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The Very Idea of a Portrait Author(s): Vidya Dehejia Source: Ars Orientalis, Vol. 28, 75th Anniversary of the Freer Gallery of Art (1998), pp. 40-48 Published by: Freer Gallery of Art, The Smithsonian Institution and Department of the History of Art, University of Michigan Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4629529 Accessed: 17-06-2015 12:42 UTC

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The Ver.y Idea of a Portrait

A SLENDER, POISED IMAGE ofa sensuous image of his own father, it can only be because, in female, flawlessly cast in bronze and identi- the accepted style of the day, portrait images were fied for many years as an image of the god- always sculpted to bear a greater resemblance to im- dess Parvati, stands a meter high on a pedestal within ages of the gods than to their actual counterparts. the Freer Gallery of Art (fig. 1). Sometime agco,I pro- Although lively and individualistic figures often ap- posed that the image may be read with equalvalidity pear in genre scenes and narrative presentations, as a portrait of the Chola queen Sembiyan Mahadevi, whether sculpted or painted, verisimilitude certainly idealized as divinity and portrayed in the guise of a was not the ruling principle in commemorative por- goddess. This blurring and apparent overlapping of trait figures of aristocratic or royal ancestors. These the categories of divine and royal portraiture has led stylized portrait statues and paintings were presum- me to explore in this essay the idea of portra:iturein ably identified either by their exact placement in a early India in an attempt to analyze its status an(dvalue. chapel, monastery, or temple or by their use in spe- A revealing commentary on the Hindu concept cific rituals such as birthday celebrations or death of portraiture is contained in an ancient Sanskrit play anniversaries. titled Pratimai-naitaka (Statue-play), written by The earliest ancestral portrait gallery for which fourth-century dramatist Bhasa and structured material evidence survives, though at its barest mini- loosely around the story of Rama. In its third act, mum, commemorated a group of seven members of when prince Bharata, younger brother of exiled Satavahana royalty and was carved in the first cen- Rama, returns to his hometown, as yet unaware of tury B.C. in a cave at the head of the strategic Nanaghat tlle recent death of his father King Dasarat;ha, he Pass, located along the trade route that led down from marvels over the execution of the sculpted images in the hills of the western ghats to the ports along the a newly constructed pavilion. Wondering whether Arabian Sea. The royal portrait gallery would have its four figures represent deities, he prepares to bow been seen by merchants, traders, and other travel- to them, upon which the keeper informs him that he ers who passed through Satavahana territory on is in an ancestral chapel and that the images repre- their way to the west coast. Unfortunately, the sent his father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and stone bas-relief images themselves are damaged great-great-grandfather.' If the audience of thieplay beyond recognition, and only the inscribed labels did not ridicule Bharata for failing to recognize the remain in the rock face above to apprise us of their identity.

FIG. 1. The second such portrait gallery known to us IdealizedPortrait of QueenSembiyan Mahadevi as commemorates the Kushan rulers of northern India. Parvati, Cholaperiod, ca. 998, bronze,36 ?4 in. An ancestral chapel at Mat, just outside the town of CourtesyFreer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Mathura, appears to have housed no fewer than four Institution, F29.84. portrait images, much damaged today, carved from 41

Ars Orientalis, volume XXVIII (1998)

