Mûrti

The mûrti like representation

The various schools of the hindouism, particularly the schools dévotionnelles, or Bhakti, and tantric, have a design monotheist suitable for each supreme divinity - generally Vishnu, Shiva, Krishna or Devî - from where emanate all the others Déités and all the principles. The majority of Hindus will thus venerate several gods and goddesses in whom they see only various aspects of the same expressed reality. This worship is carried out mainly via the mûrtis.

The mûrtis are statues or images used like supports, hearths of devotion and meditation. They are sometimes abstract, sometimes coarse like Jagannâtha, but generally they are representations of gods and goddesses such as Shiva or Ganesh, RAM, Krishna, Sarasvati or Kâlî, which can be extremely complex, like those of Shiva and Vishnou.

The idea that the deities are powerful footbridges for the faith and of the representations of the truth is called ishta devatâ, or selected personal deity. Since the spirit of the excessively pious person is in turbulence - vritti - and, consequently, incompetent to concentrate on a divinity without form, the mûrti equips god with a form to be used as support with the devotion. The Hindus thus see the various gods like various demonstrations of the true a , Brahman, the formless divine principle, therefore aniconic. The dévotionnelles practices - or of bhakti - thus recommend to cultivate a major and personal bond of love with God by one of his forms, and often make use of the mûrtis representing this form. Like Daniélou says it: the image of a god is thus a form used to concentrate the thought on an abstraction.

The worship of the mûrti is generally interpreted like idolâtre by the Judaïsme, the Christianisme and the Islam and thus involves an erroneous and negative judgment on this devotion and the Hindouisme. However this Western perception and the charge of idolatry which it involves reflects neither true vedic philosophy nor the Hindu belief. The worship of the mûrti is in fact rather close to that of the icons, the veneration of an image or of a statue representing an ideal or a principle more raised, it does not identify the divinity in the material object itself.

However the hindouism is not the Polythéisme idolâtre which imagine the Musulman S, a justification rather of the Moslem Invasions in India, or the Christians. The hindouism is basically a Monothéisme, that of the veneration of the Brahman, the supreme Oneself , the Universel , the One in the diversity , which one can see like the equivalent of God of the Christians, of the Allâh of the Sûfî. This veneration, each one, think the Hindu following the usual tolerance to India, carries out it by taking its own way, by using the tools which are appropriate to him best. Moreover, the divinity described by the Islam and the Christianisme, when they are not conquerors and missionaries, the Judaïsme of the first Juifs in India and the Zoroastrisme of the Pârsî , is seen by the Hindus like a mental image of Brahman.

The mûrti is thus a tool of veneration, meditation, not an idol, which explains why it can be destroyed without involving sacrilege like that is very usually done during Hindu holidays, such as the Durgā pūjā of Kolkata or the Ganesh Chaturthi applied to the Maharashtra. When the mûrti played its part, it is natural to destroy it. In the same way, the statue of Jagannâtha of Purî is burned, rebuilt and repainted regularly.

The mûrti as a representative object

In the mûrtis, the gods often have several arms, several heads, of the particular attributes. Each one with a Vâhana, known as vehicle or mounting. In the statuary, the form takes precedence over the matter whose the mûrti is made. However, certain matters - gold, the money, bronze, stone - are associated with certain gods.

The origin of the mûrtis should not be required in the representation of a divine creature which one fears and reproduces to venerate it, such an idea of the hindouism could only be erroneous. The mûrti is a whole of symbols which offers an image of a abstration. The Hindus do not believe that the mûrtis are things alive and equipped with capacities, as could the being of the idols. They rather prévilégient only one material image than the mental image that the iconoclasts prefer for their communication with the divine one in which they believe. Besides the Hindus destroy often the mûrtis when their role is completed, as one gets rid of a tool become useless.

Like Daniélou says it besides, expressing the Hindu point of view perfectly: When an image or the history of an incarnation or a prophet or any manifestation of divine comes from there to be looked like a materiality, like a historical fact, instead of being included/understood like a symbol, it lost the greatest part of its significance and became indeed an object of idolatry and superstition , which seems to apply perfectly to the religions of the book which seek a historical base. One however saw this drift appearing with Hindu fundamentalism, as with the business of Ayodhya.

The Yogi, on the other hand, do not use the images because they do not need any, they control other techniques to carry out their devotion and their meditation. However, at all times, of the Indian religious schools refused the representation of divine, even included/understood in this direction symbolic system.

See too

Random links: