Filozofski vestnik Letnik/Volume XXIII • Številka/Number 2 • 2002 • 191-204 
B O D I E S , P O W E R A N D DIFFERENCE: 
R E P R E S E N T A T I O N S O F T H E EAST-WEST DIVIDE IN 
T H E C O M P A R A T I V E S T U D Y O F INDIAN A E S T H E T I C S 
PARUL DAVE-MUKHERJI 
This paper attempts to raise certain methodological issues concerning the 
study of Indian aesthetics. It seeks to draw attention to the need for concep-
tual rigour in the usage of related terms derived from western aesthetics 
through a critique of the comparative method in the study of Indian aesthet-
ics. In particular, this method, predicated upon a certain binarism (east/west; 
culture/nature; practice/theory), offers a disciplinary coherence to compara-
tive aesthetics even as it renders it open to criticism. In the process, the body 
as represented in art emerges as the site of contestation through which cul-
tural difference is negotiated within a larger politics of visual representation. 
/ . 
The Disciplinary Formation of Aesthetics and Colonialism 
Aesthetics, as a concept applicable to art, emerged in the west by the 
eighteenth century.1 It was only later that it consolidated itself as a discipline 
allied to that of art history.2 Along with other disciplines, it too was deeply 
related to colonialism and it was through the process of colonisation that it 
entered the academic curricula of the Indian universities.3 Foregrounding 
the systematic complicity between the disciplinary formations of domains of 
knowledge and the political structure of imperialism, Edward Said's Orientalism4 
has crucial implications for the discipline of aesthetics as well. The latter, as a 
1 Michael Kelly, "Origins of Aesthetics: Historical and Conceptual Overview," 
Encyclopaedia of Aesthetics, Vol. III. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1998, pp. 417-427. 
2 Eugene Kleinbauer, Modern Perspectives in Western Art History, University of California, 
Los Angeles 1971, p. 2. 
3 Chatterjee, Partha (ed.), Texts of Power: Emerging Disciplines in Colonial Bengal, Samya 
Calcutta 1996, p. 26. 
205 
DARUL DAVE-MUKHERJI 
part of western academic knowledge, can no longer maintain its impartial 
status and has been shown to be complicit in the history of European colo-
nialism. By the first decade of the twentieth century, the first International 
Congress of Aesthetics (ICA) was held in Berlin. Such International Con-
gresses seemed to work from the assumption that aesthetics has universal 
applicability and value. The Berlin conference and the subsequent formation 
of the discipline followed the logic of a possible universal aesthetics.5 The 
effect of such a logic was an inevitable homogenisation of cultural difference. 
Now it is possible to see how the cultural dominance of the west was precari-
ously maintained through its prescription of a set of aesthetic values derived 
from the west.6 These values became "normal" in judging the art of different 
cultures. This cultural hegemony carried over even after the colonised na-
tions gained their political sovereignty. 
It is only from a post-colonial perspective that one can see the various 
stakes involved in the erasure of the cultural difference. Even while one 
recognises the necessity for engagement with the question of universalism, it is 
important to take note of the way difference has been theorised within the 
framework of comparative aesthetics. It is not as if the question of difference 
has not been raised under the rubric of the universalism of comparative aes-
thetics. Scholars of Indian art and comparative philosophy such as A. K. 
Coomaraswamy and P. Masson-Oursel have raised the question of difference 
only to foreclose it through cultural essentialisation. At this juncture it is neces-
sary to raise once again the quesdon of difference, which takes into account the 
consequences of universalism on one hand and essentialism on the other.7 
The historical fact of colonisation has been foregrounded not for indulg-
ing in the politics of blame but for historicising the emergence of the disci-
pline in the west and the circumstances of its entry into India. As a concept 
and a discipline which organically evolved at a specific historical juncture, 
underpinned by certain culturally specific imperatives within the west,8 what 
does it offer to the study of Indian art and culture? How productive is it as a set 
of conceptual categories to interrogate the tradition from a postcolonial present? 
4 Edward Said, Orientalism, Routledge & Kegan Paul, New York 1978, p. 27. 
5 Archie Bahm, "Is a Universal Science of Aesthetics Possible?," Journal of Aesthetics and 
Art Criticism , XXXI (1972), pp. 3-7. Bahm addresses this issue in form of a question and 
answers in the affirmative. 
