Consciousness, Literature and the Arts

Archive

Volume 2 Number 2, August 2007

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Nepal and South Asian Buddhist Art: Appropriation of a Symbolic Tradition

 By

Jane Duran

University of California at Santa Barbara

 Much of the art of Nepal is seen in art historical circles as a twist on certain styles of the Indian canon.1  Although it is clear that the Nepalese valley of Kathmandu has a strong history of contact between both Tibetan and Indian cultures, broadly construed, the importance of Buddhism for Nepal cannot be overstated, nor can its importance with respect to the art history of the region be easily delineated.

       There are two or three important art historical constructs found in the Kathmandu Valley that lend themselves to analysis along the foregoing lines.  The well-known art historian of South Asia Benjamin Rowland articulates the situation this way:

According to tradition, a great many of the surviving stupas in Nepal are relics of the legendary visit of Asoka…. An even more characteristic form of Nepalese architecture is to be seen in the many wooden temples erected in the ancient capitals of the realm….  Among the earliest examples of Nepalese sculpture are a number of bronze statuettes….2

           What all of these objects have in common is a relationship simultaneously to two traditions—insofar as the stupas are concerned, this simultaneous relationship is of paramount importance.  It will be the argument of this paper that the stupa at Swayambunath immediately outside Kathmandu is an exemplar of crucial elements of what is now called the Nepalese tradition, and that it displays elements of what might be thought of as Buddhist consciousness.

I

          Swayambunath, immediately outside Kathmandu’s central core, is a popular destination for tourists.  The “all-seeing eye” of the Buddha is likely to attract attention, and even the most naïve observer can sense that the ground plan of the stupa—a Buddhist reliquary—must in and of itself have some symbolic importance. There are stupas within India, and, of course, in Tibet and in virtually every other nation with any sizable Buddhist tradition.  But as we come to grips with the notions of canonical formation in art history circles, a recurring phenomenon that attracts critical attention is the notion of an art historical culture as pertaining to a given culture or region.  Thus the concept of a specifically Nepalese art is one that requires some discussion:  it might be deemed to be obvious that there is indeed such a thing (or that we could, without difficulty, employ such a label) but to say so much begs the question.   Preliminarily, any stupa exhibits some of what Rowland calls evidence of the “ritual of veneration.”3   As he says, “[T]he architecture of the surrounding railing [of the stupa] and the actual ritual of veneration may be traced to pre-Buddhist solar cults.  The ground plan…[is] a purposeful incorporation of one of the most ancient symbols…”4

          But Swayambunath does have a few features that call for extended appraisal.  The “pagoda” effect is a typically Nepalese invention—the fact that the portion of the temple intended to house relics is raised on a platform demarcates this particular artifact as Nepalese.  Rowland notes that a “wooden tower” supported by “wooden brackets” is characteristic of the stupa style of Nepal, despite the fact that the stupa as a whole shows manifest Indian influences.5

          The immediate impression on the visitor is one of a transcendental quest—the external appearance of what we might popularly term a pagoda and the all-seeing eye remind one of the universality of the Buddhist creed.  The merger of Hindu beliefs in the Kathmandu Valley with the reign of the Newars, and more Tibetan folkways from the surrounding hills, is probably the causal point needed to explain this particular feature of Swayambunath.  Indian stupas typically exhibit a roundedness that highlights their status as reliquaries:  if the “practical function of the railing” was to “separate the sacred precinct from the secular world,” this function seems to be overridden in the Nepalese stupa by an intense desire to draw the viewer into the sacred world.6

           Although it is difficult to know precisely why Buddhism would have taken hold in Nepal when it seemed to be overrun in India itself, one striking feature of the two areas is their extensive topographical difference.  The plains of India may lend themselves to a number of different belief systems, but even the casual visitor to Kathmandu is struck by the intensity of the mountain ranges surrounding the Valley, visible on almost any typical day.  Small children can easily pick out the better-known peaks; the visitor is surprised to learn that all of the easily visible peaks have both folk and more official names.

          If mountains tend to push us, as humans, into a more questing frame of mind, the parts of Buddhist belief systems that might be deemed to be more recondite may be completely appropriate for a region surrounded by the planet’s most extensive mountain range and tallest peaks.  It may very well be for these reasons that Buddhist art and architecture in the Kathmandu Valley does exhibit a number of striking effects.