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red sandstone, each with an identifying inscrip- Such debatesoffer fair demonstration that artists did tion. The single seated image is Vima Kadphises, not sculptimages recognizable by theirphysical char- an early Kushanruler of the mid-first century A.D, acteristics;rather, correct identification was possible clad in boots and tunic and seated on a lion throne only from inscribed labels or specific referencesto with feet pendant in the position known as the sculptors'commission. pralambapadasana. The well-known standing por- trait of the famous emperor Kanishka is little more O RTRAITURE RETAINED thischaracter dur- than a silhouette created by the eccentric outline of ing the succeedingcenturies of Cholarule. In his military mantle, which is also depicted in his coin the tenth century,temples began to commis- portraits and was clearly his hallmark. Certainly the sion a rangeof portablebronze images of the deities padded boots and woolen cloak would not have been to be used in dailyand weekly rituals, as well as in an normal garb in the hot plains of Mathura but sym- increasingrange of annualfestivals. Though images bolized the authority of these rulers and signified their of deitieswere doubtlessthe primecommissions, in- central Asian origins. Across the lower edge of the scriptions at Rajaraja'sGreat Temple of Tanjavur, cloak is an inscription that reads maharajiarajiitiraja completed in the year 1010, speak of the gift of no devaputra kaniska, or "Great king, king of kings, son fewer than four bronze portraits of Chola royalty of the gods, Kanishka." A third portrait statue is amongits total of sixty-six bronze images.Emperor identified by inscription as Kanishka's successor Rajaraja'ssister, Kundavai,gifted an image of her Huvishka, and a fourth is an unidentified prince. parents, King SundaraChola and Queen Vanavan While the heads of the standing statues are broken Mahadevi, while the temple manager, Adittan away, it is possible to reconstruct that of Kanishka Suryan, gifted images of the reigning monarch from his coin portraits, which depict him clad in his Rajarajaand his chief queen Lokamahadevi.Unfor- military mantle and boots, with an unusually long tunately, these temple images of Tanjavurroyalty beard and a conical central Asian cap. His attributes have long since disappeared,depriving us of an in- of boots, cloak, beard, and cap made him recogniz- valuablesource of information(or confirmation)re- able; the shape of his nose orjawline were secondary gardingthe natureof portraiture.Yet both the ear- if not irrelevant. The shrine appears to have been lier Pallavapractice just reviewed and laterVijaya- constructed in Kanishka's year 6, perhaps corre- nagaraimagery to which we shall referwould sug- sponding to the year A.D. 84, with additions during gest that the Tanjavurimages were idealizedroyal Huvishka's reign. portraits.The Tanjavurtemple contains two addi- One of the earliest examples of royal stone por- tionalportraits of Rajaraja,one sculptedand the other traits from south India, sculpted in the seventh cen- painted;both portraya genericidealized figure with tury and identified by inscribed labels, is seen in the locks piled high in imitation of his favoritedeity, Adivaraha cave temple at the site of Mamallapuram, Shiva. Verisimilitudeappears to have been of little some forty miles south of Madras (now Chennai). On consequence. one side wall, two queens flank the seated monarch While the Tanjavurtemple inscriptionsdo not Simhavishnu, who founded the Pallava line around addresswhat motivated the creationof its fourbronze 550, while on the opposite wall stands his successor royalportraits, the inscriptionsof Rajaraja'sgrand- Mahendravarman, who ruled from ca. 600 to 630, mother,Sembiyan Mahadevi, cast some lighton this with two queens beside him. The two royal figures question.Queen Sembiyanwas a greatpatron of the look so similar that they are almost interchangeable artswho was activein buildingtemples and commis- and may even be identified as one of a range of mon- sioning bronzes for a period of at least sixty years; archs. Scholars have suggested that the standing fig- her earliestdated gift belongs to the year 941, while ure is the later ruler Mahendravarman IIand that the the latest occurred in the year 1001. Sembiyan seated figure is his predecessor, Narasimhavarman Mahadevifounded a town that adopted her name; 42 Mamalla (ca. 630-68), who gave his name to the site. she settledthere a groupof Chaturvedibrahmins and

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also constructed the Kailasanathatemple. Sembiyan towardthe creationof twenty-onetemples. She was herselfwas commemorated in a bronze portrait statue a woman with a remarkablesense of historic docu- that was probably commissioned during her lifetime, mentation,which was rarein ancientIndia. Her nu- perhaps at the behest of her son Uttama Chola. A meroustemple inscriptions inform us thatwhen she later inscription of Sembiyan's great-grandson, Em- replacedbrick temples with those built of stone, she peror Rajendra, speaks of special arrangementsmade ensured that all the originaldedicatory inscriptions for the celebration of Sembiyan's royal birthday in were reengravedon the new stone structures,along- the month of Chittirai (March-April) at the Kailasa- side her own record.Her inscriptionat the Aduturai natha temple. The inscription makes specific provi- templestates: sions for the worship of her portrait statue alongside the image of Rishabhavahana, or Shiva with his bull. While dismantlingthe earlierpart-brick, part- It speaks also of a great hall within the Kailasanatha stone structure,the inscribed stones were care- temple that took the queen's name (Sembiyan fullyremoved and preservedfor the documents Mahiideviyarperiya mandapam) and may have been engravedon them;and when the new structure used for her birthday celebrations. was completed, all in stone, this great soul In the context of idealized portraits that resemble SembiyanMahadevi ordered that the old inscrip- images of deities, I would like to revisit my earlier tions recordinggrants, donations, etc. of all ear- suggestion that the evocative bronze image in the lier kingswhich had been damagedor worn out, Freer Gallery is intended to portray Sembiyan be faithfullyengraved on the walls of the new Mahadevi. While conclusive proof of such a sugges- structure.4 tion may be impossible to produce, several features seem to indicate the probability of such an identifi- At the temple of Tirukodikavalwe learn that once cation. It has always been recognized that the image the old inscriptionshad been reengravedon thewalls is stylistically idiosyncratic in its proportions, in the of the newly built stone temple, Queen Sembiyan marked and even exaggerated slope of its shoulders, ordered that they be discarded, as they had served in the naturalistic handling of its full heavy breasts, theirpurpose. and in its solemn, thoughtful expression. It is not a We may assume that what inspired Sembiyan's standard image of the goddess Parvati. The sugges- familyto commissionthis firstknown metalportrait tion that its Sri Lankan origin explains its deviation of Cholaroyalty was theirappreciation of her remark- from the norm does not hold up to serious scrutiny; able personality,her integrity,and her sense of his- stylistically, the image displays features that indicate toricalawareness, together with their desire to pre- its manufacture in the heart of the Chola country. servefor posterity the memoryof a greatqueen. Per- Elsewhere I have spoken at length about its many fea- haps the artistwho sculpted the bronze imageper- tures of form and decoration, which indicate it be- ceived in SembiyanMahadevi such power and emi- longs to the very end of the tenth century, the date at nence that he could envision her as comparableto which a portrait image of Sembiyan is likely to have none less thanParvati, the greatgoddess. Would the been made.2Additionally, some unconfirmed reports queen have been recognized from this image, in apparently suggest that the image, acquired in 1929, which queenand goddess seem to mingleand merge? perhaps through C. T. Loo, was recovered from a Very unlikely.Is it reasonableto expect such recog- temple tank close to the town of SernbiyanMahadevi.3 nition? Once again the answeris no. But when the What considerations could have led Sembiyan's imagewas carriedin procession duringher birthday son or grandson to commission a bronze sculpted celebrations,all would have recognizedher. image of the queen? From all that we learn about her, Portraitsof the Tamil saintsprovide another rich Queen Sembiyan was a remarkable personality. A field within which to consider ideas of portraiture, lavish patron of the sacred arts, she contributed gen- and the alliedconcept of recognitionof portraits,that erous gifts of images, land, and cash endowments prevailedin south India into the sixteenth century. 43

