On Viewing SāñCīAuthor(s): Joanna WilliamsSource: Archives of Asian Art, Vol. 50 (1997/1998), pp. 93-98Published by: University of Hawai'i Press for the Asia SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20111275 .

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On Viewing Sa?ci

Joanna Williams

University of California, Berkeley

X his essay addresses an opinion implicit in too much

writing about Indian and Southeast Asian art: the image was not

necessarily meant to be seen, hence extended con

sideration of its content, or, for that matter, of its formal

qualities, is fatuous. Often this assumption leads us to over

look all but the most salient images or simply to register the

presence of particular types without considering what they look like. Recent discourse about early Buddhist narrative

reliefs has led to a straightforward statement of the issue.

Considering the Vessantara J?taka on the north gate of the

Great StQpa at S?nc?, Robert Brown writes, "Unless the

viewer is on a ladder or using a telephoto lens or binocu

lars, the j?taka relief at S?nc? cannot be seen in any detail at

all from the ground as (at over five meters above the

ground) it is simply too high."1 My purpose is not to exco

riate a particular scholar. Professor Brown s intention?to

explain narrative types in Indian terms?is laudable. But I

question whether the exclusion of visual analysis is not

excessive, constructing Indian images as totally "other," which has pernicious implications for our field.

The issue is clearly framed at S?nc?. Is five meters

(roughly sixteen feet) too great a distance to make out crit

ical detail? Surely the viewers in Figure i can distinguish in

the lowest lintel a substantial building on the right with

elephant outside, a chariot in the center moving to the left, where its form is twice repeated, unyoked to suggest that it

stops and turns back. Probably this is sufficient to evoke the

j?taka most revered by many Buddhists, which begins with

Prince Vessantara giving away the royal elephant, riding out

with his immediate family, then giving away the chariot

and horses. Would not this trigger recognition of the left

end as Vessantara proceeding with his family on foot? On a recent stay at S?nc?, I found that visitors regularly stood

back slightly to view this lintel at a lower angle, which mat

tered more than simple distance for their vision.

Then, having circumambulated the entire st?pa and

climbed by stairs on the south to the second pathway, these

viewers find the Vessantara story continued on the reverse

of this same lowest north lintel, roughly at eye level

although slightly more distant at 6.3 meters (Fig. 2). Here

they could appreciate more easily the charms of the fam

ily's life in the forest, amid carefully depicted plants and ani

mals. At the left, Prince Vessantara's children sit beneath a

v<:-.

aarar

Fig. i. North gate, outer face.

mango tree and enjoy its fruit. On the central portion of

this lintel, between two meticulously carved images of the

idyllic leafy hut, in a pond congested with lotuses, an ele

phant romps, half the scale of those in the Chhaddanta J?taka on the top lintel. Admittedly, questions remain about the

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Fig. 3. South gate, outer face.

way the story is presented. Why right to left movement on

the inner face, against the norm of pradaksina? (Perhaps to

enable a return to the palace, located almost on the back of

where the story began on the front?) Vessantara's giving away his wife and his discovery that the beggar was Indra in

disguise might seem to constitute the d?nouement; why is

this tucked away in a mass of figures at the left of the cen

tral lowest lintel? (Surely because dramatic climax matters

less than the development of pity and admiration for the

prince whose unbounded generosity will lead, offstage, to

his immediate rebirth as S?kyamuni.) The very problems that one encounters are resolved by viewing, not by decid

ing that viewing is impossible.

Gregory Schopen has argued that inscriptions at S?nc? were made to associate the donor with the sacred site, not

to record pious generosity for a human audience.2 In fact, this points to the difference between writing and pictures,

seemingly analogous "languages." The former, though accessible only to the literate, was sufficient to convey pre cise information. Images would seem accessible to all, yet

understanding their import required some prior familiarity with the subject matter. Even given such familiarity, multi

ple interpretations are still possible. The relative difficulty of seeing the topmost lintel of all

four gates might explain why five of the eight faces in

this position are devoted to the Manusi Buddhas, signified

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either by seven indistinguishable st?pas, by seven trees (not

consistently distinguished), or by a mixture of the two.

Recognition of seven forms would suffice to identify the

subject. The remaining three upper faces include the ele

phants seen in Figure 2 (what else could this be but the

Chhaddanta?) and, on the south, a woman bathed by two

elephants (Fig. 3, a familiar icon of the goddess Laksm?, albeit possibly Buddhicized here).Thus almost all carvings on the uppermost lintels are more formulaic than those on

the lower lintels.3

Brown also questions the visibility of a panel on the

Bh?rhut railing, located just above the ground, that "re

quires kneeling, squatting, or bending to see it well."4 Here

surely it is worth remembering that many Indians both pre sent and past (as shown in their images) sit easily on the

ground, their bodies conditioned from babyhood by mas

sage and by stretching that has been codified in the practice of yoga. Surely the small and the agile would find the lower

panels accessible.

