Nine Lives

by William Dalrymple

  Moreover, the devotional world which brought the Chola bronzes into being is still, just, intact. On my way from the airport to see Srikanda’s workshop in Swamimalai, I arranged to meet in the temple courtyard Shankara Narayana, one of the last professional singers of Thevaram devotional songs. These are the seven volumes of devotional hymns written by Appar, Sambandar and the other great Tamil saints, and first performed in this temple over a thousand years ago. I asked Shankara Narayana what it was like to sing in front of one of the temple’s great bronzes. “As singers, we try to lose ourselves in the beauty of Lord Shiva,” he replied. “The bronzes allow us access to his beauty, and in turn our words help give life to the idol.”

  It was these Thevaram hymns—the widespread oral memory of which is only now beginning to be endangered—that created the intense, mystical and often sensual bhakti world which needed the Chola bronzes as focuses for devotion. The direct family link between the Chola bronze casters and Srikanda’s family workshop in Swamimalai is only one aspect of a much wider continuity of Tamil theology and devotion.

  On arrival at Swamimalai, I found Srikanda hard at work in his small family factory on the main street of the temple town.

  No longer was he wearing the smart laundered lungi I had seen him wearing on my previous trip. Now he sat in an old stained vest and waist-wrap, unshaven yet with a smear of ash and sandalwood paste at the centre of his forehead. He was concentrating fixedly on a small idol of Mariamman, the mother goddess and principal deity of many of the villages of the region, gently chipping away at her with a hammer and chisel. While he finished his work, I looked around the workshop.

  The smartest rooms were those closest to the street. Here, two air-conditioned offices contained piles of order books and a huge old-fashioned typewriter out of which sprouted several sheaves of carbon paper. It was manned by a matron in a stiff white sari who tap-tapped away at it with the regularity of a metronome. A few cuttings from newspapers were framed on the walls, as was a large photograph of Srikanda with his father and two brothers, receiving some award from Mr. Karunanidhi, the sunglasses-wearing former screenwriter who was now Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu.

  The next room was the workshop proper. On one desk was the abandoned arm of a goddess, moulded in fresh beeswax and tree resin; beside it was a small basin of wax warming on a brazier, along with a knife, a scalpel and a litter of pellets and shavings which some craftsman had left lying there while taking a tea break. A second basin, filled with water, contained a collection of finished but detached body parts, as if from the casualty unit of a Victorian field hospital.

  Next to it was another desk, where one of Srikanda’s elder brothers was busy kneading, smoothing, cutting and rolling a length of wax into what would soon be a deity’s arm. The moulding took place with incredible speed, and with the ease of a child playing with plasticine. It seemed to be done entirely from memory: no pattern book or model lay open to guide him. When it was nearly done, and the fingers worked into the appropriate mudra, Srikanda’s brother held it in his left hand and began to finish modelling its curves with a hot scalpel. This he replaced every few minutes from a selection of chisels up-ended in a charcoal fire-pot at the edge of the workbench. As he gently caressed the wax with a series of quick strokes from the flat, hot blade it first liquefied, then vanished, with a sizzle of wax and a puff of fragrant resin.

  On the floor at the other side of the room sat eight cross-legged workers, all stripped to the waist, chipping, filing, finishing and decorating the cast bronzes. One boy was busy polishing with a bottle of Brasso and an old rag; another rested the head of a nearly completed goddess on a wooden chock while he worked on her bangles and armlets. All around the workers were ranks of gleaming bronze idols in various stages of finish, some dull and leaden-looking, fresh from the furnace, others shiny and brassy new, while a few were of the same darkly muted gunmetal grey as those in museums.

  The room beyond—which opened onto a yard and a cow byre at the back—was the part of the workshop that contained the furnaces, and was surrounded on all sides by a litter of slag and broken moulds. Here two men were calmly engaged in covering one of the wax models in a clay mud pack, while a third was embalming a finished mould in a lattice of wire, ready for firing.

  Opposite them, only a short distance away, a pair of sweating dark-skinned and barefoot workers were stoking a furnace set in the mud floor, while a third worker fired it up with a pair of enormous bellows. Into this ever-hotter furnace, the two stokers were shoving old scrap—a series of crushed bronze lota pots, pieces of copper wire and brass plates. The temperature was very high, and orange, green and pale yellow flames shot out as the inferno was fed.

  Then, as I watched, one of the two stokers took a crucible of molten metal from the furnace and poured it into the mouth of the waiting mould, the glowing green liquid metal pouring as easily as water from a kettle. To one side of this furious furnace scene lay a garland of fresh marigolds, remnants of the puja which had preceded the beginning of the casting, while beyond, two cows were chewing the cud.

  Srikanda joined me there, explaining that the cows’ role was to provide milk for pujas and to create an auspicious and appropriately Hindu environment. He then demonstrated the lost-wax process by which the bronzes were made. He showed me how, just as his ancestors used to do, he first made a perfect model of a god in a soft and pliable mixture of beeswax and resin; how the model was encased in a fine-grained clay made from the Kaveri alluvium, tinctured with charred coconut husks and salt, then left to dry in the sun for a week. The clay mud pack, he explained, was then buried and heated in such a way that the wax ran out, leaving a mould into which the molten bronze was then poured—a process he compared to conception, with the mould taking the place of the womb for the future god, and the slag that of the blood and afterbirth, with the sculptor as midwife and wet nurse. Ten minutes later, the mould was broken open and the sculpture of the god was waiting, ready for the beginning of the process of finishing.

