B2
Arts & Culture
The Epoch Times
Ten Fingers and a
Language All Their Own
Deciphering
hand signs in
Indian dance
By CHRISTINE LIN
Epoch Times Staff
When the Buddha reached
nirvana, he was said to make the
gesture of earth-touching: Sitting in
the lotus position, with one hand in
meditation position and the other
lightly touching the ground in front
of him, he held the earth as witness
of his enlightenment.
Buddhist hand gestures, called
mudra in Sanskrit, are a language
of their own. The position of fingers and the hand communicates a
variety of messages. They are used
in Buddhist and Hindu ceremonies, statuary and dance. While the
gestures commonly seen in paintings and statues from India, Tibet,
China, Japan, Korea and Southeast Asia boil down to no more
than ten common ones, they are
believed to be the basis of hand gestures used in dances all over Asia.
A few dances that incorporate
mudra come from the birthplace of
Buddhism and Hinduism: India.
Classical Indian dance was born
in the temples. Each dance is accompanied by a song whose lyrics
tell a religious story. The dancer,
using her gestures and expressions,
mimes the story. In this sense, classical Indian dance bridges the gap
between dancing and acting.
Now, it is performed mostly
in cultural festivals. According
to India’s National Academy for
Music, Dance and Drama, only
eight dance styles qualify as classical Indian dance; two of them are
considered to be direct descendants
of temple dance: Bharatanatyam
and Odissi. Of the two, Odissi has
older archeological evidence and
fewer modern variant forms. It is
sometimes described as “sculpture
in movement” because its poses are
taken directly from the statues in
Bhubaneswar, the “City of Temples.” At one time, the city boasted
7,000 shrines, each with intricate
dancing statuettes carved into its
stone walls.
A typical Odissi piece is
performed to live musical and
vocal accompaniment. The
dance itself consists of six
parts: The mangalacharan
praises the lord through a
hymn; battu nrutya is a rhythmic piece composed of statuesque poses in rapid
succession; pallavi
is a purely technical component of
dance devoid of a
lyrical meaning; the
abhinaya is the storytelling portion;
the dashavataar
describes the six
incarnations of
Lord Vishnu; and
finally, the moksha
portrays nirvana
(the liberation of
the
soul) and is performed to drums.
The abhinaya, the storytelling portion, is the bulk of the
dance piece. Mudra, facial expressions, and body movements help
the dancer mime the story being
sung and express the moods of all
characters involved in it. Because
Odissi is a solo
dance form and
classical Indian
dance movements
are highly specific,
a viewer must have
sufficient understanding
of the lyrics and religious
story being parlayed, and the
meaning of each gesture. For
example, if the song is about a
god who crushes the demon of
ignorance, the dancer may
be stomping her feet
one moment and
shielding herself
the next—portraying the god
and the demon
at the same
time. If the
viewer is
unfamiliar
with both
the story
and the
dancer’s
EXPRESSION: Nearly 60 different hand movements, called hasta, used
in Indian dances act as words and phrases that help tell a story.
www.dollsofindia.com
What Does the Moon
Festival Mean to You?
By ABRAHAM K. THOMPSON
Epoch Times Staff
SAN FRANCISCO—The
Moon Festival, next to the Chinese Lunar New Year, is the
most celebrated Chinese holiday. As legend has it, a woman
named Chang-e, in order to
escape the multiple scorching
suns that threatened to destroy
the earth, drank the elixir of
immortality and ascended to
the heavenly paradise in the
moon, becoming a moon goddess. However, she left her mate
behind, where he lived a very
lonely life being separated from
his soul mate. The moon festival
is one that recognizes heaven,
earth, gods, and humans and
to cherish your loved ones over
some moon cake.
So we went to the San Francisco Autumn Moon Festival
asking revelers, “What does the
Moon Festival mean to you?”
September 11 – 17, 2008
movements, the performance is at
best something pretty to behold.
Aside from the face, the hands
are most expressive. The human
hands’ ten fingers bent in different
ways and held at different angles
can produce endless gestures, but
according to the Natya Sastra,
the official guidebook of Indian
arts, there are only 29 official
mudra in the right hand and 28
in the left. Single-handed mudras
are called asamyuta hasta (hasta
means “hand”) and double-handed
mudras are called samyuta hasta.
