The power of nature: Seeking the origins of Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain devotional art

This article is from World Archaeology issue 132

Subscribe now for full access and no adverts

Today, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism have almost two billion worshippers around the globe. While the origins of these religions lie in India, images of the deities and enlightened beings sacred to them can be found in many countries. The playful elephant-headed god Ganésa, for example, is associated with wisdom and new beginnings, and revered by some members of all three religions. Today, he may be encountered in a multitude of settings, including temples, homes, and workplaces. While the familiarity of such devotional imagery can give it an almost timeless quality, its origins lie in an extraordinary era from 200 BC to AD 600, when the sacred art associated with these three religions in India underwent nothing short of a revolution.

This is one of the rich seams delved into by the major British Museum exhibition Ancient India: living traditions (see ‘Further information’ below). It showcases how this period upended tradition by bringing a shift that broadened the repertoire of devotional art associated with these three religions to include imagery that went beyond purely symbolic representations of divine and enlightened beings. By the time that this transformative era drew to a close, the core range of characteristics that remains familiar today was set. This different take on conceiving divine and enlightened figures was not entirely new, though. Instead, it drew liberally on existing imagery associated with a particular group of popular and potent deities in India: nature spirits.

Rural religion

While the subcontinent was studded with towns and major cities in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC, the majority of the population lived in the countryside. Inevitably, the lives of the people comprising these agricultural societies were framed by the passing of the seasons. After all, their well-being was dependent on successful harvests and the resources that could be foraged from elsewhere in the landscape. Unsurprisingly, then, nature was a matter of grave concern to these communities. If the monsoon rains failed, people would starve. Equally, if they were too heavy, then crops would be washed away, and once again people would be left with nothing. As a result, these societies would have been only too aware that there were two sides to nature: it could bring plenty, or it could take everything. Measures to engineer a favourable outcome involved placating the nature spirits that these communities believed inhabited the world around them. These included yaksas and yaksīs, who were male and female spirits, and could be found associated with trees – often specific species of trees – bodies of water, and mountains. Alongside them were other deities associated with animals, such as the nāgas and nāgīnis: male and female snake spirits, who could bestow fertility and also control water to ensure bountiful harvests.

Such spirits would be venerated at appropriate spots in the landscape. Trees and watery places were suitable for both groups, while snake worship was associated with caves and termite mounds as well – both places that these creatures are known to frequent. Indeed, an early written record of snake-veneration in the north-west of India comes from an account of Alexander the Great’s activity in the region during the 4th century BC, as set down by the Roman author Aelian: ‘when Alexander threw some parts of India into a commotion and took possession of others, he encountered among many other animals a serpent that lived in a cavern and was regarded as sacred by the Indians, who paid it great and superstitious reverence. Accordingly, they went to great lengths imploring Alexander to permit nobody to attack the serpent; and he assented to their wish. Now, the army passed the cavern and caused a noise… And it hissed and snorted so violently that all were terrified and confounded’. For a long time, the focus for offerings to nature spirits was stone altars placed in suitable settings. At some point in the 4th or 3rd centuries BC, though, a major change in approach is detectable: nature was given a face.

This new take on representing nature spirits is apparent from stone and terracotta statues showing them in human or hybrid human-and-animal forms. Early representations came in various sizes, ranging all of the way from something that would fit in your pocket to monumental statues. These latter can stand up to 3m tall, making them an imposing presence in the landscape. Such colossuses did not, though, greet devotees with a welcoming smile. ‘Their expressions are stern and really quite jarring,’ says exhibition curator Sushma Jansari. ‘We have a life-sized print of one in the exhibition. When you look at them, you really are put in your place by the awesome power of nature. The smaller representations of these spirits are also far from being happy, smiling deities. Thousands of terracotta figures have been found, dating from the 2nd century BCE to the 1st century CE. In most cases we don’t know whether they were votive offerings, kept in a household, or carried around in a little bag. What we do know is that some of them were mass-produced in moulds. They are also very tactile: the face of a rare bronze yaksa has been worn smooth from people repeatedly touching it.’