Heinrich Zimmer: Coming into His Own.
The Art of Indian Asia is accepted as Heinrich Zimmer’s exegesis of the Buddhist and Hindu art of South and Southeast Asia.
Edited by Joseph Campbell from lecture notes prepared by Zimmer at Columbia University in 1941 and from earlier notes, the text, with an accompanying volume of plates, was published in 1955, twelve years after Zimmer’s death.
It was intended by the publishers to serve as an introduction to Indian art, rather than a chronological, historical account of its development.
Zimmer would doubtless have approved of this intent, for none of his writings extensively address the relevance of chronology or the development of style and, in fact, his interests were interpretive rather than historical, whether he was expounding on textual or visual material.
But one wonders if Zimmer would have appreciated the publication of this text, which in contrast to his earlier powerfully written and insightful publications was thematically fragmented, with some information out of date by the time of its publication, and which presented ideas uninformed by more recent art historical literature.
Reviews of the book in 1955 and 1956 by Stella Kramrisch, Benjamin Rowland, and LeRoy Davidson called attention to the strengths and weaknesses of Zimmer’s thought in The Art of Indian Asia.
All three reviewers highly valued Zimmer’s eloquent recital of myths and exuberant descriptions of feminine beauty (the archetypal mother goddess), which revealed a sensitive comprehension of Indian sculpture informed by a knowledge of the ritual and of the beliefs that determined its form.
Regarding Zimmer’s extensive discussion of the symbolism of the lotus (which Davidson also found most stimulating), Kramrisch remarked: “Never before have myth and iconography been given deeper or fuller interpretation.”
Kramrisch also acknowledged, and agreed with, Zimmer’s hermeneutics of Puranic and Tantric thought: the theme of pairs of opposites (life and death, time and eternity, creation and destruction) that the enlightened devotee understands as one is woven throughout the book.
With this insight, Zimmer had “stepped into Indian art to its core.”
At the same time, “The quality of exhaltation expressed in his words, and aroused by the works of art, is not a direct response to their form; it is rather an association with contents, evoked by their appearance.”
Indeed, for Zimmer, an image was a composite of symbols that were visualizations of eternal realities originally expressed in myths.
His interest in Indian art was inspired primarily by his extensive study of Tantric texts; not until 1925 did Zimmer actually examine original sculptures in Paris, probably at the Musee Guimet.
Perhaps because Zimmer’s expertise was mythology, and sculpture only an extension of that interest, he failed to comprehend that a more ordered knowledge of the variety of art found throughout the subcontinent could have confirmed his conclusions (or not) and perhaps could have suggested nuances of interpretation.
Essentially, in refusing seriously to acknowledge that the art he discussed was formally transformed over time and in different geographical regions, he left himself vulnerable to criticism.
As Davidson succinctly stated: “The understanding of Indian art depends . . . on the knowledge of temporal and human forces, as well as on that of philosophic and religious texts…. Any introduction to Indian art which ignores the transmutation of ideas by man and time presents only a partial and romanticized picture, no matter how many philosophic refinements it may incorporate.”
The chapters on architecture, moreover, lack the insight and lyrical descriptions of the chapters on sculpture.
If mythology was of primary interest to Zimmer and sculpture secondary, architecture was definitely tertiary.
He never saw a Hindu temple in its physical or cultural situation and, perhaps as a result, developed less enthusiasm for, and understanding of, architecture than sculpture, which he could see in European museums.
One original idea he put forward—that the wood and thatch Toda huts of South India were the basis for rock-cut caves such as Lomas Rishi in North India—was dismissed outright as meaningless by Davidson.
Indeed, Zimmer gives no indication, here or elsewhere, of having read Coomaraswamy’s article on early Indian architecture as depicted in reliefs, which contains an extensive discussion of the relationship of wooden to stone architecture.
Truth be told, little factual information and few original ideas were presented in The Art of Indian Asia.
Whatever “facts” were included—as opposed to the interpretations that are woven through the text—must have been culled by Zimmer from published archaeological reports and previously published analyses of Indian art.
For example, the identifications and descriptions of the jataka stories on the toranas (gateways) of Sanchi Stupa I had been taken almost verbatim from Ludwig Bachhofer’s Early Indian Sculpture.
In fairness to Zimmer, though, it must be reiterated that it is by no means clear he intended his lecture notes to be published, and what was published was prepared by someone other than himself.
The question of authorship of The Art of Indian Asia therefore becomes relevant.
To what extent were Zimmer’s ideas, along with his notes, reorganized and edited by Campbell?
Moreover, other people may have had an impact on the final text.
Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, one of the most prominent art historians of Indian art in the first half of this century, was curator at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts from 1917 to 1947.
His History of Indian and Indonesian Art (1927), the only survey book on the subject available at the time, was the textbook Zimmer used for his class at Columbia.
Campbell consulted Coomaraswamy while he was editing Myths and Symbols in Indian Art (1946) and referred to Coomaraswamy’s text when compiling The Art of Indian Asia.
Is it possible that, in addition to whatever direct influence Coomaraswamy may have had on Zimmer, Campbell also integrated certain of Coomaraswamy’s ideas into Zimmer’s notes?
Indeed quite apart from the fact that the scope of the two texts is similar, the arrangement of the sections on Hindu architecture in The Art of Indian Asia is comparable to that in Coomaraswamy’s earlier work.
A detailed attempt to discern “who contributed what” to the final text of The Art of Indian Asia, however, would probably prove fruitless—and runs the risk of diverting attention from the originality and power of Zimmer’s thinking in his earlier publications.
Kramrisch remarked: “Never before have myth and iconography been given deeper or fuller interpretation.”
Kramrisch also acknowledged, and agreed with, Zimmer’s hermeneutics of Puranic and Tantric thought: the theme of pairs of opposites (life and death, time and eternity, creation and destruction) that the enlightened devotee understands as one is woven throughout the book.
With this insight, Zimmer had “stepped into Indian art to its core.”
At the same time, “The quality of exhaltation expressed in his words, and aroused by the works of art, is not a direct response to their form; it is rather an association with contents, evoked by their appearance.”