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FIG. 2. Dancing child-saint Sambandar, Cholaperiod, twelfth century, bronze,18 34in. CourtesyFreer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, F76.5.

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The majority of temples in the Tamil country pos- painted of his courtiers and nobles. The various sess a complete set of images of its saints, either the Mughal emperors are clearly distinguishable one from sixty-three Shaiva Nayanmarsor the twelve Vaishnava the other in their painted portraits; Akbar cannot Alvars. Though images of child-saint Sambandar, be mistaken forJahangir,norJahangir for ShahJahan. whether dancing (fig. 2) or standing, show total lack And indeed the artists took pains to portray the em- of concern for physical likeness or visual specificity, perors at varying stages of their careers: as young they may be termed portraits in the sense that they princes, at the height of their power, and as aging are recognized by the devotee. The figure of an un- monarchs. Admittedly, however, it is when Mughal clothed infant, with one hand pointing upwards and artists moved away from royalty to eccentric physi- the other hand either in the gesture of dance or hold- cal types like dervishes and faqirs that they produced ing a cup, makes the image instantly recognizable. their most precise and vivid portraits-warts, moles, Devotees would have told one another that this was and all. An evocative drawing of a portly man relax- the child who was given a cup of divine milk and who, ing with a jug of wine before him makes us feel we after pointing toward the heavens when questioned are encountering a specific individual (fig. 3). This on the source of the milk, burst into joyous songs in freedom, which the artists enjoyed once they were praise of the godhead. The artists took hold of the released from the restrictions of portraying royal fig- essential elements of Sambandar's life story and used ures, is equally evident in pre-Mughal painting. Paint- them to formulate his portrait. Yet the prevailing ers depicting the Buddha's life story in the fifth-cen- twentieth-century confusion over images of child- tury Buddhist monastic caves at Ajanta tended to saint Sambandar, mistakenly labeled in many muse- produce stylized figures; but they adopted a rich and ums as "dancing child Krishna," points once again vivid mode of depiction when they turned to por- to the blurring of categories of divine and, in this case, traying witches, dwarfs, and other marginal figures. saintly rather than royal. Artists apparently visual- Notably, literarytexts suggest that wall paintings were ized the beloved child Sambandar in the mold of the a regular part of the decoration of monuments; but only other child figure with which they were famil- Ajanta alone survives as testimony of this ancient iar; to them this was the standard and accepted for- mode of decoration. mula. The length of Sambandar's nose or the shape In southern India, where Mughal influence was of his eyes was not important. Visual specificity and peripheral, recognizable portraits came into vogue verisirnilitudewere likewise deemed unnecessary and somewhat later. Portraits of the Vijayanagar rulers irrelevant in the case of the Christian saints. One is (1356-1556) continue to be of a stylized type. The reminded of Robert Browning's poem "Fra Lippo famous bronze portraits of Emperor Krishnadevaraya Lippi," in which Brother Lippo Lippi painted indi- and his two queens, today in the Tirumala Devast- vidualized figures of the Catholic saints only to be hanam at Tirupati, are generic idealized aristocratic chastised by the prior, who wanted a standard type: images that could equally well be portraits of any royal or aristocratic group. It is only with the Nayaks of Paint the soul, never mind the legs and arms! Madurai, once governors of the Vijayanagar emper- Rub all out, try at it a second time. ors, that recognizable portraiture comes into its own. Emperor Tirumala Nayak (r. 1623-59) began to Even the portraits of lesser donors on Chola temples,5 commission portrait statues of the entire Nayak lin- though displaying more individual physical traits, are eage, to be carved against the granite columns of one nevertheless types-ecstatic devotees-rather than or other hall in the temples he constructed. The re- recognizable individuals. sult is an ancestral portrait gallery with rulers ar- Portraits that are likenesses came into vogue in ranged in chronological order and ending with northern India when the Mughal emperor Akbar him- Tirumala himself, who is portrayed in temple after self sat for his portrait so that his likeness could be temple as a portly figure with his stomach rolling over captured by artists, directing also that portraits be his 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/8in. CourtesyFreer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, F53.60.

