Phantasmic Anatomy of the Statues of Mathura.

• Author: Srinivasan, Doris M.
• Position: Book Review

Phantasmic Anatomy of the Statues of Mathura. By SANDRINE GILL. New Delhi: MUNSHIRAM MANOHARLAL, 2000. Pp. xxvii + 112, figs., illus. Rs 450.

The question most often asked by a visitor to a gallery of Indian art is "Why do the images have many heads, arms, and eyes?" Upon noting that such images represent deities, the visitor, especially the Western visitor, is often so perplexed that his appreciation of the art is considerably diminished. Attributing multiple bodily parts as well as animal parts and forms to the divine bewilders the general Western viewer. This bewilderment could be sustained from about the sixteenth century onwards, that is, ever since the West first came into contact with Indian art, because of a dearth of objective analyses. The first scholarly book analyzing India's special vision of the divine was an historical account of Europe's encounter and reaction to such icons. Partha Mitter's Much Maligned Monsters certainly broke fresh ground when it appeared in 1980. It was not, however, until the publication of the first art historical accounts within the last fifteen years that interpretation of the icons took center stage. In 1988 and then in 1997 two scholarly monographs appeared to investigate "why" and "what are the meanings behind the iconographic conventions." (1)

Sandrine Gill's book is the third. It focuses on deities portrayed with many bodily parts or with a fusion of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic parts. Unlike the preceding works, hers is dedicated exclusively to understanding the stylistic aspects of such renderings. As she sees it, Mathura, during the first three centuries of the Christian era, created icons of the gods which "are in fact literal translations of their supernatural powers." The anatomy given the gods can be characterized as "phantasmic," that is, unreal, imaginary, or fantastic. The addition of limbs and forms, and the combination of human and animal bodies, result in the phantasmic anatomy of her title. Gill wants to know how the artist solved the problem of fusing or juxtaposing forms not seen in nature. "The aim of this study is to present a typology of the human anatomic transformation but there are also numerous other types of combinations as the imaginary bestiary" (p. xxv). She isolates three types: the multiplication of limbs and bodies, the fusion of two bodies, and the replacement of a human head by an animal head. With no pretense at drawing conclusions from an exhaustive sculptural...