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P.J.Cherian
( Ed ) Essays on the Cultural Formation of Kerala literature, Art, Architecture, Music, Theatre, Cinema |
Construction of images in the Art of Early Christian Churches-K.George Varghese
The images in the Church Art of Kerala are orchestrated in multi-levelled symbolic formats, drawn from different religions and cultural traditions. It is indeed a sublime synthesis; which also poses certain interesting theoretical questions to the students of culture and art. Not a very comprehensively mapped and studied area till now, the theoretical search into its organization is compelled and inspired by the studies on the Western mass culture by Semioticians like Umberto Eco. Eco has unravelled vital clues about the wrong, inescapable effectivity of the plethoric image-production in the western mass culture, by examining the similar mass production of religious images and icons by the Catholic Christianity of Europe, in the Middle Ages.1 For him there is a specific "Hyperreal" level, endemic to Western Culture, which dissolves the temporal distance or ideological demarcations, as regards the production of images.
As a christian process of image-production and artistic synthesis, the Church Art of Kerala is mainly rooted in two traditions: the Western Christian and the Indian Hindu-Brahmanical. Unlike the Christian Art of Europe, which manifests a unilinear historical trajectory, the Indian Church Art, developed by the indigenous Christianity, nevertheless, had thrived in a pluralistic milieu. Despite the influences from diverse traditions which it had been enveloped with, it could develop a distinct art of its own, critically assimilating and excluding figures and motifs from the kin traditions around it. From the early simple buildings of Eastern Syrian Churches, in the typical "Greek spirit" of the Eastern Orthodox Theology, some of them changed into picturesque edifices with baroque profusion of figures and icons; mainly due to the periodical relandscapings they were subjected to by those who acquired jurisdictional power over their affairs from time to time. These forces included colonial powers also, an important one being the Portuguese. They enriched the indigenous Church Art with European decorative iconography for the first time. It will be neither theoretically unconsonant nor conceptually far-fetched to examine the present artistic layout of Kerala Churches from a comparitive perspective in two scores; first by briefly examining the architectural and theological props of the Western Church Art, epitomized in the medieval Gothic; and secondly by looking into the invaluable insights derived by modern theoreticians like Umberto Eco, from the medieval Christian Aesthetics and Church Art for the study of the surfeit image-production of the present day post-capitalism and its deceptive public visibilities. This is also a preliminary search into the possible identification of a common "Symbolic Database" that existed in the past, which equipped the diverse religions and cultures of India with images and figures to tell their own respective moral tales and paint their religious allegories.
The post-Capitalism in the west with its prodigious image-explosion has fallen into direstraits; its own cyber-images narcissistically caught up in the technological mirrors, it had lately devised, have become menacing apparitions. This has triggered a nefarious cultural process in the west, which is destroying the integrity and specular identity of its own ruthless technological ethos; and in this process fracturing the identity of its subject, by charming him/her to wild goosechases after simulated and false "happinesses"; also leaving him/her half-dead under the oppressive avalanche of the products of its mindless consumerism. The media-explosion in the west that targets a global clientele, has already extended its conspiratorial tentacles to the developing nations also, drawing their half-starved and vulnerable people into its illusory dragnet of false images. Frederick Jameson from the Marxist school, had identified this media-manoeuvre as the "cultural logic of late-Capitalism'', a pathological sign of its inveterate global crisis in the production-consumption balance. On the other hand, Jean Baudrillard, The Philosopher of Sign, who in fact co-opted the Marxist concepts of ``Use-Value" and "Exchange-Value", to create his own brand of Semiotics, diagnoses this capitalist syndrome to be the result of the essential bifurcation of the two constitutive coordinates, exchange-value and use-value, of commodities with the mindless overproduction of the late-Capitalism2. With commodities flooding the market and their ambience subjugating the consumer, he/she is prevented from critically reflecting on the essential value of a commodity as the result of a congeries of material and managerial forces expended in it, in which the value of labour constitutes the chief one. This critical act has now become a prerogative of the academic. The lay subject who is the market consumer, is forced to confront the real value of a product in the images and representations in the advertisements of the Mass Media, amidst a chain of like-images of other market products. Once numbed of his/her critical faculties, the consumer's "value-judgement" of the commodity is controlled by these mass-media representations, which package things with different image-wrappers. Hooked into this panoramic procession of product images, and the products choosing to be paraded in their construed images, the use-value of a commodity becomes the exchangeability between the images of these commodities for the subject/consumer. For Baudrillard the really real has "imploded" under the simulated images of the real.
