THE INTERPRETATION OF SYMBOLS
Ananda K. Coomaraswamy
The scholar of symbols is often accused of “reading meanings” into the verbal or visual emblems of
which he proposes an exegesis. On the other hand, the aesthetician and art historian, himself preoccupied
with stylistic peculiarities rather than with iconographic necessities, generally avoids the problem
altogether; in some cases perhaps, because an iconographic analysis would exceed his capacities. We
conceive, however, that the most significant element in a given work of art is precisely that aspect of it
which may, and often does, persist unchanged throughout millennia and in widely separated areas; and
the least significant, those accidental variations of style by which we are enabled to date a given work
or even in some cases to attribute it to an individual artist. No explanation of a work of art can be called
complete which does not account for its composition or constitution, which we may call its “constant”
as distinguished from its “variable.” In other words, no “art history” can be considered complete which
merely regards the decorative usage and values as a motif, and ignores the raison d’etre of its component
parts, and the logic of their relationship in the composition. It is begging the question to attribute
the precise and minute particulars of a traditional iconography merely to the operation of an “aesthetic
instinct”; we have still to explain why the formal cause has been imagined as it was, and for this we
cannot supply the answer until we have understood the final cause in response to which the formal
image arose in a given mentality.
Naturally, we are not discussing the reading of subjective or “fancied” meanings into iconographic
formulae, but only a reading of the meaning of such formulae. It is not in doubt that those who made use
of the symbols (as distinguished from ourselves who merely look at them, and generally speaking
consider only their aesthetic surfaces) as means of communication expected from their audience something
more than an appreciation of rhetorical ornaments, and something more than a recognition of
meanings literally expressed. As regards the ornaments, we may say with Clement, who points out that
the style of Scripture is parabolic, and has been so from antiquity, that “prophecy does not employ
figurative forms in the expressions for the sake of beauty of diction” (Misc. VI. 15)1 ; and point out that
the iconolater’s attitude is to regard the colours and the art, not as worthy of honour for their own sake,
but as pointers to the archetype which is the final cause of the work (Hermeneia of Athos, 445). On the
other hand, it is the iconoclast who assumes that the symbol is literally worshipped as such; as it really
is worshipped by the aesthetician, who goes so far as to say that the whole significance and value of the
symbol are contained in its aesthetic surfaces, and completely ignores the “picture that is not in the
colours” (Lankavatara Sutra, II, 117). As regards the “more than literal meanings” we need only point
out that it has been universally assumed that “Many meanings underly the same Holy Writ”; the distinction
of literal from ultimate meanings, or of signs from symbols, presupposing that “whereas in
every other science things are signified by words, this science has the property that the things signified
by the words have themselves also a signification” (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa III, App 1.2.5 ad 3
and 1.10.10c)2 .
We find in fact that those who themselves speak “parabolically,” for which manner of speaking there
are more adequate reasons than can be dealt with on the present occasion, invariably take it for granted
that there will be some who are and others who are not qualified to understand what has been said: for
example Matt. XIII. 13-15: “3 I speak to them in parables; because they seeing, see not; and hearing,
they hear not, neither do they understand ... For this people’s ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they
have closed lest at any time they should see” etc. (cf Mark VIII 15-21). In the same way Dante, who
assures us that the whole of the Commedia was written with a practical purpose, and applies to his own
work the Scholastic principle of fourfold interpretation, asks us to marvel, not at his art, but “at the
teaching that conceals itself beneath the veil of the strange verses.”
The Indian rhetorician, too, assumes that the essential value of a poetic dictum lies not so much in what
is said as in what is suggested or implied:3 To put it plainly, “A literal significance is grasped even by
brutes; horses and elephants pull at the word of command. But the wise man (panditah= doctor) understands
even what is unsaid; the enlightened, the full content of what has been communicated only by a
hint.”4 We have said enough, perhaps, to convince the reader that there are meanings immanent and
causative in verbal and visual symbols, which must be read in them, and not, as we have said above,
read into them, before we can pretend to have understood their reason, Tertullian’s rationem artis5 .
The graduate, whose eyes have been closed and heart hardened by a course of university instruction in
the Fine Arts or Literature is actually debarred from the complete understanding of a work of art. If a
given form has for him a merely decorative and aesthetic value, it is far easier and far more comfortable
for him to assume that it never had any other than a sensational value, than it would be for him to
undertake the self-denying task of entering into and consenting to the mentality in which the form was
first conceived. It is nevertheless just this task that the professional honour of the art historian requires
of him; at any rate, it is this task that he undertakes nominally, however great a part of it he may neglect
in fact.
