This attractively produced book takes up for study and analysis the representation of the human body in Indian art, both in the sculpture as well as later Indian painting. Emphasis is placed throughout on the sensuously rendered body of the images, the ornaments that bedeck it, the inter-penetration of the sacred and the sensuous, and the manner in which the image so conceived and rendered serves as support for the realization of the divine. The primary thrust is towards an interpretation of the visual arts, but it is backed up by copious references to literature with which the art shares a common universe. The style is easy and elegant, and the work seems to be primarily addressed to Western or westernized audiences, replete as it is with copious translations mostly from Sanskrit, Tamil, and Braj Bhasha literature. Helpful as these are, one needs to remember that they are pale shadows of the originals.

The abundant ornamentation found in Indian art, both of the architecture as well as the images that adorn its exterior or are housed and worshipped in the interior have been a source of puzzlement and dismay to scholars ever since its systematic history was initiated, mostly by scholars of British origin, in the nineteenth century. Accustomed to European art, it was to them an outstanding defect, lacking all order and balance. The subject matter of Indian art was also bizarre, particularly the many armed gods and goddesses, all singularly devoid of anatomical realism and additionally burdened with an overwhelming abundance of jewelry that further obscured what there was of the human form. Add to all this the unabashed sexuality of voluptuous figures engaging in erotic activity of the most specific kind and it was obvious to them that what was being viewed was hardly a higher form of artistic representation. What the creators, the Indians, thought about their own art hardly occurred to them, and if at all it was of no consequence.

Heading the reaction to all this rather insulting and pretentious writing was Ananda Coomaraswamy (1877–1947), who simply proceeded to refute all of these assertions. He demonstrated that Indian art was a clear expression of the religious and cultural ideals of the country, ornament was not mere embellishment but something that completed and empowered the object that it adorned, the multi-headed and multi-armed images were entirely appropriate to the meaning that they wished to convey, they were meant to act as supports for contemplation, and that the sexual imagery was firmly rooted in the doctrines of divine bi-unity where sacred and profane coincide which were at the basis of much Indian cosmogonical and metaphysical speculation.

Professor Dehejia's work expands these ideas, and seems to read like a traditional Indian tika, an explanatory and discursive commentary, on the work of Coomaraswamy, amplifying his ideas with extensive documentation, both literary and visual. She seems to acknowledge this handsomely stating that her admiration for Coomaraswamy has grown “exponentially over the years; so often, when I imagine that I have hit upon something significant, I have found an intuitive hint of the solution in one or another of his footnotes!” (p. xii). She does not make clear what these ideas of which she finds retrospective echoes in Coomaraswamy are, but be that as it may, she has done a service in once again drawing our attention to and expanding his ideas which have been largely current only among specialists for some time.

If there is any criticism that is to be directed at the book it is that Professor Dehejia paints with too broad a brush; she makes sweeping generalizations, not taking into sufficient account the great variety of the imagery and differences in style that occur throughout the history of Indian art. It is not sufficient to be concerned with the sensuous and adorned image as such but to also consider the nature of the sensuousness and adornment that vary greatly from period to period and from place to place. Thus (p.79) she remarks upon the sensuous nature of the modeling of female figures from Bharhut as reminiscent of the famous Didarganj Yaksi which is clearly not the case, the Didarganj image being fully modeled and in the round while the forms of Bharhut are cubical, the contours angular, the whole effect being singularly abstract. It is not just the presence of full breasts that makes an image voluptuous, but the manner in which this and other features of the body are modeled; it is the form, not the physiognomy that determines if the figure is sensuous or not. Again if we look at the ornaments adorning sculptures, there is a great range, for example, from Bharhut, where the form is almost covered with hard and intricately carved jewelry that conceals the geometrically rendered body (Figures 23, 24) to Sanchi (Fig 25) where the jewelry is greatly reduced and used not to cover the body but to emphasize its nudity and beauty. Similarly to state that the emphasis in Rajasthani paintings remains, as in preceding centuries (p. 161), on the elegantly sensuous and lavishly adorned human form hardly bears scrutiny for visually they are as different from earlier Indian sculpture as they can possibly be.