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containing the bunched hair that falls over to one side. its worn-out bodies Was this trend toward verisimilitude in portraiture to take on other new ones.6 to some extent due to the contact with the Portu- guese, whose help Tirumala sought in his battle The Buddha, for instance, is believed to have as- against the Sethupatis of adjoining Ramnad? No clear sumed 550 different bodies, including that of the el- answer arises. ephant Chaddanta, the monkey Mahakapi, an acro- bat, the vaisyamerchant Visahya, brahmins Sumedha E MAY PERHAPS attempt a working and Shyama, and ksatriyaprinces Mahajanaka and hypothesis to explain the indifference to Vessantara. Finally born as chieftain Siddhartha, he verisimilitude in so much of Indian por- severed all bonds and achieved salvation; he dis- traiture. In the context of Hindu, Buddhist, andJain carded the body, never again to be confined in bodily India, it may be necessary to reexamine, even rede- form. Perhaps it is not so strange, after all, that the fine, the philosophic concept of the individual self. reproduction ofphysiognomic likeness held little sig- It could be said that the Christian and Islamic self nificance in a society which believed that the physi- combines self as body and self as soul, the body be- cal features of the present birth would be replaced ing indispensable for the resurrection that will occur by a new set of bodily features in the next birth and on the final Day of Judgment. The same body in that the ultimate state of salvation is the self unen- which the soul dwelt while on earth, with its specific cumbered by a body. Furthermore, Indian religious physiognomic peculiarities, will be resurrected to systems upheld the suppression of the ego; figures contain the soul in the next world. By contrast, in- with visual specificity may well have been seen as digenous Hindu, Buddhist, andJain beliefs envision catering to that very quality of egoism that they sought a disembodied entity, a soul that returns repeatedly to destroy.7 An idealized outer form is one distinc- to earth, each time temporarily assuming a body with tive answer to the demands of portraiture. particular physical characteristics, only to discard it Portraitshave always existed in India, though the and assume a totally different body the next time nomenclature may be misleading to the modern around. The physical features of a body exist only reader because these stone, metal, or painted por- for a single lifetime and not for eternity. The traits paid little attention to physical resemblance. Bhagavad-Gita puts it succinctly: The artists' idea of portraiture, especially of royalty and sainthood, tended toward idealized visions of the As a man discards quality, character, and stature of the subjects rather worn-out clothes than a precise likeness of their physical features. If to put on new this hypothesis is valid, it is not surprising that a metal and different ones, portrait of a great and revered queen was modeled so the embodied self on the iconography and style employed to depict the discards divine Parvati. C

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5. PadmaKaimal, "Passionate Bodies: Constructionsof the Notes Self in South Indian Portraits,"Archives of Asian Art 47 (1995): 6-16. 1.A. C.Woolnerand LakshmanSarup, trans., ThirteenPlays of Bhasa (Delhi: MotilalBanarsidass reprint, 1985), 172-76. 6. BarbaraStoler Miller, TheBhagavad-Gita: Krishna's Counselin Timeof War (New York:Columbia University 2. Vidya Dehejia,Art of the Imperial Cholas(New York: Press, 1986), chap. 2, verse 22, p. 32. ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1990), 36-38. 7. PratapadityaPal, TheArt of Tibet:A Catalogueof theLos 3. Conversationswith SamuelEilenberg in 1988. We AngelesCounty Museum ofArt Collection(Los Angeles:Los acquiredthe image, which had been stored in Paris,through Angeles County Museumof Art, 1990), 57. H. Kevorkian.

4. Annual Reporton SouthIndian Epigraphy,no. 35 (Madras, 1907).

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