BEAUTIFULLY INDIAN

SUNDARAM SHOBHANAM BHARATIYAM

When in every form there is the hint of the formless
and in every movement there is a message of stillness
when in every thought there is a whisper of silence
and in every finite space there is the quest of the infinite
when a form takes us from the temporal to the eternal
it is then that akriti leads to sanskriti.
That is beautifully Indian.

pratyaakaara.m yadaa vya:ngya.m niraakaaram praka;sate /

gatau gatau yadaa sthairyam mukhyaarthatvena gamyate //1//
matau matau yadopaa.m;su bhaa.syate ;sabda-;suunyataa /
avakaa;se yadaa saante kriyate 'nanta-maarga.naa //2//
yadaa ca nayate ruupa.m na;svaraacchaa;svata.m prati tadaak®ti.h patha.h kartrii
sa.msk.rter bhavati prasuu.h //3//
eva.m pratiiyate yatra tatra saundarya-sa.myutam / bhaaratiiyam iti khyaat.m tattva.m
ki.mci d vilak.sa.nam //4//

AAKRITYAAH SAMSKRITIM
FROM AKRITI TO SAMSKRITI

In a tradition and civilisation that does not eschew elitism or deny sacerdotal hierarchy,
where society and its various functions are rigidly structured, where brahmin priests
zealously guarded sacred rites and religious rituals, where close fisted rishis parted with
their wisdom only to their sons and worthy pupils, it is refreshing to find that knowledge is
not just the preserve of the privileged or restricted to the study of scholarly texts or
acquired through esoteric practices but is equally experienced by the praja and the samajika
or the ordinary people, through their lived lives and transmitted through plain but eloquent
visual representations, be they on a mud wall or the threshold of their simple homes, or
embroidered on fabrics or painted on scrolls of itinerant performers.

India is a civilisation of many images, a culture of many visual feasts, a tradition where the
visible and the palpable are as important as the oral and the occurrent, where our highest
truths are embodied not only in our erudite texts but in kathas and gathas, akritis and
rachanas which are rich with forms and shapes, designs and motifs. Our temples are not
only places of worship but equally a gallery of beautiful forms and figures, where myth is as
important as doctrine, where ancient memories are full of cherished forms and narratives,
where mythic beings are real in many different ways and we enrich our lives by festivals
which celebrate events from the lives of our mythic gods and goddesses, and where
knowledge is gained as much from simple akritis as it is from learned discourses, where
even though we soar in the vast and boundless sky and reach out for the stars, we never
leave the earth upon which we stand firm footed, although we exalt and value the fo! rmless
yet we lovingly create and celebrate many forms, for us the nirvikalpa and nirguna is
majestic and ultimate but the savikalpa and saguna is beautiful and immediate, our minds
roam in infinite spaces but it is that very space that the potter encloses in the kalasha, we
conceive of timelessness but measure time with the rhythm of the dancer’s foot and the
sounds of the manjira, for us the body is perishable but yet it is the embodiment of all that
is beautiful for us, we claim that silence is eloquent but yet reach that through well sculpted
and chanted words. Idea and image, melody and lyric, arupa and rupa, the formless or
nirakar and form or sakar, avyakta and vyakta, the silent and the spoken, the seen and the
unseen, are inseparable a mithuna, a loving couple, and in the words of Dadu:

Incense craves to dissolve itself into fragrance and fragrance wants to remain enveloped in
incense. Melody seems to find itself articulated in rhythm and rhythm wants to get back to
melody. Idea craves to be embodied in form and form seems to release itself in idea. The
limitless seeks its intimate association with the limited and the limited craves to lose itself in
the limitless. I know not whose logic it is in creation and deconstruction, that there is an
1
unceasing intercourse after freedom and freedom is always looking for a nest in bondage.

This inquiry will explore some akritis or visual forms that adorn both majestic and grand
monuments as well as common and ordinary spaces, which through their purely visual
language are a pointer to not only our culture but equally to brahma jnana or transcendent
knowledge. All sources of knowledge, and visual knowledge in no small measure, is an
integral part of the Indian tradition and it has been rightly said:

nahi jnanena sadrasam pavitram iha viddyate

there is nothing more sacred than knowledge.

These beautiful visual representations of both the samajika or ordinary people and
chitrakars or the artisans, which are not individual expressions but that of the shared
experience of the community and the preserve of the family, and which have been passed
down through trackless generations, are not mere designs or decorations, nor meant only
for rites and rituals, but in their own unpretentious way become sources of visual knowledge
and have a culture of their own. That knowledge is not private and personal but represents
a collective view of the world for us in the Indic traditions, be they Hindu, Buddhist and Jain,
for these traditional forms are not only a part of our living tradition but have an ancient
pedigree and are archetypal, and hence become primal and living expressions of a world
view of an entire civilisation.

It has been rightly said that everything in this world, mental or physical, has to have an
akriti or form, be it visual or oral. In our engagement with what is beautiful we specially
give primacy to akriti or the beautiful form, for only an akriti can give shape and form,
depth and dimension, colour and texture to a beautiful concept or an idea or a thought, and
going beyond the static representation an akriti can impart movement, and further even
though itself inanimate the akriti can become alive with a certain rasa or emotion. What is
beautiful cannot remain formless and must take a form or akriti and thus requires sensual
apprehension. Akriti therefore has both an ontology and epistemology, that is it has a
reality of its own which can be experienced by a committed aesthete, the akriti is not
merely ornamental or decorative but is a source of knowledge.

However an akriti is only an intermediate step in the creation and understanding of what is
beautiful. Akriti stems primarily from prakriti, that is, it arises out of the material and the
physical, it is a creation of both matter and mind. Prakriti is the bija and the garbha, the
seed and the womb, it is here that akriti is conceived, it is here that it empowers the human
hand and it is from this human hand that comes the rekha and it is with the hand that the
tulika and the kalam, the brush and the pen are held; it is the hand that holds the needle
and the thread, and it is the hand that moves the potter’s wheel and the weaver’s loom. It
has been rightly said:

yato hastah tato drishtihi, yato drishtihi tato manah

yato manah tato bhavah, yato bahvah tato rasah.

Where the hand goes the eyes follow, where the eyes go the mind follows
Where the mind goes emotion arises and when there is emotion rasa is created .

This pithy sutra from the dance tradition emphasises the role of the hand not only in
creating beautiful akrtis through hastamudras but eventually through the contemplative
experience of akritis ushering in the blissful state of rasa.

The hand is central in any artistic creation and even the word akriti incorporates the word
kar which is the hand, suggesting that it is the hand that is at the main tool of human
artistic creativity. Evolutionary biologists pay great attention to the detached thumb and
hence its prehensile ability to hold objects, such as weapons and the brush, the pen and the
chisel, and this is the key to human creativity. A common morning prayer is:

karagre vasate Laxmi

kar madhye Sarasvati
kar mule tu Govindam
prabhate kara vandanam.

Laxmi resides at the tip of my hand

and Sarasvati in the middle
at the bottom of the hand is Govinda
and this morning I venerate that hand.

The potter’s wheel, the needle of the embroiderer, the mould of the textile block printer, the
brush of the kalamkari maker, the chisel of the sculptor, the kalam of the calligrapher, the
spindle of the weaver, the adept hands of the flower seller making garlands, the tender
hands of a young girl learning the first steps of handling cow dung and the bare hands of
the housewife making rangolis, these are the basic tools of akritis and are a testament to
human creativity. In them resides knowledge, an ancient memory, a beautiful energy, in
them are bodily rhythms of trackless generations, from their movement will arise metaphors
and motifs passed down from mother to daughter and above all in these hands is the living
and pulsating desire to create a beautiful akriti. And when two hands come together they
will fashion a pot and create an enclosed space which will be filled with water and it will
sustain life. From these hands will come objects that are both functional and beau! tiful at
the same time, making it hard to decide where function ends and beauty begins, because in
these akritis there is a constant interplay between usefulness and beauty. These are not
symbols nor are they art objects, but they have a presence of their own, as if to say "I am",
and they live in connivance and in harmony with our senses; they make no apology for their
unabashed sensuality for they do not obey laws of the market place or dictates of the
intellect. We will touch and caress and smell these objects, wonder and admire their
evocative shape, adorn our bodies and our homes with them, we will use them in our lived
lives and they will give us visual delight as our eyes will be drawn to them, and we will lose
ourselves in their patterns and textures, their forms and shapes, their colours and hues, and
in them we will hear hushed sounds of moving fingers and we will discover hidden truths
about life and living. These hand crafted objects will pulsate with the heart ! beat of human
creativity and move with the life breath of human imagination. And when we are touched by
them we will raise our hands and try and touch the sky, for after all our hands are not for
locomotion as they are in animals, but given to us to express ourselves, our joys and
aspirations and dreams and to create beautiful akritis.

How many know the world weaves who spread the warp?
Earth and sky the two beams of his loom.
Earth and Sky the two beams of his loom.
Sun and moon two shuttles filled and ready.
He takes a thousand threads.
He spreads them lengthwise.
Watch him as weaves today.
The length end is still far away, most difficult to reach.
Says Kabir: karma with karma, woven with unwoven threads.
How well this weaver weaves.
.......
The potter takes a lump of earth
and encloses the sky within
as he makes a ghata
and when the ghata breaks
the sky is still the same
only the potter knows
where is the earth and where the sky
from the voice of those who drank from the ghata
is still heard.