6 Tony Bennett, "Really Useless 'Knowledge': A Political Critique of Aesthetics," in: H 
Blocker & Jennifer M Jeffers (eds.), Conceptualizing Aesthetics: From Plato to Lyotard. 
Wadsworth California 1999, pp. 294-301. 
7 Leela Gandhi, "Thinking Otherwise," in: Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction, 
Oxford University Press, Delhi 1999, p.27. 
8 Terry Eagleton, The Ideology of the Aesthetics, Oxford and Cambridge, Mass., 1990. 
206 
BODIES, POWER AND DIFFERENCE: REPRESENTATIONS OF THE EAST-WEST DIVIDE IN . . . 
This question seems to pose two sets of methodological alternatives: 
1. To claim that the concept of aesthetics is too culturally specific to be 
useful in the study of non-western culture. Aesthetics, in this sense, has no 
meaning outside the European context and hence, is to be abandoned. Such 
an approach would juxtapose the west and the east as polar opposites and yet 
at the same time, constitute the very ground of "the comparative method." 
2. Aesthetics is that which defines the human essence and has universal 
applicability and so it can be a useful category in the study of any culture. 
Every culture has the potential to add a unique dimension to this overarching 
concept. Such an understanding would lead to and inform attempts which 
set out to study the diverse formulation and cultural variations of the concept 
of aesthetics. A corollary to this approach would be a feverish search, as for 
example, for Indian equivalents for every aesthetic concept such as "imita-
tion," "catharsis," "imagination," "beauty" and so forth in traditional Indian 
texts. It is the latter approach which has found wide acceptability in the works 
of some Indian scholars.9 
To illustrate and examine these two approaches, I will specifically focus 
on the works of two very influential ideologues and scholars, P. Masson-Oursel 
and K. C. Pandey, who advocated "the comparative method" in the disciplines 
of Philosophy10 and Aesthetics respectively. For analysing their positions, I 
have selected an article by Masson-Oursel entitled A Connection Between Indian 
Aesthetics and Philosophy 11 and K. C. Pandey's book Comparative Aesthetics12 as 
representative of the methods that demonstrate either a radical difference or 
an overlap between Indian and Western Aesthetics. As a point of entry into 
the critique of the comparative method, I shall take up the problem of the 
translation of terms, which bears upon the field of comparative aesthetics. I 
shall then narrow down my focus to one of the key terms from Indian aesthet-
ics - pramana and one such term from western aesthetics - "imitation" and 
critique their translation/ interpretation by Masson-Oursel and K. C. Pandey 
respectively. 
9 P.J . Chaudhury, "Catharsis in the Light of Indian Aesthetics," Journal of Aesthetics and 
Art Criticism Supplement to the Oriental issue XXIV No. 1, Part 1 (Fall: 1965), pp.151-163. 
Ramendra Kumar Sen, "Imagination in Coleridge and Abhinavagupta: A Critical Analysis 
of Christian and Saiva Standpoints," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism , Special issue, 
Oriental Aesthetics, XXIV No. 1, Part 1 (Fall:1965), pp. 97-107. 
10 P. Masson-Oursel, Comparative Philosophy, Paris, 1926 as cited in India and Europe, 
1988, p. 420. 
11 P. Masson-Oursel, "A Comparison Between Indian Aesthetics and Philosophy," Trans. 
A.KCoomaraswamy (from Review Des Arts Asiatique), Rupam 27/28 (1925), pp. 91-94. 
12 K. C. Pandey, Comparative Aesthetics, Indian Aesthetics & Western Aesthetics. Chowkhambe 
Sanskrit Series, Banaras 1956, p. 3. 
207 
DARUL DAVE-MUKHERJI 
I I . 
P. Masson-Oursel and Comparative Philosophy 
Though primarily a French Indologist and a scholar of Philosophy, P. 
Masson-Oursel (1882-1956) made a significant contribution with his writings 
on Indian aesthetics, which played a key role in the nationalist defense of 
traditional Indian art. The other is an Indian scholar of aesthetics, K. C. Pandey, 
whose work on comparative aesthetics was regarded as a seminal work in the 
field in the 50's and 60's of the 20th century. 
