‘Grotesque’ nature of Murtis
Consider the fact that the Indian ‘gods’ are portrayed in at least two ways. First, there is their portrayal with four arms (say) and there is their portrayal in completely human forms. Krishna has four arms (with Shankha, Chakra, Gada and Padma or one hand with a blessing palm or downward indicating a mudra of some kind) and he also has a fully human form. The balakrishna’s I have seen give him only two arms. So do many images of Krishna: he has only two arms. However, apart from other symbols (flute, peacock feather, etc), his colour is almost invariant. Ganesha is even more interesting: there are balaganesha’s crawling with two arms and with four arms. There are images of a four-armed Ganesha sitting on the lap of a two-armed Shiva (with and without his third eye but holding a trishula). In any case, he has the elephant head. Most Durga’s have multiple arms, a few frightening heads but there are also those with human form and pretty faces. Same applies to Parvati, Laxmi and Saraswati. Except, of course, they invariably have pretty faces. They too have characteristic traits: seated on Padma, carrying a Veena, or next to Shiva or Ganesha or sitting on top of a mountain surrounded by snowy peaks. There are also others where she is on a peetha or is very well dressed and adorned with ornaments. In short, some or another trait is mostly present that identifies which ‘goddess’ or ‘god’ s/he is. The rest, obviously, is left free. Of course, there are also images that can only be identified, if so identified by local stories, the pujari’s at the temples and so on. If these are our ‘popular gods’, the less-known (say the village ‘goddesses’) are even more problematic. Many village ‘goddesses’ look similarly vague and are almost but not quite amorphous.
When I spoke of the ‘grotesque’ nature of Indian murti’s, the reference was to this entire cluster. Once some kind of an identification is made, the form becomes almost irrelevant. Yet, even there, the attributed forms cannot exist: human forms cannot grow and ungrow four arms, for example. The ‘standard’ form is that of an entity which cannot exist precisely because it also possesses recognizable form. Thus they are not ‘grotesque’ any more than they are ‘beautiful’, but this does not mean that these predicates are not used. Often, one discusses about the ‘beauty’ of a murti or a vigraha or their ‘photo’s’ (as we call them in India); less often, we say that Krishna is more beautiful than Manmatha and my Sanskrit teacher refused to read verses from Kumara Sambhava in the class room, where Kalidasa waxes eloquently about the beautiful body of Parvati in penance. And why say these murti’s are lifeless matter? The garbhagudi of Venkatesha in Tirupati, surely, makes one ask the question what, exactly, is ‘lifeless’ there. Some murti’s and their temples teem with life; some others attract only flies and, occasionally, a few people; yet others, though very famous and well-known, languish in ruins. What, precisely, is ‘lifeless’ matter in these cases?