Coloring the World: Some Thoughts from Jain and Buddhist Narratives
religions Article Coloring the World: Some Thoughts from Jain and Buddhist Narratives Phyllis Granoff Department of Religious Studies, Yale University, 451 College St, New Haven, CT 06511, USA; phyllis.granoff@yale.edu Received: 2 December 2019; Accepted: 18 December 2019; Published: 23 December 2019 Abstract: This paper begins with an examination of early Indian speculation about colors, their number, their use, and their significance. It ranges widely from the Upanis.ads to the Na¯.tya´sastra¯ , from Svet´ ambara¯ Jain canonical texts to Buddhaghosa’s treatise on meditation, the Visuddhimagga, from pura¯n. as to technical treatises on painting. It turns then to examine how select Jain and Buddhist texts used color in two important scenarios, descriptions of the setting for events and the person of the Jina/Buddha. In the concluding reflections, I compare textual practices with a few examples from the visual record to ask what role if any the colors specified in a story might have played in the choices made by an artist. Keywords: Buddhism; Jainism; color 1. Introduction1 I begin this essay with two images of Avalokite´svara,close to each other in date, a sculpture from the 11th c. in the Cleveland Museum of art, Figure1, and a folio from a 12th century manuscript of the As..tasahasrika¯ Prajñap¯ aramit¯ a¯ in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Figure2. The Cleveland image shows traces of its original paint. Both images, of very different size, in completely different media, rely on angular lines and curves to convey movement and create a rich and complex tableau. By placing them together, I wanted to suggest that the vibrancy and motion in the painting also owe much to the skillful use of color.
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