PERFORMANCE AND NARRATION IN INDIAN ART II

Debashish Banerji

Coming of the Hindu Temple

Large horizontal panels or wall surfaces are not so easy to design in the limited space of an
encolsed temple. Temples provided niches on their sides, which the circumambulating devotee
encountered following a predictable sequence. In the short space and time of circumambulation
in front of an image, the demand of the experience moves from the evocation of rasa through
performative means to the static complexity of darshan. In the Gupta period, it seems as if town
and wilderness provided alternative habitii for contact with the gods, temples for towns and cave
sites for the wilderness. Yet the practice of making cave sites fell into disuse by the 8th /9th c.

Hindu temple circumambulation took a non-dual approach to the inner-outer properties of

"seeing," the senses being made the gates to spiritual relation and identity. Here, the placement
of divine representations in niches in the temple outer walls along the circumambulation path
often follows an ideologically meaningful" program related to a structure of initiation,
identification, liberation from the lower" or destructive powers and transformation. We find this
structure at work from the earliest extant Hindu sites of worship, such as cave 6 in Udaygiri (5th
c.), where a cella for the worship of Shiva is flanked by a sequence of Ganesha, Vishnu and a
stylish Gupta dwarapala on one side of a door leading to a linga shrine (garbha griha) and
another dwarpala, another instance of Vishnu and Durga slaying the buffalo demon
(Mahisasuramardini) on the other side (Cave 6, Udayagiri, 5th c. CE). Ganesha (image:
Ganesha, Cave 6, Udaygiri, 5th c. CE. Chloritic schist) is a god with an elephant head and a
human body, a son of Parvati, Shivas consort, and is here shown ithyphallic for his Shaiva
connotations to the sect of followers known as Pashupats. Traditionally and for all Hindu sects,
Ganesha initiates the relationship with the divine realm, and represents the liminal integration of
life-forms, physical, animal, human and divine. He represents initiation. Vishnu (image:
Standing figure of Vishnu with personifications of his attributes, Cave 6, Udayagiri, Gupta 5th
century CE), with crown on head, mace and discus in two hands and a garland (vaijayantimala)
held in the other two, represents the solar principle of protection (preservation), the Grace which
accompanies us in our journey. He also represents solar darshan, the intimate contact with the
integral divine. I believe the two Vishnus flanking the dwarapalas on either side of the door,
represent these two functional emanations of Vishnu, one related to protection and guidance and
the other related to revelation and identity. In between is the eternal moment of (weak) aniconic
nonduality. And after, is Durga, goddess slayer of the Buffalo-demon (mahishasura) (image:
Durga slaying the Buffalo Demon, Cave 6, Udaygiri, 5th c. CE). She represents victory over the
forces of ego and lethargy and transformation of the nature. Hence, liberation (mukti) and
transformation (siddhi) are her gifts. Durga here has ten hands with weapons and holds the
garland of victory (vaijayantimala) over her head. This arrangement of images reflects a Hindu
Shaiva cosmic view, in the sense of a Shaiva utilization of emerging Hindu sects of this period,
as constellating around Vishnu and the Devi, best embodied in Durga. Ganeshas quasi-
independent status is maintained through the requirement of his puja at the start of any sequence
of actions (kriya). Vishnu represents the guru and the embodied goal. Shiva and Shakti in union
in their primal aniconic (or weak aniconic) form strip form down to the simultaneous moment of
destruction and creation, deconstruction and synthesis. This is what the open door offers.
Returning from its nondual duality one beholds again Vishnu as the solar godhead, who is yet
intimately oneself. Finally, in the descending path, one returns to ones earthly reality, where the
forces of inconscience and ignorance which are habitual responses of the lifeform, are rudely
smitten awake and either destroyed or transformed by the power of the new consciousness born
from the contact with Shiva-Shakti and Vishnu-Maya.

