ART AND SOUL
Images of the formless

The Buddha was not rendered in human form even 500 years after the emergence of Buddhism, says B.N. Goswamy

The siddham character ‘A’ in the garbhadhatu mandala Japan; 15th century

Inscription on a Chinese Buddha image, dated 746

"The majesty of God, which is beyond the reach of any eye, must not be dishonoured by becoming representation." — John Calvin

— Dietrich Seckel

ONE knows the image well: the body firm and erect but not tense, dew-drop freshness on the face, the eyes gentle, gaze firmly fixed on the tip of the nose, the expression one of utter peace bespeaking a mind inwardly turned, like a yogi’s, a ‘flicker-less lamp burning in a windless place’. But the Buddha was not rendered like this from the beginning.

There was no rendering of him in human form at all for close to half a millennium after the founding of the faith. Where does all this come from then, this construct, and this manner of approaching him? And where does all this lead?

Dietrich Seckel, whose classic work on the Buddhist art has set the standards of scholarship for upwards of a generation, takes us through all this, and through the minefield of conflicting ideas about image-making, in a study that has become available only recently in an English version.

Translated from the original German that first appeared nearly 30 years ago — and one owes this publication in equal measure to that remarkable Zurich-based journal, Artibus Asiae, and to Helmut Brinker and John Rosenfield, two distinguished scholars, long associated with Professor Seckel, who have edited the volume — the work is now titled Before and Beyond the Image.

It is a magisterial account, subtle and layered like the doctrine that it explores as it proceeds. Art, in this case, the image of the Buddha, remains the central focus, but the world of thought unfolds all around the reader in these pages.

It starts, naturally, with things that one knows from close: the ‘representation’ more accurately, a suggestion of the presence, of the Buddha in early sculptures from India not in his human form but aniconically, through some symbol or the other: footprints, parasol, wheel, the Bodhi tree, an unoccupied throne, and the like.

In sculpted panels, devotees crowd together in an assembly to hear the Master speak, but all that one sees in place of him, is an empty throne; Sujata brings humble offerings to the Lord seated under a tree, but the tree is him, as the sculptor renders it. Sacred footprints are not only objects of contemplation and adoration, but become endowed with magical powers, for in them one sees Him. And so on. All on account of the stated belief about his being beyond representation, his transcendence of the phenomenal world.

But, with time, ideological changes come about, and Professor Seckel takes us through them, step by considered step. By the second century AD, the Mahayana doctrine comes in; popular beliefs, and needs, take over; the ancient figure of the seated ascetic and teacher is easily adapted to the form of the Buddha; a whole iconography develops. We get Mathura and Gandhara and Sarnath.

But, most engagingly, as Professor Seckel points out, the image, seductive as it is, does not displace the symbol completely. For as we move towards the Far East, in particular Japan — an area that is like home to Prof. Seckel — symbols, and symbolic representation of the Buddha, continue to occupy central place in art and thought.

The nothingness, the emptiness of Nirvana, which is the highest goal in Buddhist belief, is best understood there not through a figure but a symbol. The more abstract a visual sign is, the truer and more effective it is, in this manner of thinking. The concept of ‘circle’, or ‘round’, best represents timeless eternity without beginning or end; mudras become replete with and express the ultimate truth; mystic-magical syllables, or words written in siddha characters, contain the essence. We move through subtle ideas, images light as air, sounds that stay unstruck. It is a fascinating, deeply absorbing journey.

And none of it is without relevance even to the present day, and even in our immediate context. For we keep constantly, and still, engaging with opposites that are embedded deep in our own awareness: the idea of the godhead being nirguna (emptied of attributes) or saguna (possessed of attributes); of the Supreme Spirit being niraakaara or saakaara: devoid of form or clothed in it. Streams continue to run parallel, at least in our land.

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