Indecent Lascivious Iconography

[Gene Thursby]

	I respond to one tangent along the thread proposed by Y. Rosser,
specifically to the comment re "eye of the beholder, i.e, that: 

> Certainly, if beauty is in the eye of the beholder, a Christian missionary
> in U.P. in the1880s would view this Tantric/erotic art differently than
> would a Dharma Bum of the 1960s, or an Indologist in 1995.

	Comment: A true Arya in the activist, radical, or Lekh Ram wing 
of the Arya Samaj (at least at any time from the 1880s through the 1920s) 
would have -- and did -- react to most religious use of imagery in India, 
and especially to murti puja and all tantric imagery, as keenly and 
negatively as any Christian missionary or tobacco missionary such as 
Senator Jesse Helms.  There are little-known polemical writings against 
"puranic Hinduism" by Arya Samaj authors that include -intentionally- 
obscene illustrations that are intended to inflame the sentiments of 
their readers against images and religious practices presumable connected 
with them.  In short, "reformers" of Indian descent in India have in some 
instances propagated and actively debased what they sought to efface.
	International, cooperative scholarly study of these phenomena, 
however, would be limited if not prevented by the new USA legislation.
Gene Thursby <gthursby at religion.ufl.edu>