Hands thus have a language and a voice, a music and a rhythm, a song and a dance, a
story and a message, and all this through the various akritis that they produce. When
cotton is picked in the farm the and from it come threads and when these threads are
woven into a fabric, in all of this there is a voice and a song. And when a potter collects a
handful of earth and fashions it into a pot he whispers a song as he turns the wheel and the
pot then becomes a part of the household and when it is discarded it returns to the earth
and in this journey there is a story and a message. And when a housewife gathers old and
worn saris and embroiders them she sings a bhajan taught to her by her mother, and
makes these fabrics it into a kantha and a new born child lies on it, it no longer remains just
a fabric but becomes a mother’s blessing. And when Diwali approaches and the women of
the house apply fresh cow dung to the village home they do so with singing and chanting,
and the new b! ride decorates it with alpana, it is not just an adornment but a visual prayer
for the whole family, for in it she will portray not only the feet of the goddess but also paint
her hidden longings. And when the kalamkari artist takes his hand made brush and draws
stories from the Puranas to a scroll he murmurs to himself sacred words and he relives
those ancient stories through his hands.

Weaving is a very ancient tradition in India and weaving and philosophy share many
common words, words such as sutra and tantra. It was Pupul Jaykar who once said that "it
was in the growing, spinning, weaving, dyeing, printing and embroidering of cotton that the
Indian crafts people found their richest expression. Threads or sutra are an important part
of Indian traditions both religious and secular. There is a sense of wonder in creating a
thread from a cotton pod and then weaving a fabric from it. Wrapping a thread around the
trunk of a tree is done for the granting of a wish. In certain tribal villages a continuous
thread is tied around the periphery of the village and this is to contain the good and ward
off the evil from the village. Coloured threads serve as a vastra for the deity in a puja and
the devotee ends the puja by tying a thread on his wrist. Some of the deepest sentiments
such as between a sister and brother are expressed by tying a thread as i! n a rakhee. And
it is from threads that fabrics of all kinds are woven.

Weaving has often been described to music, both are fine arts and done with a dedication
and latifa or pleasure. A weaver very often will sing or chant as he weaves. To fully
understand a certain piece of textile, its colour and texture, design and motifs one must
bring to it not only one’s sight and touch but even more the music that inspired it.. Just as
music begins with a single note similarly the creation of textiles begins with a single thread.
And like the many notes of the musical scale there are many types of threads and they can
be combined in many different ways to produce a fabric. The loom is the weaver’s
instrument and like the musician he adjusts and sets it like a musician tunes his instrument.
When the weaves fills his bani or weft and throws his shuttle it is as if the musician has
started the alap and like a raga weaving has a certain rhythm of laya. And just as a raga
has a certain rasa or rang the weaves infuses a certain feeling i! n what he weaves and each
fabric like each raga requires a different technique. The environment in which the weaver
lives filled him with wonder: green leaves, the bark of a tree, roots of a date palm, fruits
like the mango, birds and blossoms, the feather of a peacock and the fine thread of a spider
web filled him with wonder and he incorporated that in his fabric. And then there are colours
which the weaver derived from the world around. Truly has it been said that weaving is like
music.

And so it is with most traditional crafts and thus it is that in every akriti there is a voice, a
song, a cry, a silent prayer of thanksgiving, a hushed voice of excitement for a forthcoming
family event, a whisper of joy at a samskara, a poignant sigh when the heart can bear no
more pain, a breath of longing to restore some comfort and happiness, and perhaps even a
cry of pain. For akritis often carry with them an expression of our deepest longings and
heartfelt aspirations and all of these feelings are not too far from the hand that creates. The
Aitreya Brahmana states:

deva shilpani etesham vai shilpanam anukritihi shilpam adhigamyate.

Ait. Br. VI.27

This statement underscores the divine origin of akrtis but even more suggests that the
rhythms of these akritis is imbibed by the humans in creative act. This creative act is not a
mere karma or a volitional activity but a kriya, a sacrament, charged with all the senses and
alive with songs and chants.

Akritis are alive for they are created, they perish and they arise again. It has been rightly
said:
aadaavaakrtir avyaktaa madhye vyaktaa bhavet sadaa.
ante 'vyakteti caavyaktavyaktaavyaktam pravartate.

An aakriti is avyaktaa or formless in the beginning,

vyaktaa or possessing a form in the middle,
and once more returns to avyaktaa or formlessness in the end.
Thus the cycle of avyakta-vyakta-avyakta continues.

The many forms that are beautifully and lovingly made will eventually disintegrate, just as a
votive horse placed under a tree in an ancestral rite becomes one with the soil, but the rite
and the ritual will remain, and another horse will be made. A fabric will age and fray with
time and then layers of old fabrics are collected and embroidered and a kantha is born.And
when even this gets tattered chindis from this will be tied to the tree with a wish. This
brings in the all important difference between akar and akriti, for akar is mere form and
akriti is the process by which the form is made, and it is the process that is the preserve of
the artisan and the artist, the mother and the daughter, and this is what survives from
times ancient till today and will endure even beyond.

If akritis are created by the mind and executed by the hand the surface that enshrines the
akriti is equally special. Drawn on the ground it is invocation to the earth on the walls and
threshold, doors and windows of our homes it is a visual prayer; on palm leaves and paper
and in pothis and books it is visual knowledge; on fabrics it is a blessing and on scrolls of
itinerant singers they are a living narrative.

And no less evocative and beautiful are the materials that are used to express these akritis.
Whether it is rice past or natural dyes, silk or cotton thread , hues made from lapus lazuli or
indigo, these inert but organic materials are brought to life by the artisan and they in turn
enliven mute spaces into living expressions of visual knowledge where kriti is transformed
into drishti.

Patanjali states:

grahyalambanoparaktam cittam grahya

samapannam grahya svarupa karena nirbhasate
A mind is coloured by what the object it focusses on, whether it issubtle or gross
Yoga Sutra Bhasya I.41

This foundational sutra from Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra makes the contemplation of these akritis
a yoga, for when the alert and focussed mind cognises these akritis, the mind as it were
assumes the form of the akriti, that is to say that it becomes one with the akritis and then
these akritis do not remain just adornments or decorations but become visual knowledge.
The process of transformation of the beautiful into beauty, of sensual information into
knowledge, was codified early in the Indian tradition and casts a different light on the value
of akritis. The sensual cognition of these akritis or perception is on par with textual
knowledge and exalts these akritis as a bonafide source of knowledge. This is an important
acknowledgement early in the Indian tradition and gives akriti and gives primacy to sensual
perception as a pramana or the means to knowledge.

Shruti , what is heard, and smriti or what is remembered, are traditional sources of aurual
knowledge and the spoken word enjoyed a primacy and validity in times ancient and does
so even now. The written word came later and we owe this to the Buddhists and the Jains,
but even when written, the textual tradition remained mainly oral, as texts were read aloud
and even chanted and sung. The correct intonation of these words was important and any
distortions in this would lead it to be called an apashabda or the corrupted word. From
about the 6th century BCE onwards texts were produced on copper plates and then on palm
and birch leaves. The textual tradition remains of prime importance as sources and
transmitters of knowledge. However we shall by-pass this erudite textual tradition in this
inquiry in favour of drishti or visual sources of knowledge through the engagement with
various akritis that are a treasure of the tradition.

It is useful to begin with some basic concepts in Sanskrit that revolve around the words
drasya and pashya, Pasyati is a verb that denotes the simple optical act of seeing. Drishti
however is a contemplative noun and means more than the act of visualisation or seeing; it
is rather perceiving, feeling, knowing, insight and then ultimately realisation and drishti is
therefore undertaken in a second more contemplative moment and falls under the rubric of
anubhava ir experience. And then there is najar in the bhashas which is a type of vision and
has a variety of meanings which include the romantic glance and even the evil eye.
Etymologically related to drishti is darshana, and while Sanskrit does not differentiate
between darshana and drishti, Prakrit and the bhashas considers darshana as the
transfiguring vision of a deity that occurs in a temple and drishti as enlightened or
contemplative vision. Darshana or transfiguring vision of an icon is fundamental to the
religio! us experience, whether it is in a home shrine or a temple. Equally the icon gives
aesthetic hints that an adept rasika or aesthete picks up and assures himself of a rich
aesthetic experience. However drishti can be understood in a wider context and is not
limited to darshana or the transfiguring vision of icons in a religious setting and can go
much beyond the narrow confines of an organised temple or even a shrine and can occur in
everyday spaces in the lived lives of the samajika or the common people. It is ths type of
drishti that we are interested in exploring.

