Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Shiva Nataraja: Shifting Meanings of an Icon

1999; College Art Association; Volume: 81; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00043079.1999.10786894

1559-6478

Padma Kaimal,

Indian and Buddhist Studies

Sculptures of Shiva Nataraja, dancing in his ring of flame, may be the best-known objects of Indic art. Their fame and their academic interpretation derive in large part, however, from an essay by Ananda K. Coomaraswamy that oversimplifies the visual icon's links to written documents and that represents texts composed in the thirteenth century as contemporary with this image type, although sculptures of Nataraja survive from the early tenth century. Evidence from the tenth century suggests his significance rather as the wild lord of the cremation ground and as an emblem of the Chola dynasty.