The same post-Capitalist conjuncture is examined by Umberto Eco also. But taking a more comprehensive historical perspective, he identifies this image-mania not an exclusive feature of modern Capitalism. In the same vein as Fernand Braudel, who argued that capitalism is not an exclusive European phenomenon which began in the fifteenth century, but a global feature which was found among the Levantine desert cultures of Middle-East as well as in the Red Indian America3, Eco also traces the beginnings of the image-explosion of European culture back in the Christian Middle Ages; and not something which started with capitalism. Again like Levi-Strauss, who argued that the myth-making capacity is a universal one endowed to diverse cultures from one to the other end of the world4, Eco argues that the peculiar penchant for image-making is not a capitalist man's prerogative, but humanity's common patrimony. He specifically sees this image-explosion in the icons and images of the Gothic Cathedrals of the Middle Ages. The nearly 10000 images in the Chartres Cathedral arranged according to the four parts of the medieval Encyclopaedia of Vincent of Beauvais, was the result of this basic image-making propensity of man, only to be expedited by a dominant religious conjuncture, at a particular point in history. It had no structural difference with the image-churning that is going on in Hollywood today. There is also no fundamental difference between the sophisticated and indirect sway which modern Capitalism holds over its subject by making him/her an avaricious consumer of its self-images, and the ideological hegemony of the medieval Catholic Church, enforced through the terrible beauty of its icons.
In the absence of books in the Middle Ages, these Cathedrals with their thousands of icons, arranged in the encyclopaedic order, functioned as mirrors of history, nature and morals to the ignorant and the deprived. Till Renaissance, the notion of erudition and standards of beauty were tied up with these Holy Images, ostentatiously spread out on the walls and facades of the Cathedrals. As Walter Benjamin observed, the "secular cult of beauty'' began very late in history, only with the fifteenth century Renaissance5. This became coeval with the invention of printing by which there occurred a cardinal "epistemic shift" from images to words, in Europe. This great divide was primarily engineered by Protestantism which destroyed the Catholic icons, that were put across as a bridge between man and God. The internecine christian warfare between iconolatry and iconoclasm of fifteenth centuary also emblamatizes the shift from Middle Ages to modernity, from medieval Cosmology to modern Mathematical Physics, as well as a fundamental shift from images to words. Victor
Hugo summed up this in the nineteenth century: The Gothic sun set behind the colossal press in Maintz.
An analysis of the Christian Art of India which had born and thrived in the ``Asiatic'' milieu in turn has to be taken up with the context-specificity of its civilizational cradle and its genetic cultural variations from the west. Two important features of Kerala Christian Art should be dwelt upon initially, which differentiates its legacy from the Western Church Art: 1. its architectural organization, and 2. its historical evolution.
The concept of an ancient Kerala church does not conform to a mere functional building that houses its congregation for the worship alone, but a complex ensemble spread out in a walled-in compound, supposedly a zone of inviolable sanctity, with different architectural symbols, and monuments nestling to the central building. With their flag masts, huge stone-crosses, stone-lamps, vadyappura, double-porticos, natakasala and arched entrances (padippura) around the main building, the old churches resembled more of a temple than their giant Gothic or Romanesque counterparts, soaring to the sky, in the west.
The Church Art is a pervasive one spread out into every point and corner of the church-complex. From the large stone-crosses to the candlesticks in the altar, the substratum of this art is amazingly versatile, and the materials used diverse. Its theological artistry is visible in the roofs, walls, doors, portals, columns, altars, lamps, seals, coins, pulpits, ceremonial crosses made of gold and silver, stone-crosses, flag masts, floors, baptismal-fonts, reliquaries, bells, vessels, panels, wooden lofts, coffers etc. The diverse materials used are stones, wood, gold, silver, iron, brass, cotton, leather, bronze, steel, etc. The lack of Xenophobism towards other religions and the self-enriching tendency to borrow and assimilate from other cultures and religions have made its art versatile. We find many images and figures in its art heavily accented with diverse religious iconographies. Though Hindu influence can be legitimately expected, there are surprising proofs of the influence of Buddhist iconography, Persian Art and even Assyro-Egyptian primitive arts. (Of course the claim made about these root influences is tentative, which needs a lot of further research) The inter-cultural and inter-religious exchanges had reached such a positive pitch at one time, that the face of Buddha can be found on the mounts of the Stone-Crosses of a few Christian churches, while a figure strongly resembling the infant Lord Krishna, surrounded by peacocks, is found in the portals of the Chengannoor church.
