Dehejia the Very Idea of a Portrait

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The Smithsonian InstitutionRegents of the University of Michigan

The Very Idea of a PortraitAuthor(s): Vidya DehejiaReviewed work(s):Source: Ars Orientalis, Vol. 28, 75th Anniversary of the Freer Gallery of Art (1998), pp. 40-48Published by: Freer Gallery of Art, The Smithsonian Institution and Department of the History ofArt, University of MichiganStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4629529 .Accessed: 05/03/2013 16:31

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VIDYA DEHEJIA

T h eVe r y I d e a

o o r t r a i t

SLENDER, POISED IMAGE ofa sensuousfemale, flawlessly cast in bronze and identi-fied for many years as an image of the god-

dess Parvati, stands a meter high on a pedestal withinthe Freer Gallery of Art (fig. 1). Sometime agco, pro-posed that the image may be read with equalvalidityas a portrait of the Chola queen Sembiyan Mahadevi,idealized as divinity and portrayed in the guise of agoddess. This blurring and apparent overlapping ofthe categories of divine and royal portraiture has ledme to explore in this essay the idea of portra:iture nearly India in an attempt to analyze ts status an(d alue.

A revealing commentary on the Hindu conceptof portraiture is contained in an ancient Sanskrit playtitled Pratimai-naitaka (Statue-play), written byfourth-century dramatist Bhasa and structuredloosely around the story of Rama. In its third act,when prince Bharata, younger brother of exiledRama, returns to his hometown, as yet unaware oftlle recent death of his father King Dasarat;ha, hemarvels over the execution of the sculpted images ina newly constructed pavilion. Wondering whetherits four figures represent deities, he prepares to bowto them, upon which the keeper informs him that he

is in an ancestral chapel and that the images repre-sent his father, grandfather, great-grandfather, andgreat-great-grandfather.' If the audience of thie playdid not ridicule Bharata for failing to recognize the

FIG. 1.

Idealized Portrait of Queen Sembiyan Mahadevi asParvati, Chola period, ca. 998, bronze, 36 ?4 in.Courtesy Freer Gallery of Art, SmithsonianInstitution, F29.84.

image of his own father, it can only be because, inthe accepted style of the day, portrait images werealways sculpted to bear a greater resemblance to im-

ages of the gods than to their actual counterparts.Although lively and individualistic figures often ap-pear in genre scenes and narrative presentations,whether sculpted or painted, verisimilitude certainlywas not the ruling principle in commemorative por-trait figures of aristocratic or royal ancestors. Thesestylized portrait statues and paintings were presum-ably identified either by their exact placement in achapel, monastery, or temple or by their use in spe-cific rituals such as birthday celebrations or deathanniversaries.

The earliest ancestral portrait gallery for whichmaterial evidence survives, though at its barest mini-mum, commemorated a group of seven members ofSatavahana royalty and was carved in the first cen-tury B.C. in a cave at the head of the strategic NanaghatPass, located along the trade route that led down fromthe hills of the western ghats to the ports along theArabian Sea. The royal portrait gallery would havebeen seen by merchants, traders, and other travel-ers who passed through Satavahana territory on

their way to the west coast. Unfortunately, thestone bas-relief images themselves are damagedbeyond recognition, and only the inscribed labelsremain in the rock face above to apprise us of theiridentity.

The second such portrait gallery known to uscommemorates the Kushan rulers of northern India.An ancestral chapel at Mat, just outside the town ofMathura, appears to have housed no fewer than fourportrait images, much damaged today, carved from

Ars Orientalis, volume XXVIII (1998)