Anantasayin Dasavatara Temple, Deogarh

In a more or less contemporary (5th c CE) brick temple to Vishnu from the same region
(Deogarh) (image: Dashavatara Vishnu Temple, Gupta c. 425 CE), we find the walls carrying
images of Vishnu signifying a similar progressional sequence. In keeping with the dawning of
day, Hindu temples are oriented on an east-west axis, with the entrance at the east and the shrine
at the western end. Here, interestingly, we discover a reverse circumambulatory order, an
uncommon tradition usually related to Tantric sects, marked by the presence of a Ganesha image
to the north of the entrance. In a niche on the northern wall, we come across the initiatory scene
of the myth of creation as told in the Vishnu Puranas - Vishnu (image: Deogarh, Vishnu
Anantasayin, Dasavatara Temple, Gupta, c. 425 CE). Vishnu is asleep on his bed of Time, the
coils of the infinite serpent, Ananta, attended to by his consort Lakshmi and adulated by the other
gods and goddesses. A lotus extends from his navel with the Creator Brahma seated on it. Under
Vishnu, in a lower register, his personified weapons and the disturbing elements, Madhu and
Kaitab are depcited.

We have already encountered this image of Vishnu in Udaygiri, but the image on the temple wall
of the Dasavatara temple, is both more compact and more articulated than the Udaygiri Vishnu.
A body aesthetic based on bends and poses and a natural use of divine iconometry gives to
these figures an aristocratic calm and relaxed sensuous beauty that are the hallmarks of the Gupta
canon. They bespeak the formation of a cultural elite that attempted to attain mukti (liberation)
through bhukti (enjoyment) and bhukti through mukti, within samsara and through its two
engagements, kama (the pursuit of desire) and artha (the pursuit of material and cultural capital).
It is difficult to tell, based on imagery, of the degree of success or failure of this enterprise, but
the imagery reflects the consciousness of certain ideals embodied in posthuman forms through
art. This image of the Hour of Creation represents the dawning of Divine Consciousness after the
initiation.

On the western wall, is a scene of two ascetic hermit brothers, Nara and Narayana, doing
meditation (dhyana) and chanting (japa) (image: Deogarh, Nara-Narayana, Dasavatara
Temple, Gupta, c. 425 CE). Nara literally means man and Narayana, God. In the panel,
Narayana can be distinguished from Nara both because he looks the elder brother and because he
has four hands. These brothers, supposedly joint avatars of Vishnu, symbolize the union of man
and god, and represent the power of the reciprocal relationship for the good of the world and the
destruction of evil. In this case, they represent Vishnus power of Preservation and reciprocally,
the power of Identification.

On the southern wall, is a panel depicting the story of Gajendramoksha (image: Deogarh, Nara-
Narayana, Dasavatara Temple, Gupta, c. 425 CE), the liberation of the king of elephants,
Gajendra. The king elephant had gone with his herd to the river bank to drink in the evening. But
a hungry underwater snake, Naga, dragged at the king so as to draw it into the water and
consume it. Gajendra, after struggling with the Naga to his last ounce, surrendered himself to
Vishnu. Vishnu heard his call and intervened to release Gajendra from the grip of the Naga. This
panel represents Vishnus power of Destruction leading to liberation (moksha). Thus, here too,
we see the performative structure of initiation, preservation/identification and liberation repeated
in the path of circumambulation.

We have noted in the previous chapter, how this Dasavatara temple was of a panchayatana type,
which means that the temple we considered was at the center of a 5-temple group, the other four
situated at the four corners of the Vishnu temple. In that case, we would need to consider our
Vishnu sequence as a second and inner track of a two rotation circumambulation. The outer
circle would consist of the other four shrines, though we couldnt be sure if the
circumambulation was meant to be clockwise or anticlockwise. Assuming a Smarta
configuration and keeping to the convention of Ganesha first, these would be Ganesha, Surya,
Shiva, Durga. Ganesha would initiate, Surya would preserve, Shiva would liberate (destroying
obstacles and attachments) and Durga would further destroy what hides, and transform. This
circle would open the consciousness of the devotee to the transformation process. Moving on
into the inner circle, Vishnu would be creator, preserver and destroyer, a monotheism of Vedic
Purusha or Surya, co-existing with the monism of Liberation coded into Shaiva philosophy
(darshan).