Historically also this complexity prevails. The vicissitudes in the political history and church history had left their indelible marks on the Church Art. Christianity was established by St.Thomas, the Apostle, in 54 A.D., says the local tradition. Before the advent of the Portuguese in 1498, the Christians of Kerala, called Malankara or Syrian Christians, followed mainly the Syrian Liturgy. The church took to its onus the practice of the "Greek Spirituality" of the Eastern Orthodox churches, with its introspective and contemplative outlook. The logocentric tradition of the Greek philosophy had already influenced the theology of the Eastern Churches which gave premium to an unembodied, frugal and iconoclastic worship of God, in contrast to the ritualistic worship of Roman Catholicism in the highly ornate churches.
The Church Architecture of the Syrian Christians, with a lot of autochthonous features had a closer resemblance to the Hindu temples, which were also rooted in the same "Asiatic" spirituality. But once these churches came under the jurisdiction of the Portuguese in the sixteenth century, the ornate monumentality of the European churches was introduced into the small temple-like Syrian Christian churches, which even did not have windows in the early past. The baroque and ornate altars with statues and foliages replaced the Chaldeo-Syrian altars, which were infact only stone-tables with nothing more than candles, Chalice and the Holy Book on them, the bare necessities for observing the Holy Mass. Despite unpleasant frictions with the Portuguese, both in political and ecclesiastical matters, this was the golden era of the Church Art in Kerala. They introduced the Romano-Portuguese style, which was assimilated with such artistic and structural finesse by the artists of Kerala, so that it created some of the finest pieces of artistry in the Nazrany school. Later, British also were equally enthusiastic in introducing their skills and forms into the Church Art of Kerala. Hence, from a conservative perspective, the art in these churches may appear eclectic, with diverse traditions, both western and eastern, superimposed one over the other. The exclusively "Asiatic" symbols like stone lamps, flag masts, stone-crosses, arched entrances etc., untouched by the foreign hands, co-exist with the Renaissance frescoes, and the Baroque Art of Europe in the same church-complex. There is, infact, an underlying unity behind this apparently confused juxtaposition of images, symbols and monuments; this is due to the fact that as universal archetypes, images and symbols of religions, both in the west and in the east, have many common elements. This is the most important level of our analysis which needs a close comparison of different symbolic systems and the nature of their sign formations; and how the Christian Art of Kerala happened to form one of the most viable heuristic substratum in which these diverse elements, both from the east and the west have merged.
The Christian Art as it developed in the west is a spectral and consummate art, specifically aimed at the glorification of God and His deeds. Hence it became an axiomatic art in which the things sculpted or painted were dictated by the theologian. Each component of this art becomes the alphabet in a sacred script. The church and its precincts are sanctified, to become a divine microcosm that replicates the sprawling universe and its Lord in the middle. The space in the church got symbolically apportioned; right and left, high and low, inside and outside, all bear a symbolic significance according to the "sacred-profane" dialectic6. It is an art of high order, made to serve the didactic, sacramental and liturgical functions of the church. In the Middle Ages of Europe, the Gothic churches with their myriad icons, infact functioned as Encyclopaedias which imparted knowledge visually to a populace otherwise denied of print matter. The church was compared to a ship in which the laity sailed to the heavenly shores. It was everything for the poor and the centre of medieval life.