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red sandstone, each with an identifying inscrip-tion. The single seated image is Vima Kadphises,an early Kushan ruler of the mid-first century A.D,clad in boots and tunic and seated on a lion throne

with feet pendant in the position known aspralambapadasana. The well-known standing por-trait of the famous emperor Kanishka is little morethan a silhouette created by the eccentric outline ofhis military mantle, which is also depicted in his coinportraits and was clearly his hallmark. Certainly thepadded boots and woolen cloak would not have beennormal garb in the hot plains of Mathura but sym-bolized the authority of these rulers and signified theircentral Asian origins. Across the lower edge of thecloak is an inscription that reads maharajia rajiitiraja

devaputra kaniska, or "Great king, king of kings, sonof the gods, Kanishka." A third portrait statue isidentified by inscription as Kanishka's successorHuvishka, and a fourth is an unidentified prince.While the heads of the standing statues are brokenaway, it is possible to reconstruct that of Kanishkafrom his coin portraits, which depict him clad in hismilitary mantle and boots, with an unusually longbeard and a conical central Asian cap. His attributesof boots, cloak, beard, and cap made him recogniz-

able; the shape of his nose orjawline were secondaryif not irrelevant. The shrine appears to have beenconstructed in Kanishka's year 6, perhaps corre-sponding to the year A.D. 84, with additions duringHuvishka's reign.

One of the earliest examples of royal stone por-traits from south India, sculpted in the seventh cen-tury and identified by inscribed labels, is seen in theAdivaraha cave temple at the site of Mamallapuram,some forty miles south of Madras (now Chennai). Onone side wall, two queens flank the seated monarchSimhavishnu, who founded the Pallava line around550, while on the opposite wall stands his successorMahendravarman, who ruled from ca. 600 to 630,with two queens beside him. The two royal figureslook so similar that they are almost interchangeableand may even be identified as one of a range of mon-archs. Scholars have suggested that the standing fig-ure is the later ruler Mahendravarman II and that theseated figure is his predecessor, NarasimhavarmanMamalla (ca. 630-68), who gave his name to the site.

Such debates offer air demonstration hat artists didnot sculpt mages ecognizable y their physical har-acteristics; ather, orrect dentification was possibleonly from inscribed abels or specific references o

the sculptors' commission.

O RTRAITURE RETAINED this character ur-ing the succeeding centuries of Chola rule. Inthe tenth century, emples began to commis-

sion a range of portable bronze mages of the deitiesto be used in daily and weekly rituals, as well as in anincreasing ange of annual estivals. Though imagesof deities were doubtless the prime commissions, n-scriptions at Rajaraja's Great Temple of Tanjavur,completed n the year 1010, speak of the gift of nofewer than four bronze portraits of Chola royaltyamong ts total of sixty-six bronze mages. EmperorRajaraja's ister, Kundavai, gifted an image of herparents, King Sundara Chola and Queen VanavanMahadevi, while the temple manager, AdittanSuryan, gifted images of the reigning monarchRajaraja nd his chief queen Lokamahadevi. Unfor-tunately, these temple images of Tanjavur royaltyhave long since disappeared, depriving us of an in-valuable ource of information or confirmation) e-

garding he nature of portraiture. Yet both the ear-lier Pallava practice ust reviewed and later Vijaya-nagara magery o which we shall refer would sug-gest that the Tanjavur mages were idealized royalportraits. The Tanjavur emple contains two addi-tional portraits fRajaraja, ne sculpted and the otherpainted; both portray a generic dealized igure withlocks piled high in imitation of his favorite deity,Shiva. Verisimilitude appears to have been of littleconsequence.

While the Tanjavur emple nscriptions do notaddress what motivated he creation f its four bronzeroyal portraits, he inscriptions of Rajaraja's rand-mother, Sembiyan Mahadevi, ast some light on thisquestion. Queen Sembiyan was a great patron of thearts who was active n building emples and commis-sioning bronzes for a period of at least sixty years;her earliest dated gift belongs to the year 941, whilethe latest occurred in the year 1001. SembiyanMahadevi ounded a town that adopted her name;she settled here a group of Chaturvedi rahmins nd2



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also constructed the Kailasanatha temple. Sembiyanherselfwas commemorated in a bronze portrait statuethat was probably commissioned during her lifetime,perhaps at the behest of her son Uttama Chola. A

later inscription of Sembiyan's great-grandson, Em-peror Rajendra, speaks of special arrangements madefor the celebration of Sembiyan's royal birthday inthe month of Chittirai (March-April) at the Kailasa-natha temple. The inscription makes specific provi-sions for the worship of her portrait statue alongsidethe image of Rishabhavahana, or Shiva with his bull.It speaks also of a great hall within the Kailasanathatemple that took the queen's name (SembiyanMahiideviyarperiya mandapam) and may have beenused for her birthday celebrations.

