Anadi – The Timeless Tribal Art : Baidyanath Saraswati

Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, established in the memory of Smt. Indira Gandhi, is visualized as a Centre encompassing the study and experience of all the arts – each form with its own integrity, and yet within a dimension of mutual interdependence, interrelatedness with nature, social structure, culture and cosmology. This view of the arts, integrated with, and essential to, the larger matrix of human culture, is predicated upon Smt. Indira Gandhi’s recognition of the role of the arts as essential to the “integral quality of a person, at home with himself and society”. It partakes of the holistic world view so powerfully articulated throughout the Indian tradition.

Following this view-point, the IGNCA, in its very first moment of contemplation, has come to realize that there is no logical justification of considering the western colonial science of man infallible and intrinsically universal and all other views as parochial, pre-cultural, and pre-scientific. Obviously, there is a need to open up new ways of looking at man, nature, and culture. Happily, a new school of thought has begun emerging under the guidance of Dr. Kapila Vatsyayan, one of the founding members of the IGNCA and the chief architect of its intellectual life.

This seminar on “Anadi: the Timeless Tribal Art”, is dedicated to the memory of Smt. Gandhi. We decided to hold it in Arunachal Pradesh, at the shining of the Sun, the light that announces a new day for work or worship, and to achieve the perfection of the true nature of art and the art of nature. It is our pleasure and privilege to be associated with the Arunachal University, where my esteemed friend and India’s foremost anthropologist, Professor A.C. Bhagwati, is the Vice-Chancellor.

We are happy to see many distinguished artists of word and artists of work from various parts of north-east India, especially from Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Manipur, and Nagaland. Friends, we have gathered before the splendour and warmth of the Sun to pray for the departed soul of Indira Gandhi and to offer the thoughts of Goodness, Truth and Beauty.

Before we mount to higher plains of thinking, we have to know the theme we are making. For this it is necessary to make, first of all, terminological clarification.

The terms used by the modern sciences can be translated into the language of the traditional science. But the reverse is not true, that is, the categorical terms used in the traditional science cannot be translated into the modern sciences with precision. What I wish to point out is the following: That the ancient words possess a wide-ranging experience and expression. That these words can be understood in terms of both cosmology and anthropology, whereas the terms used by the modern sciences belong to a specific field of accepted references. I do not suggest that the words at home in one culture cannot be carried out to other cultures. Let me illustrate this point.

The word Anadi, in Sanskrit tradition, is one such example. It refers to a self-contained undifferentiated world of space-and-time–the beginning before the actual ‘beginning’ of all that came later. At the highest level of cognition, Anadi is linked to Ananta. Together they make a cosmological category referring to the Absolute, the Eternal, the Ultimate.

The term ‘tribe’ is a definable entity in the field of evolutionary anthropology. By and large, it is used in a pejorative sense, with reference to an ancient society, which in relation to modern society, is a separate section of humanity.

The Sanskrit word Adi refers to the primordial force which, ideologically, stands at opposite ends of the anthropological spectrum. At the conceptual level, it is associated with the primeval beginning of the universe — the first moment of creation, the first divine emanation, the first seed of life. It does not refer to the beginning of life in the linear frame of time as a cosmological category. Adi is cross-linked with Anadi. It roughly corresponds to the anthropological term ‘tribe’, but allows us to redefine ‘tribe’ as the eternal seed of humanity. Interestingly, as you know, there is a cohesive community in Arunachal Pradesh which is named Adi, the first.

In the context of India, the term tribe is a trap. Perhaps we can never get rid of it. But we can wipe out its evolutionary connotation by restituting the tribal sapientia.

The Latin words for ‘art’ include aristos, the best; arete, virtue as well as ares, armed in his war-charriot, fit and fitting for his purpose. There is a theory that the artist, as an individual, is distinct from his neighbours, the public. As a maker (artifex), a fitter, he is a specialist. A distinction is made between art and craft or skilled handiwork.

The modern notion of ‘art’ is different from that of Kala, a Sanskrit word. Ka the first consonant of the alphabet, refers to the Brahman, the God, the primeval elements such as fire, wind, water, light, the sun, the soul, the mind, the body, time, light, sound, weather, happiness and so on. The term Kala encompasses a wide variety of things: a small part of anything; an atom; one of the sixteen digits of the moon; a division of time variously computed; one minute 48 seconds or eight seconds; the 60th part of one thirtieth part of a zodiacal sign; any of the 64 practical arts; a term for the seven substrata of the elements of the human body; a term for embryo; etc. Within this all encompassing wordview, Kala signifies the ‘divine potency’ of time and space, and therefore, linked with Adi, Anadi, Purusa and the Cosmic Elements. In this sense the universe at large is an ‘artefact’ echoing, living, forming and transforming.

Following the ancient Indian vision, what human artist does is, properly speaking, cosmography – an imitation of the cosmic work of art, the kairological art, on which all the human arts hang.

The Seminar will address itself to a number of seminal question pertaining to tribal art. First, a consideration of aesthetic aspects: Is art capable of transmitting aesthetic experience only in a state of transcendence? Is aesthetic pleasure grounded in the physical rather than the spiritual? Is art an expression of every day life? Is the ‘quality’ wholly self-contained within the work of art itself? Is there a distinction between ‘art’ and ‘craft’, ‘art’ and ‘fine art’, ‘making of useful things’ and ‘making of things of beauty’?

Next, the questions on decontextualizing tribal art. Is art conditioned by cultural norms and values? If so, is inter-cultural communicability in arts possible? What is that which a tribal culture wants to express and experience through the genre of art? Is nature the proper context of tribal art and life? How do we explain the changing context of tribal art? Is this not true that the tribal dance today is made a spectacle performed out of context, out of time, out of place, out of way to please people of the “other” cultures? Is this not true that the tribal art-objects are now sold in emporium as tourist art or airport art? In the perceived order of tribal cosmology, does decontextualization imply “unruly” art? Does it bring the inevitable disorder in social life? etc.

Lastly, must we consider modernization, mechanization, privatization and popularization as antipodal currents in tribal art? Or must we admit that by losing its original context, tribal art today has acquired a new context? Is it being universalized? And thereby is the world of art enriched.

None of these questions will provide absolute answer or indicate the whole truth. The objective of the seminar will be fulfilled, if we may lay down the multi-dimensional and multi-layered hemispheres of tribal art beyond the extreme poles of a conceptual minimum and spiritual maximum.

[ Newsletter | List of Newsletter ]