Indeed, for Zimmer, an image was a composite of symbols that were visualizations of eternal realities originally expressed in myths.
His interest in Indian art was inspired primarily by his extensive study of Tantric texts; not until 1925 did Zimmer actually examine original sculptures in Paris, probably at the Musee Guimet.
Perhaps because Zimmer’s expertise was mythology, and sculpture only an extension of that interest, he failed to comprehend that a more ordered knowledge of the variety of art found throughout the subcontinent could have confirmed his conclusions (or not) and perhaps could have suggested nuances of interpretation.
Essentially, in refusing seriously to acknowledge that the art he discussed was formally transformed over time and in different geographical regions, he left himself vulnerable to criticism.
As Davidson succinctly stated: “The understanding of Indian art depends . . . on the knowledge of temporal and human forces, as well as on that of philosophic and religious texts…. Any introduction to Indian art which ignores the transmutation of ideas by man and time presents only a partial and romanticized picture, no matter how many philosophic refinements it may incorporate.”
The chapters on architecture, moreover, lack the insight and lyrical descriptions of the chapters on sculpture.
If mythology was of primary interest to Zimmer and sculpture secondary, architecture was definitely tertiary.
He never saw a Hindu temple in its physical or cultural situation and, perhaps as a result, developed less enthusiasm for, and understanding of, architecture than sculpture, which he could see in European museums.
One original idea he put forward—that the wood and thatch Toda huts of South India were the basis for rock-cut caves such as Lomas Rishi in North India—was dismissed outright as meaningless by Davidson.
Indeed, Zimmer gives no indication, here or elsewhere, of having read Coomaraswamy’s article on early Indian architecture as depicted in reliefs, which contains an extensive discussion of the relationship of wooden to stone architecture.
Truth be told, little factual information and few original ideas were presented in The Art of Indian Asia.
Whatever “facts” were included—as opposed to the interpretations that are woven through the text—must have been culled by Zimmer from published archaeological reports and previously published analyses of Indian art.
For example, the identifications and descriptions of the jataka stories on the toranas (gateways) of Sanchi Stupa I had been taken almost verbatim from Ludwig Bachhofer’s Early Indian Sculpture.
In fairness to Zimmer, though, it must be reiterated that it is by no means clear he intended his lecture notes to be published, and what was published was prepared by someone other than himself.
The question of authorship of The Art of Indian Asia therefore becomes relevant.
To what extent were Zimmer’s ideas, along with his notes, reorganized and edited by Campbell?
Moreover, other people may have had an impact on the final text.
Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, one of the most prominent art historians of Indian art in the first half of this century, was curator at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts from 1917 to 1947.
His History of Indian and Indonesian Art (1927), the only survey book on the subject available at the time, was the textbook Zimmer used for his class at Columbia.
Campbell consulted Coomaraswamy while he was editing Myths and Symbols in Indian Art (1946) and referred to Coomaraswamy’s text when compiling The Art of Indian Asia.
Is it possible that, in addition to whatever direct influence Coomaraswamy may have had on Zimmer, Campbell also integrated certain of Coomaraswamy’s ideas into Zimmer’s notes?
Indeed quite apart from the fact that the scope of the two texts is similar, the arrangement of the sections on Hindu architecture in The Art of Indian Asia is comparable to that in Coomaraswamy’s earlier work.
A detailed attempt to discern “who contributed what” to the final text of The Art of Indian Asia, however, would probably prove fruitless—and runs the risk of diverting attention from the originality and power of Zimmer’s thinking in his earlier publications.
Actually, Zimmer’s earlier publications record more faithfully and coherently his ideas that have had an impact on our understanding of Indian art.
Other lines of inquiry are therefore more intriguing.
What ideational constructs prevalent in Germany influenced Zimmer’s intellectual development, and what personal characteristics compelled his research interests?
Once Zimmer became interested in art, what textual and human sources shaped his ideas?
Did Coomaraswamy in fact influence Zimmer’s thinking?
Another prolific and prominent writer on Indian art and its symbolism during Zimmer’s lifetime was Stella Kramrisch.
How influential were her ideas?
That the three knew or knew of one another, at least to some degree, and recognized a commonality of intellectual approach to Indian art is clear.
Zimmer reviewed Kramrisch’s translation of one of the Puranas, the Vishnudharmottara, in 1926 and her Grundzüge der indischen Kunst (Fundamentals of Indian Art) in 1927.
Sometime after this, Kramrisch and Zimmer probably met on a train from London to Oxford.
Although she felt that his lack of personal experience of India made his opinions overly subjective, she admired his work enough to translate two of his articles into English and arrange for their publication in the Journal of the Indian Society of Oriental Art.
Coomaraswamy praised Zimmer’s Kunstform und Yoga in a 1932 review, in which he stated that “no more valuable book for the understanding of Indian art . . . has yet been published.”
Coomaraswamy thought Zimmer to “be the ideal scholar, at the same time erudite and creative, able to gather material rigorously but also able to see its significance.”
Coomaraswamy’s sustained admiration for Zimmer’s thought is further revealed in a review of Zimmer’s posthumously published Myths and Symbols in Indian Art.
The appreciation seems to have been mutual.
In an undated letter to Coomaraswamy, Zimmer stated: “I need not say how much it means to me to have met you personally.
Your inspiring way of dealing with Hindu art and religion has, since I became a student, been one of the main elements of my initiation into this revelation of truth.”
Coomaraswamy and Kramrisch were also acquainted.
He reviewed a revised and enlarged edition of Kramrisch’s translation of the Vishnudharmottara in 1932 and her Indian Sculpture in 1934, which he regarded as “the best existing introduction to the subject within its chosen limits.”
In a 1947 article on the symbolism of the Hindu temple, he referred to her recently published book The Hindu Temple (1946) as a magnificent work.
On her part, Kramrisch apparently had the highest regard for Coomaraswamy’s intellectual seriousness and dedicated the 1937 issue of the Journal of the Indian Society of Oriental Art to him on his sixtieth birthday.