In the context of idealized portraits that resembleimages of deities, I would like to revisit my earliersuggestion that the evocative bronze image in theFreer Gallery is intended to portray SembiyanMahadevi. While conclusive proof of such a sugges-tion may be impossible to produce, several featuresseem to indicate the probability of such an identifi-cation. It has always been recognized that the imageis stylistically idiosyncratic in its proportions, in themarked and even exaggerated slope of its shoulders,

in the naturalistic handling of its full heavy breasts,and in its solemn, thoughtful expression. It is not astandard image of the goddess Parvati. The sugges-tion that its Sri Lankan origin explains its deviationfrom the norm does not hold up to serious scrutiny;stylistically, the image displays features that indicateits manufacture in the heart of the Chola country.Elsewhere I have spoken at length about its many fea-tures of form and decoration, which indicate it be-longs to the very end of the tenth century, the date atwhich a portrait image of Sembiyan is likely to havebeen made.2 Additionally, some unconfirmed reportsapparently suggest that the image, acquired in 1929,perhaps through C. T. Loo, was recovered from atemple tank close to the town of Sernbiyan Mahadevi.3

What considerations could have led Sembiyan'sson or grandson to commission a bronze sculptedimage of the queen? From all that we learn about her,Queen Sembiyan was a remarkable personality. Alavish patron of the sacred arts, she contributed gen-erous gifts of images, land, and cash endowments

toward he creation of twenty-one emples. She wasa woman with a remarkable ense of historic docu-mentation, which was rare n ancient India. Her nu-merous temple nscriptions nform us that when she

replaced brick temples with those built of stone, sheensured that all the original dedicatory nscriptionswere reengraved n the new stone structures, along-side her own record. Her inscription at the Aduturaitemple states:

While dismantling he earlier part-brick, part-stone structure, he inscribed stones were care-fully removed and preserved or the documentsengraved on them; and when the new structurewas completed, all in stone, this great soulSembiyan Mahadevi rdered hat he old inscrip-tions recording grants, donations, etc. of all ear-lier kings which had been damaged or worn out,be faithfully engraved on the walls of the newstructure.4

At the temple of Tirukodikaval we learn that oncethe old inscriptions ad been reengraved n the wallsof the newly built stone temple, Queen Sembiyanordered that they be discarded, as they had served

their purpose.We may assume that what inspired Sembiyan's

family o commission his first known metal portraitof Chola royalty was their appreciation fher remark-able personality, her integrity, and her sense of his-torical awareness, ogether with their desire to pre-serve for posterity he memory of a great queen. Per-haps the artist who sculpted the bronze image per-ceived in Sembiyan Mahadevi uch power and emi-nence that he could envision her as comparable onone less than Parvati, he great goddess. Would thequeen have been recognized from this image, inwhich queen and goddess seem to mingle and merge?Very unlikely. Is it reasonable o expect such recog-nition? Once again the answer s no. But when theimage was carried n procession during her birthdaycelebrations, all would have recognized her.

Portraits f the Tamil saints provide another ichfield within which to consider ideas of portraiture,and the allied concept of recognition of portraits, hatprevailed n south India into the sixteenth century. 43



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FIG. 2.

Dancing child-saint Sambandar, Chola period,twelfth century, bronze, 18 34in. Courtesy FreerGallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, F76.5.