Early Chola Successors

South Indian Shiva temples patronized by the early Chola kings (9th- end of 10th c.) reflect this
tradition through a similar standardized imagery. As in all cases, these temples (image:
Brahmapurishwara temple, Pullamangai, 10th c. CE) are also oriented on an east-west axis and
follow the usual clockwise circumambulation direction. In most of these temples, we may expect
two images to the south and north each (one on the mandapa (assembly hall) and one on the
vimana (shrine area)) and one image to the west. In sequence, these will be Ganesha on the south
wall of the mandapa, Dakshinamurti on the south wall of the vimana, an icon of the principal
dedicatory aspect of Shiva on the west wall, Brahma on the north wall of the vimana and Durga
on the north wall of the mandapa. If Ganesha (image: Ganesha Brahmapurishwara South,
Pallava, c. 8th century) takes us past the threshold into the divine realm, it is Dakshinamurti
(image: Dakshinamurti Srinivasanallur South Vimana, Pallava, c. 8th century) who initiates us
through silence for (darshana) and union. Dakshinamurti (literally south-facing) is Shiva in the
form of a teacher. He is young, is deeply peaceful, has a large head of coiled hair and sits in the
relaxed royal pose (lalitasana). He dominates the demon of forgetfulness (apasmara) with his
lowered leg and has four hands, the lower right of which is raised in a Fear not (abhaya)
gesture (hasta). Below him sit his disciples, yogis, ganas (dwarves) and animals, such as tigers
and serpents. He teaches all these disciples telepathically.

The icon on the western wall (image: Lingodbhava Brahmapurishwara West, Pallava, c. 8th
century), closest to the garbha griha, represents the principal deity of the temple and faces the
viewer frontally inviting contemplation and darshan. This is an opportunity for a transcendence
of humanity and an initial experience of identity with the divine.

The northern niche of the vimana often features Brahma (image: Brahma, Brahmapurishwara
North Vimana, Pallava, c. 8th century). After the identification of darshan, Brahma represents
the power of a new spiritual birth. Finally, Durga on the northern wall of the mandapa (image:
Durga, Brahmapurishwara North Mandapa, Pallava, c. 8th century) ensures victory over the
cosmic pulls of the lower Nature and liberates us into a transformed existence.

Concept of Darshan
A word needs to be said here about the concept of darshan vis--vis the performances of
spectatorship in temples or of sacred Hindu art. The word literally means "seeing" but its
connotations are very different from the meaning of this word in western cultures. Darshana is
used to describe the act of "seeing" a temple deity, the encounter with a "realized being" or guru
and it is also the term used for Indic spiritual philosophies. It means an act of seeing in which the
distinction between subject and object is lost in an experience of non-duality. This is more
clearly understandable in the case of the guru where "darshan" is a mutuality of seeing, an
experience in which the disciple (shishya) feels "merged" in or subjectively united with the guru
and the sense of sight is a gate for identity. In viewing the deity at the temple, a similar sense of
"seeing" is connoted in the mind of the devotee. The icons are living forms in matter which "look
back" at the viewer, a mutuality of sight which bestows Grace and in the ultimate sense, the
spiritual experience of union (yoga) or liberation (moksha). The eyes of the deity thus become
windows of transcendental communication and expression. Special eye-opening rituals are part
of the process by which iconic installation is conducted in temples and temporal worship (puja).

Today, much of the art that would be meaningful within the matrix of such performances stands
in isolation as objects of aesthetic enjoyment or national glory in galleries and museums. But the
performative matrix of Indic art has not been completely stripped from even such objects. In
Indian museums one often finds a flower or two near the feet of such images, offered in worship
by a visitor, even surreptitiously in spite of the institutional strictures against such practices and
the guards employed to enforce such strictures.

Darshan and agency

Ideas of darshan and human-divine relation also relate to the performances of image-making
undertaken by artists/sculptors in India. As touched on earlier, artists were a disadvantaged caste
in the Hindu social system, and operated in professional guilds composed of master artists
(sthapati acharya) and their disciples. The acharya is believed to be a multi-disciplinary master
designer/architect/artist/craftsman whose conceptions were executed by a group of other trained
workers. These professional workers undertook commissions of different sects and religious
groups, and whatever their own beliefs, came to develop an alternate religion of art-practice with
its own disciplinary norms and rituals pertaining to the midwifery of the birth of god in material
form and the experience of union or identity with it. In the building of statues, for example, upon
carving of the head, it was kept wrapped around the region of the eyes with cloth, until the rest of
the image was completed and ready for consecration. The eyes were "opened" only at this final
stage, when the image was supposed to be the embodiment of god, and capable of darshan."
(image: Brahmani. Chola, probably 9th century. Granite). Such a practice allowed the
artists/craftsmen ownership over the process of bestowing divinity, something magical to their
caste, which made them gods and devotees of gods.