Masson-Oursel was regarded in his dual role as Indologist and "positivis-
tic" philosopher as, an official spokesman for India and the Orient within the 
French historiography of philosophy.13 K. C. Pandey, on the other hand, used 
"the comparative method" within the field of aesthetics and was familiar with 
Indian as well as western theories of aesthetics.14 In terms of theoretical as-
sumptions, Masson-Oursel and K. C. Pandey can be said to have important 
differences and commonalties. 
Masson-Oursel was deeply committed to the view that the Indian and the 
Greek philosophies and art traditions were so fundamentally different that 
any form of comparison could only demonstrate the unbridgeable difference. 
However, both Masson-Oursel and K. C. Pandey appear to subscribe to "the 
totality of the human phenomenon" by analyzing and comparing its different 
manifestations in various cultural traditions. They were both committed to a 
search for recurrent isomorphic features, common structures (which Masson-
Oursel termed as "proportions") in mutually independent traditions. Masson-
Oursel's "claim to be a totally open-minded cartographer of the human mind 
with a true universality, no longer bound by the restrictions of being part of 
one particular tradition"15 seems to echo in the introduction of K. C. Pandey's 
Comparative Aesthetics. 
A careful study of the aesthetic theories of the Western thinkers from 
Sophist Gorgias (about 470 BC) and Socrates (469-399 BC) to Croce (1866-
1952) produces an impression on the mind of one who is familiar with Indian 
Aesthetics that the East and the West have thought on the problem of the 
beautiful in ways which have a marked similarity and, therefore, there is ample 
13 Wilhelm Halbfass, India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding, State University of 
New York Press, Albany 1988, p. 142. 
14 K. C. Pandey, Comparative Aesthetics, Indian Aesthetics & Western Aesthetics. 2 vols. 
Varanasi: The Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series IV, 1956, p. 7. 
15 Ibid. 
208 
BODIES, POWER AND DIFFERENCE: REPRESENTATIONS OF THE EAST-WEST DIVIDE IN . . . 
scope for a comparative approach to the problem of aesthetics. Such an im-
pression has been responsible for my thesis "Comparative Aesthetics."16 
Aesthetics, according to this problematic, is a unitary phenomenon and 
every culture partakes of it equally.17 Halbfass's comments on Masson-Oursel's 
project also hold true for that of K. C. Pandey's: His thought seems to repre-
sent an objectifying, detached meta-philosophy [meta-aesthetics in the case of 
Comparative Aesthetics] which no longer engages in any actual problems and 
subject matters of the various philosophical traditions, but treats them all 
equally as objects of comparative anthropological enquiry.18 
As an advocate of comparative philosophy, Masson-Oursel used "the com-
parative method" not only to juxtapose Indian with western culture but within 
the different facets of Indian culture.19 In his article, Indian aesthetics and 
philosophy are compared via a terminological analysis of pramana, a term 
common to both the spheres of Indian culture. It is taken to be an important 
project to dispel prejudices and is addressed primarily to the western audience -
both the critics and admirers of Indian art. This seminal essay belongs to the 
mid 20's of the twentieth century when there was a divided opinion among 
the English public about the relative worth of traditional Indian art. To counter 
the colonial denigration of Indian art, the Orientalists and the nationalists in 
India articulated a powerful and rhetorical counter-posture extolling Indian 
art, for example, in the writings by E. B. Havell and A. K. Coomaraswamy.20 
Whether traditional Indian art was "naturalistic" was the main rallying point 
and an issue of confrontation between the two camps. It is the corporeal body 
which is invoked around which claims of authenticity in terms of beauty or 
truth are staged. (Plate 1.) 
To every western art critic who discusses the Indian conception of beauty, 
those who blame the Hindus for their supposed anatomical errors, as well as 
those who attribute to them a transcendental idealism, we can only recom-
mend a study of the Citralaksana.21 It will open their eyes and dispel their 
prejudices;22 
16 Ibid., p. xxix. 
17 See Van Meter Ames, "Aesthetic values in the East and West," in \ journal of Aesthetics and 
Art CriticismXlX, No.l , (1960) pp. 3-16, for similar assumptions in Comparative Aesthetics. 
18 Wilhelm Halbfass, p. 142. 
19 A student of Levy-Bruhl and S. Levi, Masson-Oursel propagated the "comparative 
method" as the culmination of the "positive method;" see Wilhelm Halbfass, India and 
Europe, p. 142. 