The work of all three could be characterized in general as more interpretive than descriptive.
Each recognized the transcendental and therefore symbolic nature of Indian art—Indian art was a mirror of a real world that was intangible—and therefore each sought to understand iconology, the meaning behind the forms.
And, in contrast to previous scholars, each extensively consulted various types of texts to interpret this iconology.
Kramrisch, who spent thirty years in India, had greater firsthand knowledge particularly of temples, but also of sculpture, than either Coomaraswamy or Zimmer.
Probably because of this, she focused more in her earlier writings on the chronology and development of forms.
Her metaphysical observations, which were not extensively presented until her monumental publication on the symbolism of the Hindu temple in 1946, four years after Zimmer’s death, were less prominent in this early scholarship.
It is not surprising then, that there are no clear indications in Zimmer’s writings on art that he was influenced deeply by Kramrisch’s thoughts.
His interests in metaphysics and aesthetics more closely corresponded to Coomaraswamy’s interests.
It would be more fruitful, then, especially given Zimmer’s acknowledgment of Coomaraswamy as inspirational for him, to examine the work and possible intellectual interaction of these two.
Zimmer’s single most important interpretive work on Indian aesthetics was Kunstform und Yoga, published in 1926, on which I will rely almost exclusively.
Coomaraswamy’s theoretical writings extended throughout his lifetime, and I will focus on these to the exclusion of his art historical works.
Although each author wrote in response to different personal and intellectual contexts, both were reacting to the negative critiques of Indian art prevalent in Europe in the early twentieth century, and they came to similar conclusions about the nature of Indian art and aesthetics.
Ananda K. Coomaraswamy (1877–1947) was born in Sri Lanka to a British mother and a Tamil Hindu father, who died when Coomaraswamy was two.
Thereafter he was raised and educated in England as a geologist and only returned to Sri Lanka in 1902, where he resided for just five years.
Although Coomaraswamy intermittently traveled to India, most of his life was spent in the West, but because of his background and consequent mission, he came to represent and defend the East.
His first major work, Mediaeval Sinhalese Art, published in 1908 upon his return to England, reflects knowledge of and involvement with the contemporary debates in England about both the decadence and needed reform of industrial design and about the nature of Indian art.
Notable in this debate were Sir George Birdwood and William Morris, both of whom attributed the strength in conception and execution of Indian design to the fact that the designs were produced by a living tradition within the traditional Indian village social structure.
The idea that a traditional social structure had to lie behind design of any real quality was used to oppose industrialism, which was blamed for the decline in English—and, under British administration, Indian—craftsmanship.
Taking an opposing point of view, John Ruskin added a moral twist to the debate on the aesthetics of Indian art.
Convinced of the cruelty and immorality of Indians he concluded that, although Indian decorative designs were acceptable because their production need not involve the intellect or a developed moral sense, Indian sculpture was inferior in quality to European.
Inhuman and despotic people were not capable of creating fine art, he said.
His evaluation of Indian art further turned on the issue of fidelity to nature, an important theme in art criticism at the time.
Direct imitation of nature was central to Ruskin’s theory of art, and since Indian art was abstract and symbolic, and lacked fidelity to nature, he considered it irrational.
Concurrent with the debate on the aesthetics of Indian art in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century were attempts to develop a history of Indian art that would both construct a chronological framework and allow for aesthetic evaluations.
The cultural historian Partha Mitter has divided these scholars into two groups: the archaeologists, who were primarily concerned with the sequential ordering of sculpture and architecture in time and place and who accepted the superiority of the classical Western style; and the transcendentalists, who rejected this assumed supremacy and sought to understand the aesthetics and symbolism of Indian art.
The basic ideas of the archaeologists were as follows.
Indian architecture was a true style because its form was adequate to its function, but it was inferior to even imitative European architecture.
Indian art was to be classified by religious and chronological categories (Buddhist, Hindu, and Islamic) or by region (Indo-Aryan north and Dravidian south).
This art had evolved from simple to more complex forms, and Buddhist art was superior because of its simplicity.
Subsequent Hindu art, with its many-armed and ferocious gods (long considered irrational in Europe), was, however, degenerative—the result of the reassertion of the indigenous Dravidian element.
The superiority of European art and race was considered self-evident: Indian sculpture was evaluated by classical standards and, since it did not represent ideal types in nature, was found wanting.
“Good” Indian art (the early Mauryan capitals, and the Buddhist art at Sanchi, Amaravati, and Gandhara) was derived from the Western classical tradition and/or executed by Greek artisans.
Publications by E. B. Havell and A. K. Coomaraswamy in the first decade of the twentieth century controverted many of these attitudes of the archaeologists.
Havell, the principal of the Calcutta School of Art, objected to the frequent attribution of foreign influence and rejected the application of classical standards to Indian art, which he thought must be evaluated by indigenous standards.
In order to understand this art, he argued, it was necessary to comprehend the philosophical, religious, and mythological ideas embedded in it and, most important, to comprehend the purpose of the artist.
Indian art was idealistic, mystical, and symbolic, a spiritual art that embodied a transcendental ideal rather than “the appearance of objects (nature) perceived by human senses…. Its main endeavor is always directed”
Towards the realization of an idea, reaching through the finite to the infinite.
The artist, who gave form to the infinite, depended on a spiritual vision to produce images of the gods.
This spiritual vision was acquired by meditation exercises (yoga), during which the artist’s identity merged with that of the invoked divinity.
Given that Western standards were still the criteria for evaluation of Indian art, biases persisted in England regarding the sculpture—the “fine art”—of India.
These views were given succinct expression by Sir George Birdwood on the occasion of a 1910 lecture by Havell to members of the Royal Society of Arts.
According to Birdwood, who was familiar with Havell’s work and who had a deep appreciation of Indian applied arts, no “fine art” existed in India because there was no art for art’s sake.
Rather, Indian art was utilitarian, a monstrous representation of a deity for ritual.
Whereas Western art was inspired by the artist’s own ideals of the good, the beautiful, and the true, Indian art was canonically prescribed, and only infrequently did this result in a classical statue.