  As he spoke, the two workers who had poured the liquid metal into the mould now placed it into a vat of water to cool it. Then they began to break the mould open. “This is the most magical bit,” said Srikanda as we watched, “and the most unpredictable. You do not know whether the casting has worked until this moment.

  Gently tapping with their hammers, the two men broke away the clay, so that the head, leg and trident of an image of Kali began to take shape amid the mess of fused mud. It felt slightly like watching an archaeological excavation, as a familiar object emerged from the earth through the careful prodding of the specialists. “The finishing which follows this is the most arduous part of the process,” said Srikanda. “For a large idol, this alone can take as long as six weeks.”

  This, he added, was the only point at which he believed their technique diverged from those of the Chola master casters: so fine and skilled was the work of their Chola forebears, said Srikanda, that their pieces needed virtually no finishing after they emerged from their moulds. Today, he said, somehow there were always flaws, and the idols emerged from the casting in need of much smoothing and polishing before they would be ready for the eye-opening ceremony. Somewhere along the generational line of Chinese Whispers, the secret of flawless casting had been lost.

  The whole process, explained Srikanda, was itself encased in a fine mould of ancient ritual: only on a new moon or a full moon could a model be begun or cast; no work except finishing could be done while the moon was waning. The idol’s eyes must be carved open between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m., when there was no sound or disturbance which might upset the deity; no meat or alcohol could be consumed while a bronze was being made; a series of ancient Sanskrit incantations—the Admartha Slokas—must initiate the process, and another set—the Dhyana Slokas—must be spoken while the work was in progress. All prayer and thought should be focused on the deity who was to be asked to take possession of the idol. All the proportions, gestures and sacred geometry were exactly laid down b
y tradition, and only the most elite families of Stpathy Brahmins, literate in Sanskrit and all the appropriate shastras, were allowed to work on pieces intended for worship.

  “Our workshop should be like a temple,” Srikanda said. “Every second is holy. Some people think that what we do is an art, but we think of it mainly as an act of devotion. For us art and religion are one: only when there is prayer can the artist make a perfect sculpture. Even the wax models we create have a little of God’s jivan [life] in them, so we give even that reverence, and as we work we think only of God, saying the appropriate mantras as we carve and model.

  “These idols are reflections of our minds and spirits, so while we are at work on a sculpture we must behave as if we were in a holy temple: we must speak only the truth, and be kind and polite to everyone. Until the sculpture is finished, for weeks we must follow all the rules and regulations that have been laid down.”

  It was true, he said, that there were other workshops in Swamimalai which did not follow these traditions. They didn’t know Sanskrit, so they were unable to read the Shilpa Shastras, and broke many of the sacred rules and conventions. They employed Dalits—untouchables—and atheists, and regarded making idols principally as a business, aimed at selling to tourists. “Some of their work is very good technically,” he said. “Art lovers will be satisfied, but I do not think their idols are divine. No respectable temple will touch bronzes made in this way. That kind of work never moves or touches me. As an outsider you may not be able to see the difference, but we can. It may seem unjust today, and we all respect talent, whatever caste it is born into. But the rules of the shastras are quite clear, and we believe God will only be there if the particular image is made exactly according to the rules.”

  I asked whether the gods remained in the images forever. Srikanda explained that Hindus believe that, like humans, the idols of deities also have a defined life span: that the jivan will not stay in a sculpture forever, though it may do so, if properly and faithfully worshipped, for as long as 850 years, the faith of the devotees in effect keeping the idols alive in their old age. But as the idol heads for its millennium, the jivan in even the most adored and carefully tended idols will start to fade and disappear.

  If the idol was not properly tended to, the jivan could ebb much earlier, and if stolen or abused, the deity would leave the statue immediately. Such was the case with all the idols in museums, none of which was now alive. Each sculpture has a birth star, and according to its size and proportions, the shastras give elaborate astrological formulations by which the life of a sculpture can be determined, in the same manner as it is believed that the life of a human being can be determined by a carefully calculated horoscope. If the god was intended for private puja in a home, the horoscope of the husband and wife would be taken, and the proportions of the god subtly altered to best suit the stars of that family.

  As we chatted, Srikanda was chipping away with his chisel at the rounded breasts of the goddess. I asked whether it was ever difficult or distracting for the sculptors having to deal with such deliberately sensuous forms. Srikanda acknowledged the problem: “We have to look at these idols as a goddess,” he said. “Never as a human body.”

  He smiled. “Once when I was installing one of my idols in the Murugan temple in London, I visited the waxworks at Madame Tussaud’s. There I saw an image of Aishwarya Rai, and of course you immediately think of all the love films you have seen her in. When you are making an idol of the Devi you must always fight such thoughts, and instead concentrate on your prayers.”

