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| Home > Types Of Sculpture > Icons and Imagery > Religious Iconography
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| | Religious Iconography
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Icons in Hinduism
The chief & widely referred male deities as per Hinduism are Shiva, Vishnu, and Brahma. Though, there are many others of greater or lesser importance are mentioned in Puranas. Similarly, the most important feminine deities are Durga, Kali, Lakshmi and Saraswati. Among all, Shiva is perhaps the most ancient and the most widely worshipped deity. He is the deity who is identified as the power or potential within the lingam. His symbol is the bull, placed in front of him in many temples. In many of his icons he is presented in ithyphallic form; very often he appears with his consort. But at the same time, he is the patron deity of yogis & Hathmunies, identified as such by his piled-up mass of uncut and uncombed hair, and by his nudity. Basically, this is not inconsistent or opposite with his sexual vitality. The source of the yogi`s power is his own divine sexuality that is conserved and concentrated by as ceticisms. Perhaps as the oldest icon of Shiva is Pashupati, Lord of the Beasts.
 As found on some of the seals of the Indus Valley civilization, during the third millennium BC, a deity represented oftenly as he is surrounded by animals, but on some seals by river creatures he is often shown as ithyphallic, and crowned with horns and a strange, high head-emblem. This form is accepted as being an early image of Shiva. But the deity, resembling with this form also appears as a bull-headed, ithyphallic dancer in sealing of stone and in terracotta.
Obviously, he is in a close relation of the early forms of the Greek Dinosaurs, who came `from the East`. As a dancer Shiva also appears in later times, in the Tandava Nrutya, as Nataraj, Lord of the Dance. This images must be crystallizing the memory of ancient period ceremonials when priests or other devotees danced, perhaps clad in the head and skin of a scarified bull, possessed by the god.
Shiva is identified with many characteristics -he was alone who could receive or balance on his head the fall of the transcendent river of heaven, which once flowed in the Milky Way but now flows across the Indian plains as the holy goddess Ganga. He it was who held without fear the black poison from the fluid Universe in this throat, when all the gods combined to churn the worlds like butter from the milk of chaos. And finally, he it is who performs with his skull-drum, the dance of destruction as the night of each successive universe descends, and the whole of creation of universe vanishes in dense smoke and fire. In the guise of him, his devotees adore him by night in the cremation grounds beyond the limits.
To Shiva`s dark and yogic majesty Lord Vishnu provides a radiant and heroic kind of foil. Vishnu is considered as the deity about whom the religion of love revolves. It is believed that the Brahmins identified as Vaishnavas developed the story of divine incarnation in order to glorify the legendary heroes & reinforce the existence of supernatural power. Vishnu himself is found in personifying the support of all that exists. The best known icon of Vishnu & described in Puranas is showed him in sleeping position upon the endless serpent of eternity, afloat on the ocean of unresolved essence. This theme gives birth to a new concept that unfolds to reveal the creative deity, Brahma. The main function of Brahma is to help in the active propagation of the material worlds, channeling the whole energy through himself in the existential force of Vishnu. Sometimes, awake in his smiling face, Vishnu sits on the serpent of eternity. This mainly to represent the immanent, sustaining power of the world. The whole energy of the world is ultimately resides at the charans of Vishnu.
One icon that individually reveals the omnipresent power of Vishnu is incarnation in the form of Narasimha, the man-lion. Prahlad was one of Vishnu`s true worshiper & he had a controversy with an odious king, his father. The king Hiranyakashyapu threw out the omnipresence of Vishnu. With striking a stone pillar, which he declared as inert and non-divine, challenged the God Vishnu. Present in the being of the pillar the form of Vishnu materialized, with the hideous mask of a lion, tore out the entrails of the king, and vanished. This incarnation legend is famous & told with some of variations in all parts of India.
Vishnu had appeared in several forms of incarnations such as boar, dwarf, lion, fish, tortoise, as Buddha, and especially as Rama and as Krishna. Rama is the idol for all Hindu people the hero of the poetic epic the Ramayana, the cornerstone of India`s literary heritage. He is shown as young, chivalrous, a conqueror of the demon of Lanka, Ravana. His followers are located in the many States of our country. He is also identified with a faithful monkey lieutenant, Hanuman. Hanuman is the deity of all faithful soldiers, who hides behind his legendary personality a far older face, the face of devouring Time.
Rama generally appears in icons as a slender youth holding the bow at the back with wearing simple cloths during the fourteen year of vanavasa. He knew very well how to wield the bow. In case of Krishna, his appearances in sculptured icons are found relatively few. The art of painting was identified as started by him. But most of the icons of Krishna present him with the love-image of the divine, in the most sublimely attractive form that the Indian mind could conceive.
