intelligence and other human qualities. 127. H.I Ph. P. 93 128. Divyāvadānam XXXVII P. 466 ff.

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The vijñānavādins, however, do not admit the real existence ( paramārthatā ) of any external thing for its discriminating nature. It is only the constructive imagination of mind that builds up the things. "As the waves appear instantly on the ocean, or images in a mirror or a dream so the mind is reflected in its own sense-fields."129 As the things are unreal owing to their relativity, the words referring to them are also the same, for in speech one cannot speak of anything without relating it to some kind of causal relation. The real truth ( Paramārtha ) thus can never be referred to by such words for truth transcends relativity. The Buddha himself states that his verbal instruction cannot express the wisdom which he wants to convey, for truth is to be realized by a deep meditation. Although both the referring words and the referred objects are false, it is simply a convention ( vyavahāra ) to speak of things as known. Nevertheless, the verbal instruction has a pragmatic value. The Buddha himself compares the unreality of his verbal instruction with a citra on a canvas

A master painter or his disciples try to represent an object with colours on a canvas. But in fact, neither on the canvas, nor on the plate nor in colours does the object exist ; but in order to attract the attention of the people a citra ( of an object ) is only imagined in colours.130 So also is the truth - simply imagined as couched in the words. Nevertheless, both the instruction and art have their practical or phenomenal ( Vyāvahārika or samurtti ) value. "As a king or a wealthy house holder", the Buddha says, "giving his children various clay-made animals pleases them and makes them play ( with the toys ) but later gives them real ones, so I making use of various forms and images of things, instruct my sons..."131 The relation between truth and words is

129. Laṅkāvatārasūtra II 118. 130. ibid II.120-23 ; for the discriminating nature of words see Suzuki's trans. P. 76-77. 131. Suzuki's trans 77-8.

analogous to that between the real living animals and their

clay models. Thus art both verbal and visual, according

to the Buddhists, is only an imperfect representation of truth

and possesses only phenomenal reality ( samvṛtti ). If the

visible world is wrongly conceived as really existing, visual

art is still more wrongly conceived as real objects and is,

therefore, twice removed from the absolute reality ( pāramār-

thika sattā ). This imaginative and illusory character of the

visual art thus becomes a very striking example to explain

the illusory character of the visible world itself:

"An artist once a picture painted

Of such a monster that he fainted,

So endlessly worlds transmigrate

By false ideas infatuate.

As stars, a fault of vision, as a lamp,

A mock show, dew drops, or a bubble,

A dream, a lightning flash, or cloud

So should we view what is conditioned." 132

The monistic Vedāntins, however, do not suspend

the existence of the external world unlike the Vijñāna

vādins, nor do they attribute any absolute reality to it.

It exists with all its varieties only from a phenomenal

( Vyāvahārika ) point of view. The dream objects appear

as real only in a dream; but when the dream evaporates one

becomes conscious of its falsity, similarly all the wordly

affairs are true for an ordinary human being who has no

knowledge of Brahman, the absolute reality; and becomes

attached to the worlds, heavily affected by its pleasurable or

miserable experiences. But the world melts away before

one who possesses the knowledge of Brahman; like the

illusion of a rope as a snake vanishes after one's careful

observation.. 133

132. Buddhist Scriptures, P. 189. 133. H. I. Ph.*P 443 ff

As the variety of the phenomenal world the plurality of the souls is also false from the absolute ( Pāramārthika ) point of view. They aae but the same as the supreme soul, although the individual souls appear as different from the universal one as a reflection on a mirror seems to be different from and independent of the original object. The Vedānta sūtra states that an individual soul is an ābhāsa (literally reflection) of the universal soul. Ignorance (avidyā) serves here as a mirror. Śaṅkara explains that an ābhāsa is neither the thing itself nor an altogether different thing independent of it. The image of the sun, for example, on the water, is not really the sun itself, nor something other than the sun. Though the individual soul in its pure from is identified with the universal one, it seems as different from that, for it is affected by ignorance.134

Vidyāraṇyamuni compares this world which is an illusion with the illusion of painting. An artist represents different people decorating them with clothes of different colours on canvas. But the difference of these clothes are false for they have no separate existence from the receptacle — cloth or canvas. Thus while the canvas is a real cloth, the clothes of painted people are only illusory ( vastvābhāsa ). On the same canvas an artist paints all the objects of visible and invisible worlds. Hence there is no essential difference between a mountain ( jada ) and a man ( cetana ) in a painting, for essentially they are all nothing other than the canvas. Thus if the phenomenal world is an ābhāsa (reflection, imitation or copy) of the absolute reality, the artistic world is an ābhāsa of the phenomenal reality.135 Bhuvanadeva, an eminent author on the canons of Indian arts elaborates this Vedāntic view of art. His Viśvakarman instructs his son Aparājita

134. Śaṅkara's com. to the Brahmaśūtra, II. 3.50 135. Pañcadaśī, VI. 1-9.

that the origin of citra is as old as the origin of the universe itself, for it is essentially an ābhāsa. To judge from the absolute point of view, there is no world, and no phenomena with innumerable varieties. As the water-reflection of the moon ( jalacandramā ) has no separate existence from the moon itself, so also is the relation between the world and Brahman, and between the phenomenal object and its representation in art.136 As a man with the knowledge of Brahman looks at the world indifferently, so also a man with knowledge of the phenomenal reality considers the reflectory character of arts. The former does neither suffer from sorrows nor enjoy the happiness, for he knows that there is nothing in the world which causes such feelings in reality. So also one conscious of the nature of the phenomenal objects does neither like to marry a sculptured girl nor fear a painted tiger, for he knows that these are mere likenesses incapable of serving any practical purpose. If the cosmic art ( the world itself ) is the reflection of Brahman on Māyā, the human art is the reflection of Nature on the heart of the artist which he visualizes.

Together with this illusionistic view of the world, the līlā theory suggests a very important insight into the aesthetic activity. Brahman is pure existence ( sat ), pure consciousness ( cit ) and pure bliss (ānanda). Although he is self-satisfied (āptakāma), just for the sake of a play he desires to diversify himself, and thus being reflected on his will for creation, his own māyā power, he becomes many. He is thus both the material and the instrumental cause of the world. It is not that he creates himself as a potter creates pots out of clay. It is as if a man enters into a room, the walls of which are set with mirrors and finds himself diversified into many images. But it is not that this desire is to fulfil some wants that he has. As he is the only reality, he

136. Aparājita pṛcchā, 224 1-24; 233 17-18.

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cannot want something other than himself. His play of creation is for the sake of bliss, and bliss is not available when one feels lonely. Thus his blissful nature implies that he must enjoy himself in his own varieties.137

The same is true with the artistic creation. Everybody who enjoys a painted horse is conscious of its unreality. Hence the reason of its enjoyment is not its practical utility that he gets from a living horse. On the contrary, the more conscious he is of its phenomenal unreality, the more is his enjoyment, for it is the accuracy of likeness of something accomplished through the materials, which are very unlike its original, that the aesthete appreciates. Thus as a phenomenal world and a dream world have their own standards of reality, so also the aesthetic world constructs its own standard of reality, and its proper enjoyment is impossible by the standard of phenomenal or absolute reality. Brahman relishes his own creation although he is conscious of its falsity ( not absolutely true ). So also an aesthete enjoys a painted horse although he is conscious of its falsity ( not phenomenally true ). In both the cases enjoyment is pure, free from any attachment or detachment; and this indifferent nature is due to the knowledge of the object's falsity.

Śaṅkuka, an eminent dramatic critic, thinks, too, that all art is essentially an imitation ( anukṛti ) of an event or object of Nature of the past or present time, and as such it is different from both the absolute and the phenomenal truth ( tattva ). But he disagrees with the Vijñānavādins and the Vedāntins in denying that it is an error ( viparyaya) or mistaken perception ( mithyā ); it is neither a doubt ( samśaya ) nor merely a similitude ( sādrśya ). None of the following cognitions, for example, is aesthetic — “this

137. See the com. of Śaṅkara and vācaspatī to the Brahmasūtra II. 133.

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picture ( of a horse ) is really a horse", "is that ( picture ) a horse or not ?", "The appearance of that ( Picture ) as a horse is illusory" and "that ( picture ) is like a horse". In other words, aesthetic cognition is completely independent of a logical cognition, and its nature cannot be explained by a logical analysis, Śaṅkuka suggests that art imitates Nature in such a way that it arouses a cognition in the aesthete such as "This ( Picture ) is a horse", and the aesthetic cognition is mostly like a yogic perception or intuition which "involves no contradictory notion, and thus it is impossible to say that it is a form of mistake ( viplava ); it is an immediate perception ( anubhava ) evident in and by itself. What sort of argument, then, could put it in question ?138 Abhinavagupta, an opponent of Śaṅkuka, agrees with him that visual arts are imitative, but argues that all the arts are not of the same nature ; especially poetry is certainly of a different order from the visual arts. A picture of a cow, for example, aims at producing an imperfect copy of a real cow as it copies only its physical composition. The conscious elements of a cow is inaccessible to painting for the materials like colours and canvas which it uses are all insentient. How can sentient being be perfectly manifested through only insentient object ? Visual art is thus not a manifestation, as some critics think, of a real object, but only imitation of it ; for imitation is according to him an imperfect likeness ( sādrśya ) of an original.139 "Some people say", he writes, "The pigments - orpiment, etc. undoubtedly compose, ( samyuj ) a cow. Now, if the word 'compose' is understood in the sense of manifest ( abhivyaj ), these people also are in error. For we cannot say that minimum etc. manifest real ( pāramārthika ) cow like the one which might be manifested by a lamp etc. All they do is to produce ( nirvṛt ) a particular aggregate

138. Gnoli Op. cit P. 37-38 139. NS (AB) P. 36

( samūha ) similar to cow. The only object of the imgae, ' it is like a cow ' is simply this minium etc. applied to constitute a particular arrangement ( sanniveśa ) similar to the arrangement of the limbs of cow."140

140. Gnoli op. cit P. 48. Prior to Abhinava, it appears, Ānandavardhana also had looked down upon citra as an inferior type of a art in comparison with poetry. His definition of the 'picture-poetry' (citrakāvya—Dhvanyāloka iii. 42,43) suggest that a picture is simply an unintelligent replica of a thing in so far as a painter does nothing new, but simply imitates the things which are already there. Ānanda-vardhana would agree with Abhinava that a picture is an aggregate of only visual aspects of a thing, wanting its soul or essence together with its other sensible aspects.

CHAPTER III

VĀNMAYAM: IMITATION AND RE-PERCEPTION

i. Music—essentially a rhythmic movement — a representation of cosmos and the basis of all the fine arts — the theory of Nāda—Āhata and Anāhata in cosmos and human body—Āhata an incomplete representation of Anāhata e.g. all the ordinary sensible sounds including vocal and instrumental music — representation of human emotion in music — Śruti, Svarā and Rāga—Rāga the final form of music—Rāga an audible image—Rāga and picture. ii. Dance —an imitation through rhythmic movement of body—its object — the actions of three worlds—different types of dance —Nrtta, Nrtya and Nāṭya—differing in ways of representation—four kinds of representation used in dance—their symbolical nature Nrtta the primary form of dance — Nrtya an advance over it —more representative than Nrtta.

iii. Nāṭya the most imitative of all arts—a visual reproduction of a verbal composition of full story—poetry or verbal composition—essentially a transformation of Nature according to the principles of probability and propriety—a probable likeness of Nature. iv. Nāṭya or drama—Bharata’s conception — an imitation of states and actions of three worlds—his followers—Dhanañjaya and Dhanika—Viśvanātha—Bharata’s commentators—Bhaṭṭa Lollaṭa—Śaṅkuka’s imitation theory—Abhinavagupta’s refutation — imitation versus retelling — his theory of re-perception—criticism—imitation theory of Mahimabhaṭṭa.

i. The Viṣṇudharmottara Purāṇa states that music especially vocal music is the basis of all the fine arts ; and so without a fundamental knowledge of music, knowledge of other arts is impossible. This statement suggests that among all arts vocal music is the first born. It gave rise to instrumental music from which dance developed ; and painting, the two dimensional visual art, took dance as the model of its technique upon which ultimately statuary, the three dimensional visual art, was brought into perfection.1

Such a trend of artistic development is conceived by Indians, because they think that a rhythmic movement which forms the basis of the entire Natural creation is also the basis of all the artistic creations. According to the Sāṅkhya school, before creation, unmanifested Nature (the Material principle) was with her three constituents—‘sattva’, ‘rajas’ and ‘tamas’ in a state of equilibrium. Owing to her proximity with Puruṣa the Spiritual Principle, she moved, and this movement led to creation. Nature's movement was not chaotic or anomalous. In an orderly way the three constituents mixed in various proportions as a result of which the world appears variegated.

The Śaiva School agrees with the Sāṅkhya that movement ( spandana ) is the beginning of creation but explains the process in a slightly different way. Matter and Spirit are not here two separate principles. Both belong to Lord Parameśvara, the Absolute Creator of the Universe. But he is not directly concerned with this creation. He first created Power (of creation) ; and when a desire for creation arose in this power ( Śakti ) she moved; and out of

1. VDP III 5.3-7; Cf. SRK Vol. I, II. 1-2

this movement Nāda (Sound), the fount of manifested Nature was created.2 In the Prapañcasāra3 Puruṣa is luminous ( jyotih ) and Prakṛti a conscious or vital principle. Roused by desire for creation Prakṛti mixes with Puruṣa and modifies herself to some definite solid point ( Vindu ). This macrocosmic point creates the world by dividing itself into Nāda (Sound), microcosmic point ( Vindu ) and Vīja (Seed) of all the things. These confusing opinions are clarified in the Sārada Tilaka,4 which states that Vindu is Śiva or Parameśvara and Vīja is Śakti, his consort or power. From the combination of these two sound is produced. The entire universe is thus essentially a sound which is audible not to any ordinary ear but only to a human being in deep contemplation. Prior to his practice and contemplation ( dhyāna ) a beginner hears various chaotic sounds ; but as he becomes absorbed in the first stage of his contemplation he can hear rhythmic sounds of the seas, clouds, springs, bells and drums. These sounds then become more subtle like that of tiny bells, flutes and lyres and like the sweet huminings of black bees. Sounds become sweeter and subtler as one merges deeper and deeper in his contemplation until his individual consciousness is completely lost in the universal one in a state of samādhi.5 There is no limit to this macrocosmic sound and no sound is heard in the ordinary world which this Ethereal Sound excludes. In fact, all the ordinary sounds are the gross manifestation of this macrocosmic ethereal sound.

As the human shape is the perfect representation of the universe in a microcosmic form, the macrocosmic sound is also said to be produced in and pervading through this body as its microcosmic counterpart. The manifested Nature consists of five gross elements such as earth, water, fire, air

2. J. C. Chatterji, Kashmir Shaivism, Part I, P. 41 Sqq. 3. I. 44. 4. I. 7-11; “Vindu śivātmakastatra Vījam śaktyātmakam”, Raghava- bhatta quotes Prayogasāra here. 5. Nādavindūpaniṣad II, ii-iii.

220

and sky each generating from a potential energy and thus possessing this as its characteristic attribute. Sound is the potency of sky, touch of air, colour of fire, taste of water and smell of earth. The Nāda-theorists accept the Sāñkhya system of evolution with a little alteration. They think sound, the potency of sky, is not a single unit. It is not homogeneous, present in all other four potentials, but heterogeneous - a compound product of fire and air. Fire is the source of power and air of vital force. Combined with and kindled by this air fire generates and expands the universe which is essentially sound. Śiva or Parameśvara, the fount of power (Śakti) is the Fire potential and Śakti is the vital Principle. A combination of both generates sound; and this sound is the first creation.6

The Nāda-theorists, like other schools of Indian philosophy, believe that the body of a human being is the perfect representation of the entire universe, their explanations, however, vary in accordance with their notions of the universe. A living human body is composed of five gross elements each of them having its circulating centre (cakra) inside the spinal cord. The centre of earth is at the bottom (mūlādhāra) and those of water, fire, air and sky are situated respectively in an upward direction - water between the navel and the sex organ, fire at the navel, air at the heart and sky at the throat. The sixth centre situated between two eyebrows on the forehead is the place of consciousness and above all these Śiva himself exists in the most powerful centre at the cerebrum and Śakti in the lowest centre (of earth) as a power-point (Vindu).7 It is thus a union-in-division of Śiva and Śakti which tends to creation, and when the two unite absolutely

6. Vahnimāruta, samy gānnādah samupajāyate, Siṅgabhūpāla quotes from Matanga's Brhaddesī. See his com. to SRK vol. II II 3.

7. Saṭcakra, ed. Haripada Deva Sarma, Cal. 1357, st. 5 Sqq.

the creation ceases. A human being who aspires for the supreme bliss above all sorts of the worldly happiness limited within the fluctuating gross elements must unite the two extreme centres of his body ( the microcosmos), and by that he must go above all the mundane affairs. But he cannot unite these two avoiding the gross elements, for these are the essentials for his very existence. He has to awake the 'power' which is dormant, as if contracted into a small point ( Vindu ) and has to make it pass by some peculiar practices through the centres of gross elements successfully and to unite it finally with Śiva in the cerebrum.8

As in the macrocosmos the supreme sound is always created by the regular movement of power ( Śakti), the same happens inside the human body also. If the macrocosmic sound is created by the vibrations that are due to a contact of Śiva and Śakti and to her frequent movement as she transforms herself variously every moment, the microcosmic sound is created by the natural attraction between Śiva and Śakti situated in two ends of the body. Both the sounds are, however, inaudible to ordinary ears. Although the vibrations start from the earth-centre where Śakti lies dormant at a point, its sound is not heard even by the Yogins unless they pass through the centres of fire and air.9

So both the sounds are of the same nature - produced automatically in a natural way, for which they are called Anāhata (unstruck). In the physical world common experience shows that sound is produced where two things are struck against each other. These ordinary, sensible sounds are called 'Āhata' ( Struck ) by the Nāda theorists.10 Although the ethereal or divine sound is due to the movement caused by the contact of two principles, neither the contact nor the movement is ordinarily perceptible. That

8. Ibid 51 Sqq. 9. SDM PP15-16 10. SRK Vol. I. II, 3.

is why it is distinguished from the normal āhata or 'struck' sounds. Although the process of sound creation is always the same, the former is 'primary' whereas the latter is 'secondary'. It is like a distinction between natural and artificial or between an original and its imitation; and although the sound of the cosmos and that of the human body are both automatic and share equal nature, yet as the human body is built after the pattern of the universe and so is a representation of it, the sound inside it must necessarily be representation of the cosmic sound. The two sorts of representation are not, of course, without some fundamental distinction. While the unstruck sound of the human body is a perfect representation of the cosmic sound, the struck sounds of the perceptible world are only its imperfect representations.