Christianity became the official state religion of the Roman Empire with the conversion of Constantine into Christianity in the early fourth century. In its newfound ascendancy Christianity developed a "Political Theology"7 with the emperor at the apex of the state machinery, who became an image of God. Unlike the Eastern Orthodox Churches which thrived among other major religions as `minority churches', the Latin Christianity of the west vehemently and aggressively asserted its political supremacy wherever possible; its art included. The Church Art, infact had a politico-religious import, which faithfully reflected the dominant character of the socio-political composition of society, from time to time. For example, when the Christians were the hunted and tortured heretics in the time of Pagan Roman Emperors, they found refuge in the subterranean catacombs; the first churches were these underground caverns. Later when Christianity gained more respectability, their worship resembled a conference or a meeting in the house of an important person of the community. The architecture of the Basilicas, which followed shortly, came to bear the image of this arrangement; their naves became meeting halls with the Apse attached at the eastern end. The Romanesque churches of late Antiquity and early Feudalism, with their strong walls and impregnable towers, bore close resemblance to the castles and fortresses of the feudal overlords8. But by twelfth and thirteenth centuries, this gave way to the Gothic style; with its Clerestory windows, stained-glasses and towering spires it emblematized a more sophisticated urban culture; where the power base also slowly shifted from the agrarian Lords and Barons to the itinerant merchants of the towns.
Christianity became a mass culture in European Middle Ages, and percolated every front of medieval life. This pervasive supremacy, primarily in the political and social realms, had its impact on the cultural domain also. This was reflected in the constitutive structure of its art and intellectual treatises; in the soaring chants of the Gregorian melodies, in the "Summa Theologica" of St. Thomas Aquinas or in the "Divine Comedy" of Dante, one finds verticality and harmony as the structural
principles of organization, emblematic of the medieval Christian Cosmology. The Gothic church was another sublime counterpart, a "Summa" made in stone; with its towering spires and groined vaults it aggressively announced the supremacy of an affluent, yet intolerant Christian ethos.
The Church Art of Europe had very consciously reflected the political prejudices of the ruling class from time to time. It became a planned and schematic art in which its religious enemies became the political enemies also. A strange dialectic of exclusion-inclusion crept to the core of this sacred art. The enemies came to be represented as the "Other" of its own faith and legacy. These "Others" which began with the Pagans, multiplied in the course of time. Art historian, Michael Camille, has observed four concepts of ``Other" in the representations of the Western Christian Art. The Pagans were the "historical Other" to the Christians, while the Muslims became the "foreign Other". When the need for a "domestic Other" was strongly felt, this role was thrust upon the Jews. In its progressive multiplication, another "Other" was invented by the Lateran Council of 1215. This was the susceptible part of the mind, which became the "internal Other" to the human self itself9. All these "Others" were iconographically portrayed along with the lives of saints, Madonnas and narrative cycles of Christ's life in the Western Church Art.
The oriental art which it indeed is, and the "Asiatic" milieu in which it thrived have rendered very fundamental differences to the Indian Christian Art from its European counterpart. Indian Christianity never held a "Political Theology" as in the west, in the sense that its will and ethos were made to prevail over other religions forcibly. Neither had it developed the concept of an "Other" in its theology or in the art, loaded with a gut animosity towards other religions. Even in its allegories, which describe the warfare of good and evil, a Muslim or Hindu, his non-believing brethren, never loom as the evil "Other" of the Christian. The evil figures in these allegories usually bear general and abstract signs of their perversity and villainy, like a menacing moustache or a curved canine, but not some marks which specifically identify them as Muslim or Hindu. To be more specific, while the Hindu iconographic codes were used to portray evil in its allegories, Hindu or a Muslim as a person is never portrayed as an anthropological incarnate of evil. Yet as a didactic and edifying art system, it is a theoretical necessity that some form of ethical opposition to its own notion of good, even if it is not the abject satanic evil with horns and tails, has to be inserted into its narrative to keep the perennial anguish of hellfire ever burning. This theological necessity of contraposing evil and good in its art has resulted in the formation of an abstruse, oriental system of visual codes with its own characteristic logic, in variance to the western system. The arrangement of elements in this system follows a substructural logic not readily visible on the surface.
