Black and Bright and Beautiful

[Stephen Hodge]

N. Ganesan wrote:
> > Tamil texts, on the contrary, praise the shining
> > Black and its beauty. Few textual examples
In native pre-modern Tibetan writings, though not translations from
Skt to the best of my knowledge, I have noticed that the colour of
Indians is often specified as being "sngon-po".  In Tibetan,
"sngon-po" generally means "blue" or sometimes "green".  It is used in
most cases to translate "niila" or sometimes "hari" in the sense of
green but not "yellow" or "tawny".   Since Tibetan colour terminology
is quite capable of expressing "yellow" and "tawny" (and "black", for
that matter) and as they would have been aware that Indians are not
generally green (in colour), I have wondered whether there are any
Indic antecendents for specifying this colour (dark-blue).  It has
been suggested to me that a dark well-oiled skin might have appeared
bluish to Tibetan pilgrims but I have my doubts.  On tne other hand,
iconographically speaking, a number of tantric deities who are said to
be dark-blue in the texts are sometimes depicted as black while black
ones are sometimes painted as dark-blue.


Best wishes,
Stephen Hodge