Reviews of Books 99

Thüpavamsa stresses the interactions of kings, monks, and divine beings who—collectively—assure
the arrival of powerful Buddha-relics at their pre-destined locations in Anurâdhapura.
A striking feature of the Sinhala Thüpavamsa is its elaborate account of Sakyamuni Buddha's
defeat of Mâra, which emphasizes the virtues/perfections (päramitä) attained by the Buddha in prior
lives. With this defeat of Mâra, the future of Sakyamuni's Buddha-íóíana is made possible. The struc-
ture of the Sinhala Thüpavarnsa connects Sakyamuni's dharmic conquest to the subsequent military
victory of King Dutthagâmatiî. The latter defeats rival kings in Lanka, partly an act of protection for
both Sakyamuni Buddha's säsana and the Buddha-dispensation which follows. Celebrated relics of
Sakyamuni Buddha are installed on Lankan land, while Dutthagâmatiî's family itself is incorporated
into a lineage of Buddhas. The family of King Dutthagâmatiî is here mapped onto the genealogy of the
next Buddha Maitreya, with Dutthagâmatiî's father Kävantissa destined to father Maitreya Buddha and
Dutthagâmatiî himself foreseen as the new Buddha's chief monastic disciple (p. 253). There may have
been no comfortable and stable royal return to the city of Anurâdhapura in thirteenth-century Latikä,
yet, according to Paräkrama Patidita, the city of nibbäna beckoned: "Thus all of these persons, doing
valuable acts of merit, hearing the Doctrine from that Mete Buddha . . . will enter the city of nirvana"
(p. 253).
Another noteworthy feature of this text is its extended narrative-theoretical reflection on individual
and collective merit-making in contexts of labor paid for by the royal purse. King Dutthagâmati! is por-
trayed as determined to ensure that those laboring to build the Great Copper-Roofed Mansion and the
Golden Garlands Relic Shrine are paid wages for their work, and that ardent devotees do not sneak into
the construction site to work without pay (Chapters 10-11). What appears an unusual degree of social
conscience for a king (extending the Mahävamsa's. treatment of this topic) is subsequently explained
in terms of the king's determination to make vast merit for himself through his construction, a goal
linked perhaps to karmic concerns about the demerits accumulated in his military actions. The royal
merit-making ambition is so great that the king has the labor site policed, and insists on giving splendid
monastic requisites to a monk who was caught engaging in the clandestine merit-making act of adding
a brick to the relic chamber (pp. 210-14). As befits a text "compiled for the sake of arousing serene joy
in the minds of virtuous persons in this world" (p. 252), however, the Sinhala Thüpavarnsa's theory
of merit defends the conjunction of royal greed for merit and the devotional well-being of the court's
hard-working subjects: "Thus there is great benefit and great reward even in merit done for wages with
a mind that is serenely joyful toward the Dispensation of the Buddha" (p. 214).

ANNE M . BLACKBURN
CORNELL UNIVERSITY

The Body Adorned: Dissolving Boundaries Between Sacred and Profane in India's Art. By VIDYA
DEHEJIA. New York: COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2009. Pp. xii -i- 238, 72 fig.

While the primacy of the body in Indian artistic productions has been recognized by art historians,
there has been little serious study synthesizing art and text and their shared articulations of the sensu-
ous and ornamented figurai form. In her book Vidya Dehejia goes beyond an iconographical analysis
of selected artworks from premodern India by including passages from a variety of textual sources that
also underscore the fundamental position of human and divine bodies. Dehejia does not attempt to dem-
onstrate causal relationships between image and text, but chooses to highlight the ways that both media
articulate shared concepts about the body and its ornamentation. For her textual material, Dehejia relies
mostly on Sanskrit and Tamil court poetry and literature, inscriptions from monuments and sculpture,
devotional hymns of saints, and dynastic eulogies (prasasti). Other sources include texts on art and
aesthetics, as well as Buddhist literature and select passages from the vast corpus of Purâtias. For the
artworks, Dehejia presents an array of sculpted images (primarily stone and bronze) and dedicates a
100 Journal of the American Oriental Society 130.1 (2010)

