The Vakatakas: An Essay in Hindu Iconology.

• Author: Brown, Robert L.
• Position: Reviews of Books

The Vakatakas: An Essay in Hindu Iconology, By HANS BAKKER. Gonda Indological Studies, vol. V. Groningen: EGBERT FORSTEN, 1997. Pp. xiv + 211, plates, maps.

Many of the sculptures illustrated in Hans Bakker's book may come as a shock to scholars of India's art and religions. Indeed, the dynasty of the Vakatakas under whom these images were made may be only vaguely known to many as well. It is mostly the Buddhist caves at Ajanta that have been associated with the Vakatakas, although even this spectacular monument tends to be generally grouped under the rubric of the Gupta Dynasty and of Gupta art. Benjamin Rowland's survey of Indian art (The Art and Architecture of India) does not mention the Vakatakasm although it has much to say about Ajanta as part of the Gupta Period that "may well be described as 'classic' in the sense of the word describing a norm or degree of perfection never achieved before or since."' The later (1985) and more comprehensive survey by Susan L. and John C. Huntington, The Art of Ancient India, (2) does mention the Vakatakas fairly extensively, particularly with regard to Ajanta, and also two other Buddhist cave sites, Bagh and Aurangabad. Y et, the sculptures that are the topic of Bakker's book, which are Hindu images, are not mentioned at all.

For many scholars, it was Joanna Williams' important 1983 article, "Vakataka Art and the Gupta Mainstream," (3) that introduced art and architecture from three of the most important sites dealt with by Bakker: Ramagiri (Ramtek), Mansar (Manasar), and Pavnar (Paunar). The question she asks--what was the relationship between Gupta and Vakataka art (including that from Ajanta)--remains of the greatest interest and is dealt with as well by Bakker. Sculpture, however, from one of Bakker's sites, Mandhal--material that will perhaps most elicit the "shock" mentioned above--is not discussed by Williams, having been discovered around 1974 and brought into the scholarly literature at the end of the 1970s and the 1980s.

Indeed, the discovery of things Vakataka in the last few decades--of art, architecture, and inscriptions--has proceeded at a phenomenal pace, and is one of the reasons that the reassessment of the dynasty's importance and role is possible (and necessary) today. V. V. Mirashi was writing about the Vakataka beginning in the 1950s, and his Inscriptions of the Vakatakas, vol. 5 of Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, published in 1963, (4) is the work with which all subsequent Vakataka scholarship begins; but note that Vakataka studies are thus hardly fifty years old. The number of Vakataka inscriptions found has doubled since Mirashi's book; many of these inscriptions have been published by A. M. Shastri. (5)...