More often, the result was a hideous image.
Western art had universal appeal, but an appreciation of Indian art could derive only from an understanding of its symbolism.
Art was but the framework, and as fine art no different from an algebraic formula.
The direct study of nature was the basis of Western art; the only reference for the Indian artist was his inner vision achieved through meditation.
Birdwood’s strong emotional and intellectual distaste for Indian art was evident in his description of a Javanese seated Buddha sculpture, which his audience would have understood to apply likewise to Indian sculpture generally.
This senseless similitude, in its immemorial fixed pose, is nothing more than an uninspired brazen image, vacuously squinting down its nose to its thumbs, and knees, and toes.
A boiled suet pudding would serve equally well as a symbol of passionless purity and serenity of soul.
It is in vain to argue that such imbecilities are objects of “fine art” because of the thoughts or emotions they excite in the devout.
Responding to Birdwood, Coomaraswamy echoed many of Havell’s ideas.
But his remarks also foreshadowed his lifelong quest to understand and explain Indian art to a Western audience.
The writer of books on art should aim to make his readers understand the art; to see the world as the artist saw it; at least to know what the artist wished to say.
The European critic never seemed to penetrate behind the surface of an Indian sculpture or painting, or to have learnt its language; he did not perceive its intention, and therefore, could not judge it on its own true basis.
Every major theme that would preoccupy Coomaraswamy throughout his lifetime, either because of his political convictions or in response to the bombastic, denigrating European criticisms of Indian art, was stated in seminal form in his monumental study Mediaeval Sinhalese Art of 1908.
Indeed, these ideas could almost be viewed as an outline that Coomaraswamy would flesh out in the years to come.
His fundamental assumption was that traditional art and society were ideal, and that anything post-Renaissance was decadent and untrue.
Coomaraswamy never accepted that the Industrial Revolution had changed the course of history and the structure of society; he consistently glorified the past, whose characteristics may have been to a considerable extent the product of his own imagination.
According to Coomaraswamy, traditional society, such as that of precolonial Ceylon until the eighteenth century, was like that of pre-Renaissance, medieval Europe: non-materialistic, ordered, and coherent.
Thus it produced the best and purest forms of art.
All artistic creation in a traditional society was an expression of a religious conception of life; religion and art were inseparable.
This was “true” art because the forms expressed the divine, not some individualistic sentiment.
The art was “ideal” in that it was inspired by an abstract idea rather than being an imitation of nature.
Reality existed in the mind and was controlled by the divine architect Vishvakarma, who revealed it in dreams to the artist.
For his part, the artist practiced yogic purification rituals and meditation in order to visualize the dream image; never was the artist to observe the object itself in nature.
The artist was part of the universe, a repository of all artists, who had worked out the language of art long ago.
Thus the artist did not strive for individual expression but gave substance to ideals of eternal beauty and unchanging laws.
Artistic tradition, the divinely prescribed canons of proportion and iconography revealed in texts, was a support, not a hindrance, to the expression of great art.
Coomaraswamy’s perspective was encyclopedic in scope, and he relied extensively on original religious and architectural texts to support and explicate his ideas about the art that he observed in these early years.
Coomaraswamy’s later work divides into two categories: metaphysics, aesthetics, and the theory of art on the one hand, and historical studies on the other.
As Coomaraswamy grew older, theoretical issues increasingly occupied his interest, although because he was curator at the Boston Museum of Fine Art he continued intermittently to produce topical art historical studies.
Moreover, despite Coomaraswamy’s growing fascination with theory, it was the latter studies—his History of Indian and Indonesian Art and his monographs on the origin of the Buddha image, on architectural forms such as cities, gates, tree shrines, and palaces, on yakshas, on Buddhist iconography, and on the symbolism of the dome—that established his reputation as an art historian.
But even in these studies the freshness of his approach came through.
According to Pramod Chandra, Coomaraswamy “was responsible for reestablishing the study of Indian art, whether architecture, sculpture, or painting, on a new basis.”
In contrast to earlier scholars, Coomaraswamy investigated beyond time and place (chronology and style), seeking to understand the inner meaning, or symbolism, of sculpture or architecture by combining observations of forms with reference to texts—two sources previously studied independently of each other.
Heinrich Zimmer developed in quite different personal and intellectual circumstances from Coomaraswamy.
His father was professor of Celtic philology at the University of Berlin, as well as a Sanskrit scholar, and thus Zimmer was imbued from birth with the “great scholarly traditions characteristic of German learning.”
He completed his Ph.D. in philology and comparative linguistics in 1914 at Berlin.
Despite this strong academic background, he developed an essentially romantic image of India, one that was never informed by a visit there.
In contrast to Coomaraswamy, who, as a South Asian, was confronted with extremely negative views of India and its “monstrous” art, Zimmer lived in an environment accepting of India—but of a mythic India.
German romanticism had created a myth of India that was based on the writing of Greek historians, as well as on travel literature and translations of a limited number of Sanskrit texts.
Much of it was produced in response to a longing for the reunion of man and nature, for a revival of the unity perceived between art and religion in the Middle Ages, and for a quest for primal verities that would explain the common origin of religion, language, and art.
For the German romantics in the second half of the eighteenth century, India was the place where culture first developed and was then transmitted to the ancient world.
It was the source of all wisdom, religion, and language, a curious blend of the primitive (a preindustrial, “intuitive” society) and the sublime (arts, sciences, and philosophy).
The Hindu was an unspoiled child of nature, simple, gentle, intelligent, who lived a life of ease in an idyllic land of natural abundance.
A superior class of holy men, Brahmans, guarded this civilization, and poetry (kavya) permeated every aspect of unified human wisdom.
Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), who formulated in his writings much of the mythic image, recognized that the Hindu god could not be perceived by the human senses and required primary symbols to depict his attributes, symbols that represented to the Hindu the principles of his religion.
Early in the nineteenth century, Friedrich Creuzer (1771–1858) made Indian myths and symbols in art the cornerstone of his Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Völker (1810).
