Aspects of ’Siva

Muurti signifies manifestation, incarnation, and form. In His divine game (liilaa) ’Siva appears in various forms ; he assumes divine, human, animal or hybrid forms. He manifests himself to vanquish demons, save the world or simply to test the devotion of gods, sages or men.

The ’Satarudrasa.mhitaa of ’Sivapuraa.na, mentions that the incarnations of ’Siva, the Omnipresent, are innumerable and describes some of them. The forms of ’Siva in sculptures are also highly varied. Here we have selected some of the most important in northern Tamil Nadu sculpted in stone or bronze idols that are worshipped also. Some of them are not related to any particular episode but symbolise philosophical and religious concepts. The several aspects of ’Siva are generally divided into groups of saumya or anugraha forms (peaceful forms where ’Siva blesses his devotees) and ugra or sa.mhaara forms (terrible and destructive forms). Some of the images like Li.Ngodbhava, Ekapaadamuurti or ’Sarabha suggest the growing sectarian outlook. As an offshoot of the Bhakti movement in Tamil Nadu (c. 650 to 950 A.D.) the concept of ’Siva underwent changes and as a result we have images of Somaskanda and Kalyaa.nasundara emphasizing family life. Conflicting cults lead to synthetic sculptural traditions of ’Siva like Hari-Hara and Ardhanaarii’svara. Similarly one can notice certain Brahmanical / non-Brahmanical traditions in sculptures like Bhik.saa.tana and Bhairava.

Besides these one can also classify the images on the basis of artisan styles during the Pallava, Chola, Paa.n.dya, Vijayanagara/Naayak rules as well as Folk styles. Again it is possible to classify the images into two broad categories viz. abstract vs concrete. Abstract forms are generally related to philosophy and concrete forms are related to rituals. Concrete images are always (except Somaskanda) found outside the Sanctum Sanctorum ; abstract images viz. Svayambhu and Li.Nga forms are always found inside the Sanctum Sanctorum. Lastly, images like Dak.si.naamuurti involve both philosophy and rituals.

The 24 forms of ’Siva displayed in this exhibition and representative of the rich iconographic tradition of Tamil Nadu, are part of the French Institute’s photolibrary, which has a collection of about 130,000 photographs on art, architecture and archeology from South India. The exhibitions is a result of the collaborative work of the teams of Indology (Karine Ladrech, a previous IFP Fellow under the guidance of François Grimal, Head of the Department of Indology, IFP, and member of the Ecole Française d’Extrême Orient, EFEO, with the collaboration of G. Vijayavenugopal, EFEO Researcher, Nicolas Dejenne, IFP Fellow, N. Murugesan, Archivist, Ramesh Kumar, Photographer, the Geomatics Laboratory (Danny Lo Seen) and the communication and editing services of the French Institute (Manisha Dolia and V. Josephine).

Finally, this exhibition is indebted to the French Embassy in India for its financial assistance and to the French Alliance of Pondicherry for its organizational support.

Denis Depommier Director, French Institute Pondicherry, 12 August 2002