Need to know temple culture

The sight of naked figures on temple architecture is disconcerting for a foreign traveler to India. She asks, in her blog, why these compromising positions should display at a temple. Obviously, at Western places of worship, nothing unprepossessing like them exists. The apparent social indiscipline upsets her organized mind, and the expectation of what should be. Clearly, there is a clash of cultures.

Organization gives meaning to everyday life in the West, a social control apparently missing in more organic cultures on the other side of the world. In the temple arts of India, erotic compositions in full view are usual. Male and female figures may be bejeweled, bedecked with flowers, but otherwise naked. 

Why? One thing for sure, the social context differs – certain artworks are dated around 6-2 millennium BCE. However, since paper trails documenting this remote past are inadequate, the conceptual reasons for the artworks must be left to conjecture. Numerous include have arisen in attempts to explain the practice. 

These include: 

• Sign of happiness, auspiciousness and prosperity: that the figures are motifs to bring good fortune.
• Mock the ascetics: that the intent is to ridicule the esoteric practices of the extreme sects. 
• Code language: that the compositions carry a deeper spiritual meaning. The figures are not about the humans but symbolic representations of attributes of Nature. 
• Conceal the magico-propitiory yantra: that the figures are a distraction, used to conceal the important points of specific ritualistic designs. 
• Non-duality: that the male and female elements are opposing forces that complement each other, and ultimately become One. 

It is known, however, that there were restrictions on the dissemination of knowledge. It was strictly on need to know basis, in the sense that only worthy receptacles could receive knowledge. Not segregation by birth, but by ability. Truth to be revealed to a person depended upon their level of spiritual preparedness for it. Seats of education were the gurukul, the ashram or temple home of the teachers, who were priests and also householders. Knowledge was not open to the uninitiated, neither was entry to the temples. 

For instance, the Rig Veda, the oldest of the written scriptures, which dates around six millennia BCE, is an epic poem with over ten thousand verses. The verses can be chanted in three different meters that change their interpretation of divine truths.  Students would be allowed a particular meter only after they were deemed fit and ready for it. Else, the hidden meanings would be kept secret. 

The Hindu temple arts of India were created over several millennia, from ancient to medieval times. They are often carved or painted in intricate designs on solid rock. In some places, they are within caves in the mountainside. Unknown artists laboured over them, with rudimentary chisels and hammers, and organic colours of the time, to create sculptures and murals that have survived the ages. Their models were not live humans, but products of their imagination.

Objectification of gender is not the purpose in temple art. The lack of clothing on the figures signifies divinity, when the light of complete self-awareness renders external coverings redundant. The gods and goddesses depicted are meant to be numerous forms of One Supreme Being - the one that becomes many. The figures and their relationships are heavy with symbolism; male and female elements complement each other in their representative powers.
 
Stephen Knapp writes:

In the Vedic tradition it is common to see the pairing of the Vedic male Gods with a female counterpart, thus combining both sets of powers and qualities that each would have. We can easily see this in Radha-Krishna, Sita-Rama, Lakshmi-Vishnu, Durga-Shiva, Sarasvati-Brahma, Indrani-Indra, etc. Thus, we have the combination of male and female Divinities that make the complete balance in the divine spiritual powers.

Fact is Hinduism started out as a philosophy, not as a religion. Neither in ancient society was a woman barred from intellectual pursuits. Women as a group held high positions in society. The verses of the Rig Veda (the oldest of the scriptures written down about six millennia BCE, but likely composed far earlier) extol the prowess of over thirty women sages that were held in the highest esteem. 

The temple compositions retell stories from the mythology, the scriptures and other ancient texts. The multiply arms, heads, or animal parts in the portrayals also have symbolic meaning. The female elements in the compositions are not subordinate to the gods. The goddesses ache instead for victory in battles against male elements! In their pose, prototype and expression, they exude power. 

For instance, the image of Durga, the warrior goddess is shown to have eight arms. This means that she is able to combat in eight directions simultaneously that the male gods cannot! The ‘battle’ signifies the conflict of good and evil. Actually, ‘gods’ and ‘demons’ represent the strengths and weaknesses of a person, and the conflicts between them, rife moral dilemmas. 

In subsequent ages, Hinduism transformed to an orthodox religion with deity worship and ritualistic practices. Changes wrought by invasions, conquests, annexations and colonization of the country buried the gender equality of ancient India deep into the sands of time. The roles of sages, apostles, prophets and avatars became the prerogative of men in subsequent ages of patriarchy. The feminine gender was made to believe that they are the secondary sex, and thus their objectification justified. 

The point is the ancient temple arts communicate imagery of a bygone social context different from that today. Artefacts still standing, are possible testimony to the different reality. There and then, the female was at least equal to the male. Walls and architecture bear proof of the pride and power of female sexuality. Over time thereafter, women's groups appear to have lost sight of their identity, their social power, and, in the words of present day thinkers, their erotic territory. The pilgrimage for the modern woman should be to rediscover their social worth and value through relevant lessons from the past. They need to find power within their self, to chart for the future, the culture of enlightened gender roles. 

Blessed to be born female?