20 Tapati Guha Thakurta, The Making of a New Indian Art: Artists, Aesthetics and National-
ism in Bengal, 1850-1920. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1992, pp. 159-167. 
21 An ancient treatise on art in Sanskrit of approximately 3rd-4th century AD. 
22 Masson-Oursel, "A Comparison Between Indian Aesthetics and Philosophy," Trans. 
From Review Des Arts Asiatique, A. K. Coomaraswamy, Rupam 27/28 (1925), p. 92. 
209 
DARUL DAVE-MUKHERJI 
Apart from the ancient art treatise, Masson-Oursel draws attention to what 
he considered a key connection between Indian aesthetics and Indian phi-
losophy via a term common to both. This he takes to be "pramana:"23 The idea 
of "pramana" plays a role of primary importance equally in the aesthetic and 
the philosophy of India from the third century of the Christian era onwards; 
it has to a large degree de termined the scholastic character of Asiatic 
PLATE 1. Emperor Mandhata surrounded bypersoni- PLATE 2. Yakshi or semi-
fled attributes/possesions of a king, such as the queen, divine goddess, Sandstone, 
the army, minister, etc., Jaggayapeta, Satavahana Pe- Kushana Period, Mathura 
riod, 2nd C. BCE., Government Museum, Madras, In- Museum, 2nd C. BCE, Ma-
dia. thura, India. 
23 The Sanskrit term pramana, commonly found in technical treatises on art, is open to 
a variety of interpretation ranging f rom systems of body measurement, modular or other-
wise to a sense of proportion in the representation of bodies of all kinds, human, animal 
or vegetable. 
210 
BODIES, POWER AND DIFFERENCE: REPRESENTATIONS OF THE EAST-WEST DIVIDE IN . . . 
culture?24And, Indianists have too long ignored the aesthetic sense of the 
term "pramana;" they have considered only its philosophical meaning and 
for this reason, have misunderstood the meaning. Their usual renderings 
are: source, faculty of knowing or even criterion of truth.25 
For Masson-Oursel, it is aesthetic "pramana," which is to be privileged 
over the philosophical one and which contains the key to the "real" or "au-
thentic" meaning. Pramana, as one of the six "limbs" of painting, means "the 
science of proportion, in relation to perspective and anatomical structure" or 
as in the Citralaksana, "the science of measure." (Plate 2.) 
The science of plastic representation (citra) consists in knowing the char-
acteristic measurements of the different parts of the bodies of innumerable 
beings which the artist may wish to represent: a god, a cakravartin, a king, a 
Buddha, a Bodhisattva, a monk or demon, etc.26 
It seems to me that via the aesthetic pramana, which Masson-Oursel inter-
prets as timeless stereotypes (Plate 3.) which are repeated by the traditional 
artists mindlessly, he conveniently applies the same paradigm to Indian phi-
losophy. In other words, the conclusion that Masson-Oursel wants us reach is 
that just as the Indian artist merely reproduced the "characteristic measure-
ments" by which the representation of the different kinds of bodies are once 
and for all fixed, the Indian philosopher continued to philosophise in a for-
mulaic mode. His position vis-a-vis this controversy over the existence of "natu-
ralism" in Indian art is summed up thus: ...Indian art is aiming at something 
quite different than the copying of nature.27 
This difference rejects and at the same time enables comparison between 
the art of the eastern and the western cultures. Polarising these two art tradi-
tions in terms of presence and absence of "naturalism," Masson-Oursel firmly 
holds the view that unlike the western artist, the Indian artist attached no 
importance to the observation or reproduction of nature but only reproduced 
the conventional types as handed down by the tradition. And herein lay the 
eternal scholastic nature of Indian art: What we assume, quite superficially, to 
be the inspiration of an art for art's sake, really proceeds from a religious 
scholasticism that implies a traditional classification of types established by 
convention. 
