Catuṣṣaṣṭi-vidyā (Part 2)

Author : Dr Arathi V B

Indian art forms flourished for centuries. What led to its downfall?

Keywords : Indian art, culture, history

Date : 18/05/2024

The Catuṣṣaṣṭi-vidyās are also called Catuṣṣaṣṭi-kalās

The names Catuṣṣaṣṭi-vidyā and Catuṣṣaṣṭi-kalā are used in the same sense by Vātsyāyana who first formulated the list in his celebrated treatise kāmasutram. Scholars opine that Vidyā is ‘that which is mastered by practice’ and kalā is ‘a natural expression of talent’. Accordingly, the 64 knowledge forms in the list are both kalās as well as Vidyās.

The word kalā means art, beauty, attribute, virtue, ‘a part of’ and others¹. Kalā, is a blissful meditation of beauty. Material gain if any, is only its by-product! The categorization of vidyās entertains no hierarchy, but equally respects every profession as a form of karmayoga, a unique process of self elevation through professional excellence.

Every vidyā, even a mundane activity in life, when pursued with tanmayaatā (passion), kriyāśilatā (perseverance) and swopajnataā (creativity) verily becomes a yoga (path to self-realization). Bhagavadgeetā summarizes this as Yogah Karmasu kauśalam (2.50). We need to first relate to this standpoint before we study form and content of the Catuṣṣaṣṭi-kalās.

Significance of the number ‘64’

Numbers have cultural significance in the Indian ethos.

For example: Tri-murti, Sapta-swara, Nava-rasa and so on. Rgveda has 64 divisions within its 20 manḍalas. The number 64 is also auspicious for representing the 64 tantras preached by Lord Śiva. Creation is said to possess the prime 15 kalās from within which the 16th kala, namely, the life principle radiates forth. 16 is 1/4th of 64. Therefore the 16 kalās mentioned in Rudrayāmalatantra, Upaniṣads and other sources too, circuitously point towards the number 64!

Although the number of kalās in the list has varied in different sources, the number 64 continues to be conventionally identified with kalās. The Rāmayaṇa, Mahābhāratam, purāṇas, Kāmasutram, Śukranitisāra, kāvyas, lexicons and living traditions mention ‘64’ kalās. The popular Lalitasahasranāma stotra praises the goddess as ‘catuṣṣaṣtyupacaradya catuṣṣaṣṭi-kalāmayi mahācatuṣṣaṣtikoti-yoginigaṇa-sevitā (She who is worshipped through 64 rituals, she who is the personification of 64 kalās and she who is served by the great 64 yoginis).

Some Jain texts and Kalpāntaravācyāni mention 72 arts while the Buddhist text “Lalitavistara’ mentions 86 vidyās.

The purpose of Catuṣṣaṣṭi-vidyās

A broad overview of the Catuṣṣaṣṭi-vidyā concept indicates that it intends to

Provide multiple employment models by encouraging both self employment and job markets simultaneously
Nourish the natural talents instead of setting up rigid models for everyone to follow
Encourage the use of regional human and material resources
Promote creativity and innovation in every domain
Emphasize upon specialization and domain discipline
To create a sustainable model of a self-reliant society
Encourage the invention of newer knowledge systems
Preserve the older knowledge systems for posterity
Explore newer dimensions and approaches to older systems
Encourage exchange of knowledge and skills within the models

The need to generate multiple employment opportunities and diverse trade activity in the society, no doubt must have been a big motivating factor in the development of the catuṣṣaṣṭi-vidyās. But a deeper study of their content, context and practice reveals a much higher vision. The profuse diversity, creative urge, aesthetic appreciation and ethnic pride displayed in the kalās, illustrate that nurturing human potential was certainly the bigger drive. The commitment to professional ethics, eco-friendly work patterns and service that have always been indivisible parts of the kalās too.