The gods and the motifs, the forms and symbols of these visual representations, as well as
those who hold them sacred or beautiful, are simple and unpretentious, but yet dignified
and self-assured. Whether it is a tree that is held sacred or a naturally occurring stone that
is revered, a river that is considered the embodiment of divinity itself, an ancestor that is
worshipped, a fabric that is simply draped but considered sacred, a simple road side shrine
on a busy street or a votive terra cotta horse that is lovingly made and offered, a narrative
scroll that holds its audience spell bound, here is visual knowledge at work that is as
spontaneous as it is intense, as visual as it is oral, charged with faith, fervour and
commitment, now private and now shared, that forms an integral part of the lived lives of
these common people, be they rural or urban, tribal or traditional. The rituals and practices
for these visual creations are neither scripted nor canonized, but what the! y may lack in
grandeur, erudition and ceremony, they more than make up in the faith and feeling that
they generate, and going beyond all of these become a source of non-didactic and visual
knowledge. In a civilisation which has encountered majestic truths and erected grand
temples, these visual representations and expressions of the ordinary people tend to be side
lined or dismissed by scholars as well as the world at large, as minor or lesser gods, or
mere adornments or decorations, worthy of curiosity but not of serious study, but it is
important to remember that they have a beauty and presence of their own in the pluralistic
Indian tradition, and that it is through them that knowledge is available visually and outside
sacerdotal rites and rituals and scholarly texts. In other words drishti understood as the
perception, understanding and realisation of these simple akritis or visual forms, becomes a
parallel knowledge system in its own right. This underscores the fact tha! t while scholarly
texts and their erudite commentaries are an important part of the Indian tradition of textual
knowledge systems, they are not the only source of knowledge, and that drishti through
akritis offers an alternative and parallel system of knowledge through everyday visual
representations. These other visual sources outside the textual tradition are probably more
ancient and perhaps more pervasive than shruti and smriti . Drishti through akriti therefore
should be given a honoured place in the epistemology of knowledge and deserves our
scholarly attention.

Gesture and signs must have been the earliest form of communication even before language
evolved and could be considered proto-akritis. Recent findings at Bhimbetka and at other
sites leave little doubt that visual representations may predate even the spoken word. The
Indus valley seals have left hieroglyphics and primitive images such as that of a cross
legged yogi or a woman within a Pipal tree which are obviously more than decorative motifs
but markers of a world view. Akriti thus is able to claim an ancient and pre-historic
pedigree.

Popular visual forms transcend and by-pass the limitations of rational language, they use
images and not words, its grammar and lexicon are made up of forms and shapes and not
words, its canvas is not just palm leaf or paper but mud walls and scrolls, its logic is the
inner essence of beauty and not a formal or rational idea, it creates forms only to break out
of them, it suggests but does not impose, it leads and does not insist, it creates vistas of
meaning rather than give didactic instruction, it is beautiful in its own right but subtly leads
to visions of transcendent beauty, its impact is immediate and direct but its message is the
ultimate that is realised in a later contemplative moment.

Visual knowledge for us in the Indian tradition has a special place for it conveys more than
what meets the eye. Whether it is a mural in a cave, or a wall painting in a nuptial chamber
in Madhuban or an adornment on a mud wall or a decoration on the threshold of a home,
motifs and patterns embroidered on a fabric, a visual image performs many functions. It
adorns and beautifies, it gives a certain sanctity to the space in which it exists, but it
equally serves a magical function and confers to the space and the environment it occupies
a protective charm. Above all, visual motifs and metaphors, images and forms, bring a
direct perception of jnana or knowledge both to the rasika who has a cultivated and trained
eye and to the samajika to whom it conveys an intuitive sense of mangalya or auspicious
and purnatva or fullness. These visual forms provides that beautiful connection between the
microcosm and the macrocosm, the secular and the sacred, between utility and beaut! y.
The visible and the palpable representation of divinity is an important, almost defining, part
of the Indian Hindu, Buddhist and Jain traditions and the creation of akritis or visual motifs
and symbols of divinities is an integral and important part of that. These visual markers
belong both to the sophisticated and the unlettered. If the spontaneous and widespread
public representation of the sacred and the divine is a feature of Indian religions, mainly
Hinduism, the creation of visual motifs and symbols and their presence in the everyday lives
of the people are an equally important part of Hindu living and are a testament to the
sensitivity and awareness of the importance of creating beautiful objects and gaining from
them not only aesthetic pleasure but philosophical truths by the unlettered and untutored in
their own unique and simple way. The young girl and the housewife who create these forms
may not be textually informed but are culturally encoded through the living t! radition and
these akritis flow through them almost effortlessly. These akrktis are more than static and
inert symbols, they are actually living visual metaphors, generally transmitted from mother
to daughter, through trackless generations, and stem from ancient dreams and memories
that are a store house of fundamental and distilled truths of the tradition, of Puranic stories
and folk legends that are heard in many different ways and from the fertile and lush tropical
vegetation of the Indian continent. In this pluralistic environment time tested philosophical
truths survive in songs and stories, where a handful of earth can hold more knowledge than
countless pages of erudite and hoary palm leaf manuscripts. In these simple and everyday
visual representations the beautiful and the sacred come together through archetypal and
primal forms, they beautify and they inform, they protect and they purify, they confer
auspiciousness and beauty in the daily spaces in the lived lives ! of our people.
In a civilisation that is mainly agricultural in spirit, both in rural and urban spaces, growth
and fertility are not only important economically and socially but become a measure of the
beauty and meaning of life itself and provide a world view and a frame of reference for the
representations of akritis. To grow is to live, to prosper materially and flourish emotionally,
to ensure the continuity of life and creation but equally in the understanding and
representation of that growth and fecundity it is to realise the movement and circularity of
time, for what grows must change with the seasons and eventually perish, but from its
seeds life will start all over again, and thus these akritis point to the eternality of time even
in the face of human impermanence.

Sanskrit words for Form and Design, akriti and rachana, both imply a creative process and
signal an exalted human activity, for creation in its best sense stems from a sense of
joyousness and fullness and not deficiency or want, it is born from a desire to create
something in the likeness of the creator, and arises from a need to create a beautiful shape
and enrich and enliven the form, to express a sense of joy and wonder and only then can
that akriti take its rightful place in the world we inhabit and become one of the highest
human visual expressions.

The phrase Beautifully Indian thus captures the essence of not only what it is to be proudly
Indian but equally makes the celebration of beauty through the various akritis, as we
express and represent it in the Indian tradition through the various akritis, a fundamental
part of our Indianness. To beautify, to adorn, to decorate and to embellish, not only
animates and delights our senses, but even more it becomes an important value to strive
for, it becomes a purushartha or end in itself of life and living. The celebration of the
beautiful pleases our senses on first encounter but ultimately enriches our spirit in a second
more contemplative moment. In recognising the value of the beautiful we in the Indian
tradition are not only valuing what is created by human hands but equally the artistic
creativity that was responsible for the beautiful object. As Octavio Paz rightly states:
The hand crafted object satisfies a need no less imperative than hunger and thirst, the need
to take delight in the things that we see and touch." (P. 21)

In the ultimate analysis it is human creativity, understood as pratibha or creative

imagination, and not so much the creator, that we applaud and venerate through the
various akritis. The creator is only the conduit of creativity that flows from sources unknown
and from reservoirs ancient. It is the act of creating rather than the actor, the dance rather
than the dancer, the kalasha rather than the potter, the fabric rather than the weaver, that
is important to us. The celebration of the beautiful is a testament and veneration to the
creative spirit of mankind and it has been rightly said that we come closest to divinity
during and because of the creative process, both in its creation and its celebration.

It has been said that rupam rupam pratirupam babhuva, every form available to the human
mind and eye is in the ultimate analysis a replica of a primal cosmic form. This cryptic sutra
has many levels and nuances of meanings, but the one central idea that emerges from this,
is that the many beautiful forms that surround us and that we create, are primal and very
ancient and are born out of pristine archetypal forms. While our religious icons or murtis
owe their pedigree to the Purusha of the Purusha Sukta of the Rg Veda, the origins of the
many forms of village or people’s art arise from the primal myth of the samudra manthan.
What it also suggests is that the beautiful for us in the Indian tradition is not homocentric
and does not just revolve around mankind. Rather it posits that we in India live in a web of
interconnections and interdependence, that human reality is not just of the immediate world
but is of the entire world and the cosmos around him, that even thoug! h his life is spent on
earth he seeks a pillar and stairway to the sky, and that myth rather than history is the
paradigm within which he best functions. Man therefore does not stand alone but is
connected to the grandeur and majesty of the world around him, the world of trees and
blossoms, of birds and animals, of rivers and mountains, the sun and the moon, the stars
and the constellations of the planet, so that even a handful of earth on which he stands
connects him through the Indra stambha or the primal axis mundi to the sky and thus
creates a bridge to the heavens and the celestial domains.

While we celebrate creation in all its multiple manifestations it is futile to seek a reason or
the first creator or the exact origin of our various akrtis, for the creation of the beautiful is
so intimately tied with life itself and is undefinable and beyond intellectual probing. It has
rightly been said:
vyarthaM saundarya-kAraNasya anveSaNam
bhAratIyeSu jIvane pUrNA sammlitA kalA
 It is useless to search for a reason for beauty
For art is completely integrated with life in India.

