Mudra, mudda

·期刊原文
Mudra, mudda

Coomaraswamy, Ananda K.
Journal of thf American Oriental Society
48:3
1928.09
pp.279--281

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p.279

Dr. Otto Francke, in ZDMG, 46, 1892, has an
elaborate article entitled Mudra = Schrift (oder
Lesekunst)?, in which he tries to prove that mudda in
the Milindapanha (where it must be confessed the
word has been unsuccessfully translated by Rhys
Davids, SBE 35, pp. 6, 91, 247 means script, or when
cited with lekha, in lists of the sippas, as reading
in distinction from writing; and he draws some
far-reaching conclusions.

This view scems to me very far-fetched and quite
implausible; it would never have occurred to anyone
familiar either with Indian dramatic technique or
with Indian iconography. As a matter of fact, the
interpretation of the Sinhalese commentator quoted in
SBE 35, p. 91, note (hastamudra sastraya) is at once
correct and intelligible; a rendering mudrd="sign
language" or "hand. gesture " is appropriate to all
the passages of the Milindapanho in question, and we
know from other sources that in early India a sign
language of the hands was considered an art or
acciomplishment with which an eduested person should
be familiar.

To make assurance doubly sure we have a Jataka
passage in

p.280

which the term is illustrated by examples. In
Jataka 546 (Cowell's translation, VI, p. 364) we
find the following (I quote the quite satisfactory
rendering of Cowell and Rouse): The Bodhisattva,
seeing a woman suitable to be his wife, reflected,
"'Whether she be unwed or not I do not know; I will
ask her by hand gesture (hatthamuddaya) and if she be
wise she will understand.' So standing afar off he
clenched his fist (mutthim). She understood that he
was asking whether she had a husband, and spread out
her hand " to signify that she had not a husband.

It need only be remarked that in abhinaya books
(see, e. g., in my Mirror of Gesture, p. 30) one of
the meanings of the sikhara hand, which is the same
as the musti hand, but with the thumb raised, is
precisely " husband." The outspread hand (pataka hand
of the abhinaya books) can well be understood to mean
"empty"; the nearest meaning given in the Abhinaya
Darpana is "having no refuge," which would not be
inapplicable to the case of a woman without a
husband. So it is evident that the Bodhisattva was
already using an established and conventional sign
language of the hands, and this is what mudda as an
art or accomplishment, always means. Nata-sutras,
which must have dealt with the expression of ideas,
etc., by means of formal gesture, are mentioned as
early as in Panini. Needless to say, this
conventional sign language of the hands, whether in
actual use by living persons, or in the more limited
range of iconographic usage, must have been based on
a natural and spontaneous language of gesture; even
today the common mudras of the hieratic art, e. g.,
vyakhyana mudra (often called vitarka) can be
observed in the course of a conversation, whenever a
point is made.

I append a list of some other references to the
language of gesture: Dracott, Simla Village Tales,
pp. 47, 50; Folk-lore, 30. 312 (a note on the
language of gesture) ; Hodson, T. C., Primitive
Culture of India, p. 61; Indian Antiquary, 22. 21;
Katha Sarit Sagara, Tawney's translation, I, p. 44;
II, p. 235; Knowles, Folk-Tales of Kashmir, pp. 215,
220 Parker, Village Folk-Tales of Ceylon, II, p. 24,
III, p. 343; Penzer, N. M., The Ocean of Story
(Kathasaritsagara), I, pp. 46, 80-82; Stokes, Indian
Fairy Tales, pp. 207, 208; Swynnerton, Romantic Tales
from the Panjab with Indian Nights' Entertainment,
pp. 329, 392; Vetalapancavimsati, story 1;
Vimanavatthu-atthakatha, p. 209, cited by K. Mitra in

p.281

JBORS, 12, 1926, p. 161; Venkatasubbiah, A., The
Kalas, Madras 1911, p. 18; Woodward, F. L., Kindred
Sayings, IV, p. 267, note 1, muddika, explained
tentatively as " reader of symbolic gestures" though
it must be admitted the sense here seems to require
some kind of enumerator.
ANANDA K. COOMARASWAMY.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.