A versatile categorization

Some vidyās focus upon intellectual exercises (Eg: tarka, jyotiṣa, vedāngas, polity) while some involve physical enterprise (Eg: agriculture, cattle rearing, wood cutting, building, carpentry) Some cater to routine essentials (Eg: cooking, ayurveda, gardening, domesticating, botany) while some others are business models based on artistic skills (Eg: bangle making, weaving, pottery, tailoring, embroidery, jewellery or perfume making) Some revolve around aesthetic appreciation (Eg: poetics and fine arts), while some others nurture some unique skills like magic, acrobatics, etc. Infact, many vidyās are a blend of two or more of these. Preserving their own unique form and content, the kalās have always had profuse exchanges and share an aesthetic bond too.

The list of Catuṣṣaṣṭi-kalās is so versatile and democratic that, from vainayiki(ethics) down to coravidyā (the art of theft!), it accommodates a big variety- poetics, prosody, music, dance, drama, painting, sculpture, flower-garland making, dyeing, jewelry, mathematics, multilingual skills, domesticating horses/ elephants, etc, stitching, embroidery, laying tiles, Ayurveda, vāstuśilpa (architecture), astronomy-astrology, magic. and even pastimes like Antyākṣari, kāvya-vācana and others.

Transcending the boundaries of gender, community, age and even time and place, Catuṣṣaṣṭi-kalās appeal to all and have been the most spectacular reflections of the grand cultural heritage of India at all times!

What does history say?

There is no precise historical data that documents the origin of the catuṣṣaṣṭi-kalā concept. There is indeed ample scope for research in this field².

The kalās must have materialised at various times in different regions and evolved with time. In order to develop into such a grand range, they must have unfolded more and more features and dimensions through relentless trials and mutual exchanges. From the lists of Vātsyayana and Yashodhara (~8 CE), we can surmise that these kalās were well developed and successfully practiced in their times. The ancient and medieval Indian societies certainly must have been indeed vibrant and spectacular with this spectrum of kalās and the buzz of socio-economic and cultural activities that surrounded them. Kāmasutram elaborates upon the various forms of arts, occupations, pursuits, knowledge systems and even events, festivities and pastimes that a civilized society should adopt.

In the ancient and early medieval times ages, study and training in veda, shad-vedāngas, caturdaśa vidyāngas, āgamas, tantras, regional and folk arts and occupations were most common and generously patronized by rulers as well as commoners. Many fine arts, trades, cottage industries and skills developed around these domains and perhaps subsequently got categorized as Catuṣṣaṣṭividyās.

Although the epics, puranas, śukranitisara, kavyas, vishwakoshas (lexicons) and living traditions mention 64 kalās, the full list first appears in Vātsyāyana’s Kāmasutram³. Eventually, newer ones were accommodated, expanding the list to 72 and 120. Yasodhara in his commentary on kamasutram, adds many more kalās of his time, expanding the number to 512! In the latter lists, many kalās were retained, some were renamed, removed, modified or even divided and some others even merged into another and so on. The democratic ecosystem of pre-colonial India always facilitated such modifications.

Royal Patronage

The catuṣṣaṣṭi-kalās with their countless regional diversities and subdivisions enjoyed immense royal patronage and public provision in India for ages. The Hindu, Buddha, Jain, Sikh, regional and tribal rulers all over India, even deemed it a mandatory religious duty to protect, promote and patronize these vidyās. Regardless of gender, regional, occupational or religious identities, expert and talented individuals and groups representing every vidya were generously felicitated⁴. Common people naturally picked up these vidyās to pursue them as kula-vrttis/kuladharmas (family occupations). The practice of catuṣṣaṣṭi-vidyās as vrttidharma by masses, ensured consistency in their growth giving scope to specialization too. People loved and pursued their vrittis so ardently that they even became possessive about them! While there always were individuals who switched to other professions by choice, pursuing kula-dharma became the most common choice for all. The kula-dharmas associated with their suitable varṇa⁵-

Cāturvarṇyam mayā sruṣṭam guṇa-karma-vibhāgasah (Bhagavadgeetā, 4.13)

Guna (aptitude, talent, background) and Karma (mandatory duties, obligations) have dictated the nature of every vidyā. While guṇa motivated the choice of pursuit, karma regulated the endeavour. Guṇa and karma are further monitored by the code of dharma, which ensured that no single individual’s or community’s undertaking hampered the collective interests of the society, culture or ecology. The consistent growth graph of Indian economy and culture for millennia, can be owed to this well executed vrtti-dharma scheme.

