Abstract

From Kovils to Devales :

Patronage and "Influence" at Buddhist and Hindu Temples in Sri Lanka

By

Sujatha Arundathi Meegama

Doctor of Philosophy in History of Art

University of California, Berkeley

Professor Joanna Williams, Chair

This dissertation examines two types of temples--kovils and devales--dedicated to deities associated with the two main ethnic groups in Sri Lanka: Tamil Hindus and Sinhalese Buddhists, respectively. It studies the relationships between these two temple spaces, as well as their respective histories in medieval and early-modern Sri Lanka, by examining patterns of patronage and visual dialogues between artisan workshops. The patronage of such temples by multiple patrons, such as kings, local rulers, monks, ministers, merchants, and ordinary people, suggests that people of diverse ethnic, religious, and social background were all key players in the negotiation of cultural and religious boundaries in medieval Sri Lanka. The wall ornamentation, pillars, basement moldings, and doorways of these temples indicate the presence of multiple workshops, which appropriated and transformed South Indian temple building practices; hence, this study also highlights the role of South Indian and local artisans, who negotiated cultural difference by engaging in dialogs across artistic boundaries.

However, kovils and devales have long been viewed in scholarship and popular writings as dichotomous religio-ethnic spaces. Studied in isolation, they have also not been seen as part of the Sri Lankan art historical canon, which is dominated by the standard narrative on the Sinhalese Buddhist majority. My dissertation questions the oppositional binaries of South Indian and Sri Lankan, Hindu and Buddhist, Dravidian and Sinhalese, and invader and native that have heretofore framed the scholarship on Sri Lankan art. Drawing on the deeply connected art-historical approaches of patronage and appropriation, which focus on specific people and their actions, I argue for a more nuanced understanding of these religious monuments, and for a more inclusive Sri Lankan art-historical canon.

The first chapter examines the Hindu temples of Polonnaruva and suggests that Sri Lankan kings, starting as early as the eleventh century, adopted a new ideal of kingship in which the patronage of temples to pan-Indic deities played a central role. The second chapter studies the incorporation of local and pan-Indic deities inside Buddhist temples in the fourteenth century by Buddhist monks and secular elites, and their appropriation of Dravida-style architecture. The third chapter investigates the patronage of a Saivite temple by a Sri Lankan king and its plunder at the hands of the Portuguese in the sixteenth century--it provides an alternative narrative in understanding the accusations of heresy against this king. Amidst the apparent hardening in early-modern Sri Lanka of the fluid religious boundaries that existed in earlier periods, the fourth chapter examines the localization of the pan-Indic deity Skanda Kumara (the son of Siva), who is known locally as Kataragama, by analyzing the patronage and ornamentation of temples to him in peripheral and non-elite contexts. In the epilogue, bringing together the four case studies I presented, I offer a narrative that attempts to map out the shifting identities of kovils and devales in medieval, early modern, and contemporary Sri Lanka.

Few attempts have been made to study the numerous textile depictions in Java from the eighth to fifteenth centuries, also known as the Hindu-Buddhist or the Ancient Javanese Period. This thesis seeks for the textiles that inspired these depictions and considers their techniques. It also traces the evolution of particular patterns in Java over time. To do so, I employ close art-historical analysis of works of art and draw supportive materials from archaeology, epigraphy and literature, as well as ethnography.

After the introductory chapter, Chapters One and Two focus each on a different textile pattern: the connected circles and the overlapping circles patterns. These chapters follow the evolution of the patterns with particular interest to search for connections to current textile tradition in Indonesia. A similar approach of inquiry is applied in Chapter Three to a type of short sleeve jacket. Chapter Four investigates the depiction of weavers in Ancient Javanese textual and visual sources.

This study of textile depictions will underscore the global connection between Java and the outside world, particularly China and India, from where many prototypes of the textile images originated. The study will also reveal that these images, in addition to being historical records, were also ornamentations, which the Javanese artists were adept at translating, decontextualizing, and re-contextualizing—as a whole or in part—into the local aesthetic and usage.

This dissertation examines the production, collection, and display of phulkari folk embroidery by looking at the ways in which textiles move from sites of production in Punjab to sites of consumption and display in South Asia, North America, and Europe, beginning in the middle part of the nineteenth century and continuing to the present day. Part of the motivation behind this study is to understand the circulation of phulkaris: how and when did these textiles enter collections, become categorized as “art” and displayed in exhibitions, and take on new meanings during processes of acquisition-display? Another motivation for this study is to understand what can be gleaned through close visual examination of objects, and exploring the process of making - a process which, in this case, is deeply informed by gender and gendered constructions of labor.

With these themes in mind, this dissertation begins with a focus on production, that is on objects and artists. The Introduction looks critically at the origins of phulkaris with particular attention to previous literature on the subject and the contours of existing archives. The first chapter (“Abstraction and the Category of ‘Phulkari’”) examines the diverse styles of embroidery identified in scholarship and museums as “phulkari,” and explores the role of abstraction in the motifs and compositions of several individual textiles. Chapter Two (“Embroidery as Writing in Figurative Sainchi Phulkaris”) focuses on the women responsible for making phulkaris, and identifies ways in which we can read individual women’s “hands” and female agency in these objects, particularly in figurative, narrative phulkaris. Acknowledging that women’s voices and biographies are rarely seen in traditional archives (e.g. as text, as pen and paper), these textiles become compelling objects that mark a woman’s perspective and presence.

Shifting gears the final three chapters explore the ways in which phulkaris have circulated in collections and practices of display, namely large-scale exhibitions and museum galleries. Chapter Three (“Women’s Work: Phulkari, Flora Annie Steel, and Collecting Textiles in British

India”) focuses on the figure of Flora Annie Steel, a British woman living in Punjab in the late nineteenth century, who collected and wrote about phulkaris. This chapter looks closely at the way Steel depicts phulkaris in her oft-cited 1888 essay, and the subsequent effects this had on early collections and exhibitions of phulkaris in British India. Chapter Four (“Embroidery for the New Nation: Collecting and Exhibiting Phulkaris in India after 1947”) centers around the growing presence of phulkaris in museum collections in India following the partitioning of Punjab in 1947, and explores how these textiles were leveraged as objects of national interest and celebration. The fifth and final chapter (“(Re)Defining Phulkari as ‘Sikh Art’”) examines recent collections and exhibitions of phulkaris in South Asia, Europe, and North America which frame these textiles within the context of “Sikh art” - an emerging and somewhat controversial category within South Asian Art History - and shows how these objects have been re-inscribed in the name of religion. The Conclusion discusses recent practices of producing phulkaris as well as visual citations of phulkaris in contemporary art, and proposes ways to understand this diverse body of material given the contexts of circulation and display discussed in previous chapters.

Each of these chapters aim to examine the role of gender in the making and framing of these textiles, and to explore the ways in which production and consumption of phulkaris in a number of global and historical settings have dramatically altered their meanings over time. Ultimately this study provides a case study for understanding the complex circulation of objects and their shifting uses and meanings when collected and displayed in new locations and cultural situations.