Now, as the Āhata sound is an imperfect representation of the Anāhata, it is naturally incapable of expressing perfectly the force of the latter. Thus the sounds pronounced by human beings imperfectly represent the inner rhythmic vibration of the perpetual sound, for they are the effects of the strikings of some sense organs and organic parts such as the tongue, lips, throat, palate etc. When such vocal sounds are used by human beings to express their inner feelings and desires, they are moulded in accordance with the peculiar rhythmic vibrations occurring in the flow of Anāhata sound in a particular state of feeling or willing. This flow of peculiar vibrations starts from the microcosmic earth centre (Vindu), and while passing through fire and air centres forms the Anāhata sound and then reaching the cerebrum comes back and passes through mouth as Āhata manifesting only certain portions of its force.11 As the inner vibrations are not always of the same nature in all the states, e.g. in love and hatred, misery and

11. R. K. Bhattacarya, Sabdatattva (Bengali) P. 262.

happiness, fear and courage etc. their vocal representations must change accordingly. Hence there are various modes of vocal sounds representing their corresponding inner vibrations under various states of emotion. There may be innumerable modes of vocal sounds. But all of them are not rhythmic and so are not pleasing to the human ear e.g. ravings of mad men. As the aim of music, like that of any other art, is to please, it uses only those modes as its medium which are regular, rhythmic and are in perfect consonance with the inner rhythmic vibrations. These modes are called Śrutis by the theorists of music.12 There may be as many śrutis as possible in accordance with the innumerable types of regular vibrations, it is impossible for a normal being either to pronounce or to listen them all. Almost all the theorists accept only twenty-two such modes that can be pronounced by a normal human voice and can be listened to by a normal human ear distinctly. All these twenty-two modes or vocal vibrations represent regularly certain definite emotions which are named by the musicians in accordance with their nature. Chandovatī, for example, indicates peace of mind, heroism and generosity ; Raudrī wrath, warmth and enthusiasm ; Kumudvatī simplicity and gaity ; Sandīpanī kindling of love and affection and so on.13

The Śrutis form the parts of several musical compositions or Rāgas as the limbs form the parts of a body. Hence the recitation of a Śruti only cannot please a human ear so much as the singing of a Rāga will do, for the separated limbs of a beautiful body are not pleasing to one's sight. The Śrutis first form certain notes or Svaras by a

12. Matanga, Brhaddesī (Trivendram) P.5, See also st. 29-30; Dattilam (Musical Journal), Oct. 1957: Pārśvadeve, Sangītasamayasāra (Adyar) P. 74. 13. O. Goswami, The Story of Indian Music (Asia P.H. ), 1957, PP. 218-220.

systematic combination of which Rāgas are formed finally. But philosophers are of different opinions regarding the generation of Svaras. The Buddhists think that there is no fundamental difference between the two — Śruti and Svarā. According to Dharmakīrti two things cannot be related as cause and effect unless an identity (tādātmyā) of essence is granted. Thus the effect and the cause are essentially the same.14 The musicians of this school propound that the difference between a Śruti and Svarā is that between an individual and a race. Both of them are essentially identical on the ground that they are all audible percepts.

The monistic Vedāntins, however, follow their theory of illusion, a key to the explanation of the world-creation as well as to the causality. The effect, according to them1, is essentially the same as the cause, but it only appears to be something different as a reflected image seems to be different from the original object. We saw in the preceding chapter how these philosophers explain the world-creation as well as the products of visual arts as illusory appearances.

The same principle they apply in judging the relation between Śruti and Svarā. Śruti is the basis of music and as such Svarā, that is generated from it, cannot have any independent existence. Both of them are audible percepts — a Svarā, which is essentially a combination of certain Śrutis cannot be something different from them. It is like a mirror-reflection of certain Śrutis. The Naiyāyikas, as usual to their theory of causation, suggest that a svara as an effect is not identical with the Śrutis, its cause. Common sense shows that milk loses its existence after producing curd. Hence in a Svarā Śrutis are united in a unique form without having individual identity. The Sāṁkhya school opposes all the above views. Mātaṅga an eminent authority

14. H. I. Ph. P. 156.

of Indian music explains this relation in the light of the Sāñkhya theory of causation. According to him although a svara is a modification of certain Srutis it is neither identical with nor an illusory appearance of the latter. Śruti and svara indeed are different but not wholly as the Naiyāyikas think, for in a svara all the constituent Srutis can be distinctly realized if one detects with care. In fact, they are not lost in the svaras. With all their individual features they are rather modified into a new unit. Svaras are manifested by the Śrutis as the objects in dark places are by a lamp.15

Svaras are, then, new units formed by a regular combination of Śrutis, the primary vocal units. There are seven svaras16 each consisting of some Śrutis of particular number and nature, and aiming at arousing a particular emotion, which the constituent Śrutis manifest unanimously, they finally produce an aesthetic experience of the same nature when used in a Rāga, the final form of musical art. Gāndhāra, for example, has four constituents which indicate hardness, determination and wrath etc. which, if prominent in a Rāga, generates a sentiment ( Rasa ) of Fury ( Raudra ). Pañcama, likewise, generates a lustful emotion ( Kāma ) distinct from that of love or affection, not necessarily of a sexual character, generated by the note Madhyama for which it contains the Śrutis like Kṣiti, Raktā, Sandipañi and Ālāpanī that manifest an attachment of gross and exciting nature ; and the latter comprises Prīti and Mārjanī that indicate a deep, sincere and sober affection.17

All the seven notes are said to be uttered by the lower animals and birds regularly and successfully. A cuckoo coos Pañcama, an elephant sounds Niṣāda, a peacock crows Ṣadja and so on. It is sometimes stated that

15. Śiṅgabhūpāla in SRK. 16. SDM. P. 30 17. Saṅgītadarpana (ed. S. M. Tagore, Cal. 1881) P. 22.

226

human beings learnt music in imitation of these brutes.18

But as the organic construction of human beings is the

perfect microcosmic counterpart of the whole universe

which is identified with the supreme Ethereal sound and

the ultimate source of Nāda, all the śrutis and svaras can

be most successfully represented by human beings only.

Nevertheless as the animals and birds sound it in a natural

spontaneous way, not by a deliberate effort as human beings

do, their utterances are comparatively regular ; and an

Indian musician might suggest here that in cases of failure

a human singer may follow a cuckoo and a pea-cock as the

singers of Pañcama and Ṣadja.

Although each of these notes is capable of rousing

a definite emotion, it is only a tune ( Rāga ), the final form

of music, which gives a perfect shape to this emotion by

bringing an organic union of the individual notes. Etymolo-

gically a Rāga means that which colours ( ranjayati ) the

heart of a being ( i.e. pleases ) by the emotion it expresses.19

The number of the constituent notes in a tune is not always

the same. Some contain all the seven at a time ( e.g. Naṭa

and Vasanta etc. ), others six or five ( e.g. Mallāra ) ; and

the character of a tune as a whole is determined by that

of the note which predominates its co-constituents. The

tune Vasanta, for example, embodies love and attachment

which kindles lust and passion as Pañcania is its predomi-

nant note.20

Now, this tune, an audible percept, is not some-

thing essentially different from a visual percept ( e.g. a

picture etc.). Rather it represents the same thing through

different medium. If a picture is a visual image ( Mūrti ),

a tune is an audible image ( Rāgamūrti ) ; for as we have

seen, art in general ( śilpam ), according to the Indians,

18. SDM PP. 30-37. 19. Ibid PP. 34 Sqq. 20. SDM P. 31.

is an image or representation (Pratirūpam). Both the arts audible (vāñmayam) and visual (rūpam) represent the inner rhythmic movements in both man and Nature (both the aspects : visible and invisible—“trailokya”). That is why all the thirty-six audible images (Rāgas) are translated into visual images (Citra) and verbal descriptions. The tune Mālava, for example, is depicted as a king of a parrot's complexion (Śukadyuti) decked with ornaments (like earing) and garlands, intoxicated with a love for both art and woman (as the mark of a damsel's kiss is obvious in his lotus-like face) he enters the chamber of music in the evening. The entire atmosphere is that of an enchanted evening when a sensitive hero just starts his actions motivated by a strong desire for luxurious enjoyment. To suit this atmosphere and to bring out its perfect effect the singers are directed to play on this tune only in the evening.21 Thus an aesthete will enjoy the tune Mallāra, sung in the evening and a picture, representing its essential emotion (as given above) with equal spirit. Both the percepts, in other words, give one the same sensation. When Śārṅgadeva attributes distinct colours to different svaras22 he is not a physicist to prove that the sound waves and light waves are of the same character. His thought seems to be based on purely aesthetic grounds that the visual percept can have its appropriate audible counter-part and an interchange between an audible image and a visual image is quite possible. If colour is a constituent of a picture, a note is so of a tune. Thus a patch of colour and a musical note are identical if they rouse the same sensation. The note Pañcama for example, is said to be of a faint blue colour (Asita) for both of them generate a sense of exciting attachment.

21. Ibid P. 41. 22. SRK I. III. 54-55 ; Cf. Colours of Sentiments, Bharata, NS VI 42-43

Vocal music is thus an image. It represents the rhythmic movements of Nature through the vocal sound, which is itself an imperfect representation of the ultimate ethereal sound that is present inside the human body in a microcosmic form. Vocal and instrumental sounds are of the same category as both of them fall under the ‘Struck’ ( āhata ) class and are related to the ultimate sound in the same way. When instrumental music is said to be dependent on vocal music, it seems that according to the theorists like Mārkanḍeya, Śārṅgadeva and Mataṅga23 man first felt the charming representative (or expressive) character of a struck sound from his own voice. Later on, while he contemplated deeply, as the Nādavindu Upaniṣad suggests,24 he could realize the charm of various other sounds in the Great Ethereal sound, which, he felt, he was unable to produce by his own voice. Attempts were then made to bring out these sounds effectively in artificial ways. Thus the instruments of music were thought of to be produced after the model of the structure and organic function of the whole universe. We know how the Sāṅkhāyana Āranyaka suggests the construction of lyre ( vīṇā ), the finest of the Indian musical instruments ( as only this instrument can produce effectively all the twenty-two modes or śrutis ), in this process.25 When the scriptures suggest that a spiritual practitioner hears sounds of different instruments such as bells, flutes and lyres in different stages of his contemplation of the Great Ethereal sound. It is easy to infer that the presence of these particular sounds in the absolute one is so far prior to their artificial reproductions by the respective instruments, the names of which are given by human beings later.

In Indian thought, indeed, the absolute comes first, then the individuals.

23. I.II. 1-2 ; VDP III. 5.3-7. 24. Loc. cit. 25. VII. 8-9.

ii. While the imitative character of music is suggested implicitly, dance is explicitly defined as an imitation of the affairs of the three worlds of-Nature ( trailokyānukṛti )26 and while Mārkaṇḍeya states that the essential ( i.e. imitative ) character of dance cannot be realized without a knowledge of instrumental music, Mataṅga clarifies the reason of such statement that dance requires a knowledge of rhythmic movement which is first realized in sound (Nāda) perfectly.27 And as such advancing a few steps over Mārkaṇḍey Śārṅgadeva remarks that dance depends not upon the instrumental music only, as sound is its model of movement, it depends upon both the forms of audible art — vocal and instrumental.28

Dance is thus fundamentally an imitation through rhythmic movements. While in music these movements are audible, in dance these are visible. The Viṣṇudharmottara Purāṇa suggests the birth of dance in the delicate movements of the limbs ( aṅgahāra ) of the Lord Viṣṇu while the gods awakened him from his deep sleep on Śeṣa the Great Snake. The goddess Lakṣmī, his consort, was deeply charmed by such bodily movements and in answering to her questions about the nature and name of such movements, viṣṇu narrated that he had produced dance ( Nṛttam ) the specific constituents of which are movements of limbs (aṅgahāra), actions (Karaṇa) and walkings about ( Parikrama ) all others being the same as those of painting.29 Picture and dance both imitate the actions of three worlds in visible forms. While a picture represents the actions and emotions of its object through rhythmic lines and colours, dance does this through the rhythmic movement etc. of the body. As actions

26. VDP III.32.17 ; III.35.5. 27. VDP III.5.5;cf Śiṅgabhūpāla's com. to SRK. I. II. 3. 28. SRK I. II. 1 29. VDP III.32.3-16; III. 35 5.

are imitated through actions themselves in a dance, it appears certainly as a better picture or a better form of visual art than painting or sculpture.30 Nṛtta, Nṛtya, and Nāṭya — these are the words in Sanskrit used for dance. The first two are derived from the root Nṛt and the third from Nat both meaning generally a movement. Nat means a slight movement (avaspandana Kincicalana) and Nṛt throwing the limbs off (gātravikṣepa).31 Thus all the three words indicate in general a movement. But this movement is not anomalous or haphazard. It is performed in a regular and rhythmic method to represent a particular object or thought. This disciplined and rhythmic movement of the body with all its parts must always be graceful so as to produce a sense of beauty.

Although all the three words are etymologically synonymous, they have different connotations in their practical uses as they indicate different types of dance which have their specific ways of representation or Abhinaya which in Sanskrit (derived from the root nī) literally means to take something towards (abhimukhenayanam).32 It indicates the ways by which the dancers represent their subjects before the spectators. There are four such ways — physical (āṅgika), vocal (vācika), emotional (sāttvika) and decorative (āhārya).33 The physical representation consists of certain expressive movements of the limbs and sublimbs such as head, neck, eyes, feet, fingers etc. each of which has its separate specific movements and by a combination with those of two or more limbs composes certain compound units of movements. These basic and compound units have their specific names and are essentially imitative either of some of the aspects of

30. Ibid III. 35.7 31. Siddhāntakaumudī (Bālamanoramā) Vol. II. P. 868; Dhanika's com. to Dhananjaya's Daśarūpaka I.9; Pāṇini, IV. 3. 129. V. S. Apte, Practical Sanskrit Dictionary pp. 534, 540. 32. AGP chap. 351. 33. ibid.

the objects visible in the common world or of the gestures of some creatures playing their characteristic roles or expressing the emotive dispositions. Stepping, for example, imitates the gaits of swans, pea-cocks etc. Single-hand poses represent the shape of bees, half-moon, beak of a parrot, faces of lion, swan, deer etc. Compound-hand poses are similarly likenesses of doves, cancer, fish, tortoise, wheel, knot, conch etc. Neck movements are also indicative of likenesses. Those are four in number representing certain emotive expressions, for example, the Parivartita (changed) pose which is a movement from right to left like a half moon, represents the act of kissing two cheeks of the beloved, and the prakampita, which is a movement forward and backward like the movement of a she-pigeon's neck, demonstrates the half-articulate murmuring made by a woman at the time of conjugal embrace. The movements of head and eyes similarly represent certain gestures expressing a number of mental states and emotions such as the Dhūta (shaken) gesture of head i.e. moving from right to left and vice versa which denotes astonishment, sadness, unwillingness, effect of cold and fever, fear, the first stage of drinking liquor and so on ; and the pralokita movement of eyes, which is from one side to the other, expresses excessive affection and idiocy etc. Several compound units are formed out of these basic movements. The combined movement of hands and feet is called Karana and two Karanas make one Mātṛkā, and two, three or four Mātṛkās constitute an Aṅgahāra.34

Vocal representation is the dancer's utterance of speeches that a poet composes and the emotional expressions without any physical movement such as motionlessness, perspiration, horripilation, change of voice and colour, trembling, shedding of tears and fainting are the eight

34. AD 51 Sqq; NS. IV 29-33.

232

emotional representations. The decorative representation refers to the dancer's make-up with proper costumes and ornaments.35

All the physical movements have been conventionalized by the theorists on choreography for an easy and disciplined communication between the performer and the spectator. If the dancer devises gestures and postures according to his own whim and fancy the appreciator may not understand this, for the representative character of these gestures is so symbolic ( other than naturalistic ) that without an awareness of their technique an aesthete is unable to realize what the figures represent and signify. These conventionalized gestures are not, of course, formed too arbitrarily. As the form of an art is controlled by the nature of its medium the same object cannot be represented in the same manner by two different arts. If a painter can bring the likeness of a bow more successfully than a dancer in his picture of a fighting scene, the dancer can represent the force and vigour of the fighter more vividly than the painter. With a strong awareness of the scope of their medium the master dancers as well as the theorists have devised and fixed the best possible likenesses of their objects through the physical gestures. The states like attainment of happiness and arrogance, for example, are to be represented by the Patākā (flag) gesture of a single hand raised on the level of the forehead,36 for a flag is the symbol of something high and stately and the feelings are of this nature. But simply by the fingers of a hand it is not possible to give a naturalistic likeness of a flag. Only a geometrical image is possible by extending the four long fingers and bending the thumb to touch them. The raised fingers here stand for the flying cloth of the flag and the

35. ibid 38-42 ; NS. VI 22-23; see Abh. 36. AD 87. Sqq.

bent thumb for that part of the pole or stick with which the cloth is attached, while the hand itself is the bare stick that a man holds. With various position of this ‘Flag hand’ various other things are symbolically represented. Speedy movements of wind and waves are represented by this hand with the fingers downward and moving up and down. To represent the glare of heat, torrential rain and shower of flowers, two ‘flag hands’ with the fingers separated and moving are to be joined. Similarly a bee (Bhramara) is represented geometrically by the middle finger and thumb crossing each other, the fore finger bent, the remaining two fingers separated and raised. As a bee is associated with flowers this gesture is used to indicate the plucking of flowers like lotus and lily. It should fall down with a sound to represent rebuke, pride of power, quickness, beating time and producing confidence.37 Thus all the gestures of all other limbs are symbolic likenesses of the objects of Nature and they are used in various manners to represent objects, states and emotions of the creatures of three worlds ( trailokyānukṛti ). Incarnations of Lord Viṣṇu, activities of gods and demons can also be shown by the gestures that denote the characteristic signs of the persons concerned. The Fish incarnation is danced by showing the ‘fish-hands on the level of the shoulders.38 A Brahmin as well as the sages and planets like Jupiter, in whom the Brahminic characteristics predominate, are represented by the Sikhara gesture ( a first with the raised thumb ) in two hands, and the holding of the right hand horizontally indicates the sacred thread of a Brahmin.39 A mother’s womanly features are shown by the crescent moon gesture in the left hand, the symbolic likeness of hips, waist and girdle-turned round over the belly (to indicate the prominence of womb) and the

37. Loc. cit 38. AD 116 sq q. 39. ibid 226 sqq.

pincer (sandamśa) in the right hand indicating probably a union especially that of sex.40

Now, Nṛtta seems to be the most primary form of the Indian dance wherein some particular states of mind such as sorrow, fear, happiness, love and hatred etc., actions like fight and worship and actions and behaviours of other animals are represented through the physical movement only (gātravikṣepamātram).41 As there is no theme or story to represent through these gestures, vocal representation is totally absent and the dancer without changing his dress from time to time decorates himself only once before coming to the stage. Accomplishment of music is not so much necessary as the rhythmic time beats and tempo of the physical movements. The dance of Viṣṇu mentioned by the viṣṇudharmottara and that of Śiva on the occasion of destruction of Dakṣa's sacrifice are of this type. According to Bharata Śiva (not Viṣṇu) is the originator of Nṛtta. After performing all the possible physical gestures he asked the sage Taṇḍu to compose the formal techniques of these systematically; and after Taṇḍus name Nṛtta is otherwise called Tāṇḍava (Taṇḍu). Abhinavagupta classifies this Nṛtta into some seven kinds according to (1) the way of its representation and (2) the nature of the states represented. Regarding the way of representation it may be (a) pure physical gestures without any accompaniment of music either vocal or instrumental, (b) gestures accompanied by only the vocal music and (c) those accompanied by both vocal and initrumental music, supported by tempo. As regards its nature it may be (d) excited and eleveated if it represents fight, fear, pride, enchantment etc. and (e) soft and graceful representing love, devotion, misery etc. The other two classes are combinations of the above two classes with the pridominance of excitement in one

40. Loc. cit. 41. SRK vol. IV. Vii. 27-28.

and of grace in the other. A number of Nṛtta forms were composed with appropriate subject-matters under this classification. Abhinavagupta quotes only eight of them to clarify the nature of this type of dance. Bhāṇa, for example belongs to the ‘Uddhata’ class wherein exciting and fierce activities of the Lion ( Nṛsimha ) and Boar ( varāha ) incarnations of Viṣṇu are represented. Bhāṇikā is a mixture of insolence and grace with the predominance of the former, for it represents the children-in-play, lions and boars at fight, any kind of play where the players hold flags in the ritual processions etc. Rāmākrīḍa is purely graceful. The dance here imitates the seasons displaying movements that arouse laughter, calm and soothing joy in the spectators. Rāsaka is a group Nṛtta to be performed by a number of female dancers representing the sixty-four erotic art techniques which is thus partly graceful and partly exciting.42 Nṛtta thus imitates the states and activities of the things and beings of the three worlds not in a full-fledged story form, but shows only the characteristic features in general. Rāsaka, for example, does not represent the first meeting of any definite couple of lovers, the atmosphere suitable for their mutual attraction, their union, separation and love plays in the re-union etc., it only represents the feelings of erotic excitement in general ( without a reference to any individual ) displayed in their physical gestures such as glances, kisses, embraces, slow steppings, decoration of body and so on.