Interested in the relationship between the classical world and India, Creuzer thought symbols signified a particular idea, that they were a sign language with mystical meaning, created by priests to teach moral truths—in short, visual guides to divinity.
Symbols were the simplest and most archaic form of human expression.
Those of the Orient were enigmatic, mystical, and untranslatable.
Symbolic art expressed the profound ideas and the diverse relationships that existed in theology, and images in primitive societies were for meditation on the divine.
Creuzer’s ideas were to have an impact on one of the most influential nineteenth-century thinkers on world art, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831).
Hegel, too, thought that art represented an ideal world beyond the visual, objective one.
In Hegel’s view, symbolic art was the first of three stages in the history of world art: symbolic (in which there is a contradiction between form and meaning), classic (representing a balance of form and meaning), and romantic (in which spirit dominates over matter).
Hegel also held that different traditions represented different ideals that reflected a national spirit.
To judge a given nation’s art, it was thus necessary to understand its ideals and to what point in history that nation belonged.
Because the Indian philosophic tradition denied individuality, India therefore lacked a factual, true depiction of history.
To Hegel, everything in India, the Hindu experience of life, happened as if in a dream.
But, although Indian art possessed a meaning beyond the directly perceptible, it was not a true symbolic art.
The potential to advance to the classic stage was nonexistent.
Ultimately for Hegel, then, Indian art, although a spiritual art, was static and irrational.
Zimmer’s initial interest in India was stimulated by emotional resonances more akin to the longings of the eighteenth-century romantics than to the “scientific” approach of nineteenth-century scholars.
Although Zimmer was also concerned with some of the ideas that occupied the latter: myths, symbols, the transcendental nature of art, and the unconscious.
Disenchanted with the academic stagnation of German universities in the first decade of the twentieth century, Zimmer perceived India, through Indian literature, in terms similar to those of the romantics—as the ultimate source of civilization, a primitive place, and yet one possessing transforming wisdom.
I could not stand the stale and dull atmosphere of pseudoromantic Western medievalism.
Imagining India, its dense deep fragrance in my nostrils, the jungle before me, unknown, perhaps unknowable, I thought of this southern sky of which I had read studded with strange stars and bewildering asterisms, none of them familiar to us, and yet a whole civilization, many civilizations, had steered their boats looking up and orientating themselves from this totally different pattern.
In contrast to his academic colleagues who emphasized philology and the literal translation of texts, Zimmer sought to understand the meaning behind the words and to integrate the truth he found in Indian material with the accepted truths of the West.
Writing of this material, he commented that “the task was to transmute it so as to make it fit into the context of our own experiences and traditions: a process of mutual transmutation, assimilation.”
The study of Indian texts was for Zimmer a personal as well as intellectual quest.
Zimmer was not unaware of the controversies surrounding India and art history, although there is no indication in his biographical notes or in his early writings that he knew of the intricacies of the debates in England confronting Coomaraswamy.
He thought that art historical methodology isolated art, deprived it “of roots in real soil.”
Indeed, Zimmer eventually wrote Kunstform und Yoga im indischen Kultbild (1926) to do away with “the then prevailing purely esthetic approach to Indian art on the one hand, and with the barren classistic criticism on the other.”
It should be noted that when Zimmer wrote this book, Coomaraswamy had not yet written at length on art theory, and what was published in Germany probably had a limited circulation in England and America.
Despite disparate backgrounds, then, Zimmer and Coomaraswamy perceived identical goals and independently drew on texts to comprehend the inner meaning of Indian art.
And perhaps not surprisingly, they came to similar observations.
Zimmer enumerated three major influences on his thinking: the Tantric texts that were edited and published by Sir John Woodroffe in Europe in the 1910s, the Puranas (compendia of Indian mythological and historical traditions that he studied to a degree unprecedented in Europe), and Carl Jung’s Psychology of the Unconscious.
The Tantras, a corpus of esoteric literature, reveal the role that sacred images, particularly Shaivite images, play in religious life and the meaning attached to the images, as well as elucidating magical rites.
Between 1918 and 1924 Zimmer studied the eight Tantric texts published by Woodroffe and in 1926 presented his penetrating analysis of the meaning and instrumentality of Indian images as meditational devices in Kunstform und Yoga.
With this publication Zimmer delved to the core of the metaphysics of Indian imagery with a clarity and breadth of understanding that was probably never rivaled even by Coomaraswamy.
Zimmer began the answer to his basic question—”Why is so prominent a phenomenon of Indian art as the sacred image, in its most basic formal structure, constituted the way it is?”—with a descriptive juxtaposition of classical and Indian sculpture.
Classical art captures one moment in time and is rich in relationships of parts to one another, a characteristic that prompts the gaze to move in a circular fashion, eventually encompassing the entire work.
Indian sculpture, by contrast, is still, at rest, oblivious to the viewer; it can be seen as a single unit that captures the essence of being, rather than one moment in time.
The Tantras provide the key to the spiritual world in which Hindu deities are rooted.
The world is an unfolding of divine, feminine energy (shakti) into a world rich in manifestations.
Shakti is consciousness, a blissful state of being equal to brahman, being-not-yet-unfolded.
Shakti is endowed with the power of maya (illusion) and because of this, unfolding from the state of not-yet-unfolded, can transform itself into the form of a god or goddess possessing attributes.
Pure being in its first transformation from its not-yet-unfolded state reveals itself as the divine couple Shiva and Shakti: they are one under the two aspects of repose-in-itself and the energy that unfolds itself.
This theme of apparent, but nonexistent, duality, is central to Zimmer’s subsequent analysis of Indian thought and interpretation of artistic expression.
Pure spiritual being, however, strives to return to the undifferentiated state in human and divine consciousness; man wishes to experience himself as brahman, to experience pure consciousness, to feel it and himself as one and the same, that is, divine.
This is the ultimate goal of devotional practice: for the perceiver and perceived to become one and for dualistic consciousness to end.
The path to this goal is worship (puja) of images, which involves yogic practices.
The degree to which the devotee is successful depends on technical ability and maturity.
A sacred image is a tool or representational device, a yantra, that is made the focus of magical and ritual spiritual functions.
