Page 62 - Indian and Himalayan Art, March 15, 2017 Sotheby's NYC

Exquisitely cast as equal parts of a divine image, Shiva and
Uma are shown standing over a shared lotus base. Shiva,
preceptor of universal destruction, is in a bene cent mood as
Chandrasekhara, the Lord Crowned with the Crescent Moon.
He takes an elegant tribangha pose, his left knee bent, and
his hips, which are encircled by a short veshti and festooned
girdle, sway out to the right side. The four-armed god tenderly
reaches his pair of left arms around the goddess’s shoulders, a
posture that endows this image with its name, Alinganamurti,
He who Embraces Uma. Shiva holds in his upper left hand an
antelope that gracefully rises from his ngertips just behind
Uma’s head, as if to express the goddess’s gentle character.
His lower left palm is gently curved to echo the rounded
contour of Uma’s shoulder. The two are well adorned with
ornaments including multi-strand belts and sacred threads,
necklaces, armbands, and rings, and crowned with high
jatamukutas, hers with circular tiers around which to wind
ower garlands. Uma wears two makara earrings and Shiva
wears one disk and one makara to show that she is always a
part of him.
While bronze icons were typically crafted as distinct individuals
that may be brought together as components of a larger
assemblage, forms like Alinganamurti unite members of the
divine pantheon in a single manifestation. Some multi- gure
bronzes, such as Tripuravijaya or Somaskanda, show Shiva
and Uma on separate lotus bases over a shared rectangular
plinth. By contrast, Alinganamurti positions the two on
a conjoined oblong lotus. In this way, Shiva and Uma are
represented as mutually empowering entities. The ultimate
expression of their union is Ardhanarisvara, The Lord who is
Half Woman, in which the God and Goddess share a body.
In Alinganamurti, the couple is perfectly conceived as a unit.
They are proportioned in balance to each other, such that
Uma ts precisely into the crook of Shiva’s arm. Standing
in similar postures, Shiva’s movements are subtly more
pronounced than Uma’s to distinguish his masculine prowess
from her feminine charm—the turn of the left foot, the sway
of the hips, the de ection of the torso, and the tilt of the head. in a relief carving at the Muktesvara temple in Kanchipuram.
Each of these actions reveals the muscular engagement that
represents divine energy.
The three separate portions of this sculpture reveal the
sophisticated technique of production required for such
complex bronzes. The gures themselves are solid cast and
include a disk-shaped base beneath the feet. The disk is set
into a separately cast lotus base over a tiered pedestal, here
rectangular to accommodate the two gures. The bronzes
were traditionally fabricated through a process of lost-wax
casting, beginning from a wax gure as the primary image. The
wax gure is packed in clay and the molten metal mixture of
copper alloys is poured through apertures called sprues. The
wax ushes away and the bronze solidi es as it cools. Cracking
the clay open destroys the mould, and no identical sculpture
can be produced. Each bronze icon fabricated in this manner is
therefore entirely unique.
Chola bronzes were intended both as exceptional artistic
creations and as a means through which to transmit the
essence of the divine. The sculptures are speci cally designed
for portability. Here, the image is complete with upright prongs
that originally supported an aureole of ames (prabha), and
projecting loops through which to a x poles or tie ropes
when carrying the image (for an example of Alinganamurti
with the prabha, see C. Sivaramamurti, South Indian Bronzes,
1963, cat.69A). On festival occasions, bronze sculptures
were made mobile through public processions, such that
a greater number of people could see and be seen by the
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Divine. Simultaneously, the public witnessed the splendor
that the patron had imparted. A procession typically begins
in the interior of a temple. The bronzes are rst bathed in the
ve sacred substances and then dressed and adorned with
sacred pigments. Mounted on silver or golden pedestals, the
sculptures are then bedecked with silk and cotton textiles,
ower garlands, and golden ornaments studded with jewels.
In Hindu tradition, divine vision (darshan) is central to the
process of worship. Here, Shiva and Uma’s faces are angled
towards each other, such that their gazes converge at a single
point. This is the position of the beholder. Through darshan,
the viewer pays homage to the Gods, and the Gods in turn
grant blessings. Devotional hymns of the Tamil saints extol
the praises of the gods by vividly describing their physical
appearance. Shiva bears water in his jatas, which are coiled
into a crown replete with owers, and he wears a crescent
moon. Uma has a waist like the hood of a cobra. These hymns,
compiled in the Tevaram anthology, center on the concept of a
close, personal relationship with a god who remains constantly
just beyond reach—such is the nature of transcendence.
This proximity to god, expressed through a sentiment of love
and longing, is referred to as bhakti. The text of the Periya
Puranam, composed several centuries later in the court of the
great Chola king Kulottunga I (ca. 1070 – 1120 CE), wove the
legends of the saints together into a narrative expression of
bhakti. The Periya Puranam associated Tevaram hymns with
particular places and constructed reasonable itineraries of
pilgrimage through the South Indian landscape. As a royally
sponsored form of devotion, pilgrimage assumed a new level of
prestige. So too did processions of festival bronzes.
Alinganamurti gained popularity as a bronze icon during the
reign of Kulottunga I. However, it remained rare compared
with the North Indian equivalent, Uma-Mahesvara. A limited
corpus of early representations of Alinganamurti is known from
stone sculpture. The rst can be found in a Pallava context,
From the Chola period comes a tenth-century niche sculpture
at the Visamangalesvara Temple, which is situated on the
banks of the Kaveri River in the village of Tudaiyur. The deity
also graces the walls of the Great Temple at Tanjavur (circa
1010 CE). Comparable bronzes are in collections including the
Metropolitan Museum of Art (V. Dehejia, The Sensuous and
the Sacred, 2002, cat.8), the Madras Government Museum (C.
Sivaramamurti, South Indian Bronzes, 1963, g.69a), the Art
Institute of Chicago (P. Pal, A Collecting Odyssey, 1997, cat.17),
the Indian Museum in Kolkata (T. Donaldson, Siva-Parvati and
Allied Images, 2007, g.286), Los Angeles County Museum of
Art (P. Pal, The Sensuous Immortals, 1978, p.118), and several
temples in the Kaveri region (S.R. Balasubrahmanyam, Middle
Chola Temples, 1977, Pl.83; V. Dehejia, The Sensuous and the
Sacred, 2002, g.15; R. Nagaswamy, Masterpieces of Early
South Indian Bronzes, 1983, cat.96). These bronzes display
two types. In the rst, Shiva cups Uma’s breast or encircles
her waist with his left hand. In the second—as in the present
example—Shiva’s hand is positioned around Uma’s shoulder.
Although both types remained in circulation throughout the
Chola era, the latter more often appears in the 12th Century.
Shiva’s multistrand upavita, high waistband, and disk shaped
earring, together with Uma’s crisply de ned features and
cinched waist, support a similar date for the sculpture. Superb
in quality, this Alinganamurti represents the union of artistry
and transcendence.
By Emma Natalya Stein, Yale University, History of Art, PhD.
candidate.