The dark era

From the ancient times, merchants, travellers, diplomats and students from across the world who frequented India, carried back the rich multifaceted knowledge concepts to their own regions. However in the medieval era, the western and middle-east societies underwent massive civilizational destructions under the Abrahamic onslaughts⁶. While jihad and the crusades completely engulfed the middle east and Europe in decades, the mighty Indian kṣātra⁷ managed to block their entry for centuries. But the asura-yuddha⁸ of the Islamic and Christian invaders and the foolish discord amongst Indian rulers, gradually paved way for outsiders to barge their way into the Indian land.

Intolerable of the scale of prosperity and vibrance of the Indian society, the invaders ruthlessly demolished temples, palaces, towns and deracinated the prevalent political, economic, educational, social and cultural edifices that had developed over millennia. Kingship, temples and gurukulas which cradled our knowledge systems, skills and occupations were rooted out. The Ghaznavids, Khiljis, Moghuls, Dutch, Portugese, French, British and all other invaders plundered, looted and killed alike.

But around the 18-19 CE, the British who had begun to establish a strong hold on India, conspired a different strategy to colonize India. Their intention was to dominate India via methods which faced less resistance.

They used their political control, they designed wily long-term schemes to divide and weaken India by taking over the education domain and intellectual discourse. Their plans were well conceived and executed.

Their agenda was clear:

Disintegrating the economy by imposing alien policies, trade sanctions and heavy taxes
Dividing the society on the basis of caste, language, region, gender and religion to keep it disunited.
Discouraging native knowledge systems by belittling and depatronizing them
Monopolizing every domain of Indian life by dictating every aspect of education, occupations, religion and socio-political discourse.
Weakening the self esteem and spirit of self defense of the natives to make them non-defensive
Religious conversions to permanently unplug people from their cultural identity and to command their loyalty forever.

By employing hundreds of racist religious bigot ‘scholars’, they connived long-term schemes to achieve this. Macaulay’s devious education policies, the highly concocted caste narrative, trivializing of native vidyas / vrttis, demeaning every aspect of Indian life as primitive and uncivilized, demonizing vedas, vedāngas and temple traditions and everyone who pursued them and many more were part of their schemes to uproot India from her rich past and and cultural identity.

While taxes and trade sanctions suffocated the local and international markets for all levels of trade, English education conditioned younger generations into colonized thinkers who would willingly welcome every act of the British as a ‘great reform’! Amplifying stray instances of social discrimination here and there, the British autocracy increasingly devalued the very spirit of kuladharma, which Indians always practiced with pride.

The deśi ecosystem involving self employment, family occupation, dignity of labour, domain discipline and karmayoga were rubbished off as ‘caste system, primitive and discriminative’! Every individual and community was vigorously encouraged to shed the ‘caste’ (family occupation) and submit to the jobs that the British gave as ‘alms’. Perfidious natives and intellectuals were ‘bought’ over to work for the British designs. Every devious scheme was manipulated to appear like a ‘long awaited solution for India’. Posing as ‘saviours’ of India, they ruthlessly destroyed the edifices on which Indian economy arts and occupations were built. The once prosperous ecosystem with integrity, ethics and democracy, now was reduced to servitude. By the beginning of the 20th century, the Indian economy declined to its lowest.

The worst hit were the vedic and occupational education, military training and fine arts. The catuṣṣaṣṭi-kalās which once contributed most to the Indian economy and culture, suffered as serious setback.

British apathy dealt such a blow to the local and international market that many of the prosperous kalas went totally extinct, while many others depreciated into petty businesses, and many others were reduced to socio-religious conventions or hobbies⁹. Naturally, pursuing the kuladharma was no longer the choice for many. It must be stated that post-independence India also did not see a significant revival of native arts and occupations¹⁰.