Nṛtya, on the other hand, imitates a full story through the gestures of Nṛtta. Abhinavagupta quotes Kohala to narrate the origin of this type of dance as follows. Once in an evening while Ṡiva was performing Nṛtta, Nārada the divine sage came there. Probably the dance was of the Uddhata class, for Nārada saw the movements of

42 NS IV 17. Sqq see. ABh Vol I PP 180 Sqq.

fight in it ; and then getting inspired he sang the story of

Siva's destruction of the giant Tripura. Siva was highly

pleased to listen to his own elevated deeds and enacted the

whole story through his dance accompanying Nārada's

song. Afterwards he asked the sage Tanḍu to compose a

new type of dance by combining story with Nrtta ( or

Tānḍava ).43 Generally in this type of dance the narrative

song is sung in the green room with the accompaniment

of instrumental music while the dancer or the group of

dancers enact it on the stage. Sometimes the dancer may

sing himself. "Her ( of the female dancer ) Nrtya and

songs", instructs Nandikeśvara, "accompanied by abhinaya

should show states and conform to proper beates of time.

She should sing with her mouth, express the meaning ( of

the song ) by ( gestures of ) hands, show states by her eyes,

and beat time with her feet. Where the hand goes eyes also

should go there, where the eyes go mind also should go

there. Where the mind goes there the state should follow

and where there is the state there the sentiment arises."44

Vocal music sometimes accompanies Nrtta also. But this

music does not contain a narrative song as in the case of

Nrtya. These are mainly hymns of the gods and goddesses

( devasṭuti )45 and short songs of haughty or soft notes,

highly effective if they accompany the Uddhata or Masrna

forms of Nrtta.

Although Nrtta supplies the fundamentals of Nrtya

and is prior to its origin, the latter gains a high popularity

among the Indian spectators for its wider representative

scope. With its reference to particular characters and a

gradual development of the whole plot the appeal of Nrtya

as an imitative art is certainly deeper than that of Nrtya

which is more suggestive than representative. That is why

latter writers on histrionics, dramaturgy and music have

43. Ibid. P. 180. 44. AD 35-36. 45. NS IV. 238.

looked down upon Nṛtta as less imitative art in comparison with Nṛtya. They even proceed to undervalue it as devoid of states ( bhāva ) and sentiments ( rasa ) consisting only the physical movements accompanying time beats and tempo.46 But these comments should not be considered as cxclusive. Both the types, no doubt, represent states and produce sentiments in the minds of spectators. But this effect of Nṛtya is so stronger than Nṛtta's that the latter appears before the former as the throwing off of the limbs ( gātravikṣepamātram ) only.

It is now obvious that the Viṣnudharmottara's idea of dance as an imitation does not mean a replica or a mirroric reflection of the objects of Nature ; the medium it uses is itself incapable of doing that. It is the inner rhythm, the very spirit of Nature which it embodies through physical objects that dance tries to represent. Abhinavagupta interprets it as a natural expression of a given state of mind through the movement of limbs. Dance does not imitate anything in real life ; it is a self-subsistent creation free of any practical motive. Śiva, the originator of dance did not imitate any other thing outside himself. He simply expressed his complete and perfect bliss free of all obstacles.47 So the same also can be said of the dance of Viṣṇu.

Abhinava's idea of dance and drama ( which we shall see later ) is the necessary outcome of his Śaivic cosmology that the universe has no other model except the absolute's free will (vimarśa) and limitless power of self manifestation ( prakāśa ).48 The universe as well as dance originated from the same source. The originators of dance, it is true, were not imitators as they expressed only their own states through the physical movements. But the same cannot hold good in the case of an ordinary dancer. It is not his

46. Daśarūpaka, 1,9 ; See Dhanika's com. to it 47. NS Abh. Vol. I. P. 21. 48. K. C. Pandey. Comp. Aesth. Vol. I. pp. 557-559.

own feelings that a professional dancer expresses freely. He has to communicate the essence of the states and actions in general through the prescribed forms of physical and emotional movements. That is why the ancient scriptures preferred the word 'imitation' (anukṛti) to 'expression' (prakāśa) to explain the nature of dance.

iii. If Nṛtya appears to be more representative having a deeper appeal with its enactment of theme through aṅgahāras and recakas, Nāṭya or Nāṭaka is the most representative not only of all the dancing-arts, but of all the other arts—visual, verbal and audible — as well, for its widest scope of imitation. In fact, Nāṭaka or drama is a unique combination of all the three arts — audible, visual and verbal. Here a verbal composition of a story is presented by the actors ( or dancers ) in a visual form using all the four kinds of acting devices (abhinayas) distinctly and appropriately. Thus the nature of drama is to be considered by judging the activities of both a poet and an actor.

A poet or a verbal composer is said to be the creator of his own world. His world is limitless and independent of the world of Nature consisting of three causal factors. Nature, the creation of Brahman is a compound of three causes such as material like atoms, instrumental like the wheels of a potter and efficient like the potter himself. All the objects of Nature are not pleasing, as they admit of pleasure, pain and indifference by turns. In Nature objects are not always beautiful to sight, nor tasteful to tongue ; foods are of six different kinds of taste only, not all likable, some being too bitter or too sour. A worldly man suffers from various kinds of sorrows and has real joy only at rare moments in his life. But the world of a poet is free from these limitations. He can change and extend his world in all

directions and manners that are pleasing to him.49 The materials of this world are only words and their meanings and as they differ essentially from those of the Natural world, their creations also differ essentially. With suitable combinations of these two, the poet creates a world of his own wherein the ordinary laws of Nature do not operate.

If in Nature honey and fragrance spring from flowers, a poet can make them spring from the face of a woman or from the distant moon. When separation of a lover and beloved causes pain to a sympathetic friend of theirs or a tempestuous night frightens and a diseased ugly woman irritates an observer in the world of Nature, they all appear pleasing in a poet's world. All the objects are charming to look at and sweet to taste. The creation of a poet is thus of a superb type, and, as a development over the ordinary common world of Nature, is of an extraordinary ( alaukika ) character.50

This superb activity is not guided by anybody else's direction, nor is it a copy of some other divine beings ' products. The poetic world is the invention of the creative imagination of the poet. This faculty of the poet is called Pratibhā or a kind of intuition defined as a power of human reason ( prajñā ) that can devise new things or can manifest everfresh forms and objects. This is an extraordinary power that cannot be acquired only by effort. This is endowed by Nature ( naisargikī ) as an inborn faculty which the poet has to polish and develop by constant practice.51

But what does the poet create in his art ? What are the subjects of this poetic superb world ? Are they all inhuman demons or phantoms ! Is this world diabolic ? Is it absolutely strange to the common man who finds in it no similarity at all with the world he lives in ? The answer to

49. AGP.345. 10. 50. Mammaṭa, KP I. 1., also its prose. 51. Locana to Dhv. 1.6; Dandin, Kāvyādarsa, 1.3, 1.103-104, Vāmana KSV, Prose to 1.3.15.

these questions given by Sanskrit critics are in the negative. Both the worlds of a poet and of Nature have the same subjects and settings in common. The common phenomena like the sky, oceans, forests, hills, days, nights etc. and the feelings such as love and separation, sorrows and pleasure, events like battle and peace all are present in both. In fact, all the events and actions of Nature, both visible and invisible, of the three worlds earth, heaven and the under-world are used by the poet as the subject-matter of his art. Valmiki the earliest Sanskrit poet of genius has set models for the later poets that an epic, the grand form of poetry must exploit the activities of a great personality forming the centre of the entire plot around which must move a pageant of men-in-action with a vast landscape continuing over seasons, years and sometimes even generations.52 But the two worlds are not exactly the same. A poet does not simply copy or reproduce whatever he observes in Nature either sensibly or intuitively. Ample changes take place when Nature is transformed by the poetic genius into supernatural. This genius or special type of intuition has two aspects —creative ( Kārayitrī ) and appreciative or contemplative (bhāvayitrī).53 The poet is not an ordinary observer. To his eyes facts and persons of Nature are not merely sense-percepts as they appear to ordinary people. In his specific contemplative vision, Nature is purged of all the harmful and ugly features appearing only in its charming essence. "Nothing is there", says Dhananjaya, "in the world, whether it be delightful or detestable, high or low, gross or elegant, occult or deformed, entity or non-entity, which, when touched by the imagination of the poet and men of taste, doesnot become beautiful Rasa."54 The poet, then, perceives

52. Dandin. op, cit. I. 15-19. 53 Rājaśekhara, KM IV ; See for terminology Gnoli. op. cit. p. 66, Note b. 54. Quoted by Krishna Chaitanya, Sanskrit Poetics. P. 41.

beauty and only beauty everywhere in Nature and bodies forth his personal realisation through the unique combina-

tion of words and their meanings. The poetic world is independent of Nature not in the sense that it consists of

unreal objects. Poetic products are in no way unreal, for human reason does neither conceive of nor appreciate

unrealities. The reality of the poetic world, in fact, does not depend upon that of physical objects as it is not an evolute

of Nature. The spatio-temporal relating of physical objects cease and take new shapes here, possessing thus the

reality of their own without waiting for their physical existence or non-existence. The poetic world is said to be

limitless ( apāra ) because where the objects losing their particularity are visioned in various ways in new shapes

and relations, there could be no limit at all.55 ‘There is no constant nature of things’, says Avantī Sundarī,

the learned wife of Rājaśekhara, "so far as poetry is concerned. For the poet's mind and poetic expression

conceive of things in all sorts of ways56 ."

But this freedom of a poet constructing his world of imagination should not result in whims and arbitration.

He is a man of extraordinary reason. Thus, although he has to embody his own vision of Nature as it appears to his imagina-

tion, nobody should expect that this embodiment whould be unreasonable. Every step of his appreciation,

conception of Nature and its expression through words and meanings must not be so free as to exceed the limits of general

reason. He is not to tell us of an improbable event such as weak man defeating a giant in the battle by his valour or a

lover's joy at the separation of his beloved or a man delivering a long learned speech to a lion while dissuading it from

its attack. Similarly, it would be quite unreasonable if the poet makes the sun rise in the west at night, fire drench

55. AGP. 345. 10. 56. KM P. 44-46.

and water burn. The poetic transformation of Nature, therefore, is to be regulated by certain rules - the principles of propriety. Ānandavardhana, One of the pioneer critics of Indian poetics considers the violation of these principles as the only cause of th failure of a poet in making his art beautiful.5 7

The principle of propriety indicates briefly that the transformation of Nature must not be unnatural. It must obey the general or essential laws of Nature. In a previous chapter we have noticed how the Indians understood Nature in a very broad sense, as not limited within only the objects that are sensibly perceived. Invisible spirits, gods, demons and giants, invisible places like heaven, hell and their sub-regions also are counted under it. Every being, again, has its own peculiar nature ( svabhāva ) according to the predominance of a particular element in the composite of the three elements Sattva, Rajas and Tamas - in his person ; and varieties of personality are due to the various types of this composition classified as good, bad and mixed among all sorts of beings. The various characteristics of the different types of beings are manifested through the necessary physical activities. A man of heroic character exercises his valour and powers by killing his enemies and ruling over a kingdom smoothly without fear of any opponent. But however heroic he may be, it is quite impossible on his part to cross the seven oceans or fly in the sky which are completely beyond the scope of human power. But as the gods possess divine power, they can perform whatever they like or need to serve their purpose. So in essense gods and man are different in nature and in their transformation these essential characteristics should not be interchanged. Gods should not be manly, nor men divine. Proper nature must be attributed to proper persons.

57. Dhva author's prose to III. 14

This is the fundamental notion of the principles of propriety. Abhinavagupta explains this principle as the preservation of conviction or belief ( Pratīti ) of the readers. “Impossible things should not be narrated.²⁵⁸ The poetic transformation of Nature should not appear to the reader as fantastic or false. The poet must compose it in such a way that the reader will be convinced that it may happen or might have happened. There are two standards of this conviction. One is the general ideas about the sensibly observable and supersensuously perceivable facts of Nature such as women are weaker than men, a child aged ten is ignorant of amorous sense, an eunuch cannot breed, the lotus perishes in autmn, gods are immortal and so on. The second standard is the testimonial or record such as acts narrated by histories like the Rāmāyana and the Mahābhārata and other authentic Purāṇas. No ordinary human being can have Lord Śrikrṣṇa as his charioteer. But Arjuna had him. Women do not deliver babies through their ear-holes ; but Kunti did it. The oaths and parental devotions of Rāmachandra, Bhīṣma and Śravaṇakumāra are puite uncommon and the heroism of Sātavāhana is also extraordinary. But these are so popular that people have granted them truth. All these do dot seem impossible here, the expected natural would rather seem unnatural. If Sātavāhana be shown as a powerful human hero only, it will be quite unconvincing and the disbelief of the readers will mar the charm of poetry.⁵⁹

58. Locana to Dhv III. 10. Sqq. 59. Loc. cit.; See also Abhinava's idea of the obstacles of Rasa the first being impropriety pratipattan ayogyatā, Gnoli's translation; unsuitability that is to say the lack of verisimilitude P.62)ABh. P 280 Plots containing common subject-matters (lokasāmānyavastuviṣayaḥ) arouse cur conviction easily. If extra-ordinary events are to be portrayed, then the deeds of famous characters like Rāma etc. are better suitable than the imaginary ones as our belief in their former is deeply rooted in ourselves owing to their uninterrupted fame since antiquity.

On this ground Kṣemendra even ventures to say that propriety is the soul of poetry. As ornaments like necklaces or bracelets decorate the body and the qualities like sympathy, tolerance and bravery decorate the character of a man, so are the ornaments ( alañkāra ) and qualities ( Guna ) of poetry. However valuable and charming the ornaments and qualities may be in themselves, they are all useless for a dead body. So also are the poetical ornaments for an improper composition. A thing is proper for some other thing, says Kṣemendra, if the two are alike (sadrśam, anurūpam) — if the essential features of both are the same ; and in this sense, propriety ( aucityam ) is the most essential principle of poetic activity i.e. making a likeness (Sādrśyam) of Nature. A woman wearing bracelets around her neck and necklaces around the feet will appear hopelessly ridiculous, because her use of these ornaments will not conform to the standard of their common use in the society. The same is true when an enemy shows pity to his captive or a man shows his heroism before his subdued compliant. Kṣemendra thus suggests that the poetic world is not a land of the poet's fantastic dreams or visions, but a world, the events and actions whereof are to be measured by their possibility and probability in the world of Nature. In other words, it is a probable and possible likeness or representation of Nature.60. AVC 1.4-7. Yakila yasyānurūpaṁ taducitamucyate, author's Vitti to stanza 7. Dr. Suryakanta translates, "That which is suited to a certain thing is called 'proper'" (Kṣemeñdra Studies P. 119) using 'suited' for anurūpaṁ. But the word is t in any case merely indicative of custom, tradition or convention which is oridinarily the opinion of scholars. E mphasizing the technical aspect of the term they, however, neglect ts philosophical aspect. For its meanings as h armony, adaptation etc. and for a more detailed discussion see Pro . V. Raghavan's "Auchity in Sanskrit Poetics" collected in An Introduction to Indian Poetics, Macmilean (Frdik), 1970, P. 10277.

For all these reasons Anandavardhana and Abhinavagupta instruct the poets to be very careful in constructing their plot, character, situation and language etc. following this principle of propriety. There are five successive stages in the entire plan of poetic composition : selection of the main plot, addition of subplots, carrying the action towards fruition, concentration upon the sentiment (Rasa) and arrangement of characters, situation and ornament etc. proper to the desired sentiment. As the main purpose of an artist is to create a particular sentiment, he should select a story fit for this. A love story, for example, is appropriate for the sentiment of love, but not a story of death and destructions which is appropriate for pathos. Among the nine sentiments only one should be given prominence, although others may be there as accessories; and similarly, the main plot must appear distinctly among subplots which should again be congruous for the enrichment of the main plot. In nature things take some time to reach fruition or perfection. It is quite fantastic to think that a couple of lovers completely unknown to each other previously should express their love at their first meeting and make love then and there. The emotion rises gradually in two hearts and being inspired by various other facts, it gradually reaches the apex. Generally, there are five stages in the full growth of a particular emotion. In case of love, for example, the event starts with the meeting of the pair of lovers and passing through three stages such as the attempt by the lover to possess the beloved, possibility of success and re-union — upto the final stage i.e. enjoyment. These are the stages of the event as connected with the states of the hero which must have their corresponding sections (Sandhi) — opening, progress, development, pause and conclusion each being again subdivided into some sub-sections (Sandhyanga).61

61. Dhva. III. 13-14, See author's prose and Locana.

Every plot needs its appropriate characters. Among them are heroes, heroines, side-heroes and side heroines and other subordinate males and females. Sanskrit poetics has conventionalized the features of the poetic characters. Principal and minor characters are typified. Heroes are of four main types each being sub-divided further into four. Similarly heroines are mainly of three types, but subdivided into one hundred and twenty-eight varieties. Besides, there are detailed descriptions of other typical characters such as ministers, clowns, messengers, priests etc.62 These types are not merely conventional and it should not be thought that the Indian poets give no place for the individual peculiarities of the characters. We know that typification or classification is an Indian way of understanding the personalities of beings divine, human, and even of brutes or animals. In the former two cases it is based on psychophysical evidence in accordance with their most general features. The process involved herein is more inductive than deductive. Two persons of the same type living in different spatio-temporal units do not possess exactly the same characteristics. With some essential common features, in fact, they may differ as much as the poet desires for his purpose. The types are fixed, to facilitate the observance of propriety regarding characters — One guide line is provided by a ready-made chart, based on experi-ments, for the poet's easy and quick apprehension of the proper relation between the plot he chooses and the characters that would carry on the action towards the manifestation of the sentiment intended. The Dhīrodātta type of hero is brave, powerful, intelligent, leader-like modest, born of an aristocratic family with a charming figure who faces situation both fortunate and miserable with an equal control over impatience and pride. Beings both divine and

62. Sāhityadarpana. III. 37, sqq.

human with a predominance of ‘Sattva’ e.g. Rāmachandra, Viṣṇu, Puruṣottama and Yudhiṣṭhira etc. are of this type. Dhīroddhata people possess the above features, but they are very proud and revengeful with a predominance of ‘Rajas’ element. Bhīma and giants like Rāvaṇa belong to this type. Dhīralitas are more human in comparison with the above two characters possessing deep sensitivity towards the beauty of women and arts. Kings like Duṣyanta and Udayana are of this type. Sages and Brahmins are Dhīraprasānta with their thoughtfulness, self-sacrifice, power of contemplation, simplicity and grave appearance. The poets desiring to create Marvellous and Terrible sentiments should necessarily choose plots wherein dreadful activities are performed by the Dhīroddhata type ; whereas for the sentiment of love the Dhīrolalita type is more suitable. It will be highly improper to choose a person like Rāma as the hero of a plot like that of Kālidāsa's Śākuntalam. Similarly the characterisitcs of a Dhīralalita cannot be appropriate for Rāmachandra, the hero of Bhavabhuti's Uttaracarita. Persons like Udayana, Kaṇva or Cārudatta, again, cannot be appropriate for performing the terrific actions of a Bhīma or a Duhśāsana.

