Consciousness, Literature and the Arts

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Volume 11 Number 1, April 2010

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Mohenjo-Daro: The Origins of a Tradition

by

 Jane Duran

University of California at Santa Barbara

          In art historical terms, we frequently find ourselves adverting to the notion of the “origin of a tradition.”  This notion is so commonplace that one may experience some difficulty in filling it out; nevertheless, it is manifestly the case that conceptual work needs to be done. 

          The art historical tradition of India is often glossed as having started at the site of Mohenjo-Daro.1  Critics such as Rowland seem to feel that a line can be drawn, as it were, tracing the development of a certain sort of “plasticity” in the tradition of this site.2  But surely more than a vague causal tracing is at stake here.  Although prototype theorists in psychology, such as Eleanor Rosch, might help us to understand the “family resemblances” thinking at work, something more seems to be needed.  It might well be contended that what is required to categorize the “origins” of a given tradition is a genuine delineation of stage-by-stage growth, emerging in the full-blown classical version of the tradition in question.  With respect to India, I shall argue, a great deal of work needs to be done.

I

          Marguerite La Caze writes in The Analytic Imaginary that “images may work simultaneously on a number of different levels.”3  La Caze is, of course, writing about the use of visual and visually-oriented material within the analytic tradition, but her point is well taken in a broader sense.   It could be contended that a great deal of what is important in the allusion to the earlier portion of the tradition by a commentator such as Rowland is that it calls to mind simultaneously different strands of the tradition, and that our consciousness of the tradition works on multiple levels.  Rowland notes, for example, that:

                   [T]he steatite seals [at the site] reveal the

          most consummate and delicate perfection of

          craftsmanship….  The seals provide…evidence

          for our reconstruction of the Mohenjo-Daro religion

          and its relationship with the ancient Near East and

          the concepts of modern Hinduism.4 

          But the main way in which the seals provide the evidence is that they employ “bovine” images.5  In other words, one inference here is that -–absent seals or such evidence from later sites—most of what is at stake in the debate about the India art historical tradition revolves around the use of images, and other weakly traceable elements that, given the long chronology, may scarcely have causal antecedents in the site itself.

          It is important to try to be especially clear about the Indian tradition because so much gets placed into it in a sort of grab-bag fashion at a later point.  Pratapaditya Pal, writing in a catalogue produced for an exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, faces a similar problem and notes:

                   Even though most of the surviving examples

          [from the ancient sites] of painted pottery are shards,

          there is no doubt that the prehistoric Indian artists

          drew with both imagination and graphic clarity….

          Some of the decorative motifs seen on these potsherds

          can be recognized in textile patterns through the ages.6

          The naïve reader might very well come to the conclusion that much of what is constitutive of the Indian tradition is geographical; in other words, place of origin of a piece automatically demarcates it as part of the relevant tradition, even if other sorts of arguments cannot be made.

          At the outset, then, we might want to be clear about a number of desiderata that have to do with the “origin of a tradition.”  Geographical proximity or continuity is only one point; one might also want to advert to continuity of style, and still another point—probably the most obvious—would have to do with a chain of causal relationships.  From the start, it would seem that a “tradition” shows elements in common over a period of time where there would be strong reason to believe that such elements causally affected others working in the tradition, even if we may sometimes feel that the chain is broken or truncated at certain points.  Part of the difficulty is that the association process is such that we tend to make cognitive associations regardless of whether or not there is a causally-demonstrable chain. 

          It is not nearly as difficult to make out a genuine such chain as one might sometimes be tempted to infer or assert.  For example, with respect to West African-derived elements of the Black traditions throughout the Americas, there is ample historical documentation and development.7  We might think of this particular instance as a “successful” case.

II

          Because we have emphasized what ordinarily counts as the continuation of a tradition—stylistic focal points, the causal chains of which can be traced over time—it is important to try to be precise about traditions the paths of which can actually be charted, so to speak.   Although it does not, in an exemplary sense, represent a tradition in the visual arts, the musical traditions of the West African cultures live on in the Americas, and direct causal chains can be shown to exist.   (Manifestly, in at least some sense, such causal relationships can probably also be shown for the visual arts, although that is not our concern for the moment.)