II

          Ernst and Rose Waldschmidt argue that there are crucial and important differences between Nepalese architecture and the sorts of stupas—late Buddhist artifacts—found in, for example, India.7   They base their argument on a number of features similar to those we have just recounted, and some others as well.  They state:

With its superimposed, one-room storeys, in which one must imagine altars with Hindu or Buddhist idols, the Nepalese temple has generally departed from the usual medieval Indian forms in which the tower-topped place of worship was connected to an entrance hall and some-       times also to colonnades…. [B]uddhist temples are usually built with a combination of wood and brick in the Pagoda style.8

 The authors are careful to mention the many similarities between Indian stupas and those of the Kathmandu Valley, but like Rowland, they feel that there are crucial differences.  Interestingly enough, they too mention the use of “eyes” on the plinth as a “feature peculiar to Nepal.”9  But a strong counterargument could be made to most of these statements about Nepalese art; it could be maintained that the viewer simply reads into the geographical difference a stylistic or cultural difference that is not really born out by the facts.  In other words, the similarities throughout Buddhist artifacts in this large South Asian region are great enough that it is not hard to assert that their commonalities very much outweigh their differences.  To recapitulate, the stupas of Buddhism are typically large mounds covering an interment of bones or other relics of bodhisattvas or Buddhist saints.  The ground plan of such a reliquary contains the notion of the mandala, or symbol of the cosmos, and its apex is usually built in accordance with some concept of the cosmic axis.10  Since the stupa is itself a symbol—especially for the uninitiated viewer—it might well be maintained that it is the architectural concept of the reliquary that is driving the production of such an artifact, and that stylistic differences, especially in South Asia, are either minimal or unimportant.

          Commentators seem to be agreed that there is such a thing as “Nepalese style,” but even the most astute commentators have difficulty describing it, except in very general terms.  If the sharper, pagoda-like features of the towers and the “eyes” themselves constitute preeminent signatures of the architecture of Nepal, one might be tempted to wonder why these Buddhist features—and the awareness they betoken--are so important in this region.  One question has to do with the proximity of the origins of Buddhism.  Could it be that beliefs and legends surrounding the birth of the Buddha have something to do with the prominence of these stylized features in this region?

 III

          The Waldschmidts believe that it is no accident that certain prominent features of the Nepalese stupa, including those featuring the “all-seeing” nature of the Buddha, arose in the Kathmandu Valley.  Historically, Lumbini, also in Nepal, is believed to have been the birthplace of the Buddha.

          In terms of current geography, Lumbini is located a few miles from the Indo-Nepalese border.  But it has long been associated with the birth of the Buddha.  Before Nepal had been opened to foreigners, Ernst Waldschmidt was able to visit it in 1933, and reported:

 I was allowed…time to visit this holy place, which was then isolated from the outer world….  [H]alf overgrown and in the shadow of some old trees, lay a small shrine,   crudely constructed from the debris of ruined buildings, but newly whitewashed and well kept.  The entrance was a narrow doorway, and beyond this were some steps leading down to a vaulted cellar….  Once one had grown  accustomed to the atmosphere, the outlines of a sandstone relief emerged,   depicting the birth of the Buddha, a work dating probably from the 2^nd or 3^rd century AD….11

           It is clear that this long historical association has resulted in a greater consciousness of what we might term proximity than is the case for many other parts of the world with a strong spirit of Buddhism, and it is also clear that this awareness had resulted in artifacts long before the time of the construction of much of the later work in Kathmandu.  What one is initially tempted to say, then, is that certain of the features of the “Nepalese” style that Rowland and the Waldschmidts try to demarcate in their works probably have their origin in a notion of the closeness of the Buddha, and of the origins of Buddhism itself.  This awareness may have yielded a greater desire to produce visual effects on the facades of various works, and at least some of these effects—certainly the eyes, if not the steeply stepped-structure of the towers—do, in fact, leave the viewer with this impression.  Since so much of the religious iconography of South Asia relies more on myth or oral tradition, this explanation for parts of the Nepalese stupa construct—if explanation it be—must be one of the few that can rely on known historical fact.  For there is no question that we do know the bare facts surrounding the birth of the Buddha and his first steps toward enlightenment.

 IV

          So far we have adverted to two main lines of argument to support the notion that, contra some commentators, there is a distinct Nepalese tradition with respect to Buddhist artifacts and stupas, in particular.  Our first main line of argument alluded to the simple citation of at least two or three pronounced differences between Nepalese and other South Asian reliquaries, as given by the critics:  the storey-like, or “pagoda” nature of the towers, and the use of eye iconography on the plinths.   In a second argument, it was noted that, assuming that a cultural ambience has anything at all to do with the formation of an artistic tradition, the fact that the Buddha was born in Nepal and that there is a developed mythography surrounding this probably has something to do with the nature of the development of Nepalese style.

          But recent work on the formation of art historical canons calls into question the ways in which such canons might be deemed to be formed.  Janet Wolff has noted that, with respect to the twentieth century tradition labeled “modernism” in Europe and the United States, a great deal of the formation of the canon has as much to do with social factors and artists’ proximity to one another and to centers of critical commentary as it has to do with anything else. 12

          The naïve observer might respond that this is all very well for the Eurocentric tradition, but that such caveats have little to do with how critics (European though they may be) have perceived the art of Asia, Africa or the indigenous Americas.   But what one is tempted to respond to this is that, if anything, the situation is the other way around:  because what we deem to be “canonical” objects of these traditions were, in general, selected by only a very few Europeans after rather limited contact with the cultures in question (and, in many cases, one or two centuries ago), it stands to reason that social factors have a great deal more to do with the selection of objects in these traditions than is even the case in, for example, a selection of leading “Modernist” architectural sites in the United States.

          Nepal was never a British colony, but because of the British presence in India its first European visitors were, in general, those who had been stationed in India and who took the time and trouble to travel to Kathmandu.  Thus what struck them, so to speak, at the outset of their voyage became, in many cases, “important” pieces of Nepalese art.  When we consider that even the most devoted and sincere Europeans—among them, for example, those who made the attempt to try to learn Sanskrit—were baffled by Hindu India, we can well imagine that what they took to be paradigmatically “Nepalese” was anything that stood out in any remarkable way from what had already been seen in India.

          Thus social factors among British observers—their comparison of notes, their having visited major Indian sites, their general acquaintance with the languages and cultures of South Asia—are with great probability crucial in the formation of the Nepalese canon.

          With respect to stupas (as opposed to, for example, bronzes) we can guess that both of the obvious factors we already mentioned—steeped storeys, Buddha “eyes”—were of great importance in the demarcation of Swayambunath as a site simply because these features were demonstrably different from those of stupas in India itself. 

          Wolff notes, in discussing how she queries the formation of the modernist canon in the United States (particularly insofar as space in museums is concerned), that “Without in any way intending to detract from the importance of this work [the canonical], I want to propose the value of a different project here—what one might call a politics of interrogation.”13  Wolff is on to something here:  any canon can be interrogated, and we can—and should—inquire into the practices of acquisition, valorization and curatorship that have formed and informed it.  In general, the Hindu works of India, in particular the architectural and temple sites, made an impression on Europeans for a variety of reasons that today seem somewhat recherche and outmoded:  one thinks of the response to Konarak in Orissa, for example, and the shock of the Europeans at what they took to be its eroticism.  But if we can guess that the barebones of an Indian canon had already been formed before Nepal had been visited extensively, then it is clear that deviation from and difference with respect to the canonical Hindu/Buddhist work of India would shape the Nepalese canon.

          Thus it is no accident that Swayambunath is, perhaps, the single leading architectural relic in Nepal, and certainly is the most frequently cited among the various stupas.  Its geographical location (very near Kathmandu itself), its striking appearance, and the features that we have already noted that enabled even the inexperienced observer to regard it as significantly different from an Indian stupa—all these led to the now-credited assumption that Swayambunath is classically Nepalese, and, as Rowland says, “characteristic” of structures Nepal.14

          It would not be fair to say that we cannot demarcate a Nepalese tradition.  Rather, given what we know today about the sociological factors influencing the formation of canons, it would be accurate to say that we can take a guess as to the conditions under which the formation of a “Nepalese” canon occurred.  Those conditions would have a great deal in common with the various factors that Wolff has cited in her recent work, but one thing is clear:  however the tradition was formed, some works are paradigmatic, and among them is the stupa at Swayambunath.