Any presence of "naturalism" in Indian art can only be understood as 
unintentional or accidental: If here or there a relief or a painting exhibits 
some features drawn from life, it is only accidentally that the artist has, in 
24 Ibid. 
25 Ibid. 
26 Ibid. 
27 Ibid. 
211 
DARUL DAVE-MUKHERJI 
spite of himself, transcribed something from actual nature; and this is cer-
tainly not, from the indigenous point of view, the most meritorious part of his 
work.28 
This claim to have attained the indigenous point of view by Masson-Oursel is 
enabled by the very problematic of "the comparative method:" The best way 
to enter at all into the genius of any great historic culture seems to be to 
approach it simultaneously from several points of view;29 
The contradiction involved in this methodology of the awareness of one's 
location within one's specific culture and the claim to view other cultures 
from a transcendental vantage point f rom which they are visible did not go 
unacknowledged by this French Indologist as he continued: Even though the 
observations to which one thus commits oneself be fragmentary and some-
what arbitrary.30 What is accomplished by the detour to the pramana in "In-
dian Aesthetics" is the emptying out of any sense of "naturalism" or "empiri-
PLATE 3. Lakshmi, Goddess of Abun- PLATE 4. Boddhisattva or Future Buddha, 
dance, Kushana Period, 1st C. AD., Na- Ajanta Wall Painting, Cave No. 1, Vakataka 
tional Museum, New Delhi, India. Period, Late 5th C. AD., Maharashtra, In-
dia. 
28 Ibid. 
29 Ibid., p. 91. 
30 Ibid. 
212 
BODIES, POWER AND DIFFERENCE: REPRESENTATIONS OF THE EAST-WEST DIVIDE IN . . . 
cism" implied by the pramana of Indian Philosophy. (Plate 4.) The "pramana" 
of the philosophers cannot any longer pass for the apprehension of reality. 
That is what we call real knowledge, but that does not by any means denote 
knowledge deduced from facts.31 
The western and the Indian cultures from this point of view are divided 
along the lines of "nature" and "culture." "Naturalism" and "abstraction" are 
chalked out as the mutually exclusive domains of the art/philosophy of the 
west and the non-west. It is the "natural body" which became accessible to the 
post-Romanesque western artist, whereas throughout history the eastern art-
ist was locked up in the prison-house of the "cultural body" in which tradition 
is seen purely in negative terms. And is it not surreptitiously rather than openly 
that our own "imagers" inserted into cathedral decoration details extraneous 
to the traditional scenes composed of abstract figures?32 Or, It follows from 
this comparison of the accepted aesthetic and philosophical meanings of the 
word "pramana" that Indian artists and metaphysicians were in agreement 
that it was not material objects, but more or less a priori abstract types, whether 
types of being or types of knowledge, that were worthy of attention.33 
The typical image of the Indian or oriental artist that emerges is some-
one who neither engages in the world empirically nor one, as the nationalist 
would have it, who elevates himself above the visible and contemplates art 
within a mental sphere. Just like the metaphysical philosopher, the Indian 
artist merely duplicates the received traditional types like an automaton. Ab-
straction then becomes symptomatic of this permanent mentality of repro-
ducing "types of beings." All types of bodies whether of the kings or demons 
are represented through "characteristic measurements," where measure ex-
ists only to give fixity to the types. 
If nature /cul ture acted as one set of coordinates to articulate the "gulf 
[that] fundamentally separates Indian and Greek minds,"34 it was mapped 
onto that of theory/practice: 
Platonic types are "ideas," though external to souls, because Hellenic 
wisdom is a contemplation, theoria. Hindu types are acts; ...They may be 
everlasting but they cannot be eternal; they may be correct, but they cannot 
be perfect.35 
It was only during Middle Ages that the west came closest to the east. 
While in the next phase, that of the Renaissance, the west freed itself from the 
31 Ibid., p. 92. 
32 Ibid, [my italics] 
33 Ibid., p. 93. [my italics] 
34 Ibid. 
35 Ibid. 
213 
DARUL DAVE-MUKHERJI 
prison house of conventions and opened its eyes to the world, the east re-
mained relegated to "its nadve and permanent mentality" of venerating plas-
tic types in her arts and types of thought, purely practice-oriented in her phi-
losophy. Nothing is more unusual than for man [for the Indian philosophers 
and artists] to open his eyes upon the world. The West, in general, up to the 
Renaissance, venerated concepts. The East, though often voluptuous, has until 
now despised nature.36 
III. 
