Unit 8- South, East & Southeast Asia Study Guide

• South, East, and Southeast Asia art existed from 300 B.C.E. to 1980 C.E.
• West and Central Asia art existed from 500 B.C.E. to 1980 C.E.
• Art creation is influenced by accessible materials and manufacturing techniques.
• Indian artists use diverse materials like ceramics and metal.
• Buddhist stupas are unique to India.
• Indian art uses stone and wood carving extensively.
• Wall and manuscript painting are Indian specialties.
• Tapestry is an Indian specialty.
• The culture, beliefs, and environment of an area significantly shape the creation, subject matter, and location of artworks.
• Indus Valley civilizations were highly advanced.
• India's cultural centers were home to major civilizations and dynasties.
• India saw the development of major philosophies and religions.
• Early Indian religions distinguished the cosmic from the earthly; this view was adopted by Hinduism and Buddhism.
• Indian religions inspired artistic forms like the Buddhist stupa and the Hindu temple.
• Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism readily use images.
• Art is influenced by audience, function, and patron.
• Indian art has a tradition of depicting mythical and historical narratives.
• Architecture is generally religious.
• Cultural exchange through war, trade, and travel influences art.
• Asian art impacts global trends and is also shaped by them.
• Trade routes connected Asia to the rest of the world.
• Christianity and Islam have significantly impacted the arts in India.
• Art history evolves through changing theories and interpretations.
• Art history is subject to differing interpretations and evolving theories.
• The fertile Indus and Ganges valleys have seen numerous invasions and assimilations.
• Indian society is a blend of various populations, creating a cosmopolitan culture.
• India has eighteen official languages; Hindi is spoken natively by just 20% of the population.
• India includes Hindus, Muslims, Jains, Buddhists, Christians, Sikhs, and tribal religions.
• India's diverse geography ranges from mountains to deserts and tropical forests.
• Arts play a vital role in Indian life.
• Rulers commissioned buildings, sculptures, and murals for civic, religious, and personal glory.
• Indian monuments combine arts with artists working under a team leader to maintain uniformity.
• Religious advisors and priests ensured monuments follow canonical texts.
• Artists trained as apprentices in workshops.

Buddhist Philosophy

• Buddhism is a spiritual practice that helps people cope with suffering.
• Buddha (563-483 B.C.E.) rejected royal life for asceticism, not seen as a god.
• Buddhism sees life as suffering compounded by endless rebirth.
• Buddhists aim to end rebirth and achieve oneness, extinguishing the soul.
• Spiritual merit is gained through good works, charity, love, and religious devotion.
• Buddhist art uses rich cultural iconography.
• The Lion is a symbol of Buddha's royalty.
• The Wheel represents Buddha's law.
• The Lotus symbolizes Buddha's pure nature.
• Columns with a wheel symbolize Buddha's teachings.
• The Empty Throne represents Buddha's presence.

Buddhist Figures

• Buddha depictions are uniform across time and distance.
• Buddhas usually have a compact pose with little negative space.
• Seated Buddhas are often in the lotus position.
• Drapery varies by region: tight-fitting in Central India, heavy robes in Gandhara.
• Buddhas are frontal, symmetrical, with a nimbus, or halo.
• Bodhisattvas assist Buddhas and are sometimes attached to the nimbus.
• Buddha's moods are detached and meditative; hand gestures (mudras) show actions and feelings.
• The head features a top knot (ushnisha), tight curls, and an urna between the brows.
• Rejection of jewelry symbolizes disdain for courtly life.
• Statues feature a base (predella) that includes donor figures or stories.
• Buddhist art includes yakshas and yakshis, nature spirits from Indian popular religion.
• Yaksha depictions emphasize male and female traits respectively.

Bamiyan Buddhas

• Bamiyan Buddhas, Gandharan, 400-800, were destroyed 2001, cut from rock with plaster and polychrome paint in Afghanistan.
• These were the first colossal Buddhas.
• There were two standing Buddhas: one 175 feet tall, the other 115 feet.

Bamiyan Context and Function

• Smaller Buddha: Sakyamuni, the historical Buddha.
• Larger Buddha: Vairocana, the universal Buddha.
• Niches shaped like a halo around the body.
• Buddhas were originally covered with pigment and gold.
• Cave galleries contained wall paintings of seated Buddhas.
• Pilgrimage site on the Silk Road.
• Pilgrims could walk into passageways to the Buddha's shoulders.
• Legs were carved in the round to allow circumambulation.
• Caves were part of Buddhist monasteries, chapels, and sanctuaries.
• Located on a branch of the Silk Road; a trading and religious hub.
• The Buddhas served as models for rock-cut images in China.
• The Taliban destroyed the Buddhas in 2001 as an act of iconoclasm.