If poets are to be chosen according to the nature of the sentiment, and heroes are to be proper for the plot, heroines must be suitable for the heroes and their mutual relations in conjugal and social affairs are also to be decided accordingly. It is unnatural, for example, that Rāma should have a wife like Vasantasenā a courtesan only. Sītā, a woman of Svīyā Mugdhā type — sober, devoted to husband, less passionate, ready for any type of sacrifice for the welfare of family or society, bashful and fully aware of a sense of prestige etc. is fit for him. Their relation of love similarly cannot be that of a libertine (Viṭa) and of a public woman (veśyā). Emotions, too, have their proper ways of expression. A woman-in-love does not express

her feelings by holding dagger and running to her husband to kill him. Sweet glances, false anger, gentle weeping, horripilation and all other coquettish gestures (anubhāva) are proper for the expression of love, and a suitable atmosphere is also necessary to kindle a particular emotion and to carry it towards fruition. A battle field is the proper place for two heroes eager to show their velour, but not for a couple of lovers ready to woo. A moonlit night, calm and lovely garden full of fragrant flowers and gentle wind of spring etc. are proper to arouse the feeling of love. The language of narration or speech must similarly be proper to the speakers, situations and sentiments. A Dhīrodātta character may use words of long compounds. But this appears quite improper in narrating the pathetic sentiment of love-in-separation etc. in dramatic poetry. In case of the furious sentiment, compound words of medium size are more suitable.63 Kṣemendra also analyses in detail the propriety of poetic ‘quality’, (guṇa) — that is considered as an inherent property of sentiment) of ornaments and of the grammatical construction of poetic language.64 Since plot is the most fundamental element of poetic composition that controls the propriety of characters, situation and language, critics have given much importance to the construction of plots and have preferred the historical to invented ones, for poets without originality or little genius cannot invent probable stories binding the characters, situations and language into an organic unit in accordance with the principles of propriety. Historical facts are true and, therefore, possible also, otherwise they could not have happened at all. The poets will run the least risk in using these plots and making them convincing to the readers as they are already aware of the possibility of these facts. So the poets of even extraordinary genius select most of their

63. Dhva. III. 6, 9 see author's prose. 64. Op. cit. III 14 Sqq.

plots from history which they improve with the help of their originality and easily produce more beauty than they could by inventing purely new plots. That is why selection of historical plots is more or less a convention among ancient Indian poets.65

From this predominance of historical plots one may have doubts as regards the definition of poetry and poetic genius that is said to create a new world. If the facts of Nature are considered as the best source of the poetic world, in what way, can we call it, then, a new world ? We know that the Sanskrit critics do not consider the world of poetry as something different from the creations of Nature, and the freedom of the poet is by no means a whim or an arbitray attitude. The aim of the poet is to give his own understanding or interpretation of Nature, and in this way he transforms Nature, not without faithfully preserving its essential character also. Poetry, in other words, is a representation of Nature as it is realized by the poet. Anandavardhana emphatically states that the duty of a poet does not consist only in rendering a historical fact which is already stated by the historian. He has to re-arrange the entire fact with sections and subsections suitable for creating his desired sentiment and in that he has full right to eliminate the unnecessary and to add the necessary incidents for fulfilment of his purpose. For such re-arrangement or re-creation of Nature according to the principle of propriety the poet has to exercise his genius. Abhinavagupta clarifies this statement of Ānandavardhana by citing certain examples. Kālidāsa's aim is to create mainly the Heroic and Marvellous sentiments in his epic The Raghuvamśa by narrating the divine deeds of the ideal and powerful kings of Raghu's pedigree. He has added many incidents there which are absent in Vālmiki's history e.g. the pompous

65. Dhva. author's prose and Locana.

and gorgeous marriage ceremonies of the kings like Aja and their adventures of victory. Though these are out of history, it is quite probable that a powerful king like Raghu would have gained victory over all the kings of India or that Aja's marriage would be so unusually ceremonious. Kālidāsa has devised all this to enhance the intensity of his desired sentiments. Similarly Arjuna's victory over the Nether world is not described in the Mahābhārata. But other activities of Arjuna in this history sufficiently prove that he is not an ordinary human hero66 So the above invention by a poet is not improbable, it rather fortifies the divine heroism of Arjuna, and thus enriches the sentiment aimed at by the poet concerned. Kṣemendra also clarifies this point by some examples of success and failure. In the Uttaracarita of Bhavabhūti the sacrificial horse enters the hermitage of Vālmīki where Lava and Kuśa, the two sons of Rāma, have been brought up and trained as competent fighters. From outside it is announced that this horse belongs to Rāma, the great enemy of the family of Rāvaṇa and the only hero in the seven worlds. So a hero who seized upon it must be aware of the danger of fighting against such a hero. Lava, who is ignorant of his relation with Rāma, feels jealous at such boasting of the messenger and says—“How shocking are these words ? Is this world devoid of warriors now ( that none is to answer this chollenge )?" This aspect of Lava's character is not recorded by Vālmīki. But by adding jealousy to the character of a rising hero, the son of a man, who really happens to be the only hero of the seven worlds, the poet has rather coloured heroism with more bright paints, and, therefore, this deviation from history is not improper. But Rājaśekhara's invention — when Rāvaṇa in the self-choice-marriage ceremony of Sītā

66. Loc. cit.

asks Janaka with a careless and offensive tone to bring the Bow of Śiva, Janaka orders his attendants to bring both the bow and Sītā to the opera — is quite improper ; for Kṣemendra argues that it is proper for the Dhīrodḍhata character of Rāvaṇa to boast of his power without a sense of courtesy. But how could Janaka agree to bring the Bow and Sītā both ? Sītā has her prestige as the princess ; she is not to be shown publicly as a charming dancing girl or has not to select somebody for his proud ravings, but to garland the man only when he has come out victorious in breaking the Bow. Here it seems as if Janaka is nervous at the challenge of the demon and feels like handing over Sītā to him even before he demonstrates his ability by breaking the Bow. This is quite improper for the grave and saintly character of Janaka. Similarly the love play of Śiva and Pārvatī in Kālidāsa's Kumārasambhava is an improper invention, for Pārvatī, the mother of the entire universe, would not feel excited and long for another coition by touching inattentively the nail points of Śiva upon her thighs—a behaviour, proper only for a passionate unchaste women ( Viṭapi ). But the same poet has sufficiently proved his poetic genius in inventing the plot of the Maghadūta. No sane man would ask the clouds to carry a message for his beloved. But the hero here, a lover-in-separation is passion-struck, and it is quite probable for such a man to be unaware of the distinction between the sentient and the insentient.67

iv. Poetry, the transformation of Nature according to the principle of propriety ( or a likeness of Nature ) in verbal form is presented in drama in an audiovisual form by a group of dancers ( or actors ) through the four ways of representation — mental, physical, decorative and vocal.

67. AVC III. 13, read with author's com.

252

For its visibility it is also called "Visible poetry" (dṛśyakāvya) or simply a (visual) form (Rūpam),68 which is, according to Bharata, essentially an imitation, "......imitation of the exploits of gods, giants, kings as well as of house holders in this world."69

At the first production of drama by Bharata in the Banner Festival of Indra containing a theme of the defeat of the giants, the giants got angry, for they felt insulted by the sight of their defeat which was enjoyed by the gods and Gandharvas. So together with the evil spirits they all did harms to the actors, director and the entire stage by their magical power. Indra with his banner-staff of course drove away all evil spirits who were hanging about the stage; and all other architectural cares were taken by Viśvakarman, the divine architect. Inspite of all these co-operative attempts to protect the stage performance, the gods thought it proper to request Brahmā, father of both gods and demons, to pacify the spirits and giants by a conciliatory move. Brahmā agreed and as he knew that the giants felt unhappy over the depiction of their defeat and weakness and were jealous at the sight of the gods' victory and were convinced that by introducing drama he, the great progenitor had only belittled them, he tried to pacify them by making them understand the real nature of drama. He emphatically stated that the dramatic presentation was neither for nor against anybody. Quite indifferently it aims at exposing the proper results of the actions done by the beings of his whole creation. The first play of course showed the defeat of the giants, but elsewhere gods might be condemned for evil deeds and sometimes giants might also be praised for their benevolent actions. Besides, drama does not concern itself only with (lit. is not representation

68. Daśarūpaka I. 7; See also Dhanika's com. 69. NS I. 120; of VDP, "Nāṭyam hi Viśvasya Yato' nukāram" III 25.62,

(anubhāvanam) the actions and states of giants and gods, those of human beings also are equally important as its subject-matter. In fact, it is “a representation of the states (bhāvānukīrtanan) of three worlds……an imitation of actions and conducts of people therein (lokavṛttānukaranam), which are rich in various emotions and which depict different situations. This will relate to actions of men good, bad and indifferent……an imitation of seven divisions ( saptadvipānukaranam ) of the world”.70 In short, drama is an imitation of the exploits of gods, giants, kings as well as house holders-to their natures (svabhāva) ; and their sorrows and joys are presented in a visible form by means of representations through gestures, voice, costumes and mental signs. Dhananjay, another dramaturgist, later to Bharata, admits the imitative character of drama which is according to him an imitation of states (avasthānukṛti). Dhanika explains this statement that the objects of imitation in drama are the states, both physical and mental, of the characters like Dhīrodātta etc. composed by a poet in verbum, and the imitators are the actors, the act of imitation referring to the four methods of representation vix. physical, vocal etc.71 Thus according to both the critics, Dhanika and Dhananjaya, without enactment there is no drama. Simply the verbal composition of a dramatic poet cannot be properly called drama until it is staged by the actors. Viśvanātha another eminent critic is also of the same opinion that the activity (abhinaya) of the actors ( lit. dancers-naṭa) is essentially imitative in character for they represent the physical and mental states of the persons like Rāma etc. by superimposing their personality upon themselves. For this act of superimposition (āropa ) drama is called ‘Rūpaka’ also.72 This superimposition of the characters upon the

70. for the banner festival etc. see NS I. 106-121. 71. Daśarūpaka I.7 ; read with Dhanika’s com. 72. Op. cit VI-1-3

254

same as the identification (tāḍātmya) of the actors with the characters. There are fundamental differences between a beautiful face and the moon. But we say, the face looks like the moon or the face is the moon. Similarly although the actors are not Rāma etc. they look and act like these persons or in other words, they become themselves Rāma etc. The Sānkhya philosophy also supports this superimposition theory as regards the relation between the actors and the characters. Vācaspati endorses upon Iśvarakṛṣṇa that the indifferent Puruṣa (soul) is just like a dramatic actor (naṭa). As an actor is neither Vatsarāja nor Ajātrśatru nor Paraśurāma, but becomes every one by assuming their physical and mental states or by superimposing their personalities upon them, so also an indifferent, free formless spirit becomes a god, a man, a beast or a tree by assuming different gross bodies only.73 But a difference may be noted between an actor's acting in a character's role and a spirit assuming a gross body. In the latter case the spirit really receives a gross body whereas the actor only imitates the states of a character. Like the spirit he is not directly concerned with the character. By the artificial means like costume etc. he imitates the appearance of Rāma etc. who lived long ago, and imitates their activities in the manner directed by the poets on the authority of the histories. The critics, however raise a great controversy as regards Bharata's conception of drama ; and this controversy centres round not so much the nature of drama as stated in the first chapter of the 'Nāṭya Śāstra' as the nature of aesthetic experience Rasa as dascribed in the sixth chapter. But it is a great misfortune that all the commentaries on the Natya Śāstra except that of Abhinavagupta have been lost. Only some extracts here and there are either quoted or discussed by Abhinava as

73. Sāṃkhyakārikā 53 with Vācaspati's com.

he refutes other theories in establishing his own. It is thus risky to construct a complete notion of a theory only from its opponent's quotations and comments as there is every possibility of the latter's misunderstanding or misreading of the text. Any way, if we trust Abhinava, according to Bhatta Lollata, one of the earliest commentators on Bharata, drama consists of an imitative activity.74 Later literary critics attribute the monistic Vedānta thought to him, and try to find the suggestion of superimposition (āropa) in his conception of drama. The commonest example of error is the perception of snake in a rope wherein by mistake owing to much similarity between a snake and a rope, if placed in dim light, snakeness is superimposed upon the rope and it casts all the effects of the perception of a snake e.g. fear, running away atc. on the observer. Scuh is the nature of drama, thinks Lollata. People visit play-houses and are filled with pleasure at the sight of, for instance, the love of Duṣyanta and Sakuntalā. But where is the root of this pleasure ? Lollata thinks, originally or primarily it exists in the permanent states of love in the historical persons themselves. But as this state is dormant, and is unknown to others unless it is exposed by Duṣyanta's physical and mental gestures such as glance, horripilation etc., transitory mental states like anxiety supported by the sight of Śakuntalā and inspired by the lonely garden on the bank of the Malinī etc.. it is unable to give pleasure to an observer. Thus a permanent state gives pleasure to others ( or is transformed into Rasa ) only when it is conjoined with the determinants ( Vibhāva ) consequents (anubhāva) and transitory mental states ( vyabhi-cārin). In a play house of course, there are no historical Duṣyanta and Śakuntalā, nor the real bank of the Malinī.

74. ABh. vol. I. P. 272.

But the actors by the arrangement (anusandhāna) of various gestures and dialogues imitate the historical persons and events so skilfully that the spectators identify them with the originals. If a rope under certain circumstances, can appear before a man as snake and can make him afraid and run away, why not the actors in the roles of Duṣyanta and Śakuntalā etc. can give the spectators the same sensations as the actual persons would give in their real and direct relations ? Thus drama imitates the cunducts and hehaviours of persons ( say historical in this case ) and the pleasure which it gives is rooted primarily in the permenent states of the persons imitated ( anukārya ) whereas only secondarily in those of the imitator-actor (anukartrari). This theory certainly raises a serious objection in suggesting no distinction between the aesthetic and the wordly pleasure. If dramatic pleasure happens to be secondary to that derived from the same incident of the real world, then Lollaṭa has no other way than to admit that the events which cause no pleasure, rather cause pain, in the real world such as separation from the beloved etc. will give no pleasure to the spectators when imitated by the actors - an idea which goes absolutely against Bharata's conception of dramatic pleasure as also against our common experience. The sentiments like the Furious and the Pathetic then appear untenable in drama. Acārya Saṅkuka with his many other points of objections against Lollaṭa hints at this principal fault of his theory and tries to remould it thoroughly.75 He, too, admits that drama is essentially an imitation as the actors here by the four ways of representation imitate the states of the characters given by the dramatic poet. But against Lollaṭa he states that this imitation is not an erroneous cognition, Dramatic experience cannot be explained by the experience of a snake in a rope, and aesthetic cognition, therfore,

75. ibid. PP 272-273.

cannot be compared with any other logical cognition, nor the pleasure due to a dramatic performance is related in the same way to the same performance in the real world. The events of Nature are either painful or pleasurable or indifferent or mixed; but all the events of the world of drama are full of pleasure.

Śaṅkuka has understood that the aesthetic object is completely devoid of any practical utility and, therefore, its nature is essentially different from that of the objects of Nature. Affairs like love-play, separation, anger and unlawful acts (e.g. theft or rape of women etc.) do not please an observer. Love-plays of a couple of lovers arouse either shame or jealousy; separation causes pain and sorrow, anger raises fear and theft contempt. But when depicted in drama they all invariably please the spectators of all classes. This is because dramatic objects are not real but artificial (kṛtrima) and this artificiality is due to the imitative nature of drama wherein the actors imitate the Determinants etc. by their conscious effort (prayatna) — the Determinants through the power of poetry, the consequents through the skill (Śikṣā) of the actors and the Transitory mental states through the actor's ability to reproduce those of his own on the stage. But the spectators do not think just at the time of witnessing a play that the whole representation is false. It appears to them as real, as they infer its reality from the skilful imitation by the actors. But it is important to note that Śaṅkuka here distinguishes the reality having practical utility from its artificial representation which only appears as real. It is only the latter — the appearance (pratiyamāna) of reality that explains the nature of aesthetic object, and the aesthete enjoys its beauty (Rasa) in a peculiar type of cognition which is neither true nor false. It differs from correct perception (tattvam), mistaken perception (mithyā),

doubt (saṁśaya) and similitude (sādrśya). The spectator, for example, does not experience any of these cognitions—

(a) That happy man is really the actor, (b) Rāma is really that man; he is not happy, (e) Is that Rāma or not?

(d) That man is like Rāma. His is a definite positive experience— “This is the happy Rāma”. Śaṅkuka emphatically points out the distinction between the two types of propositions — “This (man) is so-and-so” and “This (man) is really so-and-so”, the latter being the correct cognition of a real person and the former an aesthetic cognition. This is according to Śaṅkuka, the imitation (anukarana) of reality in art. Drama is an imitation of actions expressive of emotions; and sentiment (Rasa) is an imitation of a permanent state.

Abhinavagupta takes a lot of pains to refute the imitation theory of Ācārya Śaṅkuka.76 He understands imitation in its literal senses of mimicry and emulation. Imitation is always an inferior act which necessarily implies the inferiority of the imitator to the imitated; and this act, as Bharata himself states,77 rouses a sense of humour in the observer. A buffoon, for example, is incapable of displaying the heroism of a prince. Wearing the dresses of a prince and holding his sword if he comes forward to the battle field trying his best to fight like the prince, it will certainly arouse laughter instead of fear in the enemy. So only humour is produced by the imitation of others, and certainly drama is not a business of this type. Had it been so the question of six dramatic sentiments such as Erotic, Pathetic etc. would not have arisen. There would be only one sentiment — humour. Sometimes lovers especially in separation imitate their beloveds in wearing their dresses in loving and petting the animals that they love and listening or singing the songs that they do. By this

76. ibid. pp. 274-276. 77. ibid. P. 36.

they feel their presence and thus get the satisfaction of an indirect union with the beloved by imagining their presence in objects they love and use. Drama is not also an imitation of this nature as the Determinants are not here only those of lovers but of enemies as well. Secondly, imitation in the sense of emulation is not also desired here. In the case of a teacher and a pupil the former is the ideal to the latter and he is asked to follow every action of his teacher to build up his future life. Drama is not surely an emulative affair for it is quite ridiculous to think that a man acting in the role of a hypocrite like Rāvana or Duhśāsana emulates his conducts to correct his social character.78

Abhinava, then, with this idea of imitation criticizes Śaṅkuka's theory that Rasa or dramatic beauty consists in the imitation of the permanent States of persons, either historical or imaginative like Rāma etc. made visible through the determinants etc. He asks :-- from what point of view does Śaṅkuka think that Rasa is an imitation of the permanent State? Is it from the point of view of the spectators? Or from that of the actors? Or of the critics who analyse the real nature of the aesthetic experience? Or finally, does, Bharata himself state this view?

As regards the first alternative Abhinava argues that the thing imitated must be an object of cognition; and the imitation and the thing imitated must be of equal nature so as to be perceived by the same sense-organ and belong to the same substratum. But the body of the actor, his activities and costumes etc. cannot be imitation of the permanent state for the latter is purely a mental feeling that is sentient in character and can be cognized by and subsist in only the mind itself, while the former is an insentient object of

78. For the idea of Lilā ( Priyānukaraṇam ) see NS XXIV.14; for the idea of emulation see Ath. Vol. I, P. 35 "natadanukāreṇa guruśiṣya vyākhyāhevākatvat."

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external sense perception subsisting in a unit of flesh and bones. Further, the consciousness of imitation presupposes an awareness of both the thing imitated and the thing which imitates. But none of the spectators has perceived directly the Delight of Rāma. So it is quite impossible on his part to judge whether the actor imitates or produces it himself without imitation, and still more impossible to notice whether the imitation is correct or not. Saṅkuka might answer that it is simply by a mental movement that the actor imitates the permanent state of Rāma ( which is Delight ) ; and this mental movement is visualized by the causes such as women, effects such as expressive glances and concomitant elements such as contentment etc. by which that of real Rāma (Delight) would also be perceived.

The difference, however, between the two is that while in the case of Rāma they were all real, in the case of the actors they are artificial. That is why the actor's Delight is not his own real Delight but an artificial or an imitated one. In other words, from the artificial signs (i.e. effects ) such as women, glances etc. the artificial Delight ( i.e. the cause ) is inferred. But Abhinavagupta argues that this type of inference is quite illegal for only from a real or correct sign a correct cause can be inferred ; if the reason is mistaken the whole process of inference is invalid.

Besides, sometimes fire may be wrongly inferred from mist mistaken as smoke, but it is quite impossible to infer something which resembles or imitates fire, say a red flower from mist that resembles or imitates smoke. Hence it is wrong to say that the spectator infers an imitation of Delight from the artificial Determinants etc.