Monks, priests, devotees and artists were hardly the only agents who bestowed meaning to
sacred art in India through their relational performances. Temples and their divine icons were the
focus of royal-ideological performances involving the entire state and its welfare. Here, the
Brahmin priest played the primary part, the ideological parallel of the birthing performances of
artists, to bring repeated life into icons (prana-pratistha) through sacred rituals (pujas). These
pujas were done, as they are to this day, at the behest of a patron (yajamana). But in pre-modern
India, the king (rajah) or emperor (chakravartin) stood at the head of the hierarchy of patrons.
We have seen the enactment of such rituals of a divine ecology/polity at Udaygiri and
Mamallapuram. In later times, when the Hindu temple normalized itself as architectural context,
the king often erected a special temple to commemorate his enthronement or victory over
neighboring areas.

The king ruled as the first disciple and delegate of God, upholding the law of righteousness
(dharma) over his subject-citizens. He needed to establish this right of delegation through royal
rituals of anointment and distribution of divine grace, carried out on special occasions, either
seasonally or annually. Such rituals consisted of cooperative and eristical performances where
the priest performed first a puja to the deity and the king prostrated himself to receive the food-
remnants of the puja (ucchista, prasada), which touched to the Divine, was now divine in
material form. Consuming it would be the ingestion of Divine Substance, whose entry into the
body would lead to a physical and subjective transformation. After consumption by the king, the
prasada would be distributed to the gathered subjects, representatives of the different
professional castes, who would thus partake also of this divinity.

It is important to note here that the performance of the ritual of bringing-to-life (prana pratistha)
is conducted by the priest by invoking the deity in himself and extending this to the body of the
icon. Such a ritual serves a similar function to that of the eye-opening ritual of the artists it
allows the social group to own their relationship with the deity as itself, its mother and its
midwife. For example, a priest can experience the consciousness of the icon as himself since it
was invoked in himself. He can experience this consciousness as if he is its mother, since it was
given external form from within himself in another body; and he is its midwife since the divine
consciousness is the primal agent, while he is employed for the transfer and birth of that in the
icon.

The priest also performed rituals of anointment (puja) to the king, invoking the power of the
deity to flow through the body of the king and through him to the rest of the subjects.
We have encountered performances and rituals related to this in the cases of cave 5 in Udaygiri
(Varaha cave) and the Descent of Ganga wall in Mamallapuram. But Hindu temples differed in
their means for royal, priestly and creative agent authorization. No longer able to accommodate
the gigantism of image necessary for public spectacle, later temples, as we have seen, embodied
their messages of spiritual and political authorization architecturally. They became much larger
and lost their compact meaningful program tied to the performance of circumambulation
(pradakshina) and experience of darshan. Temples from the late 10th c. began to reflect an
imperial and ideological monumentalism which pertains to a different and more complex
performative context.

Erotics and Dance

Through the powerful agency of royal sponsors, Hindu temple culture came to be a reflection of
a spiritualized version of the cultured elitism of the court. Interspersed among the divine icons in
the niches, secular scenes and erotic scenes made their increasing appearance. The
spiritualization of elite samsara meant a foregrounding of the element of kama (desire), with its
center in gendered human eros. Developed in male dominated cultures, in which the place of
women was to be the embodiment of high culture and an object of sensual/sexual pleasure for
men, behind all expressions of eros, stood the figure of the Divine Feminine seen as the source of
all Bliss. This also brings to mind the influence of Tantric sects on the courts. Dance became the
performance form par excellence, with the institution of devadasi (slave-of-god) dancers
dedicated to the deity of the temple. Large temples often included a dance hall for the royal
offering (rajopachara) of dance by the devadasis. Often the exteriors of such halls would be
carved with musicians and dancers. Highly sophisticated body, hand, foot and face languages
developed in several regions of India, such as Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and
Manipur. Such body bends (bhanga) and hand gestures (hasta/mudra) may have belonged to a
Hathayogic or Tantik tradition of standing asanas. Devadasis embodied these traditions in their
dances.