K. C. Pandey and Comparative Aesthetics 
While "the comparative method" used by Masson-Oursel serves to set apart 
the east and the west as diametrically opposite, K. C. Pandey deploys it to 
heighten affinities, similarities and homologies by assuming that both aes-
thetics and philosophy formed a part of a common, universal heritage. This 
assumption underscores K. C. Pandey's interpretation of "imitation" and its 
translation into the Sanskrit term - "anukrti:" . . . the first principle that was 
followed by the artists in their production in the hoary past, both in the West 
and the East, was imitation. It consisted of the production of a copy of what 
was directly perceptible in some medium such as clay or stone. It is interest-
ing to note that the word "mimesis," the Greek equivalent of "imitation," con-
tinued to be used by successive writers on aesthetics, though each of them 
considerably altered or modified the original meaning of it, exactly as the 
Sanskrit word "anukrti," used at first by Bharata,37 the earliest available au-
thority on Aesthetics, was retained by the subsequent writers, though each 
put his own meaning upon it.38 
What is "mimesis" in Greek equals "imitation" in English and which in 
turn equals"anukrti' in Sanskrit. Such a translation and a terminological equa-
tion is accomplished by unproblematically assuming that they are of equal 
semantic weight and form a unitary concept which cuts across cultural bound-
aries and historical exigencies. 
For me, translating "imitation" or "mimesis" into anukrti or vice versa 
poses a major theoretical problem, i.e. a problem of the theory of translation. 
This problem of the translatability of these terms is itself of theoretical inter-
est and methodological relevance. Every translator works within a theory of 
36 Ibid., p. 94. 
37 An ancient author of a treatise on Dramaturgy, Natyasastra of the 1st century AD. 
38 K. C. Pandey, Comparative Aesthetics: Western Aesthetics \o\. II, Varanasi, 1956, p. 7. 
214 
BODIES, POWER AND DIFFERENCE: REPRESENTATIONS OF THE EAST-WEST DIVIDE IN . . . 
translation whether acknowledged or not. Let us examine the theory operat-
ing in K. C. Pandey's translation. 
Translation is essentially a matter of matching written sentences or word-
units in two languages, as for example, Sanskrit (anukrti) and English/Greek 
(imitation/mimesis), such that the second set of sentences or word-units be-
comes the "real meaning" of the first. This theory of translation can be traced 
back to a certain discursive space and disciplinary formation within the west-
ern academic tradition and most prevalent in traditional anthropology.39 It 
seems ironic that an Indian scholar interpreting texts belonging to his "na-
tive" tradition would have anything in common with an anthropologist who 
translates/interprets the tradition of the Other. However, it is more a ques-
tion of what discursive space a scholar occupies and of the theoretical as-
sumptions that are internalised at a specific historical juncture of that par-
ticular discipline, i.e. of comparative aesthetics. 
For me, both these approaches of "the comparative method" are fraught 
with serious theoretical problems. While Masson-Oursel's methodology ends 
up polarising the west and the east as mutually exclusive domains and as-
sumes that both possess a unique essence, the second approach as advocated 
by K. C. Pandey collapses all cultural differences and remains caught in the 
search for equivalents of those concepts in the Indian texts which have a very 
specific sense within western aesthetics. Rather than subscribing to any one 
of them, it would be more productive to first historicise the discipline of aes-
thetics in its culturally specific setting in the west and employ it as a heuristic 
device for exploring and theorising the difference that the Indian context poses. 
IV. 
Polemics of "Naturalism " and Comparative Aesthetics 
Critically examining the problematic term/concept "naturalism," which 
Masson-Oursel viewed as a phenomenon or institution central to western self-
understanding, is there not a way out of this binary? Is the alternative to this 
possible only in negating this position by insisting that there is also an Indian 
naturalism just as there is an Indian theory of imitation or mimesis equally 
valid and adequate as its western counterpart? 
The theoretical problems involved entail of a great deal of complexity 
39 Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Disciplines and Reasons of Power in Christianity and 
Islam, The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London 1993, p. 188. 
215 
DARUL DAVE-MUKHERJI 
and are certainly not raised here for the first time. Around 1966, Archie J. 