One of the ideas latent in this is that the individuality and particularity of the creator is not
as important as is his creation. Thus it is that many of our creations are anonymous,
unsigned, unclaimed, unattached to the personality of the artist, but stemming from his
lineage, and which in turn comes from hidden sources and shared creative well springs of
the tradition. These beautiful forms are from the repository of the community, the village or
the town and are not the property of an individual. That these forms are a shared
inheritance is a recurrent and underpinning idea of the many beautiful forms of the Indian
tradition and becomes the foundation of its culture.

Satish Gujral, a veteran contemporary artist, when asked hoe he created forms he replied
instantly" :my forms arise from feelings and not from ideas." This underscores a
fundamental feature of the genesis of beautiful akritis. Buddhi or the intellect has no place
either in the creation or appreciation of akritis and therefore no rational answer can be
given as to the exact origin of akritis. Akritis arise from dhi or the radiantly creative mind,
the manaso manah, a mind within the mind, where feelings abide and rasas flow, where the
heart trembles, and unstruck music is heard, where gestures speak without any words,
where deep seated longings and dreams hide, where a thousand suns shine without casting
shadows and the movement of the moon and the stars is in harmony with the rhythms of
our body, it is where ancient memories and primal forms reside, where rationality is an
unwelcome guest, where beauty can stand self-assuredly alone and does not need a reason
or purpose, wher! e there are no dualities of pleasure and pain, but there is only ineffable
bliss. It is from this space of our chetana that akrktis arise. The Vedic term dhi is a coming
together of manas or the emotive mind and manisha or the intuitive mind and needs to be
awakened and accessed by the artist and the artisan in their search for a beautiful akriti, for
in the commerce of the day it is overpowered by the buddhi and ahamkara. This dhi is
where akritis alive in their praoksa form and it is well to remember that paroksha devah
priya, the subtle and the suggestive is dear to the gods.

For us in India the beautiful in its many and varied different forms and expressions goes
beyond the unnecessary and distracting distinction of art and craft, or the needless
separation of the sacred and the secular, or the differentiation of the classical from the folk,
for neither of these modern and mainly Western dichotomies are relevant in the traditional
Indian context of akritis, where the beautiful defies categorisation or even definition, and
stands self-assuredly alone, and lives in holistic harmony with the both the animate and
inanimate world around it. Creating objects of beauty and giving them a centrality in our
homes and lives points out the importance of bringing grace and dignity into our lived lives,
but it does not stop there. We beautify our surroundings and thereby bring a certain
elegance and brightness into our homes, but beautiful akritis are more than that; we
decorate our living spaces to give it grace and a sense of visual comfort but beautiful ob!
jects go beyond that; we adorn our own selves with the traditional sixteen adornments and
this gives us pleasure and enhances our looks but there is a higher purpose to creating
personal beauty than mere adornment, decoration or vanity.
To be in the midst of beautiful forms is to be assured of ancient racial memories and hoary
archetypal symbols, of being privy to living myths and timeless metaphors, of touching well
loved designs and traditional patterns that have endured for millennia, of experiencing
evocative colours and cosmic shapes that have been passed down from one generation to
another, and let all of this work on us at many different levels: magical, religious and
aesthetic, and thereby assuring us of dignity, auspiciousness, protection and well being. The
beautiful has to be embraced and indulged with all our six senses: drishti, shravana, touch,
taste and smell and above all our manas and only then will we totally enjoy and understand
it and make akriti a part of our being.

While Sanskrit offers a multitude of words for the beautiful, words such as sunder, lavanya,
mrudula, shobha, ramaniya, it does not have a special word for art. The word kala which we
commonly use for art objects denotes mainly kruti and even sanskriti, or the process of
creating, which once again brings to light the importance we give to the creative process
and its subjective experience rather than just the object. Art, or the creation of beautiful
akritist is for us the expression and embodiment of beauty, while art as it is commonly
understood today has a very limited significance in the Indian tradition, for our concepts
and understanding of the beautiful go much beyond the narrow understanding of art. The
Indian tradition is quintessentially mythic in its thought and agricultural in its life style. The
twin concepts of myth and agriculture make up our sanskriti, our culture and civilisation,
and it is this that informs our religious i! deas and images, our values and behavior, and
when it comes to things beautiful we turn away from the world of arid reality and
intellectual rationality but instead we turn to the vegetative and animal world, and even
more importantly to the world of myth, to draw our ideas and inspiration for the many
motifs and metaphors, images and figures, that are so much a part of our life.

All great civilisations have created beautiful objects which embody their concept of beauty,
and we in India have not only an ancient but equally a growing and evolving artistic
tradition and culture. We have entrusted our deepest thoughts and cherished visions to our
artists and artisans, be they poets or potters, women who adorn their thresholds with
rangoli or who embroider fabrics, shilpis or sangitkars. These objects of beauty, and the
discourse around them, have endured, as the enjoyment and contemplation of the beautiful
is a hall mark of the rasika and is an essential value for us in the Indian tradition, and
further it defines what it is to be cultured and cultivated. The rasika, or the cultivated
connoisseur, not only enjoys his association with objects of beauty but engages with it
contemplatively so that a discourse about akrkti can emerge. The beautiful akrkti is not only
worthy of artha or contemplation but we associate sun! der with saubhagya, the beautiful
with what is auspicious, sunder with shringara the beautiful with the romantic, and even
more we equate sunder and isvarya or beauty and Divinity. It is quite clear then, that
representing, understanding and knowing what is beautiful in many different ways is multi-
nuanced and is an important part of the celebration of what it is to be a cultivated Indian.

The first principle in designing and giving form to an object and creating an akriti is that it
be functional, efficient and safe, and it is only when these basic requirements are met that
aesthetic concerns can start. Utility is of course important but it cannot limit or exhaust
what a sensitive and cultivated person demands from an object. Artha or material
satisfaction is a basic and primal need and this must obviously be fulfilled. This is the first
order of designing an object. But there is within us a need to go beyond and surround
ourselves with things beautiful, to have not only the means but a meaning to life and living,
to nurture the kamana that is at the very core of our being, for it is there that emotion and
imagination are experienced, it is there that the joy of participating in what is sensuously
beautiful flows like a dhara or stream, it is there that the various rasas are tasted. It is
kamana or desire to experience the beautiful that leads o! ur mind from the mundane and
the banal to the exalted and the sublime, and ushers a sense of grace and dignity to our
daily living and brings joy into our quotidian tasks. For the human mind is not satisfied with
mere dharma and artha, or utility and efficiency. There is in the human condition a need for
us to use our breath to sing songs and not utter mere words of commerce, a need to make
our bodies a vehicle of grace and not of mere function, a need in our environment for
adornment and not mere expediency, a need for the beautiful and not mere utility, a need
to use our hands not only to work but to touch the stars, to grow not only food that
nourishes the body but to plant flowers that will touch our spirit. All of this is the function of
our artists and artisans, housewives and potters, craftsmen and designers and everyone
that creates the many beautiful forms. They are our creators, our prajapatis.
Kapila Vatsyayan writes:

In the antara hradaya akasa ...is the realization of beauty in perfect form, where a perfect
concord exists between viewer and viewed.... Perfect form is the model of his inner vision to
which he then seeks to give expression through visual or aural forms... The Indian artist’s
concern is with design imbued with a consciousness of the totality. He gives this form many
forms, always bearing in mind the inner state in which he saw the perfect form. Conscious
of mundane living he built a superstructure of refined feeling and sensibility, where a
continuous process of distillation, sophistication takes place... where the empirical and the
metaphysical are held together as an organic whole. Concepts underlying Indian
architecture, sculpture and ...painting bring us back to the image of Man, the purusha and
the Purusha of Upanishadic thought and the yajna of the brahmanas in more explicit terms.

This statement by Vatsyayan underscores the inwardness of the beautiful akriti, the
beautiful that touches the eye but is realised by the eye of the eye and which in turn is
nourished and realised by the mind of the mind and then finally touches and awakens the
atman. What is objectively beautiful is so important to us because it touches realms of
beauty within us.

Tha Sahitya Darpana, an ancient treatise on art, notes:

Pure aesthetic experience is theirs in whom the knowledge of ideal beauty is innate; it is
known intuitively, in intellectual ecstasy without accompaniment of ideation, at the highest
level of conscious being; born of one mother with the vision of God, its life is as it were a
flash of blinding light of transmundane origin, impossible to analyse, and yet in the image
our being.
Sahitya Darpana, III. 2-3

The concept and the realisation of atman is central to Indian thought and has both ontologic
and epistemologic significance. If the creation and the enjoyment of sunder akriti or
beautiful forms is to be a significant activity and not just for adornment or utility, or just for
superficial excitement, it must address itself to the atman, for that is where the ultimate
knowledge of the form resides and beauty tasted. It is at the level of the atman that the
materiality of the form transforms itself into the rarefied spirituality of the same form and in
so doing goes from the form to the formless. It is at the level of the atman that the pancha
maha bhuta of prakriti is transformed: ap or water becomes rasa, tej or fire becomes
contemplation, bhu or the earth is no longer the limited womb that restricts but the womb
that releases the form into the limitless, vayu is not just wind but becomes the life giving
prana and akash i! s not confined space but the vast and unbounded sky and thereby the
realisation of akriti asserts its infinity and non-temporality. Thus in going from Prakriti to
Purusha, from the form to the formless, Prakriti has not been lost or negated, but
transformed; the objectively sunder akriti or from is realised and experienced as the
formless subjective saundarya. Understood this way prakriti becomes the bija or the seed
that evolves into the majestic kalpavriksha within the atman. This once again frames the
creation and enjoyment of akriti within a metaphysical framework and akriti moves away
from being just ornamental or the decorative to being a source of visual knowledge.