The oppositional elements in the visual system of good and evil are allegoric and metaphoric, spread out into the whole of the church ensemble. Again, these are emblems and motifs, not strictly from a christian repertoire alone, but chosen from different traditions in the west as well as in the east. These motifs and figures are drawn from bestiaries, mythologies, fables, plant and animal worlds, sacred texts, angelology, folk tales etc., belonging both to the west and the east. Thus the narrative of Christian Art becomes an intermeshed one, which has co-opted and co-posited elements from diverse symbolic registers, chiefly Hindu-Brahmanical, Buddhist, Chaldeo-Syrian and European. Now the bestiaries, sacred symbols and mythologies of both Indian and western religious arts have many elements in common; yet many have different and sometimes even opposite connotations. There is a specific discursive level in the christian artistic system, in which these symbols from diverse symbolic registers, loaded with polyvalent meanings, are juxtaposed to create formulaic meanings of good and evil, befitting the allegoric occasion. The boundaries of the symbolic registers of different religions and cultures in India had opened up at the face of genuine demands from a particular sacred art, by which elements from the one had cross-stepped into the domain of the other and had existed in that alien realm without opposition or contradiction. For example, a figure resembling the Hindu God Krishna, as an infant, is found in the portals of the Chengannoor church. Similarly, animals both fabulous and real, from Hindu and Buddhist bestiaries have entered the pantheon of the Kerala Christian Art. A proper analysis of the symbolic structure of Kerala Christian Art should go via this criss-crossed labyrinth of motifs, images and emblems; sifting out and nomenclaturing elements to their own respective systems; marking out common elements as well as deciphering their semiotic meanings at the level of opposition and complementarity. This task addresses a prodigious stock of symbols and images which include mythological creatures as well as bestial hybrids.
Many of the animal symbols are common in the bestiaries of Hinduism, Christianity and Graeco-Roman Paganism. The Indian Christian Art in particular has so many bestial emblems in common with Hinduism. Cocks, fishes, goats, elephants, bulls, pigs, monkeys, tigers, lions, peacocks, deers etc. are common to Christianity and Hinduism. The western Christianity has used a number of fabulous and hybrid symbols of man, animals and birds, drawn primarily from the Pagan culture, amidst which it had thrived. Mythological monsters like Centaur (half-horse and half-man), Sphinx (half-lion and half-man) were very popularly used in the arts and lores of early Christianity. Hybrids like Basilisks (half-peacock and half-snake) Adders (half-reptile and half-quadraped) and Unicorns (animal with one-horned head of horse) stand by the side with saints and kings in the Gothic reliefs. On the other hand, Indian Christian Art uses a different set of hybrid symbols, problematically hovering between Hindu iconography and Biblical symbols. Hybrids of man and fish (not the water-nymphs of Paganism or the matsya kanyaka of Hindu mythology which are hybrids of fish and woman), of fish and elephant, lion and elephant, which are exclusively specific to this art, are used. The face of some of the lions becomes similar to that of a man, strongly alluding to the concept of Narasimha, the avatar of Vishnu. Again fabulous creatures like birds with two heads and one trunk, one head and two trunks, as well as unidentifiable mythological creatures constitute the repertoire of its symbols.
Larger monuments like the stone crosses and flag masts in front of the churches again testify to the synthesis of diverse cultural traditions and symbolic systems. The flag masts are clearly the symbolic counterparts of the dhwajasthambha of the Hindu temples. Ceremonial flag-hoisting (kodiyettam) is observed both in temples and in churches10. The huge stone crosses, which soar up to ten meters are perhaps a unique symbol of the Kerala Christian Churches, nowhere else to be found in the world. It has a distinct identity even from the Hindu sculptures of Kerala, which normally have a height of not more than three or four meters. Prof. George Menachery has observed that these crosses, some of them 800-900 years old, are the biggest stone sculptures that remain in the Kerala's art tradition. It is an artefact with diverse, superimposed levels of symbolisms. Structurally its basic filiation is to the huge Obelisks that were erected in front of the Egyptian temples in the Antiquity11. The mount of the cross decorated with numerous symbolic figures from both the Christian and Hindu pantheons, in fact is a counterpart of the sacrificial stone or balikkallu found in the courtyards of the temples. Cross also represents a human sacrifice, perhaps the noblest ever made in history. The scaffold again is in the lotus-form which clearly comes from the Buddhist tradition. The cross thrust vertically into the scaffold inturn, represents the ray of light which is the symbolic meaning of the cross in the Orthodox Coptic Churches of Egypt12.