Bahm gestured towards this vexed site of comparative aesthetics astutely while 
reviewing Thomas Munro's Oriental Aesthetics.40 
Although entitled Oriental Aesthetics, this work is really a study in com-
parative (i.e. East-West) aesthetics. ... [it] attempts a critical evaluation of 
Oriental Aesthetics from a Western point of view. Such an attempt is fraught 
with dangers, no matter who makes it. In addition to possibilities for misinter-
preting any of the multifarious details, three general mistakes are possible for 
any one who faces this problem: Those pertaining to generalisations about 
Oriental cultures, those about Western culture and those having to do with 
comparisons.41 
It is around the lack of "naturalism" that Munro's oriental aesthetics ac-
quires a definition and the dichotomous framework underlying the compari-
son between the eastern and western aesthetics which falls under Bahm's criti-
cal scrutiny. Does Munro's naturalism adequately represent Western natural-
ism? Munro is fully aware that "the term 'naturalism' is highly ambiguo-
us. "...Nevertheless I accept Munro's naturalism as a typical Western natural-
ism. He makes no attempt to provide a definition of naturalism in Oriental 
Aesthetics, but we can guess what he means from scattered negative statements. 
That it is anti-spiritualistic, anti-supernaturalistic, and anti-subjectivistic is al-
ready clear.42 
The relationship between the west and east structured and mapped onto 
the self /Other distinction is apparent. That Oriental Aesthetics is the site of 
an articulation of naturalism defined as central to the identity of the west is 
instructive; the former is assumed to fall outside the domain of the natural-
ism characterised as western and yet becomes the centre (a negativity) around 
which western naturalism acquires an identity. While Bahm rightly objects to 
the essentialisation implicit in the polarised framework informing Munro's 
Oriental Aesthetics and points to the complicitous nature of the relationship 
between these polarities, the "third alternative" proposed by Bahm in the 
form of a synthesis becomes problematic. Munro's analysis is so fully preoccu-
pied with seeing differences in terms of spiritualism and supernaturalism ver-
sus naturalism, subjectivism versus empiricism and rationalism.. .that he never 
countenances a third alternative.. .and to organising a synthesis in which the 
polarly opposite characteristics, such as unity and plurality, distinctness and 
40 Thomas Munro, Oriental Aesthetics, Western Reserve University, Cleveland 1965. 
41 Archie Bahm, "Munro's 'Oriental Aesthetics:' A Review," in: The Journal of Aesthetics 
and Art Criticism Vol. XXrVNo. 4 (1966), pp. 585-586. 
42 Ibid., p. 592. 
216 
BODIES, POWER AND DIFFERENCE: REPRESENTATIONS OF THE EAST-WEST DIVIDE IN . . . 
indistinctness, subjectivity and objectivity, function as interdependent aspects 
rather than as contradictory kinds, of reality...43 
Synthesis implies selecting the best out of different traditions and a simple 
coexistence of the differences, which is contradicted by the recognition of 
the interdependence between the "contradictory kinds of reality." It is this 
underlying assumption that renders "the comparative method" itself deeply 
problematic whether deployed in Comparative Aesthetics, Comparative Phi-
losophy or Comparative Religion, i.e. mainly because "of its claims of neutral-
ity and openness which their advocates postulate."44 
From the perspective of a postcolonial or post-modern present, when 
"naturalism" as a concept has been radically challenged as it had been ac-
cepted within western art history, it is important to re-engage in this debate 
via a rigorous critique of the terms in usage both in western as well as eastern 
aesthetics. Norman Bryson via post-structuralist art history has powerfully dis-
mantled deeply entrenched notions of "imitation" and "naturalism" by sub-
suming them as culturally specific sign systems and arguing against a direct, 
unmediated access to reality.45 
V. 
Comparative Aesthetics and the Constructions of "Sameness" 
Just to demonstrate the absurdities and reductive conclusions that this 
method led its practitioners to, busy in search of homologies and affinities, 
let us consider the following comparison46 by K. C. Pandey between Vitruvius's 
treatise on architecture and an early Indian text on architecture - Manasara: 
1. The Manasara opens with a prayer to the creator, Brahma. Vitruvius 
begins his work with a prayer to Caesar. 
2. According to Vitruvius, an architect should be ingenious and apt in 
the acquisition of knowledge.. .a good writer, a skillful draughtsman, versed 
in geometry and optics, an expert at figures, acquainted with history...In the 
Manasara artists are divided into four classes. Together they form a guild of 
architects, each an expert in his own department but possessing a general 
43 Ibid., pp. 592-593. 
44 Wilhelm Halbfass, p. 99. 
45 Norman Bryson, Vision and Painting: The Logic of the Gaze, Yale University Press, New 
Haven 1983, pp. 37-65. 