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The majority of temples in the Tamil country pos-sess a complete set of images of its saints, either thesixty-three Shaiva Nayanmars or the twelve VaishnavaAlvars. Though images of child-saint Sambandar,

whether dancing (fig. 2) or standing, show total lackof concern for physical likeness or visual specificity,they may be termed portraits in the sense that theyare recognized by the devotee. The figure of an un-clothed infant, with one hand pointing upwards andthe other hand either in the gesture of dance or hold-ing a cup, makes the image instantly recognizable.Devotees would have told one another that this wasthe child who was given a cup of divine milk and who,after pointing toward the heavens when questionedon the source of the milk, burst into joyous songs inpraise of the godhead. The artists took hold of theessential elements of Sambandar's life story and usedthem to formulate his portrait. Yet the prevailingtwentieth-century confusion over images of child-saint Sambandar, mistakenly labeled in many muse-ums as "dancing child Krishna," points once againto the blurring of categories of divine and, in this case,saintly rather than royal. Artists apparently visual-ized the beloved child Sambandar in the mold of theonly other child figure with which they were famil-

iar; to them this was the standard and accepted for-mula. The length of Sambandar's nose or the shapeof his eyes was not important. Visual specificity andverisirnilitude were likewise deemed unnecessary andirrelevant in the case of the Christian saints. One isreminded of Robert Browning's poem "Fra LippoLippi," in which Brother Lippo Lippi painted indi-vidualized figures of the Catholic saints only to bechastised by the prior, who wanted a standard type:

Paint the soul, never mind the legs and armsRub all out, try at it a second time.

Even the portraits of lesser donors on Chola temples,5though displaying more individual physical traits, arenevertheless types-ecstatic devotees-rather thanrecognizable individuals.

Portraits that are likenesses came into vogue innorthern India when the Mughal emperor Akbar him-self sat for his portrait so that his likeness could becaptured by artists, directing also that portraits be

painted of his courtiers and nobles. The variousMughal emperors are clearly distinguishable one fromthe other in their painted portraits; Akbar cannotbe mistaken forJahangir, norJahangir for ShahJahan.

And indeed the artists took pains to portray the em-perors at varying stages of their careers: as youngprinces, at the height of their power, and as agingmonarchs. Admittedly, however, it is when Mughalartists moved away from royalty to eccentric physi-cal types like dervishes and faqirs that they producedtheir most precise and vivid portraits-warts, moles,and all. An evocative drawing of a portly man relax-ing with a jug of wine before him makes us feel weare encountering a specific individual (fig. 3). Thisfreedom, which the artists enjoyed once they werereleased from the restrictions of portraying royal fig-ures, is equally evident in pre-Mughal painting. Paint-ers depicting the Buddha's life story in the fifth-cen-tury Buddhist monastic caves at Ajanta tended toproduce stylized figures; but they adopted a rich andvivid mode of depiction when they turned to por-traying witches, dwarfs, and other marginal figures.Notably, literary exts suggest that wall paintings werea regular part of the decoration of monuments; butAjanta alone survives as testimony of this ancient

mode of decoration.In southern India, where Mughal influence was

peripheral, recognizable portraits came into voguesomewhat later. Portraits of the Vijayanagar rulers(1356-1556) continue to be of a stylized type. Thefamous bronze portraits of Emperor Krishnadevarayaand his two queens, today in the Tirumala Devast-hanam at Tirupati, are generic idealized aristocraticimages that could equally well be portraits of any royalor aristocratic group. It is only with the Nayaks ofMadurai, once governors of the Vijayanagar emper-ors, that recognizable portraiture comes into its own.Emperor Tirumala Nayak (r. 1623-59) began tocommission portrait statues of the entire Nayak lin-eage, to be carved against the granite columns of oneor other hall in the temples he constructed. The re-sult is an ancestral portrait gallery with rulers ar-ranged in chronological order and ending withTirumala himself, who is portrayed in temple aftertemple as a portly figure with his stomach rolling overhis lower garment and his turbanlike headgear barely 45



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FIG. 3.