  He paused. “Self-discipline is the most important thing in this job. It is just as important as skill. Many have lost their skills through lack of self-control. If a god is in the heart and that heart becomes corrupted, the deity cannot flow through that sculptor into the idol. Good Stpathys—some of the best artists, unique artists—have lost their abilities in this way. You need to maintain not just your skills, but also your discipline.”

  When I came back at 9 a.m. the following morning, Srikanda had already been at work for five hours: his day began when the workshop opened at 4 a.m.

  As he chipped away with his chisel, now finishing a large idol of the mountain god of Kerala, Lord Ayappa, I asked him about his childhood. “I don’t remember when I first visited my father’s workshop,” said Srikanda. “It was probably as a baby. I spent much of my childhood there, and even before we went to school my father encouraged us to play there, making toy animals with the wax and resin. First I made a snake, then an elephant. All this came in the same way that a fish knows how to swim, without having to be taught. It is in my blood.”

  Srikanda said that it was while watching a procession of the gods through Swamimalai that he thought for the first time that he had to become a sculptor like his grandfather, father and uncles.

  “It was the festival of Kartika,” he said, “and huge crowds were pouring into the village to watch the procession of Murugan through the town. Many were carrying pots of milk on their head with which to bathe the idols. It is said that if you go to the temple on that day whatever you wish for will be accomplished.

  “Everyone was decorating the front of their house, and my father had put hundreds of bronze idols from his store out on the shop front. Eventually the temple chariot passed our shop—it was much smaller in those days—and as it passed my father whispered to me that our forefathers had made the image of Murugan and donated it to the temple. I was so proud, and realised that these skills we pass down are the gods’ gift to this family. Ever since then my only ambition has been to be a master craftsman and to try to equal the skills of my father and uncle.

  “I trained by watching my father. At the same time my grandfather would teach us all Sanskrit for three hours a day so that we could read and understand the complex sacred geometry of the Shilpa Shastras, and comprehend the nature of each deity. From the age of eighteen, once we had got places at college, we were allowed to begin our formal training in the college holidays. First we were taught to work wax and make the wax models, with our father overseeing our work. Only then were we allowed to graduate to engraving and finishing all the jewellery and ornamental articles on the bodies of the deities. Making the faces and hands, finishing them, and the whole process of casting: these are the most difficult skills. The chiselling is the most painful part to accomplish: if you work hard even for one day you can get a bad pain at the back of your shoulders.

  “In the house, my father was very free. He played with all of us, and just smiled if we made a noise, or if we three brothers fought with one another. But in the factory he was completely different. If we made any noise or didn’t concentrate on our work he could be very severe and very angry—everything was about rules and regulations. He wanted us to treat our work like yoga, and lose ourselves in a trance of total concentration.

  “Every month or so he would take us to the Tanjore Museum, where they have on display the greatest collection of Chola bronzes in the world. Even the museum in Delhi does not have their equal. My father used to say that this was our university. He would make us look at each piece very carefully, and when we got home he would make us try to copy the statue in wax. It was the best training I could ever have had. The work of our ancestors has never been equalled, and they are still the best teachers.

  “Once when there was the Festival of India in New York, the government asked my father to make a copy of the greatest masterpiece in the museum—Shiva as Vrishabhavahana, the herdsman, from the hoard of buried bronzes that were unearthed in Tiruvengadu in the 1950s. Many people regard it as the finest bronze in the world. My father moved into the museum and he took us with him as his assistants. We lived there for six weeks and when the replica was finished no one could tell the difference between the two. The Archaeological Survey of India were so anxious about its perfection that they made my father write REPLICA in large letters on each side of the plinth, then placed it in a vault in their headquarters in Madras in case anyone tried to switch the
two. Even today when we export our idols they are frequently seized by customs officers who think we are smuggling Chola originals.

  “In 1984, at the age of twenty-two, soon after we had finished at the museum, my father decided I had learned enough to begin working on my first idol. He determined that I should begin my career by making the goddess of our village, Vikkali Amman. I worked night and day to get the wax model exactly correct, then to make a good mould. We fired the mould after three weeks of work, and I then spent three further weeks finishing the model. When it was done I presented it very formally to my father, as a chela to his guru. I was very nervous, as he was not easily pleased.

  “He looked at it very carefully in silence for a long time. Then he gave some small suggestions for corrections where some of the jewellery was not done exactly right. He said nothing more. I made the corrections as he asked, and the following week we had the eye-opening ceremony.

  “The god or goddess only fully enters a new idol when we open his eyes and carve in the pupils—the final piece of carving—and when the appropriate puja is performed. This is the most important and most intense moment. I am human: hard as I try, many times when I am carving I think of sales tax, family problems, getting the car repaired. But when the eyes are opened, and the appropriate mantras are chanted, I forget everything. I am lost to the world. I go into a state approaching meditation. Sometimes the devotees who sponsor the idol become possessed by the goddess, and dance around, speak in strange voices, or go shaking and shivering into a full trance. The priest has to wake them by putting vibhuti on their forehead and lighting a camphor light. This happened only last week: six or seven people who came for the ceremony were possessed, and one of them announced, ‘I am the goddess and have come to solve your problems.’