A Tapestry of Life: Why Depicting Animals and Birds in Ancient Indian Art?

Birds and animals play an important role in human life. They are essential to many facets of human life, including food, entertainment, and ecological harmony. Due of the numerous advantages they provide, humans have frequently equated them with deities and given them supernatural abilities. Human and animal existence have been intertwined since the stone era. Drawings of animals and birds depicting daily activities were created by humans in prehistoric times. For exams, these must be seen in Bhimbetka, Mirzapur, etc.This is the first instance of an animal or bird interacting with a person.

Elephants, rhinoceroses, tigers, dogs, and peacocks are just a few of the animals that have been depicted in drawings found in prehistoric cave shelters. From an artistic perspective, this is the beginning stage of drawing. Hunting, a daily activity in the prehistoric era, is the topic of these images. Pet animals and wild animals are divided into two classes or categories. They are immensely beneficial to human society in a variety of ways, such as guards, performers, or for their ancillary products like milk, hair, feathers, skin, meat, ivory, and horns.

Animals and birds are portrayed in diverse ways in Indus culture for the first time in Indian art. They appear frequently and in a variety of mediums and settings. Indus art and later examples include depictions of animals and birds using the following media: T.C., metal figurines, semi-precious stone figurines, pottery paintings, seal engravings, amulets, and beads. Nearly all types of animals, including bulls, elephants, tigers, rhinoceroses, bison, dogs, monkeys, buffalo, donkeys, and birds including cocks, peacocks, pigeons, owls, eagles, and ducks, are shown in Indus Valley art with the exception of cows and camels.

Elephants, bulls, rhinoceroses, dogs, rams, deer, buffalo, and other animals, as well as peacocks, cockatoos, ducks, herons, and owls, are all depicted in art from the Chalcolithic and Megalithic periods. Terracotta, metal, and pottery paintings serve as their primary portrayal materials. Punch-marked and tribal coins from before the Mauryan era often feature animals and birds, such as fish, scorpions, peacocks, deer, elephants, humped bulls, and rhinoceroses.

We have evidence of animals and birds in literature and art going back to the Mauryan era (2nd century B.C.). Jatakas, classical dramas, kautilyas arthashastra, as well as the Vedas, Ramayana, Mahabharata, panch tantra, hitopdesa, and different Puranas, are all examples of literature. Every single religion developed its own solid ideology at this time. Animal and bird religions are practiced by Hindus, Buddhists, and Jains.

The animal kingdom arrived as the vahanas, or images, of their deities. The religion has an impact on sculptures that feature animals and birds. Stupas featured Jataka stories. According to some legends, Bodhisattvas were born in a planet populated by animals. Birds and animals were used as metaphors to explain religious ideas.

Man is aware of the value of flora to both the natural world and to human society. Even so, they hold that people are continuously connected to the animal kingdom when they pass away. Birds have long been feared, admired, and revered by humans because to their exceptional intelligence, abilities, and traits. They therefore have a significant place in mythology, superstition, art, and architecture. Animal and bird depictions have a philosophical, religious, cultural, and ornamental component in art. In how the animal kingdom is portrayed, we can also observe some moral principles at work.

With its moral ramifications, works of literature like the Jataka, Panchatantra, and Hitopadesa shared a remarkable connection between the human and animal worlds. Man has respected ecology since the time of Buddha or earlier. Birds, animals, and people coexist in harmony and dependence. Animals are depicted in great detail and skill in Buddhist and Jaina art.

The representation of animals in Buddhist cave art and sculptures on stupas is well known. Examples include the stupas at Barhut, Gaya, Amravati, Sanchi, and the caves at Bedsa, Bhaja, Karle, Kanheri, Nasik, Ajanta, and Bagh (for painting). Animals and birds were portrayed on Hindu temples after Buddhist art in the form of vahanas of Gods and Goddesses, as well as in dwarshakhas or on the plinths of temples as a Gajathara, Asvathara, etc.

Animals feature in Indian art from the earliest time (Indus culture) as both domestic and wild creatures. In Indian art, there are representations of bulls, cows, lions, tigers, bison, buffalo, elephants, rhinoceroses, horses, camels, two-humped camels, hares, donkeys, cheetahs, bears, dogs, rams, goats, deer, ibex, pigs, boars, foxes, wolves, mongooses, squirrels, rats,

Animals and birds were rendered mysterious and perhaps sacred due to their inability to speak and their ability to soar. Because of this, animals and birds were given more prominence in ancient Indian and global art (Egypt, Roman, Central Asian). They are connected to gods and goddesses, religion, mythologies, superstitions, and other things related to life and death. The representation of the animal kingdom in Indian art as a toy, vahana, amulet, bead, seal as a symbol of politics and trade, as well as on coins and as a component of nature.

Animals are shown in numerous circumstances and ways in Indian art from every period. By depicting animals and birds in art, man showed appreciation for these creatures. Numerous forms, including animals, birds, flowers, and fruits, were utilized as emblems or frequently just for decoration. The majority of Indian jewelry and clothing designs take their cues from wildlife and the natural world. Amulets or beads in the shape of animals or birds were primarily used as charms or pendants.

They enjoyed enormous social acceptance. Paintings depicting fauna and plants are a common subject. In the context of Jataka tales or purely in their natural habitat, the faunal world is richly represented in the Ajanta caves.