          For example, in the West African traditions “hollers,” “cries,” or “shouts” were frequently rendered in group situations, whether or not there was musical accompaniment.  Eileen Southern notes that these cries show up in America during the period of slavery—they were “cries in the field—‘cornfield hollers,’ ‘cottonfield hollers,’ ‘whoops,’ or ‘water calls.’”8 Those very same sorts of cries will later go on to feature prominently in Black music—and, as the critic Rudi Blesh says, “The American Negro has vastly extended musical expression through tone.”9 The point of our example is a simple one:  for many facets of the arts, one can trace styles delineated over a period of time, in some cases hundreds of years.  But to make the claim that a site is the point of origin of a style or of an art historical rubric is to make a strong assertion:  manifestly, one would hope, such causal traceability retains at least an in-principle character, and may actually be somewhat stronger or more obvious than it is in other cases.  The difficulty is that little about the Mohenjo-Daro site propels us in this direction. 

          In addition to the line of argument that would ask us to compare other traditions (the origins of which may be a great deal more evident) to the “Indian” tradition that putatively begins at Mohenjo-Daro, we also have the counterargument with respect to essentialism.  In other words, we may be attributing too much to a tradition to expect its core elements to remain sufficiently unchanged over time so that we can recognize them.  As Mitch Avila has written in a recent review of work by Larry Shiner, there is “an entire set of philosophical problems in aesthetics that rely upon essentialist definitions….”10  Avila is writing about such difficulties as the art/craft distinction, but there is no question that a notion such as chronological tradition is, indeed, the same sort of notion.  Just as the art/craft distinction insists that there is some core set of attributes of art that persist over time (and that can be separated from those of “craft”), the concepts of tradition and origin of that tradition ask for a great deal in the way of demonstrable characteristics. 

          If it is the case, then, that at least some traditions have demonstrably trackable elements--and do not rely merely on our understandable proclivity to create cognitive associative links--we might inquire as to what conceptual aid we could attain by investigating other problematic traditions.  There is no dearth of them, and work has already been done on this topic.

III

          Along with the “origins” problem to which we advert in this piece, there is the parallel problem of a demonstrable lack of coherence within a given style.  In other words, arguments have been made with respect to certain genres and styles that parallel some of the arguments here, except that we might say that they demarcate the unsuccessful cases of style attribution.

          For example, a whole host of conceptual problems arises with respect to the art of Indonesia.  Unlike the art of India, there is already a problem with this rubric, since it is unclear how to demarcate this particular tradition from the Indian tradition itself.  If Mohenjo-Daro presents a difficulty in terms of an antecedent, and the tracing of causal elements—and this has been the argument here—Indonesia presents a parallel set of difficulties, but difficulties that are perhaps somewhat easier to articulate.  One authority, writing for a catalog, noted with respect to the artwork of Indonesia:

                   Beginning around the eighth century…[m]aritime

          contacts with the Asian mainland brought Hinduism and

          Buddhism to the islands, and soon the artistic traditions

          of India were known there as well.  Artists in the

          archipelago responded creatively to these influences….11

          A piece in a recent exhibit depicting a seated Buddha in stone was described in the catalog as “Amitabha, c. 9^th century, andesite, from Borobudur, Central Java.”12  From the visual standpoint, the only factor that separates this image of the Buddha from one found in Madhya Pradesh (in India itself), for example, is that we are aware of its geographical provenance by the sheer fact of its having been dug out of the ground.  One could go on, but even those who would maintain that the knowledgeable art historian should, in most instances, be able to make a distinction between pieces from the two traditions will admit that the operative phrase here is "in most cases.”  There is no difficulty coming up with the thought experiment that any given case might prove intractable, since even to a trained observer pieces from India and from Indonesia are very similar.

          How, then, can we deal with the set of conceptual problems posed by Mohenjo-Daro?  Even if we were sure that we could point to a demonstrable tradition—and for India itself there is no difficulty—how do both the successful cases (those revolving around the Americas and the West African cultures) and the unsuccessful cases (those of some parts of Asia) help us decide what is constitutive of continuity?  These are not easy questions. 