The relation of the actor with the character in the role of which he plays cannot also appear to the spectator as a resemblance i.e. a spectator does not think that the actor himself is happy or enraged, but seems to be so;

by his physical activities etc. he appears like some one who is happy etc. But then it is only a resemblance ( sādrśya ); and resemblance is not necessarily an imitation, The similarity of a real ox, for example, with an ox-like species ( gavaya ) is not due to one's imitation of the other, but to certain physical features such as muzzle etc. which they naturally inherit in common. If the spectator would perceive only a similarity of Rāma etc. in the actor, he would not be moved by any emotion at all. But Śaṅkuka, we know, distinguishes the aesthetic cognition from the cognitions of doubt, truth, error and similitude. Such cognition is of an immediate perception, uncontradicted and self-evident. But Abhinava asks—in what way, then, the cognition — “That is Rāma etc.” is uncontradicted but not true ? What exactly is the nature of something which is neither true nor uncontradicted ? Saṅkuka suggests that the spectator's cognition is always a mistaken one for he accepts the artificial as real. Such a cognition is necessarily contradictory and hence false. Thus Śaṅkuka's idea is self-contradictory. Besides, as the statement “That is Rāma” is not applicable to any particular actor because several actors on several occasions may play in the role of the same Rāma. The implication will be that there is a genus Rāma to which all these actor Rāmas belong, which is not tenable.

Secondly, Rasa cannot be held as the imitation of the permanent state from the actor's point of view also ; for the actor does not have the notion “I am imitating Rāma or his mental state”. For without any direct knowledge of a person how can one imitate him ? If imitation is taken in the sense of doing anything which has already been done by someone previously, then not only a particular actor's representation of Delight, but every one's else's delight on all occasions in the present real world would also be imitation, for it is a delight felt after Rāma's. Thus it

implies that there is no distinction between the reality and drama, for both are imitations and so both will give aesthetic pleasure. This is practically impossible and contradicts Śaṅkuka's fundamental notion. He may avoid this difficulty by stating that the term of imitation is not the states of any particular person, but of a good man like Rāma in general—avoiding by this way also the difficulty of imitating a definite person under a spatio-temporal context not known to the imitator. But the problem then will be with what does the actor imitate such feelings? Not certainly with his own feelings such as sorrow etc. which are really absent in him at that time. It is not with the consequent e.g. tear etc. that he imitates sorrow, for, sorrow and tear are of two different natures sorrow being a mental feeling and tear a physical thing. Nor do the cognitions of an actor ; "I am imitating the consequents of a man of elevated nature" or "I am imitating somebody who is weeping in this way", explain the nature of his activity, for the first one is impossible unless definite specifications about the person concerned are mentioned, which, when done, leads again to the problem of imitating the particular ( Viśeṣa or niyata ) ; and the second one is similarly impossible as it indicates the actor's actual partaking of the sorrow. Thus the actor imitates neither the particular nor the general, neither through his own permanent state nor through its consequents.

The third alternative is directed against the Buddhist logic of Dharmakīrti. Abhinava, the Śaivist, here criticizes the Sautrantika theory of perception in criticising aaṅkuka's imitative theory of aesthetics. The Sautrantikas discard the Vijñānavādins' theory that the external world is illusory ; mind, according to them, is the only reality and mental images only falsely appear as external objects. The Sautrāntikas argue that it is quite

illogical to say that the reality appears as unreality. The phrase "like the external object" is meaningless as "like the son of a barren mother". How can something non-existent be conceived at all ? They hold that the existence of the external object is proved by the very presence of the internal images which are nothing but the copies (vikalpa) of external objects. So these two—the external object and their mental images are essentially different from the theoretical or analytical point of view as an object and its reflection on the surface of a mirror are distinguished. But the men of practical life (vyavahartārah) says Dharmakīrti, do not analyse the things in this manner. They identify the image with the object and determine the nature of the latter by that of the former.79 Now Abhinava-gupta asserts that such a philosophical explanation is not possible. It is impossible to explain a thing in the theoretical moment by an explanation that contradicts its consciousness in the practical moment ; and if from the so-called philosophical or critical point of view as such Saṅkuka tries to distinguish between the nature of drama and the spectator's consciousness of it i.e. drama is a copy or imitation of real life (as the mental image is of the external object) but the spectators identify it with the reality — his argument is unsound as that of Dharmakīrti.

Finally, Abhinava asks, does Bharata state explicitly or suggest implicitly anywhere that Rasa is the imitation of Permanent State? There is certainly no such explicit statement. Regarding the nature of drama, Bharata of course, mentions in the first chapter that it is an imitation (anukarana) of the seven regions of the world and actions and conducts of the beings (lokavrtta) thereof.80 Elsewhere Bharata uses the word 'imitation' (anukrti) as a synonym of drama—"After that (utterance of the holy Benediction or

79. H. I. Ph. pp. 159 sqq. 80. NS I. 112, 117.

Nāndi) I devised an imitation of the situation in which giants were defeated......". 81 From these evidences Saṅkuka might argue that if drama is defined as the imitation of the affairs of the world it is quite natural that Rasa would be defined by Bharata in the same manner i.e. as an imitation of the Permanent State of Rāma etc. Abhinava admits that according to Bharata's definitiond rama is an imitation — but not in the sense of a mimicry or replica. In fact, it was in this sense that drama was viewed by the giants when they felt insulted of its first production in the court of Indra as we have already mentioned, Bharata devised drama neither to condemn giants not to praise the gods exclusively. It is indeed a branch of the Vedas ( Nāṭyāveda ) which aims at instructing the people not rigorously in the way of the scriptures, but in a pleasing manner in producing both knowledge ( vyutpatti ) and pleasure ( prīti). Knowledge is produced by its theme which deals with actions and their results. The entire range of Indian thought indeed is invested in understanding the nature of creation, which is nothing but a cyclic movement of actions and their proper results. Beginning from the Vedas all the scriptures including the philosophical systems concentrate upon explanation of this idea of action i.e. bad actions produce bad results and good actions good. The purpose of drama is nothing but to illustrate this principle. It shows the events of the past that exemplify this law of action — one performing the good or bad actions under such and such circumstances enjoys the good or bad results proper to them. The gods and all the beings of the three worlds are included in it. If the aggressive activities of the Daityas have doomed them to defeat and degradation at one time the devotion and pious activities of other giants like Prahlāda, Bali etc. have also elevated them to ranks even higher than the gods at other times.

81. NS. I. 57 "tadante" nukṛtirbaddhā .... etc.

And thus drama while illustrating the laws of action, makes use of all the departments of knowledge, wise maxims, arts, crafts, and learnings. It teaches duty to those who go against duty, love to those who are eager for its fulfilment, chastises the ill-bred and the unruly, promotes self-restraint in the disciplined, gives courage to cowards, energy to heroes and enlightenment to men of poor intellect, and so on.82 Drama does all these not by theorising a problem. The events or stories of drama, says Bharata, are "taken out of the Vedic lores and semi-historical tales (so embellished that they are) capable of giving pleasure..."83 But the giants felt neither instructed nor pleased, because, they thought, the gods with a motive to insult them, had produced a mimicry of their fight and defeat with all the particulars ; and thus as one feels sorry and insulted at one's own miseries and misfortunes in the real world so would one have the same feeling in witnessing those in a drama. Bharata, therefore, states ( through Brahmā ), as Abhinava understands it, that drama is not such a mimicry ( anubhāvanam ). The replica or exact representation of a man's affairs will not please a spectator as he will remain detached, taking it as some other's private affairs, it will be also quite improper -out of a social courtesy on the part of the dramatist - to expose the private life of a man. As in the practical world one feels ashamed or jealous or angry to witness the love play of a couple, so will he feel if it is exactly represented with all its particulars on the stage. For these reasons Bharata does not recommend the stories of the living persons or contemporary events for the dramatic themes ; and this leads to the final objection that from the philosophical point of view nothing past can be represented in exactly the same original forms. This point needs an elucidation of the Śaivíc idea of

82. NS I. 109 sqq. 83. Ibid. I. 119.

phenomenon and theory of knowledge for its clarification. The Śaivas believe that the entire world with all its diversities and varieties is created by Parameśvara, the ultimate consciousness. The process of this creation is not, of course, the same as that of a potter or a carpenter, where the creator depends upon two other factors of the cause — material and instrumental that are outside him. But the creator of the universe is self-dependent without needing any extraneous help. In fact, nothing is outside him. The Absolute consciousness by its self-illuminating power ( Prakāśa ) and free will ( Vimarsa ) manifests all forms in and by itself. The relation between the external world of phenomena, with the supreme consciousness is, as it were, that between the surface of a mirror and a reflection on it with a difference that while without some external objects and light there would be no reflection on a mirror. Parameśvara Śiva reflects himself upon his own consciousness and illumines him by his own light. Thus after this mirror-image every object of the external world is called by the Śaivists as an image or reflection ( pratibimba or ābhāsa ) which is essentially an isolated universal unit without any specific characteristic or purposive value. This is what the grammarian philosophers call the meaning ( artha ) of a word. The Śaivists who divide the cognitive activity into primary and secondary hold that this isolated ābhāsa is the object of primary cognition without any causal efficiency ; it is beyond the limitations of time and space, so always of the same form without any change. The cogniser inspired by the purposive attitude unites several ābhāsas in his secondary cognition. Thus a particular object with its causal efficiency is a union of several ābhāsa within a spatio-temporal limit. The ābhāsa, for example, for which the word, ‘jar’ is used the object of primary cognition is of a generic form. It is only the substantive of the

ābhāsas such as earthen, red, high, here, now etc. uniting which the cogniser forms a particular jar of practical utility. And as the mode of collocation determines the character of an object of the practical world, its causal efficiency must change according to the change of the mode of collocation. Two jars, for example, having all other ābhāsas in common except that one is earthen and the other golden or one is small and the other large, will certainly act in different ways ; and so the actions performed by a man past or dead, if performed by other persons, will not have the same causal efficiency. When Rāma, long ago, banished Sītā, the action definitely cause sorrow to every one. But when now a man acting in the role of Rāma on the stage banishes a woman in the role of Sītā, it does not pain others in the same way as it did in the former case. Here the acting of the dramatic dancers (naṭa) in a different spatio:temporal unit loses the proper causal efficiency — the individual or specific character (svalakṣaṇatā) of the actions of Rāma long ago.84

The defeat of the giants, therefore, shown in the first produced play, does not indicate the defeat of the present generation of giants, but of those who passed away long ago. Nor is the victory of the gods victory of those present. As the gods do not feel flattered by this victory, so the giants ought not to feel insulted by this defeat. The dramatic victory and defeat have no connection with any particular victory or defeat concerning the giants and gods of a particular period. It only retells the events of the gods' 'victory and giants' defeat in general (bhāvānukīrtanam) that take place in every kalpa and Kalpāntara. No particularity should be expected of them.

84. K. C. Pandey, Abhinavagupta, pp.390, 400 sqq; id. Comp Aesth. Vol. I. pp. 88-101, 144-48, 557-60.

Objections might be raised against this denial of particularity of the dramatic characters. One may agree that a general idea of battle of the gods and giants can be presented in a play without any specifications, for so many times the giants have been defeated by the gods in various Kalpas. But how can the historical persons like Rāma etc. whose very existence consists only in some unique particularities be presented in a general way ? This problem Abhinava tries to solve on the basis of the Śaiva cosmology. It is true that the idea of their particularity arises from the testimonials and records like the Rāmāyana ; nevertheless only when they are contemporary do they amount to a real individuality animated by the power of a corresponding causal efficiency. But as this contemporaneity does not exist at the time of the production of a play, their particularities are lost. Secondly, a visitor does not visit a play with any utilitarian outlook such as, ‘To day I must do something practical’, but with the intention — “To day I am going to enjoy sights and sounds of a non-ordinary character, which arouse in the end, a state of freedom from worldly interests and whose essence is a generalised pleasure shared by all the spectators”.85 During the spectacle the spectators forgets his worldly existence and immerses himself completely in tasting of the vocal and instrumental music which accompanies the play being acted. It is thus an imaginative outlook, rather than a practical one, that guides the spectator. and so in losing their real causal efficiency dramatic characters are beyond the spatio-temporal limitations. Hence they are no more the objects of determinate knowledge or secondary cognition. They are now isolated ābhāsa appearing only in their generic forms. This type of generalisation ( sādhāranībhāva ) happens also in that prose fiction as well as in poetry. But none of them can make exper-

85. Gnoli’s translation, see op. cit. P. 112.

ience the law of action so completely as one gets in direct

perception which only drama can do.86

Drama is not thus an imitation or copy of the

world of particulars. For its generality ( sādhāraṇa ) it is

also distinguished by Abhinava from all other cognitions of

the particular objects ( Viśeṣa ) such as 'factual reality

( tattvam ), similitude ( Sādṛśyam ), error by superimposition

( āropa ), false cognition ( bhrama ), comparison ( utprekṣā )

affinity by behaviour etc. ( adhyavasya ) likeness or a statue

or image ( pratikṛti ), emulation ( anukarana ) and jugglery

or magic ( indrajāla ). In other words, the actor playing

in the role of Rāma is not really the Rāma of Vālmīki's

history, nor has he any physical and mental characteristics

in common with Rāma as found in twins, nor owing to

his costumes etc. Rāma is superimposed upon him by

mistake as is a piece of silver upon the mother of pearl.

There is further no behavioural affinity between the real

Rāma and the actor as is between a cow and a Vāhīka

( lit. meaning one who is devoid of the conducts recomm-

ended by the Vedas ) such as, for example, making water

standing. He is not compared with Rāma on certain

similarities as when face is compared with the moon, nor

is he an image of Rāma as certain puppets are of birds,

men etc. The actor does not emulate the deeds of Rāma

as a pupil follows the performances of his teachers, nor

is he a magician or a juggler who can assume various

forms by exercising certain supernatural power.87

Abhinava tries more cerefully to distinguish between

drama and similitude which is ordinarily meant by an

imitation ( anukāra ). A similitude, he argues, can be

produced only of the particular contemporary objects.

Sometimes likenesses of things can be produced even if they

belong to different periods. In the world of differences

86. ABh. Vol. I. P. 36. 87. Ibid. P. 35.

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the question of imitation or similarisation may arise. But in the world of generalities, where-each one is unique in its own form, nothing can be like anything other than itself. A jar in its unique form, for example, can not be similar to another such form, for the question of other such forms does not arise at all. This is the only and only form of its like. Two particular jars with specific colours, height, thickness, materials and existence under a particular time and space in common may be said as similar. When all the universals of the three worlds are unique what can be an object of imitation ? 88

Now, when the actor plays in the role of Rāma etc. he forgets his own practical identity suspending it to the subconscious and identifies him self with Rāma etc. as they are narrated by the poet. Here this identification is possible because both the poetic figure and the actor himself are in their generic forms devoid of their real causal efficiencies or individualities, hence are beyond the cognition of wordly reality or unreality. They are neither true nor false by the ordinary logical standard or knowledge. In such non-common, identified or generalized situation the question of the actor's imitation of either the permanent state of Rāma or its consequents does not arise. The actor simply performs what Rāma is recorded to have done and these performances are not similar (sadrśa) to those of Rāma, but are of the same type (sajātiya) owing to the generic form of both. Thus, according to Abhinava, an actor is not an imitator (anukartr) but a performer (prayoktr) and his activity (abhinaya) is neither imitation nor similization, but perceptualization -he brings the poetic narration into a perceptual form by means of voice, physical and mertal movements and costume etc.89 Here lies the

88. "Sāmānyātmakatva Konukārārthah" ? ibid P.37. 89. Abhinayah vāgāṅgasattvanaryair abhinimukhyam sākṣātkāprayāmam nevertheless, Locana to Dhva. III. 6.

distinction between poetry and drama. Poetry only narrates the actions of the great persons of the past in their generalized form while drama perceptualizes them wherefore they touch the heart of the spectator directly and his experience of them is like a direct cognition sākṣātkārakalpa or pratyakṣakalpa) though not really a direct cognition which arouses in the observer the necessary reaction to the causal efficiency of the object e.g. perception of snake makes one afraid or that of a lovely woman inspires a man's lust. The object of aesthetic perception is devoid of such effects.

This perception is further specified as a mental or inner perception (mānasapratyakṣa) as it were a self-knowing activity (svasamvedanasiddha) needed in a Yogic perception. Abhinavagupta uses two words for this activity—Pratisākṣātkāra and Anuvyavasāya meaning reperception. The Śaivists believe like the Nyāya School that there are two states of ordinary sense-perception indeterminate and determinate. The first stage is the sense object contact called Vyavasāya and the second stage is the mind-object contact via senses. This is called anuvyavasāya as it comes after (anu) the first contact (vyavasāya). The Śaivist, of course, introduces another medium Buddhi in between the senses and mind. The objects is first reflected on the senses and being illumined by the light of knowledge. These physical images are again impressed upon Buddhi. This is the first stage of indeterminate knowledge. Mind then re-acts on the sense-data recorded on the Buddhi to have a determinate knowledge. This is a stage of reformation consisting of elimination of unnecessary 'points' from the whole mass of impressions and edding something from the old store of memory to the selected points giving them a definite shape and name. This second stage, the stage of mental reformation is called by the Saivists anuvyavasāya.

This is a kind of re-perception which Abhinava names prati-sākṣātkāra also.90 The aesthetic perception, he thinks, is mental perception or re-perception, for here the perceiver's awareness of the object is concerned more with the reformative power of mind than with the sense impressions merely. Although this perception is again said to be a kind of tasting (āsvādana), it is not exactly a gustatory perception for here the senses applied are eyes and ears. In an ordinary perception a perceiver could not be so much attentive as it is required in case of aesthetic perception. A man, for example, may think of other things as well while eating. But tasting is different from 'eating', from merely tasting a thing as sour or bitter ; it is more a mental work of analysis and synthesis than merely a sense object contact. Although, similarly, ears and eyes are media in aesthetic perception, the cognition proper is a function of the mind which must be perfectly alert and attentive. Aesthetic perception is a re-perception, because, mind is active in selecting only the relevant portions and eliminating others from the sense-impressions on the Buddhi and adding something from his own stock of memory leading finally to a reformation of primary sense images, so also the aesthetic perceiver is involved in elimination, selection and addition. Here rather he adds much more from the stock of his previous mental impressions of the subconscious state (samskāra or vāsanā) to what he selects from the sense images. But still this logical reperception is not a perfectly valid analogy to explain the nature of aesthetic perception, for while the former is aware of a distinction of 'self' and 'others', of the concept of reality and unreality, the latter free of all such obstacles is a 'generalized' perception (lokaprasiddha satyāsatya vilakṣaṇatvāt). Thus to

90. anuvyavasāyam sākṣātkārayimaṛśasya paścādbhāvinam IPVV III. 43; see Gnoli op. cit. P. 103.

explain the non-ordinary character ( alaukikatva ) of this aesthetic perception Abhinava does not equalize it with the logical re-perception, but remarks that it is a "special form" of re-perception ( anuvyavasāya "vīseṣa" or pratiṣāṭkāra "Kalpa" ) ; and drama is the non-ordinary object of such non-ordinary perception. "Drama", to quote Abhinava at some length, "is a matter of cognition by a special form of re-perception, namely, in the first place, in virtue of the different kinds of Abhinayas, the presumption of a direct perception of a particular actor ( Caitra, Maitra etc. ) and of his particular space and time cease to exist ; in the second place, since direct perception cannot take place without at least a minium of particularisation, recourse is had to such names as Rāma etc. The fact that Rāma etc. are the names of famous characters eliminates the possibility that one who declaims their venerable exploits might provoke ( in the spectators ) the obstacle of universimilitude. Owing to all this, this representation is like a form of direct perception. 2) The scene represented is accompanied by pleasure-giving vocal music etc. and for this reason is a receptacle of Camatkāra. In virtue of this it has a natural suitability to enter the heart. 3) The four forms of Abhinayas hide the true identity of the actor. 4) The prologue etc. give to the spectator the awareness that he has to do with an actor. In this connection, the actor is immersed in the colouring combination ( of Determinants etc. ) ; his real identity is hidden ; he possesses mental impressions arising from direct, inferential and other forms of ordinary perception which have occurred in the past ; he possesses mental impressions of the awareness of being an actor ; and he partakes in creating a state of identity ( of the spectators ) with the dramatic performance through their heart's consent. His appearance arouses a ( particular form of ) re-perception, which consists in the light and the beatitude proper to consciousness, which is coloured by the various mental states

