The Hindu Vision [antikvár]

The Hindu View of Life As space pervades a jar both inside and out, so within and beyond this ever-changing universe, there exists one Universal Spirit. shiva samhita To understand the premises of Hindu art, we have to jettison our modern Insistence on the importance of the Individual and the rational values of scientific materialism, and place ourselves back In the theocentric world-view of medieval Europe. In the Middle Ages the role of the artist was to portray and reinforce the shared symbolic order that had guided Western man since the advent of Christianity. This order derived from what was called the Great Chain of Being, a universal coherence which stabilized Individual and collective life as part of a divinely ordained hierarchy linking humanity with Cod. In England this Idea of a cosmic hierarchy, which persisted until well Into the Victorian period. Is expressed perhaps most clearly in the works of Shakespeare: when Macbeth murders King Duncan under his own roof, the act Is a most unnatural deed not only because It violates the sacred duty of hospitality, but because in killing the hereditary head of state, he has violated the natural order that the Institution of kingship both reflects and perpetuates. As a result of this violation of Cosmic Law, all sorts of unnatural things happen: storms blow up across the land, falcons are killed by owls, aristocratic horses tear each other to pieces. Until very recendy, the preservation of the whole, with Its apparent disregard for the pursuits of the Individual, was particularly a feature of Hindu society, structured as It was by the reciprocal hierarchy of the caste system. In Indian civilization, the operation of Cosmic Law Is enshrined in what the West calls Hinduism and the Indians call Sanatana Dharma - 'the Eternal Law'. There Is in fact no word in Indian languages to signify 'religion' as a discrete or separate social function. Sanatana Dharma Is a complete way of life, regulating and governing the evolution of the individual from conception to death, life after reincarnating life, and to act in accord with the prescriptions of Sanatana Dharma is to live In accord with the law of Nature herself. The role of the artist In this vast scheme of things Is thus not to redraw the parameters of possibility In perception or expression, or to criticize the Inherited tradition or society, but rather to create those time-honoured forms which reiterate, glorify and perpetuate the Cosmic Law that upholds all life. Shiva Vishapaharana, the Destroyer of the Poison of Time. South India, TOth century. The levels of life Most Westerners are baffled by the myriad apparent contradictions of Hinduism, which ranges with maddening ease from primitive cults of blood sacrifice to the most sophisticated systems of metaphysical speculation and mystical experience. This extraordinary variety of belief and practice is partly explicable by history. When the Aryan tribes, nomadic and Imageless, entered India some time around 2000 BC, they found an indigenous settled culture-the Dravldians - that worshipped the Earth Mother in many forms and Images and, at the most popular stratum, practised the Irrepressible animism that persists even today throughout South and South East Asia, celebrating the continual epiphanies of nature - In rock, river, tree and snake. The Aryans brought with them the Sanskrit language, reverence for the cow, and a complex body of sacrificial ritual. Their religious knowledge was encoded