          It may help to some extent to think of one of our core notions—that of causally traceable elements—as being the sort of thing that admits of gradations.  In other words, the African-derived musical tradition discussed at an earlier point is an easy and successful case because it is clear that cultural elements exist, in many instances, in a form that is almost identical to their form in the original culture, or that is so close to it as to be easily recognizable.  Percussive elements, for example, are abundant in the Black traditions of the Americas, and we have no difficulty discerning these easily recognizable features of the West African traditions in their homeland—we can see such features today.

          For other traditions, elements that we would like to be able to pick out or use as demonstrative examples of the cultural continuity of a tradition are somewhat attenuated.  Even within what is regarded as the canon of the art of India, certain examples help us to make this point.  The art of Gandhara, for instance, is often cited as containing Greco-Roman features.  Some elements prevalent in Gandhara sculpture—the contouring of hair locks, the drapery folds in seated statues—do point more or less definitively to a Greco-Roman origin.  But these rather small elements must be picked out from the larger whole, and the less knowledgeable person may need substantial training to be able to identify them.

          To return to our original set of examples, the steatite seals from the Mohenjo-Daro site are on considerably less sure footing, in terms of traceable features, than either the percussion of West African-influenced music, or drapery folds from Greco-Roman work appearing in the Gandhara tradition.  The seals are small, and the features difficult to read.  One might be inclined to say that a case such as Mohenjo-Daro represents the problematic extreme of the sort of conceptual puzzle under investigation.

IV

          It may very well be the case that a great deal of the historical and causal tracing here is where we find it, but it is always possible to create an argument for the opposite side.  If we try to forward the line of argument that a critic such as Rowland wants to espouse—that Mohenjo-Daro represents the “origin” of something called the “Indian tradition”--we can do no better than to cite Rowland himself.  He is probably the best exponent of this line of argument; our task is to try to decide whether what he attempts to do might be deemed to be a bit of a stretch.

          For example, with respect to a figurine commonly known as “Dancing-Girl,” Rowland writes:

                   No less surprising is the sophistication of a copper

          figurine of a dancing-girl from Mohnejo-Daro, which in

          such aspects as the extreme wiry attenuation is prophetic

          of metal-work of the Chola Period.  The pendulous

          exaggeration of the lower lip is perhaps a Dravidian

          physical trait, and the clothing of the arms in numerous

          bracelets explains the finding of bangles of every known

          precious metal in the ruins of the Indus cities.13

          Here Rowland attempts a move that, if examined closely, is  somewhat difficult.  The Chola era, which comes over two thousand years later and is associated with the south of India (the non-Aryan region) presumably has very little to do with Mohenjo-Daro.  It is left to the reader, then, to decide what to make of a phrase such as “which in such aspects as the extreme wiry attenuation is prophetic of such metal-work of the Chola Period.”  Only in the vaguest sort of way can we attach genuine meaning to this claim, yet this may be the way in which a commentator has to work if he is to attempt the chronological leaps that are necessary to try to tie the various stages of the Indian tradition together.   A similar set of statements is made about a bust described as “carved of whitish limestone.”14    It is clear that, despite Rowland’s assertions, most of what is going on here is associational.  Despite  an enormous lapse of time—and the lack of a commencement of the relevant tradition—Rowland states that “the disposition of the robe over the left shoulder is not unlike the Buddhist sanghati.”15

          In the end, perhaps the most accurate statement to make about a site such as Mohenjo-Daro is that it represents the beginning of a tradition at least in geographical terms, and perhaps in stylistic terms as well.   Admittedly, this is a weak statement, and from the standpoint of actual art historical work it might be thought to be lacking in content.  But the fact is, as aestheticians have tried to inform us, the art historical tradition of any given region is largely a construction—not only a social construction, in the sense that we now use this somewhat overworked term, but a construction of the power of critics and commentators and of their choice to forward or discard certain sorts of views.   In that sense, Mohenjo-Daro is probably no less the origin of the art historical tradition of India than any one of a number of artifacts from Mesoamerica might be deemed to be harbingers of, for example, the art historical traditions of Mexico or Guatemala.

          Claims about art history, especially those that involve a chronological reach over time, force us to do work.  We may not like the results of that work, but the outcome is often provocative.  What we find out after careful investigation may, in a sense, help us better understand the very tradition in question.