There is still hope:

Despite years of invasions and colonization, despite having lost many of their original content and platforms, despite political apathy even after independence, despite the relentless devaluation of native knowledge systems by Leftist narratives, many of the Catuṣṣaṣṭi-kalās astonishingly continue to flourish in every part of India, in small or bigger scales¹¹. Some vidyas like yoga, music, dance, wood carving, painting, food, textiles, embroidery, jewelry, etc., have even reclaimed their positions in the world market!

We shall look into the names and forms of each of them in the coming parts.

Access Part 1 of this thread here

Picture credit:

Thumb image: Wikimedia Commons

Footnotes:

¹The word kalā is used in many contexts in ancient literature- Chandogya Upanisad, Mahābhāratam, Saivadarsana and Suśrutasamhitā, Nātyaśastra, Vivekacintāmani and Nighantus. Sānkhyayanaśruti uses the word silpa (not the same as the art of sculpture) in the same sense as kalā. In many tāla theories in music and dance treatises, the word kalā denotes ‘unit of time’.

²The present study draws most of the information and descriptions from Catuṣṣaṣṭikale (kannada) by Dr T S Satyavathi, ‘Sanskrit lore for the young’ series, Bhāratiya Vidya Bhavan, Bengaluru, 2007

³Vatsyāyana records the various pursuits and pleasures that add cheer to the life of the civilized man. Erotics, just one part of the text, has been highlighted by most western scholars and their Indian counterparts. As a result, few know about the many other resourceful knowledge documented in the text.

⁴Here are a great many references to these in vedic, epic, poetic works, kamasutram, inscriptions and living traditions.

⁵Varna is wrongly translated as ‘caste’. Unlike the European ‘casta’, the division of the society based upon race, the varṇa system is actually based upon factors like aptitude, family background, regional background, etc., It has been flexible to a great extent- While Ravaṇa, born as a brahmaṇa, took to kṣātravrtti and became a king, Siddhārtha, a born Kṣatriya, took to brāhmavrtti (spirituality) and became ‘Buddha’.

⁶Mass conversions and slavery unplugged them from everything they identified with- religion, culture, fine arts, occupation, political and social edifice and more, reducing them to poverty and servitude. People were used as human weapons by the Abrahamic despots, for war, loot, conversions and colonization of people across the world. The cultural identity of the natives is totally washed out, giving in to forced Abrahamic impositions.

⁷kṣetraraksaṇāt kṣātram. Kṣhātra denotes the undaunted will and prowess to defend one’s motherland from internal and external inflictions, even if it demands the greatest of sacrifices.

⁸āsurayudhha refers to proxy war, wherein no norm, ethics or prior agreements are valued. The invaders who could never win a single war by prowess, bribed the native traitors to find shortcuts to victory. Indian rulers for long conformed to Dharmayuddha, wherein norms and agreements are valued. Whenever the losing enemy sought mercy, Indian rulers pardoned them as per norms, but on the other hand, when they grabbed power, they always assacred the rulers and even completely destroyed towns and cities.

⁹It is astounding that even amidst such a discouraging situation, many individuals and communities pursued their kuladharmas forming independent trade guilds. The conventional lifestyle of people kept markets alive for weaving, farming, cattle-rearing, pottery, carpentry, jewellery, kitchen-ware, trade of spices, vegetables and fine arts like music, dance, drama etc., to name a few. But the ones that depended on huge funding conventional gurukulam education, native science and technology studies, military training and others gradually diminished. Unfortunately even after independence many of these native knowledge forms have never obtained the respect and encouragement that they deserve.

¹⁰The first leader of independent India, devalued native knowledge and fancifully adopted the western models for everything. Degrees and jobs in the public sector were projected as the sole measure of one’s worth. Consequently the society generated youth who graduate out of disciplines they do not really honestly like. The outcomes were unemployment, mediocrity and lack of job satisfaction. The obsession for English, degree and job grew so much that pursuing a conventional career got to be considered inferior. People who dumped their kuladharmas for jobs, consequently aspired for jobs abroad.

¹¹Not that the central and state governments have never patronized these. But in so many decades much much more could have been done to bring about a massive revival of the native arts and occupations. But it needs to exhibit a much stronger will to counter the political and Abrahamic appeasement stand points and corruption in the system to make all this materialize.