Jowo Rinpoche

• Jowo Rinpoche enshrined in the Jokhang Temple, Yarlung Dynasty, believed to have been brought to Tibet in 641, made of gilt metals with semiprecious stones, pearls, paint, and offerings in Lhasa, Tibet.
• The statue was thought to be blessed by the Buddha and made in his likeness.
• It disappeared in the 1960s during China's Cultural Revolution.
• In 1983, the lower part was found in a rubbish heap and the upper part in Beijing; restored in 2003.
• Enshrined in Jokhang Temple; Tibet's oldest Buddhist temple.
• Served as a proxy for the Buddha.
• Often decorated, clothed, and presented with offerings.
• Buddha Sakyamuni is depicted as a young man of twelve.
• This is the most sacred Buddhist image in Tibet.
• "Jowo" means lord, and "Khang" means house.

Stupas

• Stupas are the principal place of early Buddhist worship, a mound-shaped shrine lacking an interior.
• Stupas are reliquaries; nearness to their contents provides spiritual merit.
• Visitors walk a staircase from base to drum.
• Buddhists pray by walking clockwise.
• Its shape and movement with the sun give the stupa cosmic symbolism.
• Stupas symbolize Mt. Meru; which is the center of the world that connects earth and heaven.
• Stupas have a central mast with three umbrellas symbolizing the Buddha, the Law, and the Monks.
• A square enclosure symbolizes a tree with a fence.
• Four toranas, at the cardinal points, serve as gateways.

Great Stupa

• Great Stupa, Buddhist, Mauyra, late Sunga Dynasty, 300 B.C.E.-100 C.E., is made of stone masonry, with sandstone on the dome, in Sanchi, Madhya Pradesh, India.
• A pilgrimage site, this Buddhist shrine is mound-shaped and contains relics.
• Worshippers walk clockwise around the base of the stupa.
• Circular motion symbolizes the endless cycle of birth and rebirth.
• Three umbrellas represent Buddha, Buddha's law, and monastic orders with a railing.
• A double stairway leads to a walkway for circumambulation.
• It was originally painted white.
• The hemispherical dome replicates the dome of heaven exhibiting a seated Buddha.
• Toranas (gateways) are at the cardinal points (east, south, west, and north).
• Orientation and circumambulation mirrors the sun's course.
• Toranas feature richly carved scenes; Buddha is represented by an empty throne or a tree.
• Reliefs depict the sacred sites of Shakyamuni Buddha and jataka stories.
• It has horror vacui composition and high-relief sculpture with pre-Buddhist Yakshi figures that symbolize fertility.
• Donors included women, common people, and monks.

Borobudur Temple

• Borobudur Temple, Sailendra Dynasty, c. 750-842, is made of volcanic stone masonry in Central Java, Indonesia.
• The pyramid is aligned with the four cardinal points.
• The square-shaped plan has four entry points, is built on a low hill, with its rubble faced with carved volcanic stone.
• The Buddhist monument contains 504 life-size Buddhas and 1,460 narrative relief sculptures.
• It has 72 openwork stupas containing a Buddha, each performing a preaching mudra.
• Six square terraces are stacked with three circular terraces on top.
• The second level recedes for processions and each terrace represents a level of enlightenment.
• It is divided into three sections, representing the levels of Buddhist cosmology, the base, the body and the superstructure.
• Base: represents the lowest level of experience and the world of desire
• Body: people abandon earthly desires
• Superstructure: an formless world, in which a person experiences reality in its purest stage.

Borobudur Function and Context

• Used a place of pilgramage; built as a stupa.
• Circumambulation occurred on each terrace; with six square terraces that have three circular tiers and a great stupa.
• Iconographically complex with many levels of meaning.

Hindu Philosophy

• Hinduism is a diverse religion with many sects devoted to various gods.
• Those who declare themselves to be orthodox Hindus accept the Vedic texts as divinely inspired.
• A caste of ritual specialists (Brahmins) officiates between gods and people.
• Through good actions and prayer, Hindus can break the cycle of reincarnation.
• Shiva dances periodically to destroy and recreate the world.
• Brahma, Vishnu, Laksmi, and Parvati are important deities.

Hindu Temple Sculpture

• Temple sculpture integrates with architecture as a giant art piece.
• Mithuna (divine couples) on exteriors and doorways exhibit sexual allusions.
• Hindu sculptures accentuate sinuous curves; dance poses are common.
• Surfaces have organic, geometric designs, lotus flowers, and temple bells.
• Images in the "womb" of the temple are idols invoked with divinity.
• Touching the image touches the god; few can do this.
• Images are treated with respect and viewed through darshan; puja occurs via temple priests.