These yantras may be figurative (images, pratima), auditory (sacred syllables, mantras), or linear, either with figurative or written symbols or purely geometric in form.
The forms are congruent in ritual function but are ordered in a hierarchy of decreasing significance from purely geometric to figurative.
The spiritual activity of the devotee gives significance to the yantra.
In the first stage, the devotee produces in his own inner being a visualization of divine essence and then projects it upon the sacred image placed before him.
Preliminary to this is purification of the area of devotion and of the ritual devices, after which the devotee proceeds to mantras, gestures, and breathing exercises to arouse the divine nature of the body.
Proceeding to meditation (dhyana), the devotee constructs the image of the god’s essential nature before continuing to the external puja, in which he breathes his energy (tejas) into flowers and touches the flowers to the image, thereby establishing the god in the image.
The rituals subsequently performed allow the devotee to experience himself as the divine.
At this point the second stage occurs: the energy unfolded plunges back into the state of enfolded being.
Because yantras, especially figurative images (pratima), are accurate copies of supernatural essences, they must correspond exactly to the deity of the heart visualized in detail in meditation, which is then projected onto the yantra.
Thus, the yantra must conform absolutely to canonical prescriptions.
It is the vessel and replication of the inner vision.
In meditation, the visualization fills up the entire field of vision and each detail is seen at once; the vision juxtaposes essential signs that must appear together to be a complete reproduction of supernatural essence.
This is why Indian sculpture is seen as a single unit and does not invite eye movement.
There is, moreover, no room for any decorative fashioning on the artist’s part; the yantra must be free from individual capriciousness.
Three factors ensure the accuracy of the repertoire of symbolic signs of the yantra: the literary tradition of myths that preserve descriptions of deities’ appearances, traditions of artistic craftsmanship that pass from father to son, and previous models handed down as standardized representations.
All that is left to the artist is the quality of artistic execution.
To assure the fidelity of the image to the inner vision, canons of proportions and a language of signs (iconography) particular to images are provided in the Puranas and other specialized texts.
Because yantras are diagrams of esoteric symbols, they are more analogous to scientific formulas than to artistic creations of individualistic genius.
Indian imagery appears static and still because it is geometrically determined by a theory of proportion that regulates the relative size of figures within a composition (based on a hierarchy of importance) and predetermines the algebraically calculated size of the body parts of a single figure.
Zimmer also elaborates on the geometric, symmetrical mandates of Tibetan Buddhism as linear yantra that are “road maps” of truth: of the unfolding of the emptiness from the center to the realm of maya, the phenomenal world at the periphery, and of the enfolding back to the center.
A mandate decorated with figures or written signs is a mosaic of symbols.
The rituals for visualization in Buddhism are similar to those of Hinduism, and the mandala is homologous in function to a Hindu yantra, whether figurative or linear.
And, with a flash of genius, Zimmer recognized that the stupa at Borobudur was “the most impressive mandala the art of Buddhism has ever created in the visible world as a symbol of its truth.”
The concentric galleries of the structure represent stages of increasing consciousness as the pilgrim ascends and progresses to the center, until, at the apex of the stupa, the devotee experiences his divine essence.
Remarkably, Zimmer never realized that a Hindu temple was also a three-dimensional mandala.
In Kunstform und Yoga, Zimmer described, as no one else had before, the Indian metaphysical worldview or conceptual framework within which Hindu and Buddhist images were produced and the instrumentality of these images for meditation.
Other original contributions were his explanations of the unfolding and enfolding process by which the devotee experienced the divine in himself and thus resolved the duality of the I and Not-I, the equivalence and hierarchy of yantra types, and the homology of mandalas and three-dimensional architecture.
As did Coomaraswamy, Zimmer recognized that art and religion were inseparable—indeed, art represents the divine through iconography—that images are visualizations by the worshiper, and that iconography and the proportions of images are determined by tradition.
Coomaraswamy, who pursued themes presented by Havell on the idealism of Indian art and the need to understand the intention of the artist, recognized the profundity of Zimmer’s work.
To understand Indian art as the maker and user did was central to his commentary to his Western audience.
According to Coomaraswamy, given Zimmer’s exposition of the instrumentality of Hindu imagery, no longer could the study of nature be the basis for interpreting stylistic sequences, and now that “why it is what it is” was understood and accepted, it was possible to trace stylistic sequences in time and place as records of cultural and spiritual movement.
Coomaraswamy seemed to imply that Zimmer’s work was the final statement on the metaphysics and aesthetics of Indian art and had established “spiritual movement” as the basis for style.
I would like to return to Coomaraswamy’s theory of art and the role of artists in traditional society in publications subsequent to Mediaeval Sinhalese Art to trace his theoretical development and to evaluate the impact Zimmer’s work had on his own.
He published three books—The Indian Craftsman (1909), The Arts and Crafts of India and Ceylon (1913), and the History of Indian and Indonesian Art (1927)—that in fact present little of his theory beyond that contained in his first book, although the second continued metaphysical speculations mentioned in Mediaeval Sinhalese Art.
It must be remembered that Coomaraswamy accepted a priori that traditional society was “normal” and that traditional culture anywhere in the world was equivalent to that of medieval Europe.
His writings increasingly relied on Western sources, particularly Meister Eckhart, to explain his views and expose the “abnormality” of contemporary culture.
There is a tendency also in his theoretical articles to refer more to “art” and less to particular objects.
In other words, his ideas became constructs from texts, less and less informed by direct observation.
As much as possible, I will use Coomaraswamy’s own words to convey the incremental complexity of his thought on his primary themes.
In The Dance of Śiva (1924) Coomaraswamy elaborated on the view that art was produced through yogic practices.
The process was the same for worshiper and artist, who in texts is termed equally shilpin, yogi, or sadhaka.
During meditation, the divinity appeared to the artist as if in a dream, and the brilliant image became the artist’s model.
In contrast to the worshiper, the artist would then proceed to represent the mental picture in objective form.
In other words, the work of art was completed before the representation was begun.
Myth, dream, and art were one and represented man’s innermost hopes and fears.