And what of the portions of the S?nc? I pillars that are at

eye level and can be approached as close as sight requires, the pillars of the gates? I would argue that these are some of

the most carefully and imaginatively wrought parts of early Indian art. For instance, on the left pillar of the south gate

we find references to major events in the Buddha's life (Fig. 5, the First Sermon on the front, the Enlightenment on the

inner face).5 Susan Huntington would have us see not the

events but their commemoration, symbolized by a pillar

bearing the Wheel of the Law set in a deer park and by the

shrine that was built around the Bodhi tree.6 The pillar and tree form a central axis in their respective panels, contrast

ing with the asymmetrical scenes below. On the front face, below the Wheel of the Law, two registers depicting pro cessions guide the viewer in through the gateway (Fig. 4).

On the inner face, below the Bodhi tree, is a king with

female attendants (Figs. 5, 6). Below that a scene of worship surrounds the Buddha's hair relic, marked by a tilted umbrella.

This panel is best known for its inscription:

Vedisakehi damtak?rehi rupakamma katam

(fromVidisa by the ivory carvers the image-making was done)

Given the fact that virtually all the other inscriptions on the

Great St?pa identify donors, might not this also? Yet those

other records employ the term d?narh ("given") rather than

katam ("made"). Hence the usual assumption that we have

here a kind of collective makers' signature of a guild of

ivory carvers; but since no second, donative inscription sur

vives on this pillar, it is tempting to suggest that the carvers

donated their labor to attain anonymous merit but for pro fessional reasons chose to identify themselves only as the

makers. Certainly this inscription would have been easily read by the literate, including the monks directing the work

and perhaps businessmen who were potential donors.

What survives of this pillar is artfully carved, moving from activity at the bottom to a more static top. Damage

Fig. 4. South gate, west pillar, front face.

makes it difficult to identify the lowest scene in Figure 4 with certainty, but its energetic character is clear.7 An

important, portly man rides through a gateway on an ele

phant, followed by a woman and several children on a sec

ond elephant. The procession and the gate are both set at

angles to the pillar face, enhancing the sense of movement.

Diagonal cutting and the thrust of the energetic throng of

grotesque figures in the foreground add to the turmoil of

the scene. At lower left is a lone equestrian, ambiguously related to the scene. The narrow panel above proceeds sim

ply to the right; in it three figures in a chariot dominate a

distant elephant with riders. In the topmost scene a herd of

lively deer in active but peaceful postures sets off the

increasingly regular rows of worshippers surrounding the

pillar. The Wheel of the Law, given a crowning position, stands out by virtue of its deep cutting and crisp detail. The

dark grooves between its thirty-two spokes curve subtly to

suggest that it is turning counterclockwise.

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Fig. 5. South gate, west pillar, front and inner faces.

In the scene at the bottom of Figure 6, an off-center ring of worshippers, presumably Indra and the thirty-three gods, surrounds the tilted relic and the dancer who whirls

dynamically in an act of devotion. The four lowest figures are shown observantly, their bottoms jutting over the plat form on which they sit, their heads tilted back to lead our

eyes upward. Similarly, the meticulously rendered beams of

a balcony above them guide one up toward the next panel, where a ruler is supported by female companions whose

jars and moorah ("stool") are crisply defined.With the Bodhi

Shrine, the depth of relief diminishes. The rounded roof is

a deflated version of the billowing form that surmounts the

hair relic below. And the tree exists on the surface of the

pillar, the background shallowly excavated to outline the

emblematic form. This technique, as well as the droop of its

branches, led Marshall and Foucher to identify this panel as

depicting the dying Bodhi tree that inspired Asoka's grief.8

96

Fig. 6. South gate, west pillar, inner face.

Figure 5 reminds us of the coherent artistry of this pillar.

Among the gates of the Great St?pa, only the southern one

has pillars indented and curved at the top, conceivably in

emulation of the lotus capital of the Asokan pillar that once

stood nearby.Whatever the reason for choosing this format, it is put to good use, framing the emblems of the Buddha's

teaching and enlightenment.The turning Wheel of the Law

and the dance in the presence of the Buddha's headdress

animate what might be static scenes. Unique to this pillar is

the bevelled corner, inviting movement around it and per

mitting a connected reading of the two faces. Such care

with what seems to be a minor decorative element might be attributed to the ivory carvers' habits in producing small

secular objects. Other cases exist of Indian artisans working in more than one medium.9 This is not to underestimate

the difference between working ivory with saw, drill, or

gouge and working sandstone with a chisel propelled by a

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mallet; it is unlikely that the carvers set to work on the stone

with the mindset and tools of their other craft. Nor do I

wish to imply that the south gateway represents the sole

pinnacle of achievement at the site. Close looking at other

pillars is equally rewarding.