Shiva as Lord of Dance (Nataraja)

• Shiva as Lord of Dance (Nataraja), Hindu, India (Tamil Nadu), Chola Dynasty, c. 11th century C.E., cast bronze, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
• Shiva has four hands with one sounding the drum while another carries a flame of destruction, but the other two offer the abhaya mudra, a gesture of fearlessness.
• It has an epicene quality showing a male figure with flying logs off hair terminating in rearing cobra heads.
• Shiva dances in a flaming nimbus with one foot on the Demon of Ignorance.

Shiva as a deity

• Fire around Shiva represents Hindu cosmos borders; with flowers when carried in processions.
• It becomes a receptacle; as the sculpture is royally treated with gifts, food, and incense.
• It has a hole for processions under the sculpture.
• Shiva destroys the universe to allow rebirth and there is belief in salvation.

Hindu Temples

• Hindu temples are residences for a god, not for congregational worship.
• They are built with small interior rooms for priests and individual worshippers.
• The "Womb of the World" houses the sacred statue.
• Corbelled-vaulting is prefered to create the internal cave within the temple, with thick walls protecting the deity.
• An ante-chamber precedes the cella; a hypostyle hall allows congregants to participate.
• Northern temples have a vertical character; large towers set the decorative scheme. Placed on high pedestals, the temples command the countryside. Also feature "temple cities" in south India.
• Temple exteriors over covered with sculpture.

Lakshmana Temple

• Lakshmana Temple, Hindu, Chandella Dynasty, 930–950, sandstone, Khajuraho, India.
• The temple is placed on an pedestal to be seen from a distance suggesting the peaks of mountains.
• The main characteristics are compact proportions within the east/west axis meaning it receives direct lights from the rising sun.
• The building is series of shapes to become a large tower
• Containing a garbha griha meaning a very small room meant for individual worship .
• Ashlar masonry unites the temple, sculpture integrates harmoniously, figures are sensuous with revealing clothing, is sexually expressed and dedicated to Vishnu.

Lakshmana Temple Context and Patron

• This is a grouped Hindu with a series of other temples in Khajuraho.
• Yashawarman, a leader in the Chandella Dynasty, ruled and Dharga completed the temple.
• Worshipes more in a clockwise with staircases to circumambulate the temple

Angkor

• Angkor, the temple and city, Hindu, Angkor Dynasty is made in the 800-1400 using stone masonry with sandstone in Cambodia.
• The main form is a temple and mountain surrounded with four corner towers. Also includes the corbelled gallery roods and corbelled vaulting.
• The content is all made and carved of relief sculptural including rhytimic dance

Angkor Function and Context

• Dedicated sculptures represnt Vishnu .
• May have been intended as King's mausoleum, the temples primarily functioned as the home of the god.
• Angkor wat was constructed by Kings such has Suryarvan and devouted Buddhist and Hindu.

Painting

• Indians excel at painting miniatures, illuminated text and portrats.
• Their composition is both colorful and crowde.

Bichitr, Jahangir Preferring a Sufi Shaikh to Kings

• Bichitr, Jahangir Preferring a Sufi Shaikh to Kings- has content.
• Jahangir is the source of all lighting which is surrounded by halos and seated in a throne with pearls.
• holy men are placed in an area of sprituality

Vocabulary

• Ashlar masonry: carefully cut and grooved stones that support a building without the use of concrete or other kinds of masonry
• Bas-relief: a very shallow relief structure.
• Bodhisattva: Deity who refrain for helpers
• Buddha : enlightenings and sakumaya
• Cella: Main is a room of gods
• Dharsan: a deity worhsupper
• Garba grina : womb with a hindu temple gods images
• Horror vicaui: fear of empty
• Hypostyle: support by columns
• Iconolcasm: destroy religious images
• Mandorla: almonds shapes
• Mithinua: ritual mationgs and physicallity.
• Mudra: symbloc hands
• Nivariana:soul beings
• Puja: hindu player
• sakumaya: buddha and name for birthplace.

Unit 8 focuses on the art of South, East, and Southeast Asia, spanning from roughly 300 BCE to the late 20th century, covering diverse cultures and empires with prominent artistic traditions like Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, and Islam, showcasing key monuments like the Taj Mahal, Angkor Wat, and the Forbidden City, while highlighting the influence of trade routes like the Silk Road on artistic exchange and fusion across the region.