Re: [INDOLOGY] Purāṇas, "resembling the belly of a mirror"

[Toke Lindegaard Knudsen]

Hello again,

I should add to my post below that Indian mirrors aren’t necessarily flat. There are plenty of examples of curved (convex) mirrors in Indian art, for example.

All best wishes,
Toke



> On Feb 1, 2018, at 11:39, Toke Lindegaard Knudsen <toke.knudsen at hum.ku.dk> wrote:
> 
> Dear Herman (if I may),
> 
> You wrote:
> 
>> maybe the following passage from the Nāṭyaśātra (2, 72cd-73ab) is of interest to you. It deals with the surface of the raṅgaśīrṣa:
>> 
>> kūrmapr̥ṣṭhaṃ na kartavyaṃ matsyapr̥ṣṭhaṃ tathaiva ca
>> **śuddhādarśatalākāraṃ** raṅgaśīrṣaṃ praśasyate.
> 
> Thank you so much for this interesting passage, which I wasn’t aware of. In Śrīpati’s Siddhāntaśekhara, there is another interesting passage in this regard:
> 
> ādarśodarasannibhā bhagavatī viśvambharā kīrttitā
> kaiścit kaiścana kūrmapṛṣṭhasadṛśī kaiścit sarojākṛtiḥ
> 
> “The venerable, all-sustaining [earth] is said by some to resemble the belly of a mirror; by others to resemble the back [that is, shell] of a turtle; and by yet others as having the form of a lotus.” (My rough translation.)
> 
> Here Śrīpati distinguishes the shape of a mirror’s belly from the shape of a turtle’s shell, like in the passage from the Nāṭyaśāstra.
> 
> I wasn’t sure about matsyapṛṣṭha, “back of a fish.” I see that Asha Saxena, in “Ancient Greek and Indian Theatre” (Delhi: Parimal Publications, 1997), citing Abhinavagupta’s commentary, explains that kūrmapṛṣṭha refers to “a surface sloping on all sides like the back of a tortoise and a little raised in the centre,” and matsyapṛṣṭha refers to “a surface sloping on both sides like the back of a fish and long in the centre” (p. 26). She holds that the shape of the raṅgaśīrṣa should be plane.
> 
> Abhinavagupta’s commentary reads: kūrmapṛṣṭham iti / samantato nimbaṃ madhye ca vartularūpaṃ mandam / tattādṛg eva madhye dīrgharūpaṃ matsyapṛṣṭham /
> 
> However, in “A Historical and Cultural Study of the Nāṭyaśāstra of Bharata” by Anupa Pande (Jodhpur: Kusumanjali Prakashan, 1996), the author cites Subbarao as stating that ‘kūrmapṛṣṭha’ and ‘matsyapṛṣṭha’ mean convex and concave, respectively (p. 18).
> 
> It’s hard for me to see how one could get ‘concave’ from ‘back of a fish,’ and I think both shapes must be convex, sloping downward in some way, as Abhinavagupta has it.
> 
> Finally, D. R. Mankad in “Hindu Theatre” (Indian Historical Quarterly, 8:3 (September 1932), 480-499) separates the two lines you cite: “Surface should not be kūrmapṛṣṭha or matsyapṛṣṭha. Raṅgaśīrṣa, clean like the surface of a mirror, is praised” (p. 486).
> 
> It seems to me that the Nāṭyaśāstra contrasts three different shapes, two with a slope (both convex, I think, though it’s tempting to read the latter of them as concave) and one that resembles the belly of a mirror. The mirror shape is probably to be understood as flat here, not round.
> 
> With all best wishes,
> Toke