The Vastusutraupanisad rightly says, tad shilpa jnanad divya jnanam bhavati, that is, the
knowledge of form results in divine knowledge. This Upanishadic injunction can be enlarged
to understand shilpa as any object that has been thoughtfully and lovingly made and
therefore embraces akriti or design in a broader sense, and the knowledge that a
contemplative person derives from akriti or object then becomes divine knowledge. The
onus then is both on the shilpi, the maker of the object, and the rasika or the connoisseur of
that object, so that akriti can progress to jnana for this is the mandate of Indian sanskriti.
Thus the function of akriti in essence is to create the beautiful so that the mind that tires in
the world of daily commerce can rest in realms of inner beauty. As Tagore rightly states :
The consciousness of the real within me seeks for its corroboration the touch of the real
outside me. The Religion of Man. p. 82

Implicit in this statement is the supposition that our inner reality becomes known to us on
account of the reality of the many and varied beautiful akritis around us, that the infinite
that is at the core of our being is awakened by an understanding of the finite but beautiful
akritis that surround us, that our subjective self must find and feel the objectively beautiful
to fully realise itself and ultimately is the assertion that the purusha is incapable of realising
itself but needs prakriti for that understanding. Thus there are two levels of reality, one
outer and the other inner, the one that is defined by prakriti which assumes many forms or
the beautiful, and the other that is defined by purusha or formless beauty. In the words of
Tagore again:
We become aware of a profound meaning of our self at the consciousness of some ideal of
perfection, some truth beautiful or majestic which gives us an inner sense of completeness,
a heightened sense of our own reality. The Religion of Man. p. 91

There is for Tagore an inner logic and reality of things that are outwardly beautiful. Tagore
reminds us that the world of objects in which we live, a world of lines and forms, colours
and shapes, textures and cadence, words and movement, express vastly more than what
they appear on the surface. Therefore an object that is beautiful does not remain merely an
object but it leads the contemplative person to a journey of inner discovery. In Tagore’s
words:
They open the windows of our mind to the eternal reality of man.

Tagore’s position places akriti securely within a metaphysical grid of Indian thought and
moves it away from the merely psychological excitement or superficial decoration or
adornment. Akriti or beautiful form then takes its rightful place in the domain of Indian
Aesthetics and as a form of visual knowledge it is a window to sanskriti, and it therefore
behooves us to develop a discourse of Indian Forms, not just in empirical but in philosophic
terms. We must view akrkti not just from the point of view of the practitioner or the
marketer but from the vantage point of the philosopher as well. It is not sufficient to talk
about akriti in either commercial or psychological terms, to merely refer to it as something
that pleases the eye or to look upon it as a source of mental excitement or one that sells
well in the markets of the world. Sensual pleasure and excitement are indeed the first
response to a beautifully designed akriti whether it is a space or object, for that is its! raison
d’etre, it exists to satisfy those primal needs, but the beautifully designed akriti goes
beyond itself, and expresses in its mute and hushed language, a vision of the culture that
defines us, it is, in its own silently eloquent way, a pointer to the cherished values of the
tradition that shapes us, and it is a testament to the pratibha or creative imagination of the
artisan who made it, and equally for us who partake of its beauty. It is because of this that
it can qualify to be a source of divya jnana or ultimate knowledge.

If we must distinguish between art and craft, and the artist from the craftsman, a distinction
that is basically unnecessary in the Indian tradition, as it distorts the holistic nature of what
is beautifully Indian, it is important to note that when it comes to akriti or beautiful forms
we need the craftsman more than the artist to fill our daily life with things beautiful, and the
presiding deity of all craftsmen in the Indian tradition is Vishwakarman, the divine artificer,
who fashions the chariots of the gods. The prototypical craftsman amongst them all for us in
the Indian tradition is the kumbhar or the potter who takes a handful of earth and converts
it into a kalasha, which then occupies a central place in our lives, both sacred and secular.
The weaver, who makes fabrics is equally important, for it is he who converts a sutra into a
beautiful vastra. The carpenter, the metal smith, the sonar and even the housewife all
occupy a pride of place in our live! s for they fashion akritis and create forms that we not
only use but cherish, with which we adorn ourselves and our spaces to make the beautiful a
part of our daily lives and living. There is in the creation of these objects a ritual as well as a
method, a prayer as well as technique,
While the samajika or the person at large may not be able to derive a full aesthetic
experience or engage in an aesthetic discourse from the many forms of the beautiful in their
surroundings, they must surely feel the satisfaction of carrying on a tradition handed down
to them and experiencing a sense of comfort and security from the magico-religious benefit
of what has been created. For besides being aesthetically charged many of these akritis
confer protection to ths space it adorns. It is important to remember that many of these
creations in homes or havelis are for them visual prayers and not mere adornments. They
are lovingly made and piously celebrated. They are a part of their daily surroundings,
whether on walls or floors, or in their home shrines. For the rasika or the contemplative
aesthete however the presence and meditation on the many beautiful forms and objects
that surround him, lifts him from the pedestrian banality and the humdrum of existence to
the charm a! nd aesthetic excitement of beauty, it moves him from the mundane and the
commonplace concerns of life to the rarefied and sublime states of ecstasy and joyousness,
it is a reminder that the creation and the pursuit of the beautiful cannot be an end in itself
but must have a higher purpose and thus akriti provides a stairway to domains of adbhuta
or wonder, and from that sense of wonder it is only an aesthetic leap to the final state of
serene and blissful beauty and ultimate knowledge. In that state of bliss, which is best
described as vishranti or rest, where the senses no longer seek and the mind has stopped
seeking, the beautiful has moved from the objectively beautiful to a state of serene
subjective beauty, from knowledge to knowing and our entire being rests, like the
sheshashayi or the recumbent Vishnu, in a state of repose and quietude. It is abundantly
clear that the aesthetics of akritis or the beautiful forms for the contemplative and cultiva!
ted rasika in the Indian tradition is a cherished and transcendent experience, a
rasasvadana, to be sought and indulged for its own sake, and which in the words of the
tenth century Aesthetician Abhinavagupta, is close to or parallel to the bliss of brahman, it
is brahmananda sahodara. In its ability to lead us to a transcendent state of being, the state
of beauty has an epistemological ring to it, for it posits an ultimate reality to what is
beautiful, it asserts that there is an inner logic of the beautiful and makes objects of beauty
a source of visual knowledge, a atmajnana or ultimate self-knowledge and therefore of
moksha or freedom.

Understood in this sense the beautiful is not just adornment but a visual prayer, it is crucial
to our being as much as social and economic security and our mental well being. These
artistic creations are in the words of Kapila Vatsysyan "archetypal symbols of human
consciousness" (p. 203, IIC Quarterly Winter 2001). They have come down to us from
mother to daughter through trackless centuries, and although they are created by
individuals, they have the power and the pedigree of the entire tradition behind them. It is
not important to know who created them, for in the intensity of creation and experience the
creators go beyond the individual and transcend the specificity of time and place, class and
caste. Many of these representations of everyday art or ritual art such as a rangoli or alpona
are lovingly made, wiped away and then made again, or the tribal horse that is made from
earth and left under a tree to decompose and from the same earth another horse is made.
Or the w! eaver who starts his day at the loom with a simple act of piety and then begins
weaving, signaling that the act of creation has a moral and religious underpinning to it. In
so doing they are reminders of the cosmic drama of creation, destruction and renewal, and
both by their presence and their process, these beautiful forms become silent messengers
of deep and abiding metaphysical and religious insights.

The central question for the philosopher of beauty then is what makes an object beautiful, a
question that may be hard for the maker of the object to answer, for s/he works intuitively
and follows trackless traditions handed down from father to son and mother to daughter,
and any attempt to answer that question on their part would only distort or fragment the
truth. For to pry into a creative process is a sacrilege, almost forbidden. It would amount to
curiosity if not to voyeurism. The traditional craftsman is confident and self-aware but not
self-conscious, he is intelligent but not intellectual, his methods are spontaneous and not
rehearsed or scripted, his concept of beauty is intuitive and does not follow any shastra and
the over all ethos for him in his workshop is one of joyous and spontaneous creativity. One
only has to watch a kumbhar or weaver at work and see the joy on their face as a lump of
clay or just a few threads start taking shape. There is no room t! here for the prying eyes of
the academic but merely someone who has a sense of wonder at how a formless substance
begins to take a beautiful form. Here is a pristine beautiful moment of creation, the
beginnings of which are lost in the hoary past and which will continue endlessly in the
tradition through the parampara.. The craftsman is merely a messenger of the ancient
traditions of giving visual expressions to concepts and feelings of the sanskriti through
various akritis; however he is neither academically trained nor expected to respond to a
scholarly question, and the burden of that scholarly inquiry falls upon us rasikas, who wish
to undertake a contemplation about Indian akriti through their design and form, and that
inward journey on our part will reveal to us the strength and an epistemology of Indian
design and forms. For knowledge without an epistemology is akin to walking in dark and
shadowy corridors, even if that journey somehow takes us to our destinat! ion. For in
Aesthetics the journey is as important as the destination, it is during that journey that we
recreate the creative forces that drove the artisan, in that journey we allow our mind to be
bathed in the rasas that touched the creator, it is in that inward contemplative journey that
motifs and metaphors decode and reveal to us vistas of meaning and in the end during the
process of aesthetic recreation we become creators ourselves and in that final moment of
aesthetic recreation when we discover the object fully that we touch upon our essential self,
which is ananda. This is the journey that we shall undertake in this inquiry.