The artist obeyed a hierarchic canon and did not view his work from an aesthetic point of view but as that of a pious artisan to whom the theme was all important.
Beauty is what we “do to” a work of art, rather than a quality present in the object.
Coomaraswamy put forward significantly more substantial observations in The Transformation of Nature in Art (1934), and these reveal reliance on Zimmer’s scholarship.
In Asian tradition the mind of the artist visualizes the canonically prescribed form of the god as though from a great distance—from heaven, where the types of art exist in formal operation.
These types or prototypes are “those of sentient activity or functional utility conceivable only in a contingent world.”
Coomaraswamy suggests that nature is what is made intelligible by the artist through iconography, which consists of signs (abbreviated expressions of something known) and symbols (allusions to something unknown, but acknowledged to exist).
Because the artist uses a mental construct and not models in nature, the art is cerebral in character.
Having established these distinctions, Coomaraswamy then described the peculiarities of Oriental art in terms that incorporated Zimmer’s ideas and specific vocabulary.
The Indian icon is . . . a visual symbolism.
The “anthropomorphic” icon is of the same kind as a yantra, that is, a geometrical representation of the deity, or a mantra, that is, an auditory representation of the deity.
The Indian icon fills the whole field of vision at once, all is equally clear and equally essential; the eye is not led to range from one point to another, as in empirical vision, nor to seek a concentration of meaning in one part more than another.
The parts of the icon are not organically related, for it is not contemplated that they should function biologically, but ideally related.
The relation is mental rather than functional.
This was, in fact, a summary of Kunstform und Yoga that was taken verbatim from his review of Zimmer’s book.
Elsewhere in The Transformation of Nature in Art, Coomaraswamy, describing the process of worship, follows Zimmer’s formulation: yoga leads to identity of consciousness with the desired object (deity) through the use of trance.
Mantras, flowers and offerings are made, and the deity is worshiped as the self.
The process of unfolding into the phenomenal world and enfolding back to the absolute during yoga that Zimmer identified is also woven into Coomaraswamy’s later works.
In describing once again, but in greater detail, the process of meditation by which the artist visualizes the deity to be made, Coomaraswamy states that once the vision is complete, the artist returns to himself.
Likewise, he recognized that the Hindu temple was a three-dimensional mandala and applied Zimmer’s analysis of the structure of Tibetan mandalas and their function in meditation to the form and function of the temple.
The temple is the universe in a likeness, its dark interior is occupied by a single image or symbol of the informing Spirit, while externally its walls are covered with representations of the Divine Powers in all their manifested multiplicity.
One proceeds inwards from multiplicity to unity, just as in contemplation; and on returning again to the outer world, one sees all the innumerable forms that the Agent within assumes in his playful activity.
Coomaraswamy does not footnote Zimmer’s work in these passages.
It seems probable that Zimmer’s insights had resonated so closely with Coomaraswamy’s own thinking that the two were no longer distinguishable.
To put it another way, Zimmer’s ideas did not so much transform Coomaraswamy’s thoughts as provide a broader metaphysical framework for them and lend a greater authority to his elaborations.
Did Coomaraswamy’s work have a strong impact on Zimmer’s thinking subsequent to Kunstform und Yoga?
None of Zimmer’s scholarly publications that I have read indicate this.
After the publication of Kunstform und Yoga, Zimmer began to study the Puranas extensively, and from 1932 onward he sought to combine myth and psychology in order to understand Indian thought.
The only possible acknowledgment of Coomaraswamy’s work may be Zimmer’s choice of themes to be elaborated on while teaching.
One example may be the extensive analysis of the lotus published in The Art of Indian Asia.
Coomaraswamy had stated that the lotus was significant in Indian art in Mediaeval Sinhalese Art.
Zimmer also recognized this in Kunstform und Yoga.
In 1931 Coomaraswamy published a study on yakshas (nature spirits) that established the association of these spirits, as well as the lotus, the makara (a quasi-crocodilian creature), overflowing pots, and river goddesses, with water cosmology.
Coomaraswamy offered a more extensive analysis of the lotus in Elements of Buddhist Iconography (1935).
But, even if Zimmer was aware of these writings, in characteristic fashion he discussed the lotus symbol in The Art of Indian Asia and in Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization in the context of his own observations based on the Puranas.
Moreover, three other equally prominent themes of The Art of Indian Asia—the archetypal mother goddess, ideals of Indian feminine beauty, and the theme of the unity of opposites—were pure Zimmer.
Zimmer’s comment that Coomaraswamy was a source of inspiration to him may have referred to Coomaraswamy’s specialized writings, but it is not obvious that he incorporated specific information from them in his lecture notes.
Indeed, Zimmer may have been referring solely to Coomaraswamy’s History of Indian and Indonesian Art, which had been in circulation since 1927 and was therefore available to Zimmer from an early date, and which he ultimately used as a text.
How successful was either Zimmer or Coomaraswamy in making Indian art more understandable?
Essentially, neither attempted to refute head-on the criticisms of Indian art as expressed by Birdwood in 1910.
For both understood those criticisms to be founded on a misconception.
Rather, each argued that Indian art should be evaluated by its own standards, which were different from those of the West.
To this end, each explained in great detail the characteristics, production, and function of Indian art to confirm that it was utilitarian and that its form was predetermined by canonical prescriptions—to assure an iconographically correct reproduction of an inner vision.
Moreover, divine essence, rather than nature, was the content of this inner vision.
In describing these characteristics of Indian art, each surely succeeded.
Coomaraswamy subsequently went on to say that the measure of the quality of a sculpture produced in traditional society was the degree to which it conformed to the artist’s inner vision.
As Mitter has pointed out, since no one other than the artist could know the content of this inner vision, Coomaraswamy’s stance eliminated any objective criteria by which to evaluate Indian art and thus foreclosed any attempt to describe Indian art in concrete, nonmetaphysical terms.
Not only were objective criteria lacking but even the vocabulary employed by Coomaraswamy and Zimmer reinforced negative Western judgments.