With so many stories to tell and
so few hand gestures to do it with,
each mudra has developed multiple
meanings, much like homophones.
For example, one of the more common mudras is the pataka, where
the right hand is held up flat, and
the fingers are touching. The Abhinaya Darpana, another ancient
dance text, contains the following
verse dictating the uses of the pataka mudra:
“To begin dance, clouds, forest, to refuse things/ the chest or
breast, night sky, river, the heaven
/horse, to cut or to destroy, wind,
to indicate lying down, to go or try
to go/ greatness, to give or offer
something, moonlight, severe sunlight/ to open doors, meaning of
seven case endings, waves/ entering
a street, equal or to signify equality, anointing the body/ to indicate
oneself, to take an oath, to indicate
distaste/ palm leaves, shield, to
touch things/ to bless, a great king/
to indicate ‘this and that’, ocean,
to indicate well being/ to address
a person, to move forward, to indicate a sword/ month, year, rainy
days, to broom a place/ In this way
pataka hasta should be used.”
Granted, the pataka has more
meanings than other mudras, but
without the benefit of context,
reading the meaning of mudras
would be impossible. A mudra in
Indian dance is merely a single
word laden with meaning. It is the
dancer’s arms and feet, stances
and eyes, used in combination with
mudras, which form a coherent
thought. That thought then serves
as a sentence in the abhinaya. Each
component of the dance synergizes
to honor the faiths that brought it
into being.
Andrew Lee from North Beach,
San Francisco, owns a Web startup company called, Jamlegend.
com exclaimed that the point of
the Moon Festival is to “eat lotus
cake.” “It’s a great time to celebrate
family, and it also is a celebration
that has a celestial connection with
the lunar festival.”
Chinese Landscape Artists:
Li Sixun and Li Zhaodao
By TONY DAI
Special to The Epoch Times
“The moon festival is for the
Chinese to celebrate for the moon
and to have lanterns and moon
cake,” said Kawai Law, a volunteer
at San Francisco Chinatown Autumn Moon Festival. “It means we
have a whole family group together
and have dinner and look for the
moon, just like that. It’s a festival
for family.”
Photos by Abraham K. Thompson
Eva Lee, Moon Festival Coordinator who has been coordinating San Francisco Chinatown
Autumn Moon Festival for 18
years said, “We wanted something to revitalize the Chinatown community ... to help push
Chinatown more in the view and
exposure and help bring more
businesses to Chinatown.” Of her
own experience, she said, “Usually it’s a private family celebration, it’s usually with family and
eat moon cake. And then the
moon festival revolves around the
story of the moon goddess.”
LANDSCAPE BY LI SIXUN
“The moon festival is meant
to honor the moon goddess and
it’s the autumn harvest festival
to honor the maiden who twirls
around in silk on clouds and keeps
company with the furry creatures
like rabbits,” said Roland Deyoung, who teaches Chinese lion
dance, referring to Chang-e’s legendary pet, a rabbit. “It’s actually
a excuse to party non-stop for two
weeks, but who’s noticing that?”
Under Emperor Xuan Zong’s reign in the Tang Dynasty, General Li Sixun (李思訓651-716) and his son, Li
Zhaodao (李昭道), were both excellent artists in portraying natural landscapes. They are the founders of the socalled Northern school of professional painters and were
given the nickname “General Li” and “General Li Junior”
respectively.
Their early-stage style of landscape paintings was
chiefly characterized by the use of blue and green to a new
height. Emperor Xuan Zong summoned Li Sixun to the
royal court and commissioned him to paint murals at the
Da Tong Palace.
Li Sixun’s landscapes have an elevated mood and a very
unique style. He has beautifully captured the texture and
realness of the mountains and rivers with the strokes of
his brush. Li Zhaodao put more emphasis on technique
in his paintings of mountains, rivers and wild animals,
which decreased their artistic quality. They both used
brushes and bright green and blue paint to show high
mountains and cliffs, with rivers, rocks, and trees.
They were not interested in showing what nature really
looked like, as in a photograph. Instead, they were trying to convey the spirit of that place—what it felt like to
be there. Usually they did not put in all the details, just
enough to give the viewer the appropriate feeling. In fact,
they thought it was better art if it could give you the same
feeling with fewer lines.
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Contact: Cindy Yu, 617-852-8446
cindy.yu@epochtimes.com
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