Assuredly, I have not in any legal sense disproved the

assertion that the lower crossbars are not visible in detail. I

have simply presented a counter-hypothesis: what is visible

suffices to convey meaning, and what is even more visible

(the pillars) has been purposefully carved to be viewed with care.

Is all this formal analysis acceptable in an age (ours) of

contextualization? Surely semiotics has reminded us that

form segues naturally into content. I have deliberately

stopped short of iconographie argument, hoping to leave

open a plurality of readings. Nor am I urging that we men

tally dismantle the gateways to imagine the carvings alone, as in a museum or through a telephoto lens. They do

require viewing in their original physical setting. The kind

of looking suggested here does not involve inspection with a magnifying glass but rather standing back to let shadow and the posture of figures tell a story. Similarly, the yaksxs still in situ charm us with their sensuous posteriors, seen

from the upper path of circumambulation.We are not par

ticularly led to look at them from the side, walking past the

plain railing, where a decorative lateral face of the gate pil lar below commands our attention. Yet the yaksl fragment in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, isolated on its

pedestal, seems almost excessive in its bold volumes when confronted up close, and the discordant view of its flattened side is inevitable as we move around the piece.10

Issues of the original, intended viewing of S?nc? may remain unresolved for lack of contemporary verbal docu

mentation of this or of closely related early Buddhist mate

rial. The ample evidence that Indian paintings from the six

teenth century and later were carefully deciphered and

appreciated by connoisseurs11 is of doubtful relevance to

ancient reliefs.

For lack of contemporary Buddhist evidence, I would

urge consideration of the extended poetic description of a

twelfth-century temple in Gujarat, a building no longer preserved but clearly Jaina, belonging to another heterodox

religion that appealed particularly to mercantile communities:

There the hall of paintings single-handedly awakened astonishment

in the mind of every visitor: It amazed the children with pictures of

monsters; the traveling merchants with pictures of elephants, monkeys, camels, and conveyances; the faithful with pictures of the exploits of the

gods; the wives of the kings with depictions of the harems of famous

queens of old; the dancers and actors with pictures of dances and dramas; and the heroes with depictions of the cosmic battles between the gods and the demons, (no)

There, in that temple, the statue of a lady who struggled to hold fast

to her girdle as a monkey untied its knot made young gallants feel desire

and confirmed the steadfast in their rejection of sensual delights; it dis

gusted the pious and made old ladies feel embarrassed; while it made

young men laugh and young girls wonder. (112)12

We cannot determine precisely the visibility of elements

described, but neither painting nor statue is surely a dead

ringer for the gates of S?nc?. Probably paintings would have

been located in a dark interior space, yet various subjects are

differentiated.13 The subject of a celestial maiden attacked

by a monkey occurs on the exterior of temples from Osian to Kon?rak, slightly above eye level. We are deeply indebted to the poet R?machandr?gani and to the translator Phyllis

Granoff for vivid documentation that ample, diverse look

ing did go on at such religious monuments.

Initially I described as "pernicious" the suggestion that

the lintels of S?nc? are so hard to see that they cannot tell a

story. Is this not an excessive reaction to an impressionistic

suggestion made in passing as part of a laudable contextu

alization of relief images? On the contrary, it has been

repeatedly assumed that Indian art cannot be seen and was

not intended to be seen. Nor is it only Indian art that pro duces this reaction. Western colleagues report skeptical

objections to analysis of the Parthenon friezes or the capi tals of Gothic cathedrals. Even the Sistine Ceiling rewards

extended attention on the spot with a stiff neck, yet its

design, meaning, and impact surely deserve the ample attention they have been given from the sixteenth century on. Most of us are used to ignoring such observations and

proceeding in our work. But I see particular danger in a

field where the history of art might seem to have a precar ious toehold. Unlike those parts of the world's art that come

with a large body of aesthetic theory produced at the same

time (such as literati writing about Chinese painting), the

images of ancient India may appear to be embedded solely in religious and iconographie texts. Should the monuments

of India be left to religious historians? Certainly Buddho

logists have contributions to make. But these too rarely depend upon actually looking at the images.