The cross is the religious symbol of the Christians. No church is complete without it on the top, which distinguishes it from a Temple, Mosque or Pagoda. Different types of crosses are used all over the world. In this matter India has its own indigenous cross, the ``St. Thomas Cross" or "Marthoma Sliba" which is again a fusion of both western and Indian traditions. The St. Thomas Cross is an empty cross, not a crucifix. Crucifix was introduced in Kerala, only with the coming of the Catholic Portuguese. The early Chaldeo-Syrians gave primacy to empty cross, without the body of Christ crucified on it, for theological reasons. Chaldeo-Syrians considered the cross as the perfect symbol of Christ's body13. According to them, the empty cross is similar to the empty tomb from which Christ had resurrected on the third day. They followed a policy of first come first in this matter; events should be fixed according to their chronological progression. Therefore, though Jesus Christ was crucified, he had escaped from the cross, human death and human state with the Resurrection; the most important fact being this Resurrection which was the latest event in his earthly ministry, one should not go behind it and give importance to the crucifixion or its image. Again, the tips of the cross are like the opening buds of a flower; the floweriness is a typical symbol of life and Resurrection. The Holy Spirit in the form of a descending-dove, on the top of the cross is also a symbol of Resurrection; according to St. Paul, the Holy Spirit descended and filled his "flesh body" with the "spirit body". The bottom of the cross has three steps which signify the steps to Golgotha. The whole cross is inlaid in an opening lotus flower which is the Indian mark on the cross. The lotus is the perfect symbol of Buddhism which was widespread and predominant in India in the early Christian era. The cross set on the lotus flower may signify the spread of Christianity under the Buddhist influence, as well as the amity between these two religions14.
The form-content relationship in many of the paintings in the churches also reveals the symbiotic kinship between the Christian and Hindu imaging techniques. In the famous painting of ``The Hell" on the nave-wall of St. Mary's Jacobite church of Angamaly, one of the biggest wall-paintings in Kerala, from the seventeenth century, this form-content inter-relationship is clearly identifiable. The hierarchical organization, segmented layers, and the crowded figures are clearly drawn from the European Renaissance, that reminds one of the allegories of Bosch, E1Greco or Tintoretto. On the other hand, the portrayal of evil figures are executed in the Hindu iconography. Beelzebul, the head of the devil brigade in the Bible, who is on the top of the painting, closely resembles a Hindu demon with protruding eyes, wagging red tongue and burst out canines. Again, the whole picture is portrayed in the mouth of a serpant, a bivalent symbol of good and evil in the Hindu pantheon. The engines of torture in the Christian Hell also have become Indian.
Both elephant and lion are animal symbols common to western and eastern christian traditions as well as the hindu tradition. The elephants and lions found in the sculptures and reliefs of the churches raise the complex issue of their generic lineage, either to the christian tradition or to the hindu tradition. Both lion and elephant have semi-divine status in the Hindu mythology. Lion is the animal-vehicle of Goddess Durga as well as Narasimha, the avatar of Vishnu, is a half-man and half-lion hybrid. Elephant also is a sacred animal since it forms the half part of God Ganapathi. In the western christian tradition also lion is a sacred symbol. It is the symbol of St. Mark, the Evangelist. The four Evangelists, in the Western Christian Art, are represented by two animals, a bird and the man. This has Biblical warrant. St. Mathew is represented by man, since his Gospel begins with the genealogy of Jesus Christ according to flesh. Ox symbolizes St. Luke, since it is a sacrificial animal and his Gospel begins with the sacrifice of Zaccharias. The eagle is the symbol of St. John since it is the only creature that can look straight into the heart of sun without its eyes blinking, according to western mythology; likewise, St. John's Gospel takes us straight into the heart of the divinity of God, which has an unbearable luminance. Finally, lion represents St. Mark because his Gospel begins with a roar in the wilderness15. Images of lions are profuse in the Church Art of Kerala also, but with a characteristic accent of Hindu iconography in most cases. The lion that is painted on the altar of Palai Cathedral does not have even the remote resemblance of the pouncing Irish lion of St. Mark; but with its moustache, eyes, brow and hair like that of a man, is closer to the anthropologized concept of Narasimha of the Hindu pantheon. Whether it is the artisan's fanciful creative quirk or the deliberate iconographic interpretation of the priest, one is not sure, the lion on the stone cross of Changanacherry church also appears with a 'human face'. The lion on the altar of Palai is counterbalanced by the Ox of St. Luke on the other side; but the humped, fiery, Semitic bull of St. Luke, here looks like a sheepish Gangetic Cow with wide eyes, seen on the side of Krishna in the calender pictures.
