by Janadas Devan; The Straits Times, February 1, 2004
SHIVA-NATARAJA, the Lord of the Dance, is a metaphysic in stone – or bronze or copper or whatever material it happens to be made from, the material being immaterial to its meaning.
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| Janadas Devan |
The features of Shiva-Nataraja have symbolic signifiance but sadly, many Hindus have forgotten what they mean.
For me, it is the greatest sculpture there is. But I’m obviously speaking out of my own cultural preferences. For someone else, the four arms, the ring of fire, the dwarf underfoot, might seem unnatural, even revolting. But for an Indian, each of those features would have a symbolic significance, and the whole would resonate in his mind as powerfully, say, as the Sistine Chapel might in a Christian’s, or images of the Buddha might in a Buddhist’s.
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| Shiva-Nataraja |
But what do those symbols mean? How do they fit together? Many Hindus would have a representation of Nataraja in their homes but many would also have forgotten what it means.
That is perhaps the fate of traditional art today. How many Christians now would recall that the Cross was not just two pieces of wood that Christ was crucified on, but was understood, in traditional Christian iconography, as the axis mundi – the temporal order (the horizontal) turning upon the eternal (the vertical)?
To understand that – to understand any traditional art – one must know how to read symbols. Traditional art, as the art scholar Ananda Coomaraswamy explains, is not an expression of mood or feeling. Its effect does not depend on affect, but on understanding a symbolic order of meaning. ‘The object itself is a point of departure and a signpost.’ ‘We are to see, not the likeness made by hands, but its archetype.’ Symbols cannot be understood ‘apart from the references which they symbolise’.
What follows is derived from Coomaraswamy’s well-known exegesis in The Dance Of Shiva.
Shiva is bejewelled, and his locks whirl in the dance. He wears a man’s earring in his right ear, and a woman’s in his left. He is dancing, of course, and the dance represents his five aspects: creation, preservation, destruction or evolution, embodiment or illusion, release or grace.
His upper right hand holds the drum, summoning creation into existence; his upper left hand fire, from which destruction and evolution issue. The lower right hand is uplifted, signifying ‘do not fear’. And the lower left points downwards, at both the right foot squashing the demon Muyalaka, who symbolises ignorance, as well as at the raised left foot, which symbolises release or grace. The whole stands on a lotus pedestal, from which issues an arch of fire, symbolising the material universe.
The significance of Shiva’s dance is threefold: Firstly, the dance is the source of all movement within the cosmos, as represented by that arch. Secondly, the purpose of the dance is to release souls from illusion. And thirdly, the place of the dance is within each human heart.
Aldous Huxley, in his novel Island, has a lovely poetic description of Nataraja, drawing on this skeletal framework:
Shiva dances ‘in all the worlds at once’, he says, beginning with ‘the world of matter. Look at the great round halo, fringed with fire, within which the god is dancing. It stands for Nature, for the world of mass and energy… Nataraja at play among the stars and in the atoms. But also, at play within every living thing’.
‘Rub-a-dub-dub – the creation tattoo, the cosmic reveille’, sounded by the drum. ‘But now look at the uppermost of Shiva’s left hands. It brandishes the fire by which all that has been created is forthwith destroyed. He dances this way – what happiness! Dances that way – and oh, the pain, the hideous fear, the desolation!’
‘For Nataraja it’s all play, and the play is an end in itself. He dances because he dances, and the dancing is his maha-sukha, his infinite and eternal bliss.
‘Eternal bliss? For us there’s no bliss, only the oscillation between happiness and terror and a sense of outrage at the thought that our pains are as integral a part of Nataraja’s dance as our pleasures, our dying as our living.
‘Now look at Shiva’s other pair of hands. The lower right hand is raised and the palm is turned outwards.’ That gesture ‘signifies ‘Don’t be afraid; it’s All Right.’ But how can anyone in his senses fail to be afraid? How can anyone pretend that evil and suffering are all right?
‘Nataraja has the answer. Look now at his lower left hand. He’s using it to point down at his feet… Look closely and you’ll see that the right foot is planted squarely on a horrible little subhuman creature… the embodiment of ignorance, the manifestation of greedy, possessive selfhood. Stamp on him, break his back! And that’s precisely what Nataraja is doing…
‘But notice that it isn’t at this trampling right foot that he points his finger; it’s at the left foot, the foot that, as he dances, he’s in the act of raising from the ground. That lifted foot, that dancing defiance of the force of gravity – it’s the symbol of release, of moksha, of liberation.
‘Nataraja dances in all the worlds at once – in the world of physics and of chemistry, in the world of ordinary, all-too-human experience, in the world finally of Suchness, of Mind, of the Clear Light.’
The extraordinary power of traditional art, of various cultures and religions, is its ability to define a totality, in an instant, a gestalt. That explains its enduring power, as well as our difficulty, accustomed as we are to the fractured and fleeting image, in understanding it.
Feb. 1, 2004
The Straits Times, Singapore
http://www.straitstimes.asia1.com/columnist/0,1886,145-232871,00.html
Originally published February 9, 2004