The incarnated form of god in the form of Krishna had inspired all hearts with the most passionate love for him. The legends told about him retained various evidences about his folk origin, among a cattle-herding people residing riverside of Jamuna. In the vernacular literature of India, a fantastic collection of literature grew up, hymning, with a wealth of sensuous and sexual detail, his love-affairs with-the-cowgirls of his tribe all at once. Both of them are considered as divine lovers. They came allegorically to denote human souls with an attachment to the divine that proves to be as consuming and intimate as fulfilled with sexual love.
And therefore, icons of Krishna portray him playing with the flute in the flowering forest, with which he charmed his mistresses or Gopikas, perhaps with one or two of them twined amorously round him. But, his main miracle that is shown - he lifts a big mountain named as Goverdhan on one finger-tip to shelter his tribe from the anger of an insulted Indran, an old Aryan sky-god superseded by his younger rival.
One more Vishnu icon of Vedic origin is important to mention here. This icon bears witness to the sectarian rivalry between Vaishnavas and Shaivas, the dwarf. This dwarf became successful in winning the gods` contemptuous assent to his possessing all he can encompass in three strides. At the time of striding, he grows immense and his third stride had compassed the limits of the universe; thus the entire universe is of his. But followers of Shiva are not in back to fabricate an icon demonstrating the superiority of their own patron deity. According to them one day while traveling in space, Vishnu and Brahma were arguing on their relative status & suddenly between them a gigantic lingam appeared, it was too huge that they even could not fathom the height and depth of it. Shiva appeared within it for claiming supreme ascendancy belongs only of his. Such narratives, especially this may sound somewhat foolish to those, who are not personally involved. But both of these icons can convey a profound sense of immensity and cosmic awe without confusion.
Other deities mentioned in the ancient sacred literature of the Brahmins are icons of more natural forces. In this, the Vedic hymns-such as Agni, the patron of the sacrifice, persona the sacrificial fire-were treated as a statutory icons. But as per the personification done by the Brahmins, at the central place the great Self of Being comprehends the universe always remained in the iconic role of Shiva and Vishnu. Between them a kind of continuous dialectic were obtained.
Icons in Buddhism and Jainism
But among the masculine divine images the most important place is occupied by the two saints. They were the founders of the two great `secular religions` of India the Buddha, teacher of Buddhism, and Mahavira of Jainism. Both of them, were worked as path shower, human teachers to the people, who lived about in 500 BC. Many references of their lives are well documented. They lived the lives of wandering ascetics in order to find `the real truth of life`. And both discovered spiritual disciplines for which could lead souls out of the continual cycle of rebirth and suffering, to which all living creatures were committed until they achieved final release. In essence, the teachings of both were non-theistic. And more interestingly, belief was not necessary to reach at ultimate spiritual attainment, only the discipline and correct action is needed. The practice of Buddhism basically required meditative introspection, total abolition of attachment to objects of desire or pleasure, and the abolition of aversion from the unpleasant things of the world. And Jainism required the absolute avoidance of injury that cause to any living thing. Mahavira thus committed suicide by eliminating food and drink altogether, and any movement which would cause injury.
No doubt, both have achieved the spiritual ultimate and served behind them for their followers a pattern of living. Many sculptured images were made and installed in shrines mainly to inspire the followers. These images were worked to provide a vision of the spiritual nature inhabiting in the bodies of the men. Mostly, all these images were executed in the same manner as that of the Hindu images. Some have an opinion that Buddhist and Jain plastic concepts of the divine essence were virtually look the same as the Hindu.
The Buddha and Mahavira appear in seating or standing position. But the Buddha is in mild, relaxed and equanimous whereas the Jina stern in his loving and suicidal rigidity. One famous & special Buddhist icon is of the Bodhisattva. It presents the ultimate image that is showing universal compassion in the sweet and beautiful guise of a kingly being ready to answer the prayers of all faithfuls. One more important thing is that neither the Buddha nor the Jina were the gods. But in fact, they were regarded and represented as filled with the afflatus of truth of life, which is not intrinsically different from the divine. And some of Buddhist sects that were developed somewhere in medieval times carved multiple images of the Buddha. These multiple images of Buddha were to represent different aspects of Buddhist truth, often interpreted as `deities`.
In the Western part, the idea or concept of a masculine divinity is very much familiar. Most people can find by their instinct some sympathy with any masculine deity. But, being all the knowledge of `mother goddesses` as archaeological objects or as psychological theory, sometimes Indians view the goddess with suspicion.
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