Elephant also has a problematic parentage in the Indian Christian symbolism. While in India, the elephant has a semi-divine status, being half of Ganapathi and also an auspicious symbol of grace and poise, in the Western Christian tradition it is a negative symbol of sexual graft and sin. This symbol which entered the Christian Art from the Pagan mythology portrays the male elephant as the least amatory of the beasts. Female, on the other hand, permanently in sexual moods, has to arouse the male through some fraud or hoax. With lot of wandering she collects the rare herb, Mandrake, which can arouse the passion in the male. She gives it to the male covertly and realises her bestial fulfillment. The male and female elephants, no wonder, became the christian symbols of Adam and Eve; the act of their sexual consummation is an ironic parody of the Original Sin; Adam was enticed to sin and fall by the fruit Eve gave him16. In the Chengannoor church there is a picture on the stone beam which shows an elephant trampling a man. This can have different meanings. It could have been an opportune execution by a non-Christian artisan who had grown up amidst sights of rogue elephants trampling their mahouts when they succumb to their seasonal sexual inebriation. Or it can be a perfect Christian symbol of man being overtaken by sinful sexual passions, of which elephant is the ideal symbol. The reading of iconographic images in Christian churches, thus becomes a problematic theoretical affair.
In the end we shall look into an important symbol, the fish, again poised in the problematic interface between the Western Christian tradition and the Eastern Hindu. Fish is one of the many symbols that represents Jesus Christ and ironically is one of the many ambivalent symbols which he shares with the devil. The others are lion, snake (viper), bird (devil means in Latin "nocturna avis" or night bird), raven (Christ is "nycticorax" or night-heron) and eagle. Lucifer, the Morning Star, means Christ as well as the devil17. Fish is a powerful and prolific bivalent symbol that represents both good and evil, like the snake in many cultures. This symbol ranges from the redeemer-fish of Manu in India, to the Babylonian Fish-God Oannes and his priests clothed in fish-skins, to the Eucharistic fish symbol of Christ in the Roman Christianity.
From the studies of C. G. Jung, close resemblance between the time-scheme of the vishnavite tradition, imbricated into the avatars of Vishnu, and the time-scheme of Christian era which begins with the coming of Christ, can be drawn. Fish as a water symbol is at the beginning of both and fire at the end. According to ancient Astrology, it is inferred that Christ's birth occurred under a Piscean ascendant in the Zodiac of Capricon. The Zodiacal symbol of Pisces is two fishes in the opposite direction. What the Magi from the east saw in the sky at the time of Christ's birth was thus an auspicious conjunction of Pisces and Capricon, which they followed to Jerusalem. If Christ's birth comes under the water sign of Pisces with fish as its Zodiacal symbol, his death should logically occur under the fire sign of Aries, according to the ancient astrological logic. In fact this has coincidentally taken place; Good Friday, the day of Christ's crucifixion comes in March-April, which is under the symbol of Aries. More importantly, the Zodiacal symbol of Aries is Ram, the lamb, which is another quintessential symbol of Christ. Christ was sacrificed like a lamb, Bible says. So it is utmost logical to visualize Christ's birth occurring under the Zodiacal symbol of Pisces like a fish and his death occurring like a lamb in the Zodiacal symbol of Aries. Fish and lamb are his most important symbols18. Gnostic mysticism deifies this man born under fish and sacrificed as a lamb; had fishermen for his disciples; wanted to make them "fishers" of men; fed multitude by miraculously multiplying the two fishes; who himself is eaten as the "Eucharistic fish"; and whose followers are little fishes, the pisciculi19.
The fish symbol in Christianity appeared for the first time in Alexandria around 200 A.D. Scholars like De Gubernatis is of the opinion that the fish symbol in Christianity had come from India; this is not an impossibility since spiritual currents from the east were steadily flowing into the early Christianity in the west20. Like the west, in the eastern astrology also fish is a beginner symbol. The ten incarnations of Vishnu begins with matsya avathara, the fish symbol. When the vishnavite concept of Aeon begins with the fish, the water sign, it also ironically ends under the sign of fire like in the west, with Kalki, the destroyer with the sword of fire. The vishnavite incarnational scheme which ends under the fire symbol and the death of Christ occurring under the fire sign of Aries, and both representing two Aeons have many interesting parallelisms which calls for further research.
