श्रीवत्स- भारतीय कला का एक मांगलिक प्रतीक - Sri Vatsa- An Auspicious Motif of Indian Art (An Old and Rare Book)

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

Foreword In every age and every culture the human beings have given expression to their religious and spiritual experience by means of symbols. Since these symbols are outcome of religious thoughts matured in course of centuries, they often hold in them-selves key to an understanding of the currents of religious thoughts which have gone into making of these objects of art. Such symbols usually get so firmly associated with a culture that they persist for many thousand years and fail to disappear even when the religious meaning that they were originally conceived to convey, is no more relevant to a society. In such a case the society superimposes a new meaning upon them and accepts them with a fresh significance. This is also the case when these symbols migrate from one cultural milieu to the other. The most notable examples of religious symbols with multi-cultural affiliations are perhaps those of Svastika and Srivatsa which are conspicuous by their ubiquitous appearance as auspicious marks in India and elsewhere.

The symbol of Srivatsa ("the child of Mother Goddess") has a long history. Dr. A. L. Srivstava has ably shown that the symbol is fairly wide-spread in ancient world and that its origin can be traced back to a simplified representation of a human being which was artistically embellished in the course of development and later stylised. The use of the symbol of Srivatsa may have been associated with the worship of Mother Goddess who is found to have been beautifully depicted with an inscription reading Siri Ma (Sri Mata) in the art of Bharhut (2nd B.C.) and elsewhere.

This is the first book on this interesting theme written in any language which takes into account not only the vast iconographical material on this subject available in the plastic art of India and out-side world but which also takes recourse to the relevant literary sources and tries to check and corroborate the results drawn from the study of art from the Shastra.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages