Page 36 - Indian, Himalayan and Tibetan Art March 2018

The creation of bronze images for the purpose of worship The most famous of the nayanmars was the child saint
began in the eighth century during the Pallava period but Sambandar who is reputed to have lived in the seventh
the art of metal casting reached its apogee under the century. The saint Appar, subject of the present image, who
patronage of the Chola monarchs. Chola bronzes were was older, was his contemporary and it is believed that the
made from wax models using the ‘lost wax’ or cire perdue title Appar, or “revered father,” was conferred upon him
process. The > nest bronzes comprised an alloy of at least by Sambandar. Appar was a Jain monk who converted
> ve metals (panchaloham), which included copper, tin, lead, to Shaivism and is thus portrayed with a shaved head. He
gold and silver. The fact that these were solid cast indicates approached Shiva as a humble servant and performed menial
the extent of the expense undertaken in the production of tasks in his temples including clearing the weeds that sprang
these ritual icons. Besides the skill required in casting, Chola up within the temple premises. That is why he is commonly
craftsmen perfected the harmony of line and form in these pictured with a hoe in the crook of his arm. In early images
images creating some of the > nest freestanding sculptures the hoe was cast along with the > gure. Later it was added
in existence. The perfect equipoise of the saint in the present separately. The present image is missing its hoe but Appar’s
image attests to the mastery achieved by the bronze casters gentle, humble persona is very accurately portrayed.
while his serene, idealized countenance captures the spirit of
Alongside the worship of Shiva there were speci> c festivals in
bhakti or loving devotion closely associated with the subject.
the calendar celebrating the nayanmars themselves. As part
Bronze images such as these were objects of devotion in of ritual practice, the images were lustrated with water, honey,
Shaivite shrines. Shiva was the kulanayaka or dynastic patron butter and milk and rubbed down with ash. They were then
deity of the Chola Emperors. They built shrines dedicated to anointed with sandal paste and vermilion, clothed, garlanded
his worship throughout their lands which were repositories and carried around the town or temple premises in ritual
for numerous bronze images of the Lord and his pantheon procession so that all devotes had the opportunity to gain a
including the nayanmars, a group of sixty-three Shaiva saints darshan or view of the holy icon.
who are widely venerated in South India. These holy men
This image has passed through the hands of some of the
traveled throughout the land singing hymns in praise of the
most legendary collectors of South Asian Art in the twentieth
Lord Shiva and their songs and poems form a rich corpus of
century - J. R. Belmont, Christian Humann and Robert
devotional literature constituting the core of the Tamil sacred
Hat> eld Ellsworth. For a closely related > gure of Appar in the
canon, known as the Tevaram.
collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, see Vidya Dehejia,
The Sensuous and the Sacred: Chola Bronzes from South India,
New York, 2002, cat. 29, pp. 156-57.

34 SOTHEBY’S