Christ born under the sign of fish is the "Saviour" par excellence, for Christianity. In the Hindu mythology, on the other hand, the first avatar of Vishnu is the ``Saviour'' fish of vedas. In "Satapata Brahmana", this fish is initially a small goldfish which begs Manu to take it home, being afraid of the sea-monsters around it. It then grows to mighty, mythological size and rescues Manu from the great flood. On the twelfth day of the first month of the Indian year, this act of the "Saviour" fish of vedas and Manu is symbollically re-enacted. A small goldfish is put into a bowl of water and this prayer is chanted: "As thou O' God, in the form of a fish hast saved the vedas that were in the underworld so save me also, O' Keshava"21.
Matsya, the renowned fish symbol of India and the Eucharistic fish of Christ have struck up a unique cultural symbiosis, so that they are seen both in the monuments in the churches as well as in the temples, with almost similar iconographic features. From a small shy goldfish, mooring the placid waters of the mythological seas, Manu's fish grew into a monstrous Leviathan, to fight evil and rescue the sacred. Likewise, the Old Testamental fish that ate prophet Jonah was a big and ferocious whale. Jonah is a Type of Christ who prefigures him in the Old Testament, according to the Christian Hermeneutics. Jonah's remaining in the fish's belly for three days and his ejection on the third day on the shores of Nineveh, is symbolic of the death of Christ and his remaining in the tomb for three days before his Resurrection. The ferocious fish also represents Christ through Jonah. So both Hindu and Christian symbolisms, had these two natures for the fish; the ferocious Leviathan which is the "Saviour" fish as well as the small goldfish, the pliant one, the Eucharistic food. These two types of fishes can be seen on the mount of the stone cross of the Niranam church.
The symbolic arsenals of different religious arts in India show a commendable commutability of images, ideas and techniques between them. It will be better of the scholars, ideologues, and pundits to be conscious of these paradoxical liaisons and overlaps across the boundaries of different art systems in India. Religious art history is going to gain if its theoretical searches are formulated in this inter-religious terrain. The scientific findings of such erudite efforts can put in a better perspective the limits, as well as the prospects of the intercourse between different religious art systems in India; and by extension this can censor the wily rhetoric that is going on about the fabled communal harmony of India, which has lately got caricatured as an inborn historical tendency of this culture to accept and feed any religion or creed, with a spineless resilience and slavish jouisance. q
Notes and References
1. Umberto Eco, Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages, (Tr) Hugh Breding, New Haven: Yale University Press, l 986, pp. 116-118.
2. See the essay "For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign'', in Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings (Ed) Mark Poster, Cambridge: PolityPress, 1988, pp. 57-98.
3. Fernand Braudel, Civilization And Capitalism, 15-18th Century, 3 vols (Tr) Sian Reynolds, London:Fontana Press Ltd., 1981, Passim.
4. Claude Levi-Strauss, The Raw and the Cooked: Introduction to a Science of Mythology (Tr) John and Doreen Weightman, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd., 1986, pp. 1-32.
5. Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, (Tr) John Osborne, London: NLB, 1977, pp. 219-235.
6. Arnold Hauser, The Social History of Art, Vol. I, London: RKP, 1962, pp. 111 ff.
7. Wolfang Hage, Syriac Christianity in the East, Kottayam: SEERI Publications, 1988, P.6.
8. H. W. Janson, A History of Art, London: Thames and Hudson, 1962, pp. 192-215.
9. Michael Camille, The Gothic Idol, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p.xxix.
10. A. Sreedhara Menon, Cultural Heritage of Kerala, Madras: S. Viswanathan Printers and Publishers, 1996, p. 153.
11. Prof. George Menachery, Pallikkalakalum Mattum, Trichur: EIFFEL Books, 1984, p. 59.
12. Ibid.
13. Joseph Vazhuthanapally, Archaeology of MarSliba, Kottayam: OIRSI Publications, 1990, pp. 102-103.
14. Varghese Pathikulangara, Church and Celebration, Kottayam: Denha Services, 1986, pp. 17-19.
15. Emile Male, The Gothic Image: Religious Art in France in the Thirteenth Century, (Tr) Dora Nussey, NewYork: Harper and Row Publishers, 1958, p. 36.
16. Ibid. p. 34.
17. C. G. Jung, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, London: RKP, 1959, p.72.
18 Ibid. p. 90.
19. Ibid. p. 92.
20. Ibid. p. 1l4.
21. Ibid.