History · Ch 4 — Thinkers, Beliefs and Buildings — Cultural Developments
If text and image do not match …
If text and image do not match …
The central problem this section raises is this: what happens when a visual image and a written text do not agree? Art historians often rely on textual traditions — the Puranas, the epics, and other religious literature — to decode the meaning of sculptures. This is a far better method than the older colonial habit of comparing Indian images with Greek statues, but it is not foolproof.
A famous example of this difficulty is a massive rock-cut sculptural panel at Mahabalipuram in Tamil Nadu (Fig. 4.30 in the textbook). The carving is clearly telling a story — it is vivid and detailed — but which story? Art historians have searched the Puranas for clues and remain sharply divided.
One group argues that the panel shows the descent of the river Ganga from heaven. The natural cleft running down the centre of the rock surface, they point out, could represent the river itself. This story is indeed narrated in the Puranas and the epics.
The other group argues that it depicts a scene from the Mahabharata — Arjuna doing penance on the river bank to acquire divine weapons. They point to the central figure of an ascetic as evidence for this reading.
The same sculpture, then, can be interpreted in two completely different ways depending on which textual tradition the historian privileges. There is no simple way to settle the dispute. …
The rock-cut panel at Mahabalipuram is carved onto a massive granite boulder, roughly 27 metres long and 9 metres high. The entire surface is filled with hundreds of figures — gods, humans, animals, and celestial beings — arranged in a dynamic, crowded composition. At the centre of the panel runs a deep natural cleft in the rock, which many art historians interpret as the river Ganga descending from heaven to earth. On either side of this cleft, the sculptor has placed a wide variety of characters: sages in meditation, elephants, deer, monkeys, and even a cat standing on one leg (a humorous detail that mimics ascetic penance). Near the top of the cleft, figures of Naga (serpent) deities and flying celestials (gandharvas and apsaras) are shown, reinforcing the divine nature of the scene.
The most debated element is a central figure of an ascetic, standing on one leg with arms raised, performing severe penance. Some scholars identify this as Arjuna, the Pandava prince, who undertook such penance to obtain the Pashupatastra weapon from Shiva. Others argue it represents Bhagiratha, the legendary king whose penance brought the river Ganga down from heaven. The panel does not carry any inscription or label that settles the debate — the meaning must be inferred from textual traditions (the Puranas and the Mahabharata), but those texts support both interpretations. …