Then there was neither aught nor naught, no air nor sky, beyond
What covered all? Where rested all? In watery gulf profound?
There fecundating powers were found, and might forces strove
A self supporting mass beneath and energy above.
Who knows, who ever told, from whence this vast creation rose?
No Gods had then been born, who then can e’er the truth disclose?
Whence sprang this world, and whether framed by hand divine or no,
Its lord in heaven alone can tell, perhaps even he cannot.
Rg Veda, X. 129.

In the beginning this was non-existent, then it became existent, it grew, it turned into an
egg. The egg lay for the time of a year. Then it broke open. The two halves, one of silver
and the other of gold. The silver one became this earth, the golden one the sky, the thick
membrane the mountains, the thin membrane the mist with the clouds. The small veins the
rivers, the fluid the sea. And what was born from was Aditya, the Sun.
Chandogya Upanishad.

That journey should begin by an inquiry into the genesis of traditional akritis. This will take
us to the various forces that serve as an inspiration to the traditional Indian artisan, those
thousand points of lights that he turns into his vision of what he considers beautiful, the
racial memories that flow through him like an ancient river, the archetypes that live only in
the dim shadows of his mind and above all the collective unconscious of the tradition as a
whole which is like a deep and mysterious ocean, for the traditional Indian craftsperson
functions within the society that he inhabits and not just as in individual. We should
examine a handful of his earth and find in it the seeds which nourish his psyche, we should
sit with him under the Pipal tree at the end of day as he listens to Puranic stories, for it is
these mythic narratives that shape his culture, we should visit ancient temples and havelis
which are silent and timeless repositories of! our cherished spaces, and finally we should
read our ancient shastras which enunciate principles of form, all of which are as relevant
today as they were then, we must walk the hushed halls of various museums for there the
silent objects will speak to us of the glory of a by gone era and the many forms it produced
which live today only as museum objects but which were once living forms, we should look
at private collections and study treasured objects that once sparkled in opulent
surroundings. But yet this is not enough. Form, like tradition evolves, and our journey must
not end there. Modern Indian forms take its pride of place in a globalised world, it has
crossed oceans and is making its mark in international markets and it would be useful to
inquire why an Indian fabric is as elegant in New York as it is in Milan. A multi-pronged and
sustained inquiry such as this would shed light on Indian akriti through their design and
form and help us formulate an aesthetic discou! rse of akriti. That is our mandate. Only then
will we be able to say "yes this is Indian akriti" and that it reflects our culture.

The precise genesis and the creation of akritis, like cosmic creation itself, remains an
unknown, perhaps unknowable, process. There are many creation hymns in the Indian
tradition starting from the Vedas to tribal culture, and although they attempt to define the
moment and process of creation they are unable to go beyond imaginative and poetic
speculation, pointing once again to the limitation of language and ratiocination to touch the
roots of artistic creativity. Even though the creation of akritis remains sacrosanct and not
open to prying eyes it is nevertheless useful to undertake that inquiry for it might lead to a
better understanding of the role that these akritis play in the lived lives of the people and
the process of aesthetic recreation will lead us to that primal seed of creation.
Our starting point in this inquiry of beautiful Indian forms will be to acquaint ourselves with
certain fundamental and primal myths which have a bearing on the creation and enjoyment
of the beautiful akritis and which inform not only our religious rites and rituals but equally
our aesthetic sensibilities. And in doing this we confer a valued pedigree on the akritis as we
connect it to its mythic origins, and make these artistic representations universal and
timeless rather than specific and time bound. These beautiful creations do not belong to the
individual but to all of us who walk on the Indian soil. The creation myth of Indra and the
stambha, the birth and the marriage of Parvati, the samudra manthan or the churning of
the ocean, the origin and sons of the divine architect Vishwakarma, the story of rishi
Bhavana and the origin of the Padmashalis and the family of weavers, the Natyashastra and
the creation of the mandapa, primal yantras and mandalas, these are starting ! points of
our inquiry into these beautiful creations. So are shastras or canons on Shilpa and Vastu
which determine how our abodes and dwellings should be constructed and beautified. And
finally we must take note of the tropical environment, our trees and the creepers, our
flowers and blossoms, our birds and animals in the ambience of which the Indian civilisation
developed.

Kapila Vatsyayan rightly connects myths and creativity when she says:
It is the power of creativity to create myths and symbols, verbal and non-verbal, visual or
aural through what is called art... It is the harnessing ,as also the release of creative
energies, both inner and outer, which characterise the creative moment. Invariably its
language of communication is that of myth and symbol, of analogy, of metaphor, or irony,
of sandhya bhasha in the Indian sense. (p. 210)
There are certain primal Indian forms, forms that have an ancient pedigree and from these
countless new forms have emerged over millennia of Indian creativity. There is in these
primal forms not only functionality but beauty, they combine utility and meaning at the
same time, and are seminal in giving rise to multiple forms, such is their strength. The
foremost among these forms are the various ratnas that emerge from the samudra
manthan and which include the kalasha, kalpavriksha, padma, apsara, airavat, aichavaras,
kaustabha Lakshmi and Dhanvantari. Underpinning the manthan is the primal tortoise which
supports the earth. All of these are forms that have emerged from the mythic and formless
ocean and carry deep archetypal meanings and have remained foundational in the
vocabulary of Indian design and forms used by the Indian shilpi. The samudra is the
metaphor of the collective unconscious of the tradition, a store house of ancient memories
and deep and! unspoken secrets of creation. And it is when this store house of ancient
memories is churned that a number of forms appear. We return to these primal forms again
and again, they are multidimensional and polyvalent, and from them have emerged many
variations of motifs and patterns, designs and adornments, these traditional forms have
inspired the potter and the weaver, the toy maker and calligrapher, the jeweler and the
stone carver; objects inspired by these forms are sold at fairs and festivals and adorn
homes and havelis, and they carry within them the meanings and metaphors inherent in the
primal myth of samudra manthan. Many of these forms are universal and are shared by
cultures across the world, but the way in which we use, represent and understand these
forms remains quintessentially Indian, and in that sense we can call them uniquely Indian.

The myth of the first weavers arising from the lotus stalk of Vishnu and Brahma is equally
foundational for expressions on fabrics are an important part of the Indian tradition.
Religious or secular fabrics are central and have been a canvas upon which the artist and
artisan, housewife and itinerant singers have created forms that either narrate a story or
perform a ritual function or remain an important part of our adornments.

The creation myth which sees Indra planting his stambha to create a living space between
the primal waters and the sky for humans to live becomes the prototype for the many pillars
of Indian forms. The jarjara of the natyamandapa, the dhvaja stambha of the temple, the
Ashoka pillar, the tribal pillars, all take their pedigree from the Indra stambha and are a
visual manifestation of the axis mundi and feature in many of our akritis.

Closely related to myths are dreams as sources of significant and beautiful forms. The
dream of Trisala the surrogate mother of Mahavira, is a fertile repository of forms, for in the
dream state the mind is singularly free of the intellect and is privy to the collective
subconscious not only of the individual but more importantly of the race. Chap books of
dreams and omens have also recorded such forms and it is interesting that they feature
many popular forms that are a part of the vocabulary of Indian akritis.

The other source of Indian forms is the mandala or the yantra. A mandala is in essence is
representation of the cosmos through its abstraction into geometric shapes, shapes such as
the circle, square, triangle and the bindu. These shapes carry within them the ability to
represent a whole universe of the concrete world in simple and abstract forms. In its simple
vocabulary these geometric shapes are able to reduce the macrocosm into the microcosm
and at the same time portray metaphysical directions, philosophical truths, cosmic
movement and dialectic tensions, and all this through simple lines and beautiful formations,
and in doing so they represent an entire world view of the tradition with a few strokes.
Mandalas are created through a condensation and focalization of energies and by a
reciprocal process they can release those very energies to the participant. The earliest
evidence of this was seen in the creation of the vedi, the Vedic altar and t! hen in the
vastupurusha mandala, both of which have played an important part in the design of Indian
spaces. Mandalas are also yantras or cosmic diagrams that are used in meditational
practices and remain visual manifestations of the inner states of the mind. These are the
very shapes that appear in the various rangoli, alpona and mandana, creations of the simple
housewife, done with a simple ritual but yet no less meaningful for the Indian home.