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made up of pleasure and pain - and which is therefore varied. This re-perception has also other names—Tasting, sampling, camatkāra, Delibatio, Immersion, Enjoyment etc. Drama is nothing but the matter of this form of re-perception." 91

Abhinava's conception of drama is thus described in an indirect way, not so much from the side of the object itself as from the subjective experience of the object. That is obviously because he is an idealist. By analysing the aesthetic consciousness he shows that the elevation of personality from its day-to-day utilitarian limitations through self-forgetfulness to a broad sphere of generality, a non-ordinary imaginative identification with the entire set of the dramatic performance is not possible by the ordinary perception of merely an imitated artificial object. The object of such non-ordinary perception must, therefore, be of a non-ordinary (alaukika) character, inexplicable, but only suggestible by common logical cognitions. Bharata's words 'anukarana' and "anukṛti", therefore, should be interpreted not in their literal senses. No sane man would say that all the seven regions of the world can be reproduced on the stage, nor the arrangements like the application of music with its proper 'Dhrubā' and Tāla etc. throughout the performance of drama in the scenes of walking, sleeping, eating, laughing and dancing etc. are really found in similar situations of the common world.92 Drama is certainly different from a non-intelligent replica of the actions and events of the three worlds. It is a re-percept, a re-formation or transformation of events either visible or invisible which Bharata calls—a Re-telling (anukirtanam) and uses the word 'imitation' (anukṛti, and anukarana) as its synonym. Of course, there is no objection, Abhinava concludes, in calling drama an

91. Gnoli's translation except for his use of 'representation' for Abhinaya op. cit. pp. 106-8. 92. ABh. Vol. I. P. 38.

imitation as the actions etc. are here performed in accordance with their wordly counterparts in general i.e. a man of the dramatic world, may he be of extra-ordinary character like Rāma or of a common nature like cārudatta, behaves like a man in general, not like a woman or an animal. In other words, the actions of drama is non-ordinary but not unnatural, the criterian of their possibility and probability being those of the worlds of Nature in general. When the real nature of drama is thus established carefully distingui-shing it from mere replica or mirroric copy, he states further that there should be no confusion regarding the use of words -whether ‘imitation’ or ‘re-telling’ both mean the same. 93 In fact, Abhinava himself uses the word anukāra to indicate the nature of drama-“It is not fitting to imitate an event of actual life (in drama)…”(naca vartamānacaritānukāroyuktah.)94

Now question arises — is Saṅkuka justly the victim of Abhinava’s accusation ? Or in other words, does Saṅkuka define drama as an imitation in its literal sense—a partial copy of the original lacking its essential elements resulting at best in an illusion ? or an inferior and imperfect emulation of a superior being ? It is nowhere mentioned explicitly, nor even a slight implicit suggestion of such thought is present in what Abhinava himself presents as Saṅkuka’s statement. Emphatically rather, as we have seen, he has distinguished imitation which is neither doubt, nor error, nor a correct cognition ; in other words, its nature cannot be explained by reference to any logical cognition which is related to an utilitarian attitude or an ordinary sense of reality and unreality. It does thus possess a non-ordinary character. Saṅkuka would have used some other word for this peculiar object. But he is fully aware of his position as a commentator of Bharata, who himself uses the word ‘imitation’ to explain

93. “Yadituevam mukhyalaukikaKaraṇānusāritayā anukaranamityu-cyate tanna kasciddosaḥ ABh. Vol. I. P. 37. 94. ABh. Vol. I. P. 27.

the nature of drama, which as a commentator he has to clarify with justifications. But it does not mean that he personally thinks the word unfit for the purpose and just tries to lighten the problem with an indifferent mind. He is, it seems, in full consent with Bharata. The question before him is this : the subject-matter of drama is nothing else than what we visualize in day-to-day life — sorrow and happiness, loss and achievement, hopes and frustrations of persons either living actually in the past, known from history, or believed to be living known from legends. These things actually happening as contemporaneous to our existence either in case of common people or in case of extraordinary calibre, do never please ; nor were they pleasing to their contemporaries. But why do they please in drama ? Because they are not real but artificial, they are imitations — are “artificial but spectators think that they are real”95 not in the sense that the real Rāma is revived here by certain mystic power, not that the actors are really suffering or enjoying in the guise of some-body else. They are very much conscious that these are only actors playing in the roles of Rāma etc., made up and acting in perfect consonance with the authority of the scriptures which convince them to accept them as real characters. Their awareness of the artificiality of the presentation is suspended for the time being to the subconscious level of their mind. The real beings of both the actor and the character are denied. The spectator's experience here, as Saṅkuka says, is neither — “That happy man is really the actor”, nor “Rāma is really that man” but simply — “This is the happy Rama”, a self-evident cognition achieved by an immediate perception (anubhava) indicating simply the reality devoid of its practical utility. This is what Saṅkuka means by imitation of reality in drama.

95. Gnoli, op. cit. P. 34.

Abhinava's conception of 'generality' or 're-perception' differs from Śaṅkuka's notion of 'imitation' or artificial representation not so much in essence as in the methods of approach from two philosophers' different points of view and in using the words proper to their own schools. Śaṅkuka is a realist while Abhinava is an idealist, so the latter's refutation of the former, seems here an idealist's misunderstanding of a realist.

In Mahima Bhaṭṭa, a prominent opponent of the Dhvanivādins of Sanskrit poetics, later to Abhinavagupta, Śaṅkuka's imitation theory assumes a somewhat new shape. Against all the severe attacks of Abhinava, he holds that the world of art (here poetry) is artificial (kṛtrima).96 As the determinants etc. are here artificial or imitation of the real ones of the empirical world, their effect—the inferred permanent mental State must also be artificial or reflection (pratibimba Kalpāh) of the real permanent mental state (of Rāma etc.)97 for how can a real be inferred from the unreal? The Determinants etc. are not real because they do not serve any practical purpose which is the essential nature of the common worldly objects. Thus an aesthete enjoys drama in experiencing an artificial permanent Mental State.98 But it is quite strange that he is not conscious of its artificiality at the moment of enjoyment. Nor does he accept it as real as Śaṅkuka thinks. The cognition here is quite of a non-ordinary character — neither real, nor unreal, incomparable with any other logical cognitions of the common world. If a staunch logician insists upon the invalidity of such cognition and putting it in the class of error, asks- 'In what way can error exercise the moral improvement of the spectator? he is ready to answer that an error in certain instances of the common world does possess

96. Vyaktiviveka P. 79. 97. ibid. P. 79. 98. ibid P. 71.

the causal efficiency. An image, for example, made of wood or metals is not really a god. And yet the devotee worshipping it as his deity proceeds on the path of spirituality.99

99. See K. C. Pandey Comp Aesth. Vol. I. P. 338.

ANALOGUE

Imitation a fertile principle in the life of man — importance of imitative impulse in learning and other social behaviour — Aristotle and the modern psychologists — geographical settings influencing the cosmic ideas of two countries in two different ways — ultimately regulating the concept of imitation in both cosmology and aesthetics — the Greek emphasis upon body and the Indian upon spirit conditioning differently the idea of imitation in art — Platonic and Hippocratic confusion of art and reality absent in India — the simile of mirror-reflection in Plato and the Indians — Aristotle's affinity to the Indian theorists — music and dance as imitation — the symbolic depth of the Indian idea of imitation in music absent in the Greek thought — Poetry as imitation — Platonic and Simonidian ideas of poetic imitation absent in India — Aristotle's affinity to the Indian thinkers — Aristotle's theory of probability and the Indian principle of propriety — drama as imitation — imitation versus illusion — Gorgias, Śaṅkuka and the Vedānta — identification and super-imposition as ways of imitation — Plato, Dhanañjaya, Viśvanātha and the Sāṅkhya — Plato, Bhaṭṭanāyaka and Abhinava — imitative character of drama in Aristotle, Bharata, Lollaṭa and Śaṅkuka — re-perception or re-creation of Abhinava and imitation of Aristotle and Śaṅkuka — re-perception in a way the same as imitation — Abhinava and the Greeks — contribution of Abhinava to the aesthetic thought of the world.

What Aristotle said in the 4th century B.C. is still accepted by the most progressive and experimental psychologists of the present age — that man learns by imitation.1 Imitation is a fertile principle in human life and has something to do with both reason and art;2 it explains many social events, and forms the basis of some behavioural pattern and development and makes possible the transmission of human culture. Some have even ventured to say that society is imitation,3 since without imitation no human society can exist and no progress is possible. Fundamentally it gives rise to the occurrence of man's matching responses — "a process by which matched or similar acts are evoked in two people", "a process that arises under the social conditions which award it".4 With greater clarity, psychologists define it as a process of learning: "Observational learning is generally labelled imitation in experimental psychology and identification in theories of personality. Both concepts, however, encompass the same behavioural phenomenon namely the tendency of a person to reproduce the actions, attitudes or emotional responses exhibited by real life or symbolized models ... It is for the interest of clarity, precision and parsimony ... the single term imitation is adopted to refer to the occurrence of matching responses."5 We reproduce those things which are most interesting in themselves and, therefore, attract us;

1. See the article Early Socialization : Learning and Identification by Paul Mussen in "New Directions in Psychology", III, Ed. George Mandler, New York, 1967. 2. George Santayana, Reason in Art P. 144. 3. Trade quoted by Paul Mussen, op. cit. P. 78. 4. Miller and Dollard quoted by Paul Mussen op. cit. P. 78. 5. Ibid.

and secondly, we reproduce those the imitation of which brings us social reward. We reproduce sometimes the things and actions for our better understanding of their occurrences and by representing what we do not bodily become, we preserve and enlarge our own beings.6 Man's imitative instinct is thus not without a purpose ; it aims either at some emotional satisfaction or at the performance of a practical need.

With the Greeks and Indians, as with all other people of the world, this imitative impulse was quite natural, and this is obvious in their socio-cultural activities, especially in diverse rituals and religious rites,7 and although it is still controversial how far art originated from the imitative impulse of man, our investigation shows that the ancient thinkers of both the countries believed in the imitative character of art creations, with a wide variation, of course, in their interpretation of the term 'imitation' by different men and schools. This variation is due mainly to dissimilar temperaments of the two peoples. With the Greeks felt a close affinity between the cosmic forces and human beings so much so that they tried to understand Nature and divine spirits in terms of human beings. To them man, man's beauty and intellect were everything, and the divine forces were nothing but the apotheosis of human

6. George Santayana, op. cit. P. 148 7. Some of the imitative features of the Hindu rituals may be marked in the rites of "Seven Steps" and "Touching the Heart" etc. of the Hindu marriage. See R B. Pandey, 'Hindu Saṃskāras', pp. 219-20. It may be also marked in the deceptive motive of the rituals concerning a dying man, when a person is slowly dying, the image of that dying man is burnt, for it is hoped that by doing this 'death' may be made to leave the dying man, he haunts, thinking that the man in question is already dead and burnt. ibid P. 26.

beauty, strength and intellect. Hence in their cosmology and theology a concrete imitative relation between the macrocosm and microcosm was thought plausible. But the vision of the Indian was bounded by the infinite rather than the finite8 — the vast expanse of the universe before him could not allow him to form a humanized cosmos and a theos no more than an immortalized mortal. No physical affinities were possible between so powerful and transcendent cosmic bodies and human beings with their pitiable limitations. A resemblance between the created and the creator must, of course, be admitted for the reason that the like begets like ; but that resemblance in this case is spiritual rather than physical. How can the unlimited and the limited be similar in physique ? Thus while the Greek procedure is from body to body, the Indian is from spirit to body. As spirit is the ultimate reality, we are all alike in spirit, but differ in bodies as the spirit in its manifold manifestation has to assume different forms appropriate for the exercise of different functions. Thus the Indians preferred a spiritual resemblance to a physical one between the macrocosm and microcosm.

The reliance upon the physique, its strength and beauty made the Greek art naturalistic and its emphasis upon the accurate formal likeness is responsible for the popular view of art as an imitation or a copy. In spite of the selective method of the artists and wise and sympathetic views of the philosophers like Pythagoras and Empedocles, this popular view remained unchanged till after Plato. Technazō the most primary root used for art creation suggested contrivance and skill of the artistic activity ; Empedocles admitted the intelligence of the artists in reproducing a thing through a new medium, and serving

8. John Marshall, The Cambridge History of India Ed. E. J. Rapson Vol. 1 P. 649.

thus a new purpose which the original is unable to do. Hephaistos' construction of Pandora and Zeuxis' of Helen approved of the originality and genius of the artist ; yet to the common mass the artists were no more than imitators or copy-makers ; and theoretically the word imitation was not given its proper meaning with clarity and precision. Even Socrates who could realize the ideal value of the business of imitation took only a pragmatic attitude to it ; Hippocrates found a basis for comparing statues with dead bodies and Plato judged imitation more as a metaphysician than as an aesthete and hesitated to attribute to imitation any intrinsic value. In India the Greek plastic activity finds its parallel in Viśvakarman's construction of Tilottamā, but not without certain difference. For the Greek artist there was not much difficulty in rendering the invisible and the superb divine beings to plastic forms. Parrhasius could imitate the invisible mental states by imitating the visible body as they are easily inferable from their physical expressions ; and by making the statues of Zeus and Athene grand and colossal Pheidias could satisfactorily render the super-human divinities. But for the Indian artists the problem of the imitation of the invisible psychic activities and superb divine spirits was not so easily solvable. They had to grasp the spirit through a careful observation of the body and had to render the spirit itself directly. The inability of the court-artists of Vimbisāra in painting the portrait of the Buddha even in his presence would appear quite strange and perhaps ridiculously to the Greek artists as this very temperament is foreign to them. As only the physical appearance of the model was not enough for an artistic image, the Indian interpretation of the term imitation was to be much more than a copy of the physique. Although the roots like śil and kal possess certain connotative similarities with the root technazō, their derivatives differ in many respects. Śilpa the earliest word used for arts

( later synonymous with Kalā ) denoted a likeness or Pratirūpa wrought with skill and contrivance of the artist ; but the likeness did not refer only to a replica ; it indicated self-expression , and even when it referred strictly to a physical likeness the imitation did not start from the physique , but directly from the spirit . Body was important for them in so far as it was the medium through which the spirit expressed itself . The Greeks imitated the spirit in so far as it is expressed in the body . Beyond the body for the spirit in itself their artistic genius needed no journey . But the Indians sought the spirit which they imitated through a body appropriate for its perfect manifestation . This is ideal imitation . While Zeuxis tried to idealize his Helen by arranging only the different physical parts most attractive in different women , Duṣyanta tried to embody the very spirit of Śakuntalā which could make the picture appear as if it was speaking ; and while in the Canon of Polycleitus , physical proportions were more emphasized in the artistic imitation , the Indians gave no less emphasis upon the application of bhāva and lāvaṇya . Proportionate physical construction brings only beauty , but not grace , and a picture without the grace of the original is but an imperfect imitation . A distinction between beauty and grace is foreign to the Greek mind . The Platonic and Aristotelian notions of formal beauty is little more than this beauty of proportion . The spiritual depth of the Indian conception of lāvaṇya seems to be absent in the Greek thought . It is for this serious contemplative activity of the Indian artists that they have never been looked down upon as mere copy-makers . In practice , the Hellenistic ideal awoke no response in the Indian mind ; and in theory there is no Hippocratic or Platonic contempt for artistic imitation . An art image is not equal to a spiritless dead body ; to an Indian mind it is rather a supernatural form embedded with everlasting

spirit. The Buddhist and the Vedantic philosophers, like Plato, did, of course, regard an art-imitation as twice removed from the absolute reality, but by that they never confused the metaphysical and the aesthetic standards of reality, and never stated that the enjoyment of art hampering metaphysical knowledge stands as a bar to perfect wisdom. They suggested on the contrary that aesthetic knowledge is in a way a step towards the knowledge of metaphysical reality ; and when Manu, one of the senior Law-givers, forbade the young Brahmacharins to enjoy music and dance,9 it was not on the ground that the imitative or illusory character of the arts would hide the knowledge of reality from them, but to keep them apart from all kinds of emotional disturbances ; for together with art, sumptuous food, fashionable dresses, idle talks, vulgar thoughts and uses of all sorts of luxurious goods were also forbidden.

The platonic conflict of art and reality is absent in the Vedantic views because there is a fundamental difference between the basic philosophy of Plato and that of the Vedanta. Both of them believe in the illusory, unsubstantial character of the world. But there is no gradation of reality in Plato's metaphysics. For Plato anything is either real or unreal. Thus the whole world—the world of matter with the impressions of Forms — is unreal and the world of the imitative arts is still more so. Plato's artistic sensitivity had to suffer anaesthesia before this metaphysics. Art is not a slavish copy of an object, but only analogous to it in so far as it represents its qualitative and quantitative proportions only ; it is also beautiful — formally attractive — this quality of attractiveness being much more than a mere similitude. But all this is stupefied by the stern warning of his dialectics that whatever an object of art may be it is unreal — it is merely a second-hand copy of the Idea

9. Manusamhitā Ed. S. K. Vidyābhūṣaṇa (Cal.) III. 178

— a copy of a particular — valueless for a philosopher who achieves perfect wisdom by knowing the Forms. Beauty of art is far inferior to the beauty of Form or reality and like- wise aesthetic enjoyment is far inferior to wisdom. But the gradation of reality in the Vedantic system avoids such Platonic conflict by denying a mutual interference of the grades of reality. It would argue as follows : art is unreal, a copy of Nature, an illusion and twice removed from the absolute reality ; but this does not mean that it has no reality at all. If Brahman is real in the absolute sphere, the worlds of Nature and art are so in the pragmatic and illusory spheres respectively. Each one is uncontradicted in its own sphere. The falsity of an illusion is known only when one is pragmatically conscious and that of the pragmatic world is known when one is conscious of the Absolute. But each sphere has its own value. The two lower spheres do not hamper the knowledge of the absolute reality, rather they serve as two important factors in the realization of the supreme one. The relation of the pragmatic and the illusory realities exemplifies the relation of the abso- lute and the pragmatic realities. If art is a kind of illusion ( not illusion proper ) the world is also a work of art and its creator, a supreme artist ; and if the perfect enjoyment of art is not possible without a perfect knowledge of the world it imitates, the perfect Aesthete can only be the Supreme Being having perfect knowledge. There is, thus, no qualita- tive difference between a philosopher and an imitative artist. The Vedantic Brahman is the supreme wisdom, the supreme artist and the supreme aesthete. This is an idea quite foreign to the Platonic idealism. In its dualistic system the gap between Form and matter, between reality and imitation can never be bridged. Out of a play the Vedantic Brahman diversifies itself in order to enjoy itself in its varieties. It is all and everywhere, but in different forms. If the prag- matic world is neither the same as nor different from the

absolute reality, the relation between the illusory and pragmatic realities is also the same. The ideal Beauty ( of Brahman ), then, necessarily involves its manifold manifestation, for beauty is meaningless without manifestation, and the more diversified it is the more attractive it becomes. Hence the beauty of an artistic imitation is not less pure and powerful than its pragmatic counterpart, as Plato thought ; it rather supersedes that, for the play of Brahman is all the more manifest here through the imaginative genius of the artist. The Platonic God also has created this world of phenomena out of a play. But this play is of two different kinds in the two philosophical systems and regulates the natures of imitative arts accordingly. The Platonic 'play' is more or less a whim, for Plato is uncertain about the purpose of this play of creation and looks upon the created beings as puppets in the hands of the creator-player. They have been, of course, imparted with certain free will ; but in creation that does not enable them to discover something new ; they can only imitate what is already created. In such a cosmology, then human creation must be inferior to the divine one in respect of beauty, power and all other aspects. But the play of Brahman in the Vedanta cosmology meant for self-manifestation and for the enjoyment of self-bliss therein. Thus the progress of creation - its manifold diversification is, in fact, the extension of the sublime glory of Brahman Himself. Hence in such a play there is no objection to the development of human creation over Nature (the first off-spring of the Reality), no question of inferiority of the human imitative arts to the divine art i.e. Nature.