46 ^ 12th century treatise in architecture in Sanskrit dealing with iconometry and archi-
tecture. 
217 
DARUL DAVE-MUKHERJI 
knowledge of the science of architecture as a whole. They consist of the chief 
architect (Sthapati), the draughtsman or the designer (sutragrahin), the painter 
(Vardhaki) and the joiner (Sutradhard) .47 
In his search for similarities, K. C. Pandey glosses over a fundamental 
non-equivalence or asymmetry between the two contexts. Whereas in the 
Roman case the proper name of the author of the treatise is available, in the 
latter case, the treatise is referred to by the name of the Sanskrit text. 
VI. 
Beyond the Logic ofBinarism & Synthesis 
I am certainly not suggesting that finding differences between the two 
cultures is more heroic than looking for homologies and hence Masson-
Oursel's method is to be valourised over K.C.Pandey's. On the contrary, col-
lapsing differences located within the cultural specificities of any two given 
traditions in the name of grand universals such as Beauty, Aesthetics and so 
on or erecting insuperable boundaries of differences between the two are 
equally problematic. It seems to be more productive to question and move 
beyond these two alternatives. There is neither a simple transcendence pos-
sible, if that is even desirable, itself being a fraught concept, nor a synthesis. 
The very fact that there is no one-to-one correspondence between terms 
like naturalism, imitation or mimesis and the Sanskrit terms, is itself an im-
portant conceptual pointer. Of course, the absence of a word does not imply 
that the concept does not exist. But it offers a significant clue to a rich prob-
lematic that needs to be articulated and developed. 
It would be too reductive to simply level a charge of ethnocentrism against 
Masson-Oursel for his denial of naturalism or conscious imitation of the visible 
world in Indian art but it has to be seen as an attempt of one culture to theorise 
another at a time when India was still a British colony. In other words, what 
were the conditions of the production of the knowledge that constitutes Masson-
Oursel's representation of the east-west divide ? How does his colonial gaze 
operate on the objectified and mute bodies of Indian art ? The power of this 
gaze almost freezes them in time and makes their historical frame invisible. Or 
for that matter, K. C. Pandey's unproblematic acceptance of the terms of west-
ern aesthetics has to be seen against the history of aesthetics around the middle 
of 20th century when comparative aesthetics constituted a powerful genre of 
47 K. C. Pandey, Comparative Aesthetics. Vol. II, p. 540. 
218 
BODIES, POWER AND DIFFERENCE: REPRESENTATIONS OF THE EAST-WEST DIVIDE IN . . . 
this discipline. Rather than questioning the polarized framework deployed by 
the colonizers, Pandey reinstated it with an anxious search for the Indian equiva-
lents to naturalism and imitation in the Sanskrit texts. 
However, in the contemporary, postcolonial present, one cannot sub-
scribe to the obsolete methods or assumptions structuring "the comparative 
method." An alternative cannot be sought in postulating the east as a sepa-
rate entity and searching for lost past and indigenous criteria, untouched by 
western contact, for evaluating its art traditions. That would amount to substi-
tuting the nationalist with the nativist discourse and result in methodological 
insularity and ahistoricality. 
The only way to break out of the double binds of the east/ west polarisation 
is to: a) critically historicise first the discipline of aesthetics as it emerged in 
the west and the terms central to western aesthetics, rather than taking it as 
Aesthetics, a given and ahistorical, universal concept; b) in a double gesture, 
to not only problematise their application in a non-western context by 
foregrounding cultural differences and the rich, complicated terrain of trans-
latability but even to anticipate repercussions that this problematisation could 
have within western aesthetics. Lastly, the double-bind of the natural body-
cultural body mapped onto the western and Indian art traditions has to be 
dismantled on grounds that both the bodies necessarily intersect in the cul-
turally specific matrices of representation. Privileging one above the other is 
rarely innocent but complicit in the inequality of the power relationship of 
class, race and gender. And the issue of who represents whom at what histori-
cal juncture is ultimately a question of agency in the politics of representa-
tion. When this agent exercises his subjectivity by gazing at the art of the 
other, the bodies of the latter thus objectified confront semiotic violence. 
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