Page 13 - Stone and Bronze, Indian art of the Chola Dynasty, Metropolitan Museum, NYC

ages of the Early Chola period, including the seated
is
ones, the relief technique applied and the back panel
retained. Only at Erumbur does the devakoshta icon
come close in treatment to our group images. None
of
of the devakoshta icons is carved in the round-the
griva and upper-story images are smaller as well-as
there is no possibility of circumambulation.
The images carved in the round, consequently, were
not placed in a sanctum niche as Gangoly and Coo-
maraswamy thought. Some may always have been
placed in the cloister (prakara); others once were the
main images of a temple or, more likely, of a secondary
temple or shrine devoted to Brahma.
There are iconographical differences as well between
the Brahmas carved in the round and the devakoshta
images, which always have rosary and bottle in their
back right and left hands. These differences probably
are due to their different religious functions.21 The lotus
in the right hand of the former images is, according to
Coomaraswamy, a token of the essentially "playful"
character of the divine act of creation. The lotus throne
alludes to Brahma's birth from a lotus and thus once
more to creation-his role in the trimurti. There is a
raised mark on his forehead that resembles the third
eye of Siva or the luminous lock of the Buddha, but
for this we have not been able to find an explana-
tion. Perhaps it is a reflection of the concept of Siva as
Dakshinamurti, repository of the wisdom of the Vedas
(see pp. 31, 59), which in turn had been influenced
by that of the Buddha as teacher. In any case, the
images carved in the round emphasize the cosmic role
or function of Brahma, whereas on the devakoshta re-
liefs he is little more than a deified priest.
Incidentally, the emblems of the devakoshta images
also occur on some Chola bronze icons of the bodhi-
FIGURE 13
x
Brahma, late ix or early century, from Karan- sattva Avalokitesvara;22 perhaps this is another echo
dai. Tanjavur Art Gallery of the absorption of Buddhism.
lieved that they were devakoshta images, because their 2I. I do not believe that the lower (front) left hand ever held
backs are flatter and not as well finished. I think that an emblem (book, bottle, or ladle) as Coomaraswamy suggests.
this emphasis on the front is due to the fact that it was 22. T. N. Ramachandran, "The Nagapattinam and other Bud-
here that the ritual offerings were made; here, too, was dhist Bronzes in the Madras Museum," Bulletin of the Madras Gov-
ernment Museum 7 (I954) pls. vi, I; ix, 3, 4. In Gandhara sculpture,
the main or only source of light. Maitreya was represented as a regally ornate version of Brahma;
de
I have shown that Brahma indeed belongs in the see A. Foucher, L'Art Greco-Bouddhique Gandhara, quoted byJ. M.
northern sanctum niche of an Early Chola temple but Rosenfield, The Dynastic Art of the Kushans (Berkeley, I967) p. 232.
Museum
Compare the Gandhara Maitreya in The Metropolitan
that he is nearly without exception standing. In all of Art, Aschwin Lippe, "The Sculpture of Greater India," The
the devakoshta (as well as upper story and griva) im- Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin I8 (1959- 960) p. i8i.
4I