Seated man, attrib. Basawan,Mughal period, ca. 1580-85,3 3/ x 3 l/8 n. Courtesy reerGallery of Art, SmithsonianInstitution, F53.60.

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containing the bunched hair that falls over to one side.Was this trend toward verisimilitude in portraitureto some extent due to the contact with the Portu-guese, whose help Tirumala sought in his battle

against the Sethupatis of adjoining Ramnad? No clearanswer arises.

E MAY PERHAPS attempt a workinghypothesis to explain the indifference to

verisimilitude in so much of Indian por-traiture. In the context of Hindu, Buddhist, andJainIndia, it may be necessary to reexamine, even rede-fine, the philosophic concept of the individual self.It could be said that the Christian and Islamic selfcombines self as body and self as soul, the body be-ing indispensable for the resurrection that will occuron the final Day of Judgment. The same body inwhich the soul dwelt while on earth, with its specificphysiognomic peculiarities, will be resurrected tocontain the soul in the next world. By contrast, in-digenous Hindu, Buddhist, andJain beliefs envisiona disembodied entity, a soul that returns repeatedlyto earth, each time temporarily assuming a body withparticular physical characteristics, only to discard itand assume a totally different body the next time

around. The physical features of a body exist onlyfor a single lifetime and not for eternity. TheBhagavad-Gita puts it succinctly:

As a man discardsworn-out clothesto put on newand different ones,so the embodied selfdiscards

its worn-out bodiesto take on other new ones.6

The Buddha, for instance, is believed to have as-

sumed 550 different bodies, including that of the el-ephant Chaddanta, the monkey Mahakapi, an acro-bat, the vaisya merchant Visahya, brahmins Sumedhaand Shyama, and ksatriya princes Mahajanaka andVessantara. Finally born as chieftain Siddhartha, hesevered all bonds and achieved salvation; he dis-carded the body, never again to be confined in bodilyform. Perhaps it is not so strange, after all, that thereproduction ofphysiognomic likeness held little sig-nificance in a society which believed that the physi-cal features of the present birth would be replacedby a new set of bodily features in the next birth andthat the ultimate state of salvation is the self unen-cumbered by a body. Furthermore, Indian religioussystems upheld the suppression of the ego; figureswith visual specificity may well have been seen ascatering to that very quality of egoism that they soughtto destroy.7 An idealized outer form is one distinc-tive answer to the demands of portraiture.

Portraits have always existed in India, though thenomenclature may be misleading to the modern

reader because these stone, metal, or painted por-traits paid little attention to physical resemblance.The artists' idea of portraiture, especially of royaltyand sainthood, tended toward idealized visions of thequality, character, and stature of the subjects ratherthan a precise likeness of their physical features. Ifthis hypothesis is valid, it is not surprising that a metalportrait of a great and revered queen was modeledon the iconography and style employed to depict thedivine Parvati. C

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Notes

1.A. C.Woolner and Lakshman Sarup, trans., Thirteen Playsof Bhasa (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass eprint, 1985), 172-76.

2. Vidya Dehejia, Art of the Imperial Cholas New York:Columbia University Press, 1990), 36-38.

3. Conversations with Samuel Eilenberg n 1988. Weacquired he image, which had been stored n Paris, hroughH. Kevorkian.

4. Annual Report on South Indian Epigraphy, no. 35 (Madras,1907).

5. Padma Kaimal, "Passionate Bodies: Constructions f theSelf in South Indian Portraits," Archives f Asian Art 47

(1995): 6-16.

6. Barbara toler Miller, The Bhagavad-Gita: Krishna's

Counsel n Time of War (New York: Columbia UniversityPress, 1986), chap. 2, verse 22, p. 32.

7. Pratapaditya al, The Art of Tibet: A Catalogue f the LosAngeles County Museum ofArt Collection Los Angeles: LosAngeles County Museum of Art, 1990), 57.

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Dehejia the Very Idea of a Portrait