B2
Arts & Culture
The Epoch Times
September 11 – 17, 2008
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
Ten Fingers and a Language All Their Own
Deciphering hand signs in Indian dance
By CHRISTINE LIN
Epoch Times Staff
LANDSCAPE BY LI XISUN
Under Emperor Xuan Zong’s reign in the Tang
Dynasty, General Li Sixun (李思训 651-716) and his
son, Li Zhaodao (李昭道), were both excellent artists in portraying natural landscapes. They are the
founder of the so-called 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
mural 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, like 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.
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 Change, 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 which 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?”
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 and
this event [] we decided to do 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.”
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.” Chris also laughed
after mentioning that he could not
remember any more details regarding the Moon Festival because he
wasn’t paying attention in Chinese
school.
“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.”
“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 said, 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?”
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 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 In-
dian 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.