The simile of mirror-reflection is common to Plato and Indian aesthetics ; it is used to explain the nature of art - its relation with the object it imitates. But while Plato, following his metaphysics, condemned the unreality

of art by using this simile, the Indians used the simile only to appreciate the supreme success of the artist. The mirror reflection is for them a standard of artistic similitude. The object of art is not to represent only the appearance of particular, but the whole of a thing - its spirit and body, its universal as well as particular characteristics, as vividly as a mirror reflects a thing. Art is a kind of illusion - a conscious illusion - which does not pretend to stand for the reality. Instead of deluding its observer it rather enables him to understand the reality in a better way. In this respect only Aristotle, to a great extent, is comparable to the Indians. Art is not, for him, a mere copy of Nature, it may even supercede her. As in Aristotle's metaphysics form and matter, universal and particular have no separate existence, so in his aesthetics art imitates both the characteristics of a thing. In comparison with history art is more philosophic or universal, so that Aristotle prefers the probable to the actual. But while the Greek practice makes Aristotle divide arts as realistic and idealistic, the Indians in their philosophy and practice merge the two. They make the real the ideal.

The Greek and the Indians both agree that dance is more imitative and so more effective than the visual arts. But the concept of imitation in the Indian theories of dance and music is quite extensive and finds very little parallel in Greek aesthetics. That is because the practice of these arts varied to a considerable extent in these two cultures, in the imitation of dance, however, parallel is a little more than in the imitation of music. Although the Greek Hyperchēma and Emmelcia find better affinities than Orchēsis with the Nṛtya for their interpretative gestures or schēma, especially of hands, it is very doubtful, owing to lack of authentic details, how far these imitative gestures had the symbolic depth of the gestures of Indian dance. It seems from

Lucian's records that the Greeks had not developed so exhaustive a science of gestures with subtle and suggestive symbolic significance as had the Indians. Their gesticulative dances had very little symbolic quality of the Indian Nṛtya. In Skepias, for example, the dancers twist their necks imitating the manner of birds. In this bird-dance nothing beyond the activities of the birds is implied. But the peacock-gesture of hand in the Indian dance is not meant only to imitate the activities of that bird, but to indicate things and actions which have some symbolic similitude with the geometrical pattern of that bird. Aristotle and the Indian philosophers agree that music is the basis of arts, because rhythm is the best means of imitating the movements or states of mind which are rhythmic in nature. As rhythm is imitated through rhythm music is the best of all arts in affecting the soul most perfectly. The primary Greek practice of music that used to sing stories with tones proper to the characters — men and women in their various moods — finds no parallel in India where music is an imitation in two ways — first, through Ahata Nāda or struck sound, the very medium of music being an imitation in so far as it is the microcosmic form of Anāhata Nāda or ethereal sound ; and secondly, through this sound it imitates, as its subject-matter, the inner rhythms of human beings that rise as emotional reactions to the events of the external world, by using symmetry and harmony. Plato's idea of music as an imitation of human character through words, modes and rhythm is a little more than a theorisation of the traditional Greek practice. Here language must be appropriate to the characters who use them, and the modes and rhythm must suit the words. This is also without an Indian parallel, as in Indian music, it is rhythm which is most emphasized. Pure music has to use only rhythmic sound and no language. Greek modes have certain affinities with the Indian śrutis, but the absence of its minute divisions delimits its scope

and debars it from bringing any universal appeal whereas

the exhaustive śrutis in Indian music tend to express ( or imitate ) variety of emotional qualities apprehended in

human beings irrespective of gender, race and culture. In a way Indian philosophy of music possesses some affinities with

the Pythagorean idea that the human music imitates the divine music in so far as harmony and measure are the

essential principles of both cosmos and music. Thus cosmos itself is a musical composition, and the possibility of

composition and appreciation of human music lies in the human soul - a microcosmic form ( or imitation ) of the

cosmos. But concerning the actual practice, the Pythagoreans are silent, and the Indian thought in that regard finds a

parallel in Aristotle who emphasizes the role of rhythm in music. Without the accompaniment of language, he states,

rhythm and melody can well imitate the qualities of character such as anger, gentleness, courage etc. But it seems

the composition of ragas, the final form of Indian music with its intricate harmony of different tunes ( svaras ), highly

effective in embodying sentiment ( rasas ) is foreign to the Greek mind. Thus Indian philosophy of music denotes

something more than a combination of the Pythagorean and Aristotelian.

Poetry in India has not been thought of as an imitation in the Platonic sense - any thing expressed in language

whether a speech or a word is imitation, and so poets, historians, and even philosophers are imitators. But poetry is

inferior as imitation to both philosophy and history, for while philosophy records the form, poetry records the sensible

world, and while history is a record of the actual facts and events, poetry very often gives false information. The

Indians do not agree with Simonides that poetry is picture that speaks i.e., the difference between a visual artist and

a poet is only a difference of the means - the poet imitates

through words and a sculptor through stone or a painter through colour. The Indian critics like Abhinavagupta, on the contrary, distinguish the orders of verbal and visual arts. Painting may be an imitation ( or a copy ) by means of material things like colour etc., it imitates material things like the body of a cow etc. ; but poetry concerns itself with mental states of human being which are spiritual by nature ; and so they cannot be copied like material things.

In India poetry, like music, has now here been defined as an imitation. But as in some poet the imitative quality of music is implied, so also is true in case of poetry. The transformation of Nature, as the Indians think of poetry, into a ‘supernatural’ world according to the principles of propriety is very much like what Aristotle means by imitation of Nature according to the principle of probability. The sole aim of the Indian principle of propriety is to make the poetic narration convincing even though it may be historically or actually false, it must not be improbable, that is, it must not isolate the law of Nature. In other words, the ‘supernatural’ world of poetry must not be unnatural. It must not be such that the reader may doubt its possibility. Aristotle has equally understood the importance of this convincing power of poetry. Probability is a general principle that reveals the causal relation. Poetry thus deals more with the universal than with the particulars and thus in refusing the Platonic idea, he takes a stand that would agree with those of Ānandavardhana and Abhinava. All the three assert that poetry is more philosophic than history and prefer impossible probability to improbable possibility. In finding out these universals or probables Aristotle, however, applies only the inductive method while the method adopted by the Indians is more intuitive than inductive ; and this is, as we have seen, due to the two different conception of Nature.

Although in preserving the principles of propriety poetry avoids the particulars of history which have no

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necessary causal relation. History and other testimonial records, nevertheless help very often providing the probables.

The events that have happened are possible, otherwise they would not have happened. So the poets can be more successful in preserving the propriety of their plots and characters by choosing the stories from the chronicles and historical records rather than by devising something very new. Re-arrangement, of course, is allowed in this case to universalize the particulars, an act which requires the originality of poetic genius. But in such re-arrangement, Aristotle, Ānandavardhana and Abhinava agree that poets should not change the traditional opinion.10 Sometimes certain legendary or historical events may appear unbelievable such as Sātavāhana's ocean-crossing heroism and Oedipus' marriage with his mother, but they are convincing as they have been accepted by the common belief of generations. Hence a poet's attempt to change these popular beliefs into reasonable facts will end in nothing but "unconvincing possibilites.11

This consistency or propriety is the most fundamental principle of poetry which only a poet of genius can properly realize. Exhaustive illustrations of it with ample clarifications have been given by Kṣemendra some of which Aristotle also has mentioned. Ksemendra is well aware of the basic nature of the notion of propriety and like Ananda-Vardhana and Abhinava, has left its detailed working out to the poets themselves. Errors concerning this principle may be of two types - primary and secondary. The primary impropriety is the inconsistency of plot and character - a failure in proper expression, for example "if the poet meant to describe the thing correctly, but failed

10. For Arist. see Poet XXV. 1460b-1461a 11. Arist. writes "convincing impossibility is preferable to unconvincing possibility Poet XXV. 1461b (Trans Bywater)

through lack of power of expression"12 — if, for example, a hero is depicted as a coward and eunuch begets children. To this Ānandavardhana and Abhinava agree fully. This is, they say, due to the lack of genius or poetic power (śakti). The second one is due to the poet's want of knowledge ( a-vyutpatti ) in all other branches, say in geography, zoology, and physics etc. This is a technical error which is negligible. If the convincing capacity of the poet (his genius) is present in the construction of plot and character leading thus towards an effective nourishment of rasa, these technical errors will simply be overlooked.

Both the Greeks and the Indians agree that drama is visible poetry ; but it is more imitative than poetry as the imitation of states ( or actions and situations— avasthā ) of Nature is more perfect here through the visible representation of the actors etc. in a more compact way. Considered generally, it appears that Gorgias, Plato, Aristotle among the Greeks and Bharata, Dhananjaya, Dhanika, Lollaṭa, Śaṅkuka, Viśvanātha, the Sāṅkhya and the monistic Vedānta systems in India give the same views. But a careful analysis of these views reveals also certain important differences regarding the nature of imitation. The illusionistic views of Gorgias, Śaṅkuka and the Vedantins appear more or less to be the same. But neither Śaṅkuka nor the Vedantins agree with Gorgias that drama is a deception, and the audience enjoy it in being deceived. The Vedantins argue that it is a kind of illusion where the observer does not mistake it for the reality, rather he is conscious of the distinction between the reality and its imitation. Similarly Śaṅkuka has emphatically marked its difference from the deceiving character of an illusion. The idea of super imposition ( āropa ) or identification ( tādāṭmya ) seems to be

12. Arist. Poet XXV. 1460b (Trans. Bywater); Dhvanyāloka. III. 6 prose.

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common in Plato, Dhananjaya, Visvanatha and the Sankhya system - that the personality of the dramatic characters is superimposed upon the actors; or the actors identify themselves with the dramatic characters in both physique and psyche. But while Plato thinks that this identification influences the character of the actors, the Indians do not think so. In comparing the individual (purusa) with an actor the Sankhya system emphatically mentions the indifferent nature of this identification. Aesthetic activity necessarily involves an indifferent attitude as it lacks a pragmatic interest. A morally bankrupt man seldom becomes a saint by acting in the role of Valmiki or Kanva, nor does a poor man become a millionaire by imitating a rich man on the stage throughout his life. Thus the Platonic confusion of the practical and aesthetic consciousness seems to be absent in the Indian theories. An identification of the spectator with the dramatic character is similarly mentioned by both Plato and the Indian critics especially by Abhinava, but it is not without a difference. Plato thinks that a spectator of a particular nature identifies himself with the dramatic character of his own nature only and thus concludes that dramatic performance affects the character of the spectator in the real life. According to his argument a man of saintly nature cannot enjoy the character of a robber nor, it is implied, can an ordinary man enjoy an extraordinary character as there is almost no affinity between them. A similar type of identification seems to have been in the mind of Bhattanayaka when he argues against Abhinava's idea of identification which, he holds, is the basis of aesthetic enjoyment. Identification, Bhattanayaka says, is possible between two persons of similar nature only; how can a particular man, then identify himself with all kinds of characters?13 Thus he does not

13. Gnoli op. cit. P 71. see Note 3 also.

approve of this psychological factor as the basis of aesthetic experience. But Abhinava argues that the aesthetic identification is not of this sort. Here a particular man does not identify himself with a particular character. Neither the characters nor the actors nor the spectators are within their practical spatio-temporal limitations. By the Śaiva theory of ābhāsa he proves that losing their causal efficiency they are all in a generalized state (sādhāraṇya) and thus there is no difficulty in the identification of the generalities, and against Plato he would argue that the fear of the influence of a play upon the spectators in the practical field of life is 'rootless, because all of them are in a generalized state. Had it not been so, aesthetic enjoyment would be impossible. Identification of a particular man with a particular character—an interfusion of the aesthetic and practical consciousness, so to say, will cause simply suffering not enjoyment. Again according to Abhinava, neither a saint is a saint nor a robber a robber in the auditorium. All of them are only spectators for the time being, without any other distinction. So there is no question of enjoying a particular character ; one enjoys the whole play.

Of the Greeks, Aristotle is the nearest to the Indian theorists on drama. In imitating Nature — the conducts, behaviours and actions of its people of either good or bad moral qualities — both Bharata and Aristotle would agree that drama does not aim at representing any particular person or race but at giving a probable or general picture thereof following the law of necessity or causation. Śaṅkuka among all the commentators of Bharata is a close counterpart of Aristotle in this regard. Lollaṭa of course speaks of drama as an imitation, but his idea that dramatic or artistic beauty exists primarily in the original models or historical persons, and only secondarily in the dramatic representation will be refuted by Aristotle in the same way as Śaṅkuka did ;

he would argue, if that is so, why the objects that arouse detestation in the real world please when imitated in art ? Like Śaṅkuka Aristotle thinks that the dramatic and visual arts are essentially on the same level and both would agree that drama is equal to painting in imitating i.e., in giving an appearance of reality — an entity different from perceptual illusion or doubt etc. ; differing only in the means and manners of imitation. Dramatic representation is artificial but for its convincing power the spectators take it as real. But it is neither a malobservation nor an illusion proper, —rather a kind of illusion — a conscious illusion. It is neither true nor false, but as much true as false. It is false because it lacks the causal efficiency of its natural counterparts and because the spectators are conscious of its unreality ; and it is true because the skilful composition and the performance make it appear as true. In other words, as Aristotle suggests, its truth is imaginative. Śaṅkuka thus would agree with Aristotle's idea of catharsis in so far as he states that in its artificial representation the events, actions and emotions lose their causal efficiency. They are purged of their impurities i.e., harmful effects and by arousing a sort of detached ( in Aristotle's words — 'unaffected') interest fill the hearts of the appreciators with wholesome pleasure. Although Abhinava's conception of generality is foreign to the realism of Aristotle there is no virtual distinction between Aristotles imaginative reality and Abhinava's idea of the dramatic characters and events etc. as generic forms or isolated ābhāsas since both the ideas indicate a loss of their real causal efficiency. Abhinava bridged up the gap between 'imitation' and 'creation'— two very contrary creeds in the history of aesthetic thought. His theory of re-perception may be variously named as creation, re-creation, re-formation or transformation. Art is a re-perception or transformation of Nature and the artist is

the creator of his own world. In his 'super-natural' world the natural objects lose their impurities, and fill our hearts with joy and only joy. How can such a world be called an imitation - a copy ? It is a new world, a new creation. But still one may call it an imitation, in a specific sense of course. The artist creates his 'super-natural' world not by avoiding Nature, but by following its way ; in other words, through Nature he passes to the 'super-natural' ; and the 'super-natural' means Nature in its superb form ; and one cannot raise it to this stage by an unnatural means. It is in this sense that the supernatural world of art follows or imitates Nature. Abhinava amply clarifies his argument that if somebody calls art an 'imitation' for its working in accordance with the events and occurrences of Nature in general14 ( Mukhyalaukika Karanānusāritayā ) there is no harm. Aristotle and Saṅkuka, of course, used 'imitation' in this sense ; but as theorists they are imitationists and would not admit of any idea of Abhinava's re-perception. Abhinava, on the contrary, is ready to accept the word 'imitation' in the aforesaid sense to understand the nature of art, which, he thinks, is not different from his theory of re-perception. But as imitation is very often associated with its common notion of making a copy, he prefers 're-perception' to avoid such confusion. It is obvious that as a theorist he has no prejudice for any traditional views or personal taste. He concludes his argument very wisely saying that when the nature of a thing is truly realized, it does not matter what name we give to it.15 Thus imitation and re-perception (or creation) are to be regarded as simply two names of the same process. Such a conclusion we could not expect from the Greeks and it was Abhinava who was the pioneer in the history of aesthetics in bringing the "ancient quarrel" of philosophy and art, that is, of reality and illusion, of creation and imitation to a stop.

14. ABh Vol. I, P. 37 15. Sthite vastuno bhede śabdapravṛittera- vivādāspadatvāt, ABh Vol. I. P. 37.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

(WITH ABBREVIATIONS BRACKETED)

A. Greek and Latin Works and Authors

1. Aeschylus :— Prometheus Bound, Seven against Thebes, Agamemnon, Loeb Classical Library Edn.

2. Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers (Anc. PS Phil.) Ed. Kathleen Freeman, Oxford, 1948.

3. Apollodorus :— Loeb Cl. Lib.

4. Aristotle (Arist.) :— Metaphysics (Metaph.), Physics, Poetics (Poet.), Rhetorics (Rheto. or Rhet.), De generatione et corruptione, De partibus Animalium (De part. Anim.), De Anima (De Anim.), De Mundo, Ethica Nichomachia (Ethics Nich) Politics, Problemata (Prob.), Analytica Prioria (Anal. Prioria), De Interpretation (De Interp.) Analytica Posterioria (Anal. Post.)

5. Arnobius of Sicca :— The Case against the Pagans, Ed. E. Macracken, London, 1949

6. Athenaios :— Loeb Cl. Lib.

7. Diodorus Siculus :— Loeb. Cl. Lib.

8. Diogenes Laertius (Diog. Laert.) :— Loeb. Cl. Lib.

9. Euripides :— Helena.

10. Hippocrates (Hipp.) :— Regimen (Regim.) Loeb. Cl. Lib.

11. Herodotus :— Loeb. Cl. Lib.

12. Hesiod :— Theogone, The Shield of Heracles, Loeb. Cl. Lib.

13. Homer :— Iliad, The Homeric Hymns, Odyssey, Loeb. Cl. Lib.

14. Lucian :- Loeb. Cl. Lib.

15. Pindar :- Loeb Cl. Lib.

16. Plato (Pl.) :- Critias, Parmenides, Sophist, Cratylus, Statesman, Laws, Timaeus, The Seventh Letter, Theaetetus, Protagoras, Philebus, Republic, Phaedrus, Hippias Major, Gorgias.

17. Pliny :- Loeb Cl. Lib.

18. Plutarch :- Loeb- Cl. Lib.

19. Pollux :- Onomastikon, Lipsiae, 1900

20. Sophocles :- Antigone

21. Strabo :-Loeb. Cl. Lib.

22. The Pre-Socratic Philosophers :- Ed. Karl and Raven, Camb.

23. Thucydides :- The Peloponnesian War, Loeb. Cl. Lib.

24. Xenophon :- Memorabilia, Symposium, Oeconomicus, Loeb. Cl. Lib.

For the translations of Plato and Aristotle, Great Books of the Western World Series Ed. R.N. Hutchins, Encyclopaedia Britanica Inc. edn, Chicago, London, Toronto, 1952, is followed and for the originals the L.C.L. edn. is followed unless mentioned otherwise.

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48. Mayamatam, Trivendram, 1919

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50. Nādavindūpaniṣad, ed. V. N. Mukhopadhyāya, Cal. 1911.

51. Nāradapañcarātram, Calcutta, 1875.

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54. Pārśvadeva :— Saṅgīta Samaya sāra, Trivendram, 1925.

55. Praśastapādabhāṣyam (PPB), Ed. D. Jha, Benaras, 1963.

56. Praśnopaniṣad, Gita Press edn.

57. Ṛgveda Saṁhitā (RV), Maxmuller edn. London, 1872.

58. Rājaśekhāra :—Kāvyamīmāṁsā (KM), Poona,1934

59. Rāmāyaṇam, Gita Press edn.

60. Saṅgītadarpanam, ed. S.N. Tagore, Calcutta, 1887.

61. Sarvadarśanasamgraha, Chaukhamba edn.

62. Ṣatapatha Brāhmaṇam (SB), Chaukhamba edn.

63. Ṣatcakra, Ed. S. P. Sarma, Calcutta, 357 (Bangali)

64. Sāmaveda Saṁhitā, (SV) Meerut.

65. Sāṅkhyakārikā ( witk Tattvakaumudī) Ed. G. N. Jha, Bombay, 1896

66. Śārṅgadeva :—Saṅgītaratnākara (SRK), Adyar. 1944-51

67. Siddhānta Kaumudī, Ed. S. C. Basu, Allahabad, 1906.

68. Śringabhupāla :- Rasārṇavasudhākara, Trivendram,1916.

