Black and Bright and Beautiful

Valerie J Roebuck vjroebuck at APPLEONLINE.NET
Sat Nov 11 08:07:05 UTC 2000


This seems to represent the Sanskrit word s'yAma, which is black/dark
blue/green with connotations of "attractive" or "beautiful".  It is used
for e.g. the skin-colour of KRSNa, the colour of a rain-cloud, and (in
KAlidAsa, I think) for the colour of fresh grass after rain.

Valerie J. Roebuck,
Manchester, UK

PS In South Indian painting RAma and KRSNa are sometimes depicted as green.
(Also in Kathakali drama?)

Stephen Hodge wrote:

  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.





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