The Purusha sukta of the Rg Veda holds a singularly important place in the understanding
and evolution of Indian forms for it is there for the first time that Purusha or ultimate reality
was depicted in an anthropomorphic form in classical sacred literature and it set the trend
for the depiction of the infinite and the eternal in the finite and the temporal. The oral
enunciation of the Purusha in the Veda then inspired the Indian artist to embark on a
glorious journey of creating a variety of richly enduring forms of our gods and goddesses,
celestial and divine beings, forms that have endured and have become the basis of our
religious activities and aesthetic contemplation. While maintaining a human form the Indian
shilpi broke out of the limitations of the anatomic human to manifest the many beautiful
and spiritual realms of the human mind thereby making the anthropomorphic forms divine
and fit not just for religious worship but for contemplation.

If the Veda is the seminal source of many forms the Natyashastra makes dance the visual
idiom of human perfection. Combining artistic movement and gestured emotion, hasta
mudras or hand gestures that have a language of their own, narrative and spiritual insights,
adornment and beauty, the dancing akriti is able to break out of its static form and go
beyond the limitations of human time and space to convey timeless truths through the
image of the standing man reaching beyond time and space. As the Purusha sukta says so
succinctly: Purusha is all this but even beyond

Dance is the favoured akriti of Indian shilpis and it has been said that almost all icons are in
form or the other dancing images. The supremely beautiful dancing form is that of Shiva as
Nataraja.

While dance remains the paradigm of human perfection in the hands of Indian artists and
the hasta mudras are an integral part of that, human hands and feet play a special role in
various Indian akritis. Feet are the objects of devotion and worship and hands the favoured
mode of benediction and blessing and convey so much more than mere shapes and find a
pride of place in Indian akritis. While feet invoke the presence of the deity or the elder,
hands provide a living presence of benediction and are incorporated in many different ways
whether on the floor or on walls.

Literature is an important part of the aesthetic treasure of India and in many ways it is the
basis and foundation of much of our arts and crafts. Poetry is very ancient and even in the
Vedas we valorize the poet as a prajapati, a leader of the people. The essence of poetry is
rasa and so is the basis of all beautiful akritis. It is rasa that animates all our artistic
creations and takes us from the particular to the universal, from an outward emotion to an
inward feeling, from formless imagination to beautiful forms, and it is the same rasa that
takes us back from objective reality to subjective experience. Poetry informs and inspires
our artists and artisans and it would not be wrong to say that most of our akritis are, in way
or another, visual poetry. If poetry is the inspiration of our creations then Sanskrit drama
provides the structure and texture of our visual forms. It has been said that " the basic
theme of all Indian drama is spiritual equilibrium, poise between o! pposites, rest and
fulfilment at the centre of violent motion... words and images are used to draw the viewer
into a vortex of multiple perspectives." (P. 14/15 Lannoy) This is seen particularly in
sculpture and painting where rational perspective is purposely transgressed in favour of
arational time and space. The Indian artist treats time and space in a mental and imagined
rather than a physical and observed perspective. The artist views the world from an inward
eye and invites us to do the same for neither Indian painting nor sculpture is a
representation of a photographic reality but conveys the essence or the rasa of the person
or the event and remains an idealised or abstracted representation of the actual form.

And above all the peasant and the potter share the joy of a handful of earth and everything
that grows from it, trees and creepers, flowers and fruits; the rivers and the lakes that flow
on the surface of the earth and nourish our body and psyche; the mountains and the hills
that are the abode of our gods. All of these are the inheritances of the artisan in his creative
imagination. It is this earth that is the source and the inspiration of the many forms that we
make and celebrate, worship and adorn. It has been rightly said that vasanta and varsha,
spring and the rains, are foundational in understanding the Indian psyche and especially
that of the craftsman. Vasanta or spring is the season when the mango tree puts out yellow
blossoms, soft sandal scented southern winds caress quivering vines of clove, forest groves
hum with droning bees and the song of the cuckoo and this makes vasanta the season of
romant! ic love. But it is varsha or the rains, when after a hot and arid summer the fields
are lush, the trees are bathed in nourishing rain waters, there is a fragrant aroma from the
earth and the farmers rejoice at the prospect of a good harvest, there is a festive spirit all
around and the rains promise growth and the ethos of the rains is one of abundance, growth
and joyousness. Most Indian art, and folk art and craft in particular, is a celebration of
fertility and fecundity of the world around us, of growth and prosperity and the joy of
holding a handful of earth and looking at the heavens and can be considered an invocation
and celebration of the rains.

These then are the sources of our akritis. Whether it is myth or dream, trance or
meditation, a simple chant or prayer, these primal akritis arise from altered states of the
mind, a primal and pristine state of consciousness, an exalted and radiant rather than the
rational and arid mind. That rational mind is too preoccupied with mundane activities, busy
with the commerce of life, filled with the noise and dust of daily living, for it to touch hidden
sources of beauty within itself. It needs a purified and chastened mind to reach hidden and
ancient seeds of akritis. It is not uncommon for the housewife to chant a mantra or sing a
bhajan as she draws the morning rangoli on the threshold. Equally the potter or the weaver
performs a simple puja before commencing his daily activities. Singing and chanting once
again draw the mind away from its arid rationality to more beautiful and poetic recesses
within the mind and this empowers the hand and gives it a certain rhythm as it cre! ates
akritis. The painter of the Pithora Baba sleeps near the wall where the mural is to be created
and draws inspiration from his dreams. The maker of the adornments for the Jagganatha
images during the ratha yatra perform austerities, eat only once a day and that too only
food that has been cooked in the temple kitchen. Mulk Raj Anand describes the preparation
that the sculptor undertakes before commencing his work:
The artist performs purificatory ablutions and sits down to focus his attention on ....a
dhyana mantra. He then offers flowers, incense and other gifts to the form conceived. The
mental picture is thus seen in all its details and the work of art is complete in the mind even
before being translated into form. The artist then begins the task of technical elaboration,
during which time he must hold fast to the conception evolved through yoga...The kind of
mental state designed to be secured through the practice of yoga can also be cultivated by
the artisan through tuning up the functions of the body and mind into perfect obedience to
the faculty of intuition and through the deliberate invocation of dreams .

The operative word in the creation of beautiful forms is therefore dhyana and not chintan,
taking us right back to the etymological root dhi which is the mind of the mind where akritis
are born. It is in that dhi that there is the supra-sensory vision of the artist and the artisan
and it is there that the form is algebraically, though not arithmetically, complete even
before it is visible and palpable.
A defining feature of Indian akriti is that it is alive or living and this can be understood in
many different ways. The form which though inert and static represents the totality and the
wholeness of life, its inter-connectedness and inter-dependence with every aspect of life and
everything that is alive, its living relationship with the animate and inanimate world around
it and its message of universality and harmony. The Isa Upanishad declares:

isha vasyam idam sarvam yat kincha jagatam jagat

everything that lives and moves in this world is divinely inspired.

In the spirit of the Vedantic isha it can be said all Indian akritis are not just mute and inert
forms but have a rhythm and life, grace and beauty that they derive from a divine source.
Indian akritis reflect that overarching Vedantic statement and it underpins the beautiful with
both a religious and metaphysical significance. No iconic forms are static and inert but
incorporate movement and rhythm, no artistic representation of a flower exists by itself but
is a part of a creeper or a tree, every tree takes its pedigree from the mythic kalpavriksha
and is an axis mundi connecting the earth to the sky, a virahini nayika is never alone but
holds the branch of a tree, a kalasha is not just a container but encloses cosmic space.
Notice how Kabir describes a kalasha:

ghata ghata me panchi bolata

in every kalasha a bird sings.

Our beautiful akritis go from the physical to the metaphysical and take us from the sensual
to the spiritual Akriti thus throbs with meaning and has a reality, it rarely stands alone but
is generally a part of a larger whole. There is yet another sense in which the akriti is alive.
Most akritis take their pedigree from our gathas and kathas our ancient myths and timeless
songs and are a living treasure of our tradition. As they are passed down through trackless
generations they remain alive from one generation to another. And when an akriti is lovingly
made and worshiped they acquire a living presence and a reality of their own. The sacred
and the secular come together in a seamless tapestry of beautiful akritis.

Up to this point we have considered the Indian civilisation mainly from the Hindu, along with
the Buddhist and Jain, standpoint. Hindu akritis, while retaining spontaneity, stem from
ancient myths, they are tied to timeless traditions and are even backed by shastras or
canons. However the Muslims who have played an important part in the development of a
unique Indo-Islamic artistic sensibility, whether it is in architecture or decorative motifs and
objects, have their unique sense of what is beautiful. While Indo-Islamic architecture forges
a unique synthesis of Hindu and Islamic concepts of enclosing sacred and secular spaces
and speak to some foundational Islamic concepts, decorative objects developed and
patronised by the Muslim kings and nobility are generally informed not only by the world of
nature around them but equally by Hindu artistic sensibilities. Realistic flower and animal
studies, ewers and huqqas, arabesques and jalis are some of the beautiful forms develope!
d by Muslims kings and testify to the love of an opulent life style and gracious living that
was their hallmark. Equally Indian artistic sensibility was touched and tempered by the
European colonisation of India and at the height of this our artists and artisans created
various akritis to suit the European tastes. The kalamkari of the 19th century is a case in
point.