separate chapter to Rajput painting. A major theme explored throughout the book is how the physical
beauty and ornamentation of humans, gods, and semidivine beings relates to larger concepts of moral-
ity, prosperity, auspiciousness, and health.
Chapter 1, "The Body as Leitmotif," sets the stage for Dehejia's investigation. She begins by ana-
lyzing two sculptures: a Chola-peHod bronze image of the Hindu god Siva and a twelfth-century stone
sculpture of a female dancer from Uttar Pradesh. With these two images Dehejia introduces the reader
to the sensuous figurai form (both male and female) and the importance of ornamentation {alamkära).
This exploration is continued in Chapters 2 and 4 where Dehejia more fully integrates textual expres-
sions of the adorned body with the visual material. In these chapters Dehejia discusses the ways that
both divine and human bodies are idealized and yet are related to elements of the natural world. The
subjects, represented in both art and text, include yaksls and yaksas (female and male nature deities),
beautiful women and young girls, kings and queens, the Buddha, aristocratic couples, and Hindu deities
(featured particularly in Chapter 4).
The similarities in visual and textual expressions of the adorned body lead Dehejia to introduce
a subtheme: whether or not categories such as sacred and secular are truly helpful in understanding
Indian art and architecture. This theme is best presented in Chapter 3, "The Sensuous within Sacred
Boundaries," where she examines images of divine beings within their architectural contexts. Dehejia
discusses the multiple ways that architectural spaces are used for both spiritual and mundane activities
and suggests that the strict dichotomy of sacred and secular does not appear to be part of the general
Indian ethos. While this opinion is widespread in religious studies, it requires further exploration in art
historical scholarship.
In the final chapter, Dehejia concentrates solely on secular painting produced in the Rajput courts
from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. In many ways this chapter stands apart, due to its
focus on painting (which is not thoroughly examined elsewhere in the book). Nonetheless, her treat-
ment of this material corresponds with her two main themes: the visual and literary emphasis on the
sensuous body and the blurring of lines between the sacred and profane. She examines three genres of
painted manuscripts that feature a Hindu god (primarily Krsiia) "inserted" into the world of men. The
three genres include rid texts (specifically the Rasamañjarl, the Rasikpriya, and the Satsai), illustra-
tions of the twelve months of the year {Bärahmäsa), and depictions of musical modes {Rägamälä). In
the paintings, Ki-stia (or, on occasion, Siva or Räma) serves as a substitute for the courtly human hero
{nâyaka). In her visual analyses of these paintings, Dehejia identifies a variety of pictorial strategies
employed by the artists to illustrate this slippage between the earthly and the divine.
While Dehejia provides a broad spectrum of visual and textual evidence, there are some significant
omissions. First, with the exception of a single late Mughal painting discussed in the last chapter,
Islamic artistic and literary traditions are completely left out without explanation. I often felt this
omission strongly. For example, why not include painted Mughal portraits in the section on "Kings
and Princes" in Chapter 2? The Mughal interest in veracity in portraiture would have served as an
interesting counterpoint to Dehejia's discussion of the "nonspecific portrayals" of Kushan and Pallava
monarchs (pp. 49-53). Moreover, they would have expanded her discussion on "the few identifiable
royal portraits from premodem India," for which she provides only four examples, all sculpted panels
of King Narasimhadeva of the Ganga dynasty (pp. 53-54). This omission of Mughal portraits seems
not to have been motivated by a desire to treat painting and sculpture separately, as she does include an
example of painting (from the Ajanta caves) in her section on "Queens and Princesses" (pp. 40-46).
The omission of Mughal painting (and painted manuscripts from the Deccani sultanates) is also curious
given that Dehejia has an entire chapter on contemporaneous productions in the Rajput courts.
My second concern is the marginal treatment of Jain artistic and literary contributions. While Dehe-
jia does describe and provide illustrations of Jain goddesses, her examination of the body of the Jina
is relegated to two sentences (p. 106 and p. 107). This scant treatment contrasts with the five pages
dedicated to the body of the Buddha (pp. 60-64) and with the detailed descriptions of Hindu deities
in Chapter 4 (pp. 112-55). In addition, Dehejia only addresses the artistic and religious practices of
ávetambara (MürtipDjak) Jains, omitting examples from the Digambaras. In contrast to Jina images
worshiped in Svetämbara contexts, Digambara sculptures present the Jina without any form of orna-
 Reviews of Books 101

