THE SENSUOUS AND THE SACRED: Chola Bronzes from South India

With an opening chapter entitled "Chola Bronzes: How, When, and Why," this scholarly encomium draws in the uninitiated from the outset, documenting an art form that remains part of daily life and ritual for Hindus in southeastern India. Chola "temple bronzes"—so-named because they are used in the worship of Vishnu, Shiva (along with his consort Uma) and other Hindu gods—were produced in the Tamil-speaking region of South India during the reign of the Chola dynasty in the 9th through the 13th centuries, using the still-existing "lost wax" technique. Dehejia, a professor of Indian art at Columbia, presents 185 illustrations (160 in color), carefully explaining poses (often via ancient verse), ornamentation and regional differences among the figures, which are often depicted as female, exquisitely proportioned and fecund. The book's title captures the bronzes' unique fusion of spiritual attainment and physical allure, still not widely known (or comprehended) in the West. In that sense, this work makes an excellent introduction to a worldview quite different from the scientific one, which splits off the spiritual from physical life; Dehejia and the four other scholar-essayists here neither exoticize the figures nor play down their very real attractions. The book serves as the catalogue to an exhibition on view until March at the National Museum of Asian Art for the United States, part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. (Apr.)