- The history of Hinduism
- Sources of Hinduism
- The prehistoric period (3rd and 2nd millennia bce)
- The Vedic period (2nd millennium–7th century bce)
- Challenges to Brahmanism (6th–2nd century bce)
- Early Hinduism (2nd century bce–4th century ce)
- The rise of devotional Hinduism (4th–11th century)
- Hinduism under Islam (11th–19th century)
- The modern period (19th–21st century)
- Sacred texts
- Practical Hinduism
- Rituals, social practices, and institutions
- Hinduism and the world beyond
Visual theology in icons
The beauty of votary objects is believed to contribute to their power as sacred instruments, and their ornamentation is held to facilitate the process of inviting the divine power into them. Statues of gods are not intended to imitate ideal human forms but to express the supernatural. A divine figure is a “likeness” (pratima), a temporary benevolent or terrifying expression of some aspect of a god’s nature. Iconographic handbooks attach great importance to the ideology behind images and reveal, for example, that Vishnu’s eight arms stand for the four cardinal and intermediate points of the compass. A deity’s four faces may illustrate the concept of God’s fourfoldness, typifying his strength, knowledge, lordship, and potency. The emblems express the qualities of their bearers—e.g., a deadly weapon symbolizes the forces used to destroy evil, and many-headedness symbolizes omniscience. Much use is made of gestures (mudras); for example, the raised right hand, in the “fear-not” gesture (abhaya-mudra), bestows protection. Every iconographic detail has its own symbolic value, helping devotees to direct their energy to a deeper understanding of the various aspects of the divine and to proceed from external to internal worship. For many Indians, a consecrated image is a container of concentrated divine energy, and Hindu theists maintain that it is a form taken by the deity to make himself accessible to the devotee.
Like literature and the performing arts, the visual arts contributed to the perpetuation of myths. Images sustain the presence of the god: when Devi is shown seated on her lion, advancing against the buffalo demon, she represents the affirmative forces of the universe and the triumph of divine power over wickedness. Male and female figures in uninterrupted embrace, as in Shaiva iconography, signify the union of opposites and the eternal process of generation. In Hindu sculpture the tendency is toward hieratic poses of a god in a particular conventional stance (murti; image), which, once fixed, perpetuates itself. An icon is a frozen incident of a myth. For example, one murti of Shiva is the “destruction of the elephant,” in which Shiva appears dancing before and below a bloody elephant skin that he holds up before the image of his consort; the stance is the summary of his triumph over the elephant demon. A god may also appear in a characteristic pose while holding in his multitudinous hands his various emblems, on each of which hangs a story. Lovers sculpted on temples are auspicious symbols on a par with foliage, water jars, and other representatives of fertility. Carvings, such as those that appear on temple chariots, tend to be more narrative; even more so are the miniature paintings of the Middle Ages. A favourite theme in the latter is the myth of the cowherd god Krishna and his love of the cowherdesses (gopis).