Terms such as magical, dream, and vision unfortunately served to maintain the stereotype of the irrationality of Indian art prevalent in both English and German scholarship.
In much the same way, the emphasis on the fidelity of the artisan to tradition reinforced the perceived lack of creativity among Indian artists and the static character of their art.
Neither Zimmer nor Coomaraswamy addressed this problem directly.
There is certainly no denying the instrumentality of images for meditation, that images represent the divine, or that images were made according to iconographic and proportional canons.
Even within these parameters, however, there is evidence of formal and iconographic innovation in Indian art over the centuries.
But Zimmer merely says that tradition determines the formal elements in an image; these elements are constant to type but vary depending upon the era and geographical area.
Coomaraswamy states, somewhat vaguely, that human idiosyncrasy—something of the artist—is responsible for style.
But these ideas are never reconciled with the major premise in their works: that the image is a replication of an inner visualization of immutable divine essence.
The question is, following their logic, How was the original image, which was then handed down from generation to generation, formulated?
And, if the divine is immutable, what or who is responsible for subsequent changes in imagery?
These are the most significant questions that both neglected.
By emphasizing exclusive reliance on metaphysical experience as the basis for artistic expression, both Coomaraswamy and Zimmer, like their less sympathetic contemporaries, denied the Indian artisan the capacity to exercise a rational decision-making process.
Indeed, this was as true of the “transcendentalists” as it was of the “archeologists,” who simply neglected the human element.
Coomaraswamy states that the artist visualizes the image “as if in a dream,” which implies nonrational, uncontrolled activity.
Zimmer is somewhat more ambiguous about the meditative activity of the artist but states emphatically that the image must be an exact replica of the inner vision (as determined by tradition) and free from individual capriciousness.
There is no room for innovation or personal interpretation.
In so earnestly attempting to establish that the criteria for judging Indian art should be different from those for Western art, both neglected issues that could have added greater nuance and depth to their arguments.
It seems reasonable to argue that Zimmer and Coomaraswamy largely failed to consider human agency because both assumed the primacy of texts.
Consulting texts per se is not inappropriate, but both depended on this source to the neglect of more extensive observation of an equally important primary source: sculptures and temples in context.
Coomaraswamy did travel in India, but in his writings there are few descriptions of the formal characteristics of sculpture or temples.
From his initial publication in 1908 until his last works in 1947, there is a decrease in discussion of the actual art and a corresponding expansion of textual references.
His theoretical writings, as mentioned above, became constructs from texts and were less and less the result of direct observation.
Zimmer’s contextual experience was limited to viewing sculptures in museums and in photographs, and his observations of architecture were based solely on photographs.
As Kramrisch noted in her review, Zimmer’s response was to the mythological content, rather than the formal characteristics, of the art.
The fact remains, though, that iconography did change through the centuries, as did symbols.
By insisting on the primacy of texts, which both Coomaraswamy and Zimmer interpreted as expressing the unchanging, eternal divine, neither could explain the development of a particular form or account for regional variations on it except in vague generalities.
Precisely because artifactual material can be situated in time and place—as texts often cannot—they are a more faithful recording of development and transmutations enacted by human agents even within prescribed parameters.
Greater understanding of artifactual material would have made that human element more obvious.
This might in turn not only have led them to question the absolute authority of the textual tradition but also have expanded the scope of inquiry to present more substantive answers to European criticisms.
Another primary source was recognized, but neglected, by Coomaraswamy: living artisans.
He had consulted a Kandyan artisan when writing Mediaeval Sinhalese Art, and even as late as 1927 he called for a detailed study of the methods of building a modern Hindu temple in Tamil Nadu, where the Kammalar caste was still active.
Curiously, though, he abandoned the use of contemporary artisans as informants after the 1908 volume.
Informants could have shed light on the human element in the making of Indian art and could have described with a richness of detail not available in cryptic texts the complexity of the artistic process.
But as Coomaraswamy delved into theory, which caused him to glorify the past and to reject the present (an involution that in fact justified his rejection of the present), he concluded that in the colonial period Hindus no longer understood their own art.
One promising direction in his early work thus never bore fruit.
The role and practice of the artist and the degree of innovation throughout the history of Indian art are essential topics that are now beginning to be explored with the participation of practicing artisans.
When these issues are better understood, it may be possible to develop a more complex and culturally sensitive understanding of Indian art and theory.
A more thorough understanding of the production of art in the South Asian context should consider the primary sources mentioned above, texts and artisans, as well as a third, the patron.
Texts transmit tradition; the architect/artisan embodies that tradition by learning and practice and is the agent of production; and the patron is the activator of what may be termed a dialogical process that results in the construction of a temple with an iconographic program that explicates a chosen theology.
Each primary source participates in the dialogue; each contributes knowledge, experience, and a set of expectations, or individual “vocabularies,” to the language of the discourse that results in the temple and its associated imagery.
For those of us in the present analyzing the past, the formal and iconographic elements of each temple and sculpture, and the chronological development of these same elements, afford another primary source to be considered in addition to texts, artisans/architects (names, castes, guilds) and patrons/donors (name, status, sectarian beliefs).
Once completed, the temple and associated icons constituted one element of a local or regional tradition, referred to and expanded on by subsequent architects and artisans.
In studying the past, the artifactual material itself is a source, not just a product, of discourse.
The totality of the “discourse is dialogical” theory expands the dimensions of the inquiry beyond that of texts and a limited number of artifacts to include social and human factors.
Metaphysics expounded in texts would then be only one factor among several to describe in more concrete terms why Indian art “is the way it is.”
Such considerations notwithstanding, understood within their cultural and intellectual contexts Zimmer and Coomaraswamy remain two of the Promethean interpreters of Indian art of the twentieth century.
Each passionately and intelligently explicated his perspectives on the subject.
Despite what seems in retrospect to be the limitations of their work, they were among the first, and were certainly the most articulate, of those who attempted to understand Indian art on its own terms. Margaret H. Case, Zimmer and Coomaraswamy – Visions and Visualizations.
Heinrich Zimmer Coming Into Its Own
Carl Jung Depth Psychology Blog