There is an important social side to the creation and enjoyment of akritis which is as
important as its aesthetic discourse and religious observance. The workshop of the
craftsperson is regulated not by a clock but by the rhythms and sensitivities of his or her
body, it observes not only the seasons but the many festivals. The average Indian, and the
villager in particular, does not divide his self-image from that of his environment, neither
does he make the sacred a bipolar opposite of the secular, and the social as opposed to the
religious, as they have a holistic and organic view of life and living. Life for them moves
seamlessly from the sacred to the secular and stays in harmony with the sun and the moon.
There is no better example of this than the courtyard of the home which is a gathering place
for the family, a workshop for the family trade, a storage space for the harvest, a place for
animals and humans to rest and equally it is an atelier for the creation of variou! s akritis.
When housewives gather and create a kantha or sujuni or sanjhi they have an opportunity
to exchange stories, vent feelings, enjoy family gossip, arrange matrimonial alliances and as
they stitch and embroider, the many social sides of the day to day living, their hopes and
fears, their dreams and aspirations, are given a living presence along with the creation of
art and craft. Even as they embroider a tree and a kalasha they might put a motor car in
the composition for she wishes that the family have a car of their own. The village potter
works as a family, the man brings the earth and turns the wheel, the woman paints designs
and children help in whatever way they can and at the end of the day when the work is
done they have had the joy of spending the day together while creating beautiful pots.
When it is time to paint the family home and get it ready for a festival like Divali the women
of the household work as a team; one prepares the wall, the other draws th! e outline and a
third prepares the rice paste. The atmosphere is one of joyous togetherness, an
uninterrupted continuity between life, living and craft and a festive celebration of what it is
to be a human and be driven by a joy of creativity.

Stephen Huyler writes:

Apni, the wife of a camel herder in Mandawa, northern Rajasthan, performs Gangaur vrata
every year. She paints the walls of her courtyard with a simple mural before dawn on the
first day. Then accompanied by the other women living with her, a daughter, two sisters-in-
law, four nieces and her mother-in-law, she walks to the small vegetable plot outside the
town. All the women join in songs and prayers to the goddess, beseeching her guarantee for
the health of the male members of their extended family. P. 17.

In a small village near Ahmedabad in Gujarat there was this observance:

On the first day of Navratri, the festival of the Goddess, Lakshmi prepared a special rangoli
in front of her house and in this she was helped by her neighbours Ganga and Tulsi. The
three woman sang songs as they worked and asked for the blessings of the Mother. After
about an hour they sat under a Pipal tree outside their home and they talked and laughed
for an hour and invited many women who were walking by to join them. Amba was carrying
milk in an earthen ghata and when she heard them she too joined and gave all of them milk
and then all the women together completed the rangoli and placed flowers on it, asked for
the blessings of the Mother and went to their homes.

As one can see just from these two examples how the creation and celebration of akritis has
a social side to it, even as it is being created it fosters a sense of companionship, especially
to the women who would otherwise be cloistered in their homes and the activity provides an
outlet for their emotions and energies, and all of this bonds the community into a family.
Social inequities and caste boundaries are set aside in the socially unifying activity of
creating a beautiful form. Taboos and inhibitions fade away as women, young and old,
express their dreams and hopes in the many akritis that they create. However, behind the
sociology of these akritis is also a shared epistemology. The various forms that are created
are the treasure of the community and not of the individual and indicate a shared vision, the
akritis speak for the community and not just for the individual, they foster a sense of the
community even as they forge a common identity and are a part of the common! treasure
of visual knowledge. The people who make and celebrate these forms are bound together
by the various akritis as much as they are connected by ties of blood and lineage of
families. The knowledge that these forms reveal is conditioned by the culture in which the
people live and speak eloquently of its values and ideals, but in the ultimate analysis the
enjoyment and the understanding of these forms produce a singularly unique experience in
the individual. Here is another example of individual freedom in a pluralistic Indian
civilisation in the acquisition, understanding and realisation of knowledge.

The beautiful objects that are created are generally not sold but are for the family and the
home, to be used everyday or kept away for a special occasion like a festival or marriage, a
religious observance or kept aside for the daughter’s dowry. These are objects that are
lovingly made and used daily with pride, objects that add grace and dignity to everyday life
and living; to be surrounded by them as one goes through the quotidian tasks is to be
assured of the living and constant presence of the beautiful in the lived lives of the people.
Even if these objects are sold it was generally done through a barter system where a potter
would exchange a pot or a toy with something that the blacksmith or the jeweler or the
weaver made. However in today’s urban and even rural market, art and craft are sold as
objects of commerce and this has become an important part of the informal economy of the
country and has lost some of its traditional value and meaning and therefore beauty.!
Despite this it is important for us not to forget the maker of these objects and the spirit of
loving creativity in which the object is made. For the artisan or the craftsperson, the
housewife or the young bride, even today, the making of these objects is both a vocation
and a profession, it both an act and a prayer and entails not only the joy of creating
something beautiful but is equally backed by a spiritual and moral discipline. A village potter
in Gujarat had this to say:
I get up in the morning and have my bath and offer prayers to Vishwakarma and ask his
blessings to make my day, a day when I will use my hands to make beautiful objects. I go
to the wheel and sit in front of it and offer to it a small flower and worship it and ask
forgiveness that I will put it to work and seek its blessings that the pots that I make today
will be perfect in every way. And then I begin my work and with the turning of the wheel I
constantly chant the name of Ambamata and the chanting is in harmony with the hum of
the wheel and I do not notice the time going by ,and before I know I have made ten pots
and it so much joy to see my pots dry in the sun.

It is the moral, religious and discipline on the part of the maker of the objects, best
understood as sadhana, that not only shapes the making and creation of these objects, but
equally should inform us who use and surround ourselves with those objects, for without the
understanding of that sadhana we are likely to consider these objects as mere utilitarian or
decorative, and this will not be in the keeping with the spirit of akriti and the kirtikar. For
after all in creating an akriti the artisan has given form to the formless and the formed
object does not remain merely an object but becomes a source of knowledge and it
behooves us to take the form and restore to it its formless beauty through our
contemplative involvement with it. Only then will the journey of akriti take us to sanskriti.
For in that journey is the recreation of the various creative processes and it makes the
celebration of akriti a festival of the creative spirit of mankind.

These then are the sources and manifestations, the roots and expressions, of the various
akrtis or artistic forms that have inspired the Indian mind and endured through trackless
time in living spaces. They are diverse yet related, varied yet organically tied to each other,
they co-mingle and interpenetrate, like the branches of a tree they are tied to the same root
and thus must be understood as expressions of the same culture, they are voices of the
same tongue, they are forms that speak the same language, they are visions that sing the
same song, they are all beautiful forms of the same civilisation, that is not content just to
stand on the earth but to raise their hands and touch the sky. Form for us in India is not
just a decoration but a revelation of an essence, there is for us in all our beautiful forms a
sutrasya sutra, a rasa within an outer form, as there is in the Vedantic manaso manah, a
mind of the mind, or the anya-manas or other-mindednes! s, the beautifully outer form only
an invitation to the beauty within. Coomaraswamy rightly observes that:
Rarely if ever have Indian artists drawn with a model in front of them, and the image proper
is at all times, from first to last, obtained by a process of mental visualisation...Thus the
form is always reached by a process of synthesis and abstraction, rather than by
observation, and is always in the last analysis a memory image. " (p. 35 History)

This creative synthesis for the artist is not just of the present but of the distant past, a
synthesis not merely at an individual but at a collective level, a synthesis that creates a
unity amidst the beauty of all life in formal terms, it is a perception of an inward beauty of
those forms, a beauty that reveals the inner relationship and inter-dependence of
everything that lives and moves and which highlights the organic fecundity and joyousness
of life.

We return to Octavio Paz once again who wrote:

Between the timeless time of the museum and the (frenzied) time of technology
craftsmanship is the heartbeat of human time. P.24.

For us in the Indian tradition each particle of the universe manifests the power, the will and
the mystery of the divine, every phenomenon of nature is its vehicle, every event its
evidence, every fragment of matter its habitat and thus it is that every akriti is in some way
or another a from of that divine. The true realisation and understanding of akriti then is to
go from the particular to the universal, from the form to the formless, the craft person to
the craft, from the objective form to the subjective experience of that form, from the outer
mind to an inner mind that connects a leaf to a tree and all trees to the kalpavriksha, that
relates every kalasha to the samudra manthan, every horse to Uchaisvaras, and so on with
every form and its roots in the grand treasure of Indian sanskriti, and it is only in that
enlightened journey from akriti to sanskriti that what is beautifully Indian reveals itself to us
and rests in the serene and blissful state of beauty. At this p! oint can we be far from the
atman our true and ultimate selves?