Essays on Gupta Culture. by Bardwell L. SmithReview by: Vidya DehejiaThe Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 44, No. 3 (May, 1985), pp. 655-656Published by: Association for Asian StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2056327 .

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BOOK REVIEWS-SOUTH ASIA 655

Bookhouse, 19781). However, Bhat's work is in Kannada, and it is inaccessible to many scholars who might like to find out more about Kannada syntax.

Schiffman states that, since his work is a reference grammar, his primary interest has been in assembling the facts of the language and not in getting involved in debates about linguistic theory. He has collected the information concerning the facts of the language from sources such as articles, dissertations, and grammars of literary Kannada as well as various dialects. He has also consulted with Kannada-speaking linguists and other native speakers. When the sources are so diverse, there are bound to be disagreements and contradictory statements on some points. Schiffman has pointed out areas where there are uncertainties because of disagreement among his sources. In many such instances, the disagreement appears to stem from dialect diversity. In his preface, Schiffman says that in writing this book he has tried to keep in mind both the professional linguist and the lay person who may have had no training in grammatical analysis. Such a goal is difficult to achieve in linguistic presentations, but Schiffman has succeeded in keeping technical jargon to a minimum.

ROCKY V MIRANDA

University of Minnesota

Essays on Gupta Culture.. Edited by BARDWELL L. SMITH. Columbia, Mo.: South Asia Books, 1983. xvii, 360 pp. Isllustrations, Bibliographic Essays, General Index and Author Index for Bibliographic Essays. $34 (cloth); $18 (paper).

Papers delivered at a symposium are not often consistently of the high quality of these essays, which are grouped together under the headings of "Political Power," "Religious Pluralism," and "Literary and Artistic Expression." There is an overlap be- tween the first two categories, but the headings nevertheless retain their validity. A. L. Basham's historical and cultural review of the Gupta Age is tightly put together and forms an excellent introduction to the book.

A. K. Narain's "Religious Policy and Toleration" contains a welcome analysis of Gupta numismatic and epigraphic sources as they relate to his theme. The painstaking presentation of this material testifying to the religious pluralism of the monarchs is valuable. Narain's conclusion that the king's duty was not the active promotion and patronage of a religion, but the maintenance of a social equilibrium, is well consid- ered. Frederick Asher's thought-provoking essay, "Historical and Political Allegory in Gupta Art," emphasizes the many large images of Varaha-Vishnu. Asher convincingly suggests that such images served as a metaphor for the monarch, and he proceeds sim- ilarly to consider images of Trivikrama and of Vishnu's wheel as metaphors. The essay concludes with a new interpretation of two sculptured cliffs at Mahabalipuram, the Descent of the Ganges and Krishna upholding Mount Govardhana as shelter from the rainstorm. Asher's suggestion, an intriguing one, is that the two scenes taken together are intended to extol the glory of the Pallava monarch, who, like Bhagiratha, brought water to the people (through the ancient canal system) and simultaneously, like Krishna, controlled its excesses! Burton Stein considers the concept of sacred kingship and the role of public ritual in sustaining the institution of monarchy. His analysis of the Ma- hanavami festival in Vijayanagar and modern times, as a royal public ritual intended to reinforce the quality of sacred kingship, makes fascinating reading, but it seems out of place in Essays on Gupta Culture.

Part 2 commences with Basham's useful translation of the Mandasor inscription of the silk weavers who commissioned a local hack-poet, Vatsabhatta, to write a dedica-

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656 JOURNAL OF ASIAN STUDIES

tory poem for the sun temple they were building. Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty's pro- vocative essay on the heretic in the Gupta Puranas emphasizes that the Golden Age for the privileged was a dark age for those heretics outside the inner sanctum. She cites the concept of Vishnu's incarnation as the Buddha, which first appeared in the Vishnu Purana between 400-500, as "the most important of the anti-Buddhist myths of this period" (p. 108). O'Flaherty's analysis of the many Sanskrit terms used to imply he- retic is revealing. She discusses myths relating to the supression of heresy, concluding with the controversial statement that the much-vaunted gold of the Gupta era "may have been little more than a desperate attempt to plate a fast-tarnishing Establishment made of baser stuff" (p. 129). In contrast to O'Flaherty's pessimistic picture is Bal- krishna Govind Gokhale's account of the prosperity of Buddhism in the Gupta Age. He utilizes inscriptional material as well as the accounts of Chinese pilgrims to present a picture of Buddhism as "a noble and integral part of an age of classicism" (p. 153).

Part 3 commences with Barbara Stoler Miller's essay on classical drama in the Gupta Age, in which she points out that the poet's task "was to create verbal bridges to the divine as a means of glorifying and strengthening the kings they served" (p. 162). Miller contrasts the elegant and subtle courtly Sanskrit of Kalidasa's poems with the wider appeal of his plays, which bring in the Prakrit language and in which an array of characters is presented for comic relief in order to cater to the medley of spectators in attendance. A. K. Ramanujan and Norman Cutler present a joint essay on Tamil poetry entitled "From Classicism to Bhakti." They examine the poetic conventions used in early Sangam poetry and their transformation into the genre of Bhakti poems. The essay presents a fascinating analysis, which has been elaborated on elsewhere by its authors; my problem was finding its relevance to a work on Gupta culture.

Joanna Williams's essay entitled "Vakataka Art and the Gupta Mainstream" ad- dresses the question as to whether Ajanta is part of Gupta art. She enumerates the features that Ajanta has in common with Gupta monuments, lists those special to Ajanta, and concludes that the Ajanta sculptors must have been trained in a local workshop. Williams considers various images in the Vidarbha region, concluding that there was "a sophisticated and independent Central Vakataka style" (p. 233), of which Ajanta is the main surviving monument. Walter Spink's fascinating essay on the Great Cave at Elephanta clarifies a number of points not detailed in his earlier study ("Ajanta to Ellora," Marg 22 [19671). In the first half of his essay Spink highlights the vast number of copper coins of Krishnaraja found on the island, and he suggests that they were used for the payment of craftsmen who worked on the Great Cave. He then pre- sents detailed comparative material to establish that Elephanta is a mid-sixth-century Kalacuri monument, built by the emperor Krishnaraja. The second and more contro- versial half of his essay is devoted to a discussion of Dandin's Dasakumaracarita, which he believes reflects faithfully events in the Deccan at the time of the Vakataka down- fall. The complex historical associations suggest to him that Ajanta's Harisena was the great-grandfather of Elephanta's Krishnaraja. Historians may dispute his identifica- tions, but Spink's basic chronology of art history holds firm.

The book concludes with two valuable analytical and evaluative bibliographic es- says. Eleanor Zelliot deals with "Gupta History and Literature"; Bardwell Smith ana- lyzes Gupta religion and art. Essays on Gupta Culture is a valuable contribution to the understanding and appreciation of aspects of the Gupta age.

VIDYA DEHEJIA Columbia University

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