mentation. She thus misses an opportunity to explore the fact that not all religious traditions in premod-
ern India give primacy to the adorned body in art.
I might also quarrel with Dehejia's characterization of the intended audience of these works as
exclusively elite—a characterization first found in Chapter 1 but employed throughout the book.
According to Dehejia, "the world of Indian imagery was intended for the viewing pleasure not of
laborer or farmer, but of king, courtier, aristocrat, and nagaraka (refined man-about-town)" (p. 2). She
further argues that the prime audience for a royal temple consisted of "feudatory princes, officials at
the court, and Brahmin priests, all of whom belonged to the elite of the kingdom" (p. 4). While mem-
bers of an urbane elite may have been the primary viewers, users, and/or patrons of some of India's
premodern monuments, clearly other types of individuals played prominent roles as well. The uneasy
fit of her elite model if applied to all monuments can be seen in Dehejia's discussion of the stupas at
Sanchi (Chapter 3). Here, Dehejia struggles with the evidence of the donative inscriptions that identify
all sorts of patrons (and presumably, viewers) of the monument. She states.
It might appear that the earlier emphasis on an elite, urbane audience is lost here, but one should note that 616
of the inscriptions are on undecorated, structural parts of the monument. Only eleven donors were responsible
for the sculptures at Sanchi, all found on the gateways; two major gifts come from the same wealthy banker,
another two from the pupil of a well-known preacher, one from the chief of the artisans of the Satavahana ruler
Satakarni, and one from a guild of ivory-workers; two are joint gifts, and three reveal little more than a name.
Those responsible for the figurative carving at Sanchi were clearly a more restricted and wealthier group, (p. 84)

While it makes sense that the more expensive (i.e., figurative) pieces of the monument would be com-
missioned by individuals who had greater access to money, does it make the role of the patron commis-
sioning a plain pillar or crossbar any less significant? Are these 605 individuals somehow less involved
in the viewing and/or construction of this monument than the eleven wealthier patrons?
Further evidence demonstrating the complexities of the audience is found in the writings of the
Jain monk Ramachandragani, in which he describes the atmosphere within a newly constructed royal
temple (pp. 109-10). While Dehejia cites this text to demonstrate the variety of responses to art, she
fails to note that the viewers themselves are not solely the sophisticated, wealthy elite. According to the
text, the viewers inside the temple include lovely women, husbands, young gallants, faithful Jains, the
seriously ill, artists, ugly men and women, those who had lost their wealth, music-lovers, and servants.
Clearly, art was intended for these folks too.
These concerns aside, Dehejia's book is an important contribution to the field, and the variety of
textual sources adduced, as well as the numerous, high-quality reproductions, make it an especially
valuable resource. Its greatest strength is the inter-weaving of text and image to provide a broad picture
of how the adorned body was conceived, understood, and glorified in premodern India. The issue of
adornment is taken up from a different point of view in her Afterword, where she reminds us of the con-
tinual processes of ornamentation that are performed on images during ritual consecration and worship.
In the case of the sanctum or portable festival image, we witness further adornment to the divine body
through the physical application of liquids, fragrant powders and pastes, richly embroidered garments,
gold ornaments, and garlands of flowers. While these applications "conceal" the body of the image,
they nonetheless "reveal" the divine through these external alamkäras.

LtSA N. OWEN
UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS

6. Agyptologlsche Tempeltagung: Funktion und Gebrauch altägyptischer Tempelräume. Edited by BEN

HARING and ANDREA KLUG. Königtum, Staat und Gesellschaft früher Hochkulturen, vol. 3,1. Pp.
vii -I- 300, illus. Wiesbaden: HARRASSOWITZ VERLAG, 2007. €78.

This volume contains papers from the Tempeltagung conference, where Egyptologists with different
specialties come together to talk about ancient Egyptian temples. This occasion, the sixth, focused on
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