The 13th c. Sun temple of Konarak in Odisha features a dance hall (natyamandapa or nat-mandir)
on whose walls musicians and dancers are caught enraptured in a variety of poses. Encountering
the engrossed dynamism of these figures puts one in the orbit of the moving expressions of the
Suns bliss-consciousness. But perhaps the best embodiment of this era of mobile ecstasy was
the dancing icon in the garbha griha of the 12th c. temple to Shiva as the King of Dance,
Nataraja, in Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu. Even at first sight, it is clearly a very high point in
Indian aesthetic realization, given the complex identity of stillness and movement, unity and
multiplicity, it represents in a single form. The importance of this image to its time can also be
seen in the large number of bronze portable images (utsavamurtis) of a very high realization, that
were used in chariot processions of the deity during special occasions.

Nataraja, Chidambaram
As we saw in the last chapter, Chidambaram is a temple town with the Nataraja temple at its
center. As a late Chola temple, it participates in the resignified ecology/polity of the city of god,
one of a singular cultic status, deriving from its central icon and expressed in the gigantism and
organized diversification of its environment and its rituals. Behind this objective reality of the
temple, stands its subjective myth, written now in site-legends (sthala purana), with their
networks stretching from myth to terrirotiral reality and from its origin to the present (and
future). It features several enclosures marked by gates (gopuram) coded for degrees of nearness
to the central deity, Nataraja. Though the sequential order related to rasa and darshan
encountered in earlier cases was no longer clearly organized, a variety of sub-shrines to the
Shaiva family members lead up to the stand-alone ardha-mandapa and garbha griha of Nataraja.
Instead of a only a lateral formation of near-equal gods (sub-shrines of Vishnu, Devi, Ganesha
and Kartikeya) organized around a central deity (Shiva Nataraja), the garbha-griha here opens a
new dimension with three degrees of transcendence/manifestation Shiva as the Being of
cosmic Becoming, Shiva as the Being at the eternal moment of Creation and Shiva, the Being
Beyond, which had no form as yet.

Against the back wall of the central room of the garbha griha stands the black stone idol of
Nataraja. Here one encounters the deity as the simultaneous embodiment of mobile-complexity
and stillness-at-the-center-of-unity. The Vedic image of the Sun unyoking his Horses comes to
mind here the phalanxed (vyuha) rhythmic energies of the patterns of becoming of the Divine
Dancer. All the multiple narratives related to the discourse around Nataraja and the life of the
temple at Tillai find their origin in this Icon of dynamic plural stillness and oneness. This again is
a supreme moment of success for the artist/craftsman (creative agent), who is able to grant
posthuman anthropic form to this complex Idea. Of course, the artist here is primarily dependent
on the body and limb postures of dance. To this has been added the imagination of saint-poets
(users), whose descriptions orient the eye towards darshan of Shiva Nataraja in the Icon. There is
also the master priest, sthapaka, whose numerological, cosmological, mythological or
metaphysical requirements impacted form, often deeply. And there was the royal patron, who
imagined (or caused to be imagined) divine states of power and bliss that he was meant to
embody in the performed symbolic culture of the state.

Like a solar lord of darshan, Nataraja integrated in himself all the aspects of the yoga cycle and
added to these a few. In Chapter 6, I have described the Nataraja dancing with his four hands and
one leg, balanced on the other leg. Each of his four hands became a representation for the
functions of Creation (upper right hand holding drum), Preservation (lower right hand in abhaya
mudra), Destruction (upper left hand holding fire), Indicating-the-goal/tirobhava (left front hand
pointing to upraised right foot) and the Goal itself (the upraised Foot of Nataraja, freedom
through taking refuge). The mobile hands are arranged around an invisible circle, which is
sometimes echoed in a circle of fire around the icon, often in bronze versions. The comportment
of the hands along with the dynamism natural to circular movement, combined with a raised leg
(and in some bronzes, flailing hair), makes for an impression of powerful torque, as of a dynamo.
This is counter-balanced by the verticality of the body standing on one bent leg. It is the balance
between the two in the language of the body that makes for the power and beauty of the icon,
which is also a most appropriately embodied symbol. Innumerable poems extolled the
representation of these functions and their integration in Nataraja, amplifying the cultic reality of
the Icon. Some scholars feel that Coomaraswamy gave undue importance to this image in his
essay The Dance of Shiva, but he was only quoting from existing Tamil sources, which
demonstrated the ever-expanding subjective traditions around Chidambaram. In doing this,
Coomaraswamy himself contributed to this expansion, giving it now an international discursive
body.

