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.