69. Skandapurāṇam, Calcutta, 1869.

70. Somadeva–Kathāsaritsāgara, Bombay, 1930.

71. Someśvaradeva :- Abhilaṣitārthacintāmaṇi ( ACM )

Mysore, 1926.

72. Śrīkumāra :– Śilparatnam (SR), Trivendrum, 1922.

73. Śubhañkara :- Sañgītadāmodara, Calcutta, 1960.

74. Śudraka :- Mṛcchakaṭikam, Bombay, 1937.

75. Śuklayajurvedīya Mādhyandinī Saṃhitā (SYMS)

76. Śukranītisāra (SNS), Calcutta, 1882.

77. Suśruta Saṃhitā, Benaras, 1967.

78. Taittirīyopaniṣad, Gita Press edn.

79. Tantrasāra (of Kṛṣṇānanda), Calcutta, 1878.

80. Vaikhānasāgama, Trivendrum ,1935.

81. Vasubandhu :- Abhidharmakośa, Benaras, 1931.

82. Vāgbhaṭa Saṃhitā ( AHS ), ed. H. K. Sena Mallika,

Calcutta, 1875.

83. Vāmana :- Kāvyālaṅkāra sūtravṛtti(KSV),Bombay,1953.

84. Vātsyāyana :- Kāmasūtra (KS), Benaras, 1929.

85. — :- Nyāyabhāṣya, Darbhanga, 1967.

86. Vāyupuraṇam, Bombay, 1933.

87. Vidyāraṇyamuni :- Pañcadaśī, Bombay, 1949.

88. Viṣṇudharmottara Purāṇam (VDP), Nirṇaya Sāgar

Press edn.

89. Viṣṇu Purāṇam, Calcutta, 1868.

90. Viśvanātha Kavirāja :- Sāhityadarpaṇaḥ (SD)

Benaras, 1957.

91. Viśvanātha :- Bhāṣāpaṅceheḍa, Calcutta.

92. Yāska :- Nirukta, Poona, 1921-26.

C. English Works

1. Acharya, P. K. :- Dictionary of Hindu Architecture,

London, 1927.

2. Banerjea, J. N. :- The Development of Hindu Iconography, Calcutta,1941.

3. Bhattacharya, T. P. :- The Canons of Indian Arts, Calcutta, 1963.

4 Bosanquet, B. :- A companion to Plato's Republic, London, 1925.

5. Bowra, C. M. :-The Greek Experience, New York, 1963.

6. Burnet :-Early Greek Philosophy (EGP), London, 1914.

7. :- Greek Philosophy (GP), London, 1914.

8. Butcher, S. H. :- Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, New York, 1951.

9. Carritt, E.F. :-The Theory of Beauty, London, 1931.

10. Chatterjee, J. C. :-Kashmir Saivism, Srinagar, 1914.

11. Chaudhuri, P. J. :-Studies in Aesthetics, Calcutta, 1964.

12. Collingwood, R.G. :-The Principles of Art, Oxford,1960.

13. Coomarsawmy, A. K. :-Transformation of Nature in Art, Cambridge, 1934.

14. :-History of Indian and Indonesian Art, London,1927.

15. Elements of Buddhist Iconography, Cambridge, 1935.

16. Cornford, F.M. :-Plato's Cosmology -London, 1962.

17. :-The Republic of Plato, London. 1941.

18. Crane, R.S. :-(Edited) Critics and Criticism, Chicago,

19. Croce, B. :-Aesthetics, London, 1253.

20. Dasgupta, S. N. :-Fundamentals of Indian Art (FIA) Bharatiya Bidya Bhavan, 1954.

21. :-History of Indian Philosophy, 5 Vols. Cambridge, 1922-49.

22. Dutta, D.N. :-The Six Ways of Knowing, London, 1932.

23. Else, G. F. :-Aristotle's Poetics : The Argument, Cambridge, Mass, 1957.

24. Farnell, L. R. :- Outline History of Greek Religion, London, 1921.

25. Frazer, J.G. :-The Golden Bough, London, 1900.

26. Gardner, E.R. :–Encyclopaedia of Ethics and Religion, Edinburgh, 1925.

27. Gilbert and Kuhn :–A History of Aesthetics ( A Hist. Aesth. ), Bloomington, 1953.

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29. Gomme, A. W. :–The Greek Attitude to Poetry and History, Berkeley, 1954.

30. Goswamy, O. :–The Story of Indian Music, Calcutta, 1257.

31. Graves, R. :–The Greek Myths, Penguin Books, 1962.

32. Harrison, J.E. :–Ancient Art and Ritual, London, 1913.

33. Hulme, T.E. :–Speculations, London, 1936.

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308

48. Stace, W. T. :-Critical History of Greek Philosophy (CHGP), Macmillan, 1934.

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12. Rūpam, India

INDEX

(AUTHORS AND TERMS)

A

ābhāsa—212, 213, 266, 267, 297, 299

Abhinavagupta—215, 234, 235, 237, 243, 245, 249, 254, 255, 258, 259-265, 267, 268, 269, 271, 272, 273, 274, 275, 277, 281, 282, 292, 293, 294, 295, 297-299

abhinaya—230, 236, 238, 253, 270, 273

abhirūpa—201

abhivyaaj—215

adhyavasāya—269

adrṣṭa—208

Aeschylus—46

agalma—17

Agathos—91

āhārya—230

āhata—221, 222, 228, 292

anubhava—215, 276

anubhāva—248, 255

anubhāvanam—253, 265

anukāra—269, 275

anukarana—258, 263, 269, 274, 154

anukartr—256, 270

anukārya—256

anukīrtanam (retelling)—274, 275

anukṛti—151, 153, 154, 214, 238, 263, 274

anurūpam—244

anusandhāna—256

anuvyavasāya (re-perception) 271-273, 277, 299

apāra—241

ap-eikasteōn—52

ap-eikazon—52

Apollodorus—7, 8, 19, 22, 102

apo-mimeisthai—7, 8, 30

āptakāma—213

Aristippus—49, 110

Aristotle—33, 36, 52, 55, 93-128, 281, 286, 290, 297-299

Arnobius (of Sicca)—29, 30

āropa—253, 255, 269, 295

artha—266

arthakriyā kāritva—182

asita—227

āsvādana—272

aucityam—224

Avantī Sundarī—241

avidyā—212

avasthānukrtī—253

avyutpatti—295

B

Banabhaṭṭa—159

beauty—289

Bhadra—169

Bhāna—235

Bhāṇikā—235

Bharata—234, 252-256, 258, 259, 263-265, 274-276, 281, 297.

bhāva—203, 208, 237, 286

bhāvānukīrtanam—252, 267

Bhababhūti—199, 247, 250,

Bhaṭṭa nāyaka—281, 296

bhāvayitrī—240

bhāvayojanā—190, 192

Bhuvanadeva—212

bibboka—158

bhrama—269

bhūta—167, 168, 205

bhūtamātrā—162

Bosaquent—83

Brāhma—203, 205, 208

buddhi—271, 272

Bywater—106

C

Cakra—220

Camatkāra—273

Caraka—185

Cetana—212

Chandōvati—223

Chresimon—77

Cicero—67

Cit—213

Citra—173-75, 195, 210, 213 227 ; ( different divisions of citra) 174, 175 ; (Principles of citra), 179, 180;

Citrakalā—153

Citta—190, 192, 196

Collingwood, R.G.—83, 84, 85, 87, 88, 103, 104

Conscious illusion— 92-133 passion 298

Cornford—87, 88

Croce, B.—83, 84, 111, 115

Cyrenaics—110

D

Damon—27, 73

Dandin—159

debaśilpa—150

deixis—25

Demetrius—25

Democritus—131

Dhanañjaya—240, 253, 281, 295, 296

Dhanika—253, 295

Dharmakīrti—224, 262, 263

Dhīralalita—247

Dhīraprasānta—247

Dhrubā—274

dhūta—231

Dhvanivādin—277

dhyāna—219

drśyakāvya—252

E

eido—56

eiōd lon—19, 29

eidos—55

eikasia—66

eikazō—56

eikōn—19, 29, 58, 59, 66

Else—110, 127

Emmeleia—24, 290, 70

Empedocles—38, 40, 44, 46

52, 123, 284

Epicharmus—38, 39

ēthē—116, 119

euprepēs— 76

Euripides—7, 86

F

flux—55

G

Garbhagrha—169, 173

Gātrvikasepa—230, 234,237

Gavaya—261

Gomme—106

Gorgias—47, 48, 281, 295

guna—244, 248

H

hāva—158

Hemachandra—159

Heracleitus—34, 40, 43, 55,

95, 131

Herodotus—2, 5, 7. 18

Hesiod—7, 14, 32, 35, 123

Hippocrates—42, 43, 44, 45,

46, 48, 51, 101, 281, 285, 286

Homer—3, 12, 13, 14, 17, 22

25, 30, 32, 35, 82, 116, 123

126, 129

hopos homoiotatos—53

Hulme, T.E.—16

hyper chema—24, 290

I

Iśvarakṛṣṇa—254

J

jada—212

jalacandramā—213

jātaka—209

Jowett—83, 87, 88, 90

jyotih—219

K

kal—285

kalā—140, 149, 157,159, 286

kalaśa—169

Kalathiskos—25

kālidāsa—154, 177,247, 249,

250, 251

Kalos—91

Kalou mēmata—89, 90

Kalpa—141, 267, 268, 273

Kalpāntara—267

Kāma—140, 225

Karana—229, 231

Kārayitrī—240

Kohala—255

Kouretes—50

Kroeiein—60

Kṛti—153

Kṛtrima—257, 277

Kṣemendra—244, 248, 250,

251, 294

Kṣiti—225

Kumudvati—223

L

Lāvaṇya—192, 286

Lāvaṇya yojana—192 ff

Lee—87, 88

Līla—213

Lokaprasiddha satyāsatya-vilaksana—255, 256, 272

Lakavṛtta—263

Lokavṛttānukaraṇam—253

Lollaṭa—255, 256, 281, 205, 297

Luciam—24, 25, 26

M

madhyama—225

Mahīdhara—151

Mahima Bhatta—277

mallāra—226, 227

mānasapratyakṣa—271

Manu—287

mārjanī—225

Mārkandeya—228, 229

Masṛṇa—236

Mataṅga—224, 228, 229

mātṛkā—231

māyā—202, 213

mimeisthai—43

Mimēlazō—56

mimeontai—44

mimēsin—44, 45

mimētea—52

mimeton—51

mithyā—214, 257

mūrti—169, 226

N

nāda—219, 220, 221, 226, 229, 291

Nādavindu Upaniṣad—228

naisargikī—239

nāndī—264

Nandikeśvara—236

Nārada—204, 235, 236

Naṭ—230

naṭa—226, 253, 254, 267

nāṭaka—238

nāṭya—230, 238

nāṭyaveda—264

nirvṛt—215

niṣāda—225

niyata—262

nṛt—230

nṛtta—230, 234, 235, 236, 237

nṛttam—229

nṛtya—230, 235, 236, 237, 238, 290, 291

O

Ōphelimon—77

orchēsis—23, 290

ovid—128

P

paidia—58

pāñcālaan—158

Pañcama—225, 226, 227

panīni—151, 153, 154

pantomimon—25

parā—159

paradeigmaton—58

paramārthatā—210

pāramārthika sattā—211

Parameśvara—218, 220, 266

parikrama—229

parivartita—231

Parmenides—40, 55

patākā—232

Patañjali—159, 196

pathē—116

phainomenon—55

phantasia—104

Philostratus—106

phora—25

Pickard-Cambridge, A.W.—23

Pindar—5, 21

pistis—66

Plato—7, 32, 35, 36, 49,

54-64, 81-90 passim,

93, 95, 97, 101-103

109, 110, 119, 120, 122, 123,

231, 284, 285-89, 295-97

pleiads—12

Pliny—18, 30

Plutarch—111

poiein—106

poieō—16

poiētikē—88

Pollux—27

Polygnotus—108

prajñā—239, 196,

prakāśa—237, 238, 266

prakampita—231

prajñā mātrā—162

prakrti—202, 219

pralokita—231

pramāṇa(m) 182-184, 185,

187, 188, 205, 208

prāsāda—163, 166, 169, 170,

171

prāsādamūrti—170

Praśastapāda—162

prativimba kapah—277

pratibhā—239

pratimā—201

pratīti—243

pratisākṣātkāra—271

pratīyamāna—257

pratikṛti—176, 151, 269

pratirūpa—159, 286

praxeis—116

prāsādapuruṣa—170

pratyakṣakalpa—271

Praxite—les—102, 103, 108

prayoktr—270

pros-eikazein—52

Protagoras—47

prativimba—266

Protogenes—102, 109

pyrrhic—70

Pythagoras—16, 34, 35, 37,

284

R

rāga—223, 224, 225, 226,227

292

rāgamūrti—226

rajas—202, 218. 242, 247

Rājaśekhara—177, 241, 250

Rāmachandra—158, 243, 247

rāmākrīda—235

Randall—100

rasa—225, 237, 240, 245, 254,

255, 257, 258, 259, 261, 263,

264, 292

rasadrṣṭi—191

Rāsaka—235

raudra—225

Raudrī—223

recakas—238

Ṛtam—140, 145

rūpakṛt—147, 149

rūpam—156, 162, 163, 181,

227, 252

Rūpa Skandha—163, 208, 209

S

sādhāraṇa—269

sādhāraṇībhāva—268

sādhāraṇya—297

ṣadja—225, 226

sādṛśyam—197, 198, 208, 214,

215, 244, 258, 261, 269 (as a

principle of citra, 193ff)

śaiva—218, 266, 268

saivic—265

saivist—266, 271

sajātiya—270

sākṣātkārakalpa—271

śakti—221

samjñā—209

samādhi—219, 225

sāmānya—194

samśaya—214, 258

samskāra—209, 272

samudra—187

samvṛtti—210, 211

samyuj—215

sandhi—245

sandhyangga—245

sandīpanī—223, 225

sāṅkhya—182, 218, 220, 224,

225, 254, 295, 296

Śaṅkuka—214, 215, 256-264,

275-277, 281, 295, 297-299

sanniveśa—216

suptadvipanukaranam—253

Sārrigadeva—227, 228

sattā—182, 194, 208

sattva—202, 215, 242, 247

sāttvika—230

satyam—140

saundarya—192

śastra—152, 155

santrantika—262

Sāyaṇa—148, 151, 153

schēma—25, 26, 290

shorey—88

śikṣa—257

śil—152, 153, 285

śilpa—149-153, 156, 159,160,

226, 285

śilpa (deva)—150

śilpa (mānuṣa)—151

śilpakalā—149

Simonides—21, 292

Simonidian ideas—281

[ vii ]

Śiṅgabhūpāla—181, 192

sithilasamādhi—177

skandha—209

skepias—24, 299

Socrates—39, 49-52, 55, 57,

76, 101, 105, 106, 285

Someśvaradeva—172

Sophocles—8, 86

Sophron—55

spandana—218

sparśa—156

Srīdhara—162

Srī Kumāra—172

Śruti—223, 228, 291, 292

Sotra—152, 154, 155

Śūdraka—199

śukanāsa—169

Śukrācārya—178, 208

Suśruta—185

svabhāva—242, 253

svalakṣanatā—267

svara—156, 223—227, 292

svīyamugdhā—247

svasaṁvedanasiddha—271

T

tādātmya—224, 254, 295

Taks—147

tāla—205, 274

tamas—202, 203, 218, 242

tāmasa—208

tāndava—234, 236

tanukartr̥—148

tattvam—214, 257, 269

technai—8, 9, 11, 21, 63

technē—10, 16, 21, 98

technaio—284, 285

ten-tāla—205

Thales—33

thrauein—60

Thucydides—19

trailokyānukṛti—173, 229,

233

Traxus—60

Tromos—60

U

udayana—247

uddhata—235, 236

Uranus—5, 7

Upreksā—269

Uttaracaritam—247, 250

Uvaṭa—151

V

vācaspati—254

vācika—230

vāgbhaṭa—186

vāhika—269

Valmīkī—240, 249, 250, 269

vaimayam—227

Varāhamihira—166, 167, 169

172, 187

Varṇikābhaṅga—193, 194

(concept of visya)

vāsanā—272

Vasanta—226

vāstu—163, 166, 169, 170,

172, 173

vāstubrahma or vastudeva

or vāstunara—167

raktā—225

vāstucakra (or vāstupuruṣa

manḍala)—167, 169

vāstupa—166

vāstupuruṣa—201, 162

vastvābhāsa—212

Vasubandhu—162

Vātsyāyana—158, 178, 182

vedanā—209

Verdenius—89

vibhāva—255

Vidyāraṇyamuni—212

vīja—219

vijñāna—209

vikalpa—263

vimarśa—237, 266

vimba—163, 169, 171, 178

vindu—219, 220, 221, 222

viplava—215

viparyaya—214

virāṭ—202

viśeṣa—262, 269

Viśvanātha—253, 281, 295,

296

viśvarūpa—204

vyabhicārin—255

vyavahartārah—263

vyavasāya—271

X

Xenophanes—32, 33, 39, 43

Xenophon—22, 76

xoanon—17

Y

yajñavedī—163

Yāska—143, 144, 147

Yaśodhara—179, 181

yogamudrā—208

ERRATA

P

L

Incorrect

Correct

3 25 Appllo Apollo

20 5 it seems, that, it seems that

20 27 Meorabilia Memorabilia

20 33 profunse profuse

22 32 Symp. Symp.

24 2 angelikos, angelikos

24 4 Skepias, Skepias

24 13 mainliness manliness

24 28 dance dance,

24 34 lot. cit. loc. cit.

26 23 mimesthisasin (mimesthisasin)

26 32 Luc. cit. loc. cit.

27 10 Vulgar vulgar

38 34 Pythagorens Pythagoreans

40 3,18 Parmenedes Parmenides

41 24 form and matter ; form and matter.

44 8 we We

48 7 in order to be, in order to be

51 32 he the

54 5 Plato's Plato's

66 17 cencrete concrete

69 18 skillful skilful

86 15 trumpet trumpet.)

86 25 Aeschylus, Aeschylus'

86 25 'Sophocles', Sophocles'

86 25 Oidipus Oedipus

86 34 Hippolitus Hippolytus

113 16 subject subjective

[ x ]

113 31 analogy argument

115 28 women woman

128 17 good god

128 19 shephard shepherd

152 33 ucyate ucyante

152 33 tūkta sūkta

158 23 Pañcālaan Pāñcāla an

159 8 Dandix Dandin

159 22 pratirūpos pratirūpas

170 33 sanmidhi sannidhi

183 28 fee see

198 13 exactly exactly,

206 13 roll role

206 22 sensuos sensuous

207 4 thier their

207 19 these there

208 9 alwyas always

210 19 ctira citra

212 3 aae are

212 13 from form

215 31 minimum minium

217 24 retolling retelling

218 17 pususa puruṣa

220 32 samygānnādah samyogānnādah

228 27 sound It sound, it

228 30 omit so

233 27 first fist

234 29 eleveated elevated

234 32 pridominance predominance

241 24 whould would

243 20 puite quite

243 30 pratipattan pratipattau

244 26 yakila yatkila

244 35 Auchity Aucitya

[ xi ]

244 36 Macmlean (Frdik) ...P 10277 poets

Macmillan,...P 102 ff. (India) plots

247 23 velour

valour

248 7 challenge

challenge

255 16 Scuh

Such

262 30 aañkuka's

Śaṅkuka's

263 7 shese

these

264 7 definitiond rama

definition Rāma

264 12 not

nor

266 16 mirror.

mirror,

267 12 cause

caused

268 22 śpectators

spectator

270 33 Sāmānyātmakatva

Sāmānyātmakatve

271 24 is

are

271 25 knowledge. These

knowledge, these

271 31 edding

adding

273 13 minium m

minimum

277 7 former,

former

290 30 Emmelcia

Emmeleia

292 23 Aristotelian

Aristotelian