Georgia O’Keefe’s early twentieth century paintings of the Black Iris flower are more readily perceived as her metaphoric preoccupation with female genitalia. It seems to me that the Nature worshipping era of the remote past would have instead perceived spirituality in her artworks. They would have definitely been taken to denote the awesome fertility powers of the Mother Goddess. However, since Freudian interpretations of sexuality impacted social knowledge, connotative associations appear to be grasped first in the global forum.   

Remnant artifacts of Nature worship have been found from the Indus Valley civilization of ancient India dated thousands of years before Christ. Several nations of the Asian sub-continent, independent in present day, share this common heritage. Excavations ongoing mainly in two countries, India and Pakistan, at Mohenjodaro, Harappa and other places, have so far uncovered only a small percentage of the buried cultural wealth. But, although the hieroglyphics of the time have not yet been deciphered, surely the art forms discovered there can tell a story of the time! They could give us an inkling of the stark social differences of mindset and value regarding gender, past to present.  

Various objects made and used by the people have been discovered. Many figurines of the artwork found have accentuated breasts and pelvis. Does this mean women were objectified then as now? No, say the fact-finders, the exaggerations are symbolic. They represent divinity, not humans - the cult of the Mother Goddess, the Earth Mother or Nature – and invoke attributes of bounty of the deity. Made of clay or terracotta, they show kinship with Earth. 

A website collecting historical information about deities explains the point:

As significant and suggestive is her iconography - the large breasts filled with milk, uncovered genital organs, beautifully dressed hair and a good number of bangles on her wrists. This is the iconic perception of the Being who bears, feeds, takes all calamities on her head and covers the born one under her protective umbrella and, at the same time, defines in the modeling of her form an absolute aesthetic beauty. As suggest her bangles, the traditional emblem of marital state, besides a mother she is also a consort. Thus, in her material manifestation, She represents, with absolute motherhood, also the absolute womanhood. She causes life and sustains it, and is also the cause of life, its inspiration and aspiration, and the reason to live.

Social demarcations would thus have dual levels to span the universe – the gods that live in the heavens, and humans on earth, descendent from them or fallen, stripped of powers. A saying in India, that what is fine for the gods is not fine for mortals, reminds the humans of their ultimate fallibility. And that the all-powerful divine beings need to be worshipped for appeasement and blessings, because the humans are too puny to manage on their own against harsh reality.

In this ancient Indian context, the female form has spiritual and religious significance. Because of the association with divine functions, women most likely enjoyed a high position in society. Perhaps to be born female was to be blessed! It is a distinct possibility that matriarchy, which now exists in pockets around the country, was far more pervasive. A ritual originating in fertility rites that to this day  initiates Hindu image worship, is the ghot puja. It is an earthenware pot filled with water and inscribed with a figure in vermilion, which symbolizes the pregnant womb. It invokes the Mother Goddess. The traditional Indian reverence for the mother figure may have its roots therein as well. 

By the third millennium BCE, the people of Indus Valley had learned to cast in metal. The bronze Dancing Girl is the most famous amongst the human and animal artifacts found. The difference from the Mother Goddess is immediately apparent - she lacks the physical exaggerations. Perhaps a little crude in face and limb technically, the statuette nevertheless indicates the status of women of the time. A quote from British archaeologist, Mortimer Wheeler, describes its form and feature:

There is her little Baluchi-style face with pouting lips and insolent look in the eye. She's about fifteen years old I should think, not more, but she stands there with bangles all the way up her arm and nothing else on. A girl perfectly, for the moment, perfectly confident of herself and the world. There's nothing like her, I think, in the world.  

Indeed, attitude is immediately apparent in the body language. The pose – the hand on hip, the cocked stance, the lifted chin, the half-closed eyes, and the slanted look exude the impudence and comfort in skin hard to find amongst women today. Some writers suggest that the figurine is transgender. It is interesting to think, in extension, that gender may not have always been the divisive social issue it is at present. Identifying as female, in the image of the divine, may well have been totally acceptable in society.

Her nudity makes no difference to our appreciation of the artwork. Perhaps we notice it only because we belong to a different era, socialized into a different value system. Maybe in the early times, women were unused to suffering body issues! In remote regions of India, in tribes isolated from the mainstream to preserve their ancient culture, nakedness is their way of life. Jarawa women, for instance, may be more comfortable in the natural than many more civilized others might be fully clothed!

During the age of Nature worship, the people lived in awe of the environment. The power of the Goddess was perceived in every creation in the environment, and they bowed in reverence. Their imagery has been in celebration of the Divine. Against the spiritual backdrop, it is no surprise that temple art - rock carvings and cave paintings - are pretty explicit on the bountiful attributes of Nature.  

From there and then to here and now, how the perspective has changed! We expect that we control the environment today; hence we patronize the past. In the process, we tend to lose awareness of the sociocultural context of the age - and the artistic intent. Women, as a group, are habitually objectified. I remember overhearing some tourists a while ago. Eyes gleaming, the young men conversed raucously about the full figure displays of chicks in the temple artworks. It is not the fault of the artists but of particular sociocultural learning that perceptions of gender channel as they do.