There is a danger in collapsing all of R?machandr?gani 's viewers into one idealized "worshipper." In the past, as now,

viewers came in different sizes and had different kinds of

eyesight. More significantly, visitors?who perhaps inter acted as they circumambulated the building?would have

ranged from uninformed new converts to Buddhism to

learned theologians and to merchants with a separate

agenda in their religious ideas.14 Indeed, not all that much

information was necessary to be fascinated by the turning wheel on the front of the south gate or by the spellbinding dancer circling the turban on a tray on the inner face. Just

looking with astonishment, like R?machandr?gani 's temple visitors, would reveal a lot.

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Notes

note: In this article "right" and "left" refer throughout to viewer's right and left.

i. Robert L. Brown, "Narrative as Icon: The J?taka Series in Ancient

Indian and Southeast Asian Architecture," in Sacred Biography in the

Buddhist Traditions of South and Southeast Asia, ed. Juliane Schober

(Honolulu: Univ. of Hawai'i Pr., 1997), p. 68. Brown's argument is part of

questioning whether such reliefs are narrative at all. I agree with him

that, to uninformed viewers, they cannot tell a story unaided, a didactic

function that images in fact rarely play. I would prefer to think that this

is not an essential characteristic of visual narration, and that we need to

banish the written model as well as expectations of unambiguousness from our minds.

2. Gregory Schopen, "What's in a Name: The Religious Function of

the Early Donative Inscriptions," in Unseen Presence: The Buddha and

Sanchi, ed.Vidya Dehejia (Mumbai: Marg Publications, 1996), pp. 58-73.

Schopen's statement that lintel inscriptions "would have been scarcely visible from the ground, let alone readable" (p. 64) exaggerates. For

example, on the inner face of the south gateway's top lintel an inscrip tion of Anamda son of V?sithi is clearly visible from the upper path.

3. The exception is the inner face of the west gate, which has been

tentatively identified as the Transport of the Buddha's Relics to Kusina

gara.

4. Brown, "Narrative as Icon," p. 70.

5. John Marshall and Alfred Foucher, Monuments of S?nchi (Calcutta: Government of India, 1940), vol. 3, pi. 18. According to Marshall and

Foucher, the inner face depicts events that took place at the site of the

Enlightenment during the reign of Asoka (ca. 268-ca. 231 bce), not in

the lifetime of the Buddha.

6. Susan Huntington, "Early Buddhist Art and the Theory of

Aniconism," College Art Journal, vol. 49 (Winter 1990), pp. 401-7. Vidya

Dehejia introduced the suggestion that two interpretations could be

98

entertained simultaneously, "Aniconism and the Multivalence of

Emblems," Ars Orientalis, vol. 21 (1992), pp. 45?66. Discussion of the

topic continues.

7. Marshall and Foucher describe this as Asoka's viceroy on an ele

phant and the smaller figure in the chariot shown in the register imme

diately above as the emperor himself (Monuments of S?nch?, vol. i,p. 212). Debala Mitra suggests that the elephant rider is Mara, with a grotesque

cort?ge in the lower right (Sanchi [New Delhi: Archaeological Survey of

India, 1992], p. 24). Neither identification should be taken as unques tionable.

8. Monuments of S?nch?, vol. 1, p. 212.

9. In Orissa and in N?thadwara, in the nineteenth and twentieth cen

turies, the same family has often produced religious painting and wood

carving. In Karnataka, modern sandalwood carvers claim to be

descended from the sculptors of the admittedly soft steatite of Hoysala

temples. 10. Benjamin Rowland, The Art and Architecture of India, rev. ed.

(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1967), figs. 43?44. 11. B. N. Goswamy, "The act of viewing: looking at paintings in the

Indian context," in India, ?d. Pupul Jayakar et al. (Bangkok: Media

Transasia, Ltd., 1985), pp. 75?83. For paintings, exhibition under glass in

the low candlepower of a modern museum ironically makes the appro

priate close viewing almost impossible. 12. Phyllis Granoff, "Hal?yudha's Prism: The Experience of Religion

in Medieval Hymns and Stories," in Gods, Guardians, and Lovers, ed.

Vishakha Desai and Darielle Mason (NewYork: Asia Society, 1993),p. 90.

13. This brings up the issue of the visibility of wall paintings at Aj anta

and other Buddhist caves, where the eye adjusts to dim light and focuses

on small sections, although the effect is never that of a floodlit wall seen

as a whole.

14. Monastic "docents" have been hypothesized at various sites. Jan Fontein suggests explicateurs or monks reciting the Gand?vy?ha at

Borobudur. See The Pilgrimage of Sudhana (The Hague: Mouton, 1967),

p. 155

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