Behind the dressed and bedecked black stone Nataraja lie two levels of transcendence in the
metaphysics (darshan) of Chidambaram - an Archetype (event outside time) of the moment at the
threshold of Creation, the linga-in-the-yoni; and behind That, the invisible Transcendental
Substance-Force. The first of these is a crystal linga which is anointed using ritual ablutions
during specified times of the day and on specified days. The last is an empty room adjoining the
central room of the garbha griha, which represents the invisible Space body of Shiva. Along with
the Nataraja icon, these form the three levels of interiority within the garbha-griha. There is a
fourth manifestation of Nataraja, that of his bronze murti (and similar murtis for his family
members), for going on royal chariot processions through the town.

These three levels of interiority are also in keeping with the Mandukya Upanishads states of
being (avastha) (waking/jagrat, dreaming/swapna, transcendental/shusupti, nameless/turiya (the
fourth)). Nataraja would be the icon for both the objective and subjective cosmos, the states of
waking and dreaming consciousness. The sphatik linga (crystal linga-in-yoni) would be the icon
for the gnostic threshold of the cosmos, the suspended Moment containing a Real-Idea of
perpetual creation, the transcendental state of shusupti. The empty room incarnating the Space
body of the Transcendent Shiva belonged to the nameless fourth state of turiya, the horizon of
Mystery from whence Shiva manifested. This establishment of a worm-hole into another
dimension of increasing freedom in manifestation from the miraculous cosmic and
individualized Form of the Nataraja icon at Tillai to the gnostic symbol of the Birth of the
Unborn and the transcendental Absence-Presence or Plenum Void - linked the icon of Nataraja to
invisible gradations of potency bringing their power into the cosmos through his Dance.

Multiplication Origin and Copy

A protean icon of this magnitude cannot be restricted in time and space. But instead of taking the
aniconic direction and saying that it cannot therefore be represented, the Hindu imagination said
instead that it can be multiplied in infinite replicas across time and space. These replicas would
not be copies of an original but original variations of an original variation whose
origin of radical infinity could not be exhausted in representation. Hence, Nataraja replicated
in photographs and prints and worshipped in ones home is as much an embodiment of Nataraja
as the one in Tillai. One may even say there are times when a dancer replicating the Ananda
Tandava of Shiva in a performance, becomes an embodiment of Nataraja. This indeed is the
hope of great Indian dancers, who carry an image of Nataraja with them wherever they go, and
offer their dance to Nataraja. The gates of one of the inner gopurams of Chidambaram carries
many images of devi dancing in different poses on its massive doors, considered a compendium
of correct form, which dancers visit Chidambaram to study. Perhaps the most pervasive replicas
of Nataraja are the bronzes that continue to be cast, using lost wax process in the region around
Swamimalai in Tamil Nadu. These are now prized possessions in museums and worldwide
collections, but their function was (and remains) to travel through the city on human pulled
chariot. These may all be occasions for darshan of the one and only Nataraja who has taken the
form that is before one. This does not mean there is no ideal form the ideal form is the set of
solutions to a problematic field generated from the interaction of opposites such as stillness and
movement.

Gods in Time
Temples of South India, particularly large ones around which cities have developed, have a
number of seasonal processions of the temple deities through the town, paralleling royal visits.
Instead of temporary images, Chola divine processions were conducted with bronze sculptures,
known as utsavamurtis, some of which are kept in the sanctum sanctorum (garbha griha), some
in areas surrounding the circumambulation (pradakshina) path and some in storage in the temple.
Many of them are available within the temple for darshan throughout the year. These are paraded
at the time of the processional festivals, carried in chariots or on platforms or palanquins on the
shoulders of devotees. While bronze casting using a lost wax process has a long history in Tamil
Nadu, the Chola bronzes meant for processions developed an elegant and elite sophistication.
Over time, these images would sometimes become damaged or lose their definition and hence
become unrecognizable. They were then reshaped or melted and recast, in keeping with the idea
of the rebirth of time-bound gods.
The bronze version of the Nataraja image developed into a particularly attractive form, because
the flexibility of working bronze allowed for subtle indications of muscular flexion and skeletal
balance, making for a darshan of a different kind not only the identity of the mutual gaze, but
the physical bodily mirroring of the icon, the formation of a corporeal posthuman aspiration.

WORKS CITED: