The original Chola bronze castings are valued internationally at more than one million pounds

Of all the religious artefacts in India, the one most coveted by foreign art connoisseurs are the Chola bronze images of dancing Nataraja. It was Fritjof Capra’s Tao of Physics that launched Lord Nataraja as a global icon.

In his book, Capra wrote the dance of Shiva was “the dance of subatomic particles.” He was not the first in portraying Nataraja as a universal metaphor for the interface between science, spirituality, dance and art, but he definitely helped the idea to catch on.

In the 1920s, the late art historian, Ananda Coomarasway, coined the now famous adage ‘The Cosmic Dance of Siva’ to describe the Nataraja imagery, hailing the Nataraja icon as “poetry but nonetheless science.” Lord Nataraja has made it to the cover of Time Magazine. And don’t forget that there are nine different forms of the dancing Nataraja.

What is the dancing Nataraja? Lord Shiva is the author of all dance forms. The science of dance Natyashastra, dealing with the 108 types of classical Indian dance forms, is said to have originated from him like all yogic postures. Icons depicting Shiva as the Lord of Dance (Nataraja) seem to have originated in the North during the Gupta period in the first century and developed in the South early in the seventh century.

The Nataraja statue presents the God in a pose, which is technically termed bhujanga-trasa (fear of a snake), since the body is twisted violently to the side, one leg raised abruptly as if the foot had just trodden upon a snake. The left arm sweeping across the body is also a purely artistic movement from the dance. In the upper right hand, is the damaru drum — a double-faced instrument held in the middle at the narrow waist.

When the drum is shaken with a vigorous rocking motion, the thongs fly out and the knots or weights lash the stretched skin of the drum faces, producing a rapid, staccato tattoo: the original meaning of the word damaru is a tumultuous clamor or uproar. As for the rest, the icon is wholly didactic, a superb symbol of the divine forces which demand utter self-surrender on the part of the individual, presented in ritualised artistic terms which engage the mind of the devotee as compellingly as does the temple-dance itself. This is the four-armed Nataraja image as it is best known: Shiva as the destroyer of ignorance, pattern of the cosmos and guide to liberation.

The original Chola bronze castings of the seventh century are valued internationally at more than one million pounds, if available for sale. Or you can get a current bronze casting — weighing 10 kg — from the image-makers of Chennai — as low as 250 pounds/Rs 20,000. In the past 50 years, hundreds of dancing Nataraja Chola bronzes have been illegally sold to foreign connoisseurs to grace their drawing rooms.

One of the classic cases was that of Sivapuram Nataraja, which was sold in the 1970s to American collector Norton Simon for one million dollars. The theft was not known for more than 20 years, till an American scholar went to the Sivapuram temple to study the eighth century bronze. To his surprise he found, that what was in place was a 20th century imitation, devoid of the ultimate grace of the Chola bronzes. The alerted Indian Government pursued the matter and finally got back the treasure.

But what is it that makes these Chola bronze Natarajas so special? “Shiva’s cosmic dance in magnificent bronze sculptures of dancing figures with four arms whose superbly balanced and yet dynamic gestures express the rhythm and unity of life,” is how a world authority on dancing Natarajas describe the icons.

An eloquent description indeed, but one that hastened the speed with which the Natarajas, and other Chola bronzes, left Indian shores for the sumptuous living rooms of private collectors and respectable museums in the West.

Chola artists breathed life into their work by using the cire perdue, or lost wax process, with minute details worked into the clay moulds closely following the Silpa Shastra texts. The craftsmen approached their task with the right Dhyana Shlokas pertaining to the particular deity so that their minds would be imbued with the essential quality of the deity.

Materials were chosen with great care at every stage — fine beeswax, clay taken from termite mounds, and of course, the delicate proportions in the panchloha, or alloy, made out of five metals. Because the mould is broken once the casting is complete, no two idols can be alike and that essential uniqueness adds to the value of each piece for the worshipper and the modern-day collector alike. — MF