The question of how far an ancient author or artist has understood his material also arises. In a given
literary or plastic work the iconography may be at fault, by defect of knowledge in the artist; or a text
may have been distorted by the carelessness or ignorance of a scribe. It is evident that we cannot pass a
valid judgment in such cases from the standpoint of our own accidental knowledge or ignorance of the
matiere. How often one sees an emendation suggested by the philologist, which may be unimpeachable
grammatically, but shows a total lack of understanding of what could have been meant originally! How
often the technically skilled restorer can make a picture look well, not knowing that he has introduced
insoluble contradictions!
In many cases, however, the ancient author or artist has not in fact misunderstood his material, and
nothing but our own historical interpretation is at fault. We suppose, for example, that in the great
epics, the miraculous elements have been “introduced” by an “imaginative” poet to enhance his effects,
and nothing is more usual than to attempt to arrive at a kernel of “fact” by eliminating all incomprehensible
symbolic matter from an epic or gospel. What are really technicalities in the work of such authors
as Homer, Dante, or Valmiki, for example, we speak of as literary ornaments, to be accredited to the
poet’s imagination, and to be praised or condemned in the measure of their appeal. 6 On the contrary:
the work of the prophetic poet, the texts for example of the Rgveda or of Genesis, or the logio of a
Messiah, are only “beautiful” in the same sense that the mathematician speaks of an equation as “elegant”;
by which we mean to imply the very opposite of a disparagement of their “beauty”. From the
point of view of an older and more learned aesthetic, beauty is not a mere effect, but, properly belongs
to the nature of a formal cause; the beautiful is not the final cause of the work to be done, but “adds to
the good an ordering to the cognitive faculty by which the good is known as such”7 ; the “appeal” of
beauty is not to the senses, but through the senses, to the intellect.8
Let us realise that “symbolism” is not a personal affair, but as Emil Male expressed it in connection
with Christian art, a calculus. The semantics of visible symbols is at least as much an exact science
as the semantics of verbal symbols, or “words”. Distinguishing “symbolism” accordingly, from the
making of behaviouristic signs, we may say that however unintelligently a symbol may have been
used on a given occasion, it can never, so long as it remains recognisable, be called unintelligible:
intelligibility is essential to the idea of a symbol, while intelligence in the observer is accidental.
Admitting the possibility and the actual frequency of a degeneration from a significant to a merely
decorative and ornamental use of symbols, we must point out that merely to state the problem in
these terms is to confirm the dictum of a well-known Assyriologist, that “When we sound the archetype,
the ultimate origin of the form, then we find that it is anchored in the highest, not the lowest.”9
What all this implies is of particular significance to the student, not merely of such hieratic arts as those
of India or the Middle Ages, but of folk and savage art, and of fairy tales and popular rites; since it is
precisely in all these arts that the parabolic or symbolic style has best survived in our otherwise
self-expressive environment. Archeologists are indeed beginning to realise this. Strzygowski, for example,
discussing the conservation of ancient motifs in modern Chinese peasant embroideries, endorses
the dictum that “the thought of many so-called primitive peoples is far more spiritualised than
that of many so-called civilised peoples,” adding that “in any case, it is clear that in matters of religion
we shall have to drop the distinction between primitive and civilised peoples.”10 The art historian is
being left behind in his own field by the archeologist, who is nowadays in a fair way to offer a far more
complete explanation of the work of art than the aesthetician who judges all things by his own standards.
The archeologist and anthropologist are impressed, in spite of themselves, by the antiquity and
ubiquity of formal cultures by no means inferior to our own, except in the extent of their material
resources.
It is mainly our infatuation with the idea of “progress” and the conception of ourselves as “civilised”
and of former ages and other cultures as being “barbarous””11 that has made it so difficult for the
historian of art—despite his recognition of the fact that all “art cycles” are in fact descents from the
levels attained by the “primitives,” if not indeed descents form the sublime to the ridiculous—to accept
the proposition that an “art form” is already a defunct and derelict form, and strictly speaking a “superstition,”
i.e. a “stand over” from a more intellectual humanity that our own; in other words, exceedingly
difficult for him to accept the proposition that what is for us a “decorative motif” and a sort of upholstery
is really the Vestage of a more abstract mentality than our own, a mentality that used less means
to mean more, and that made use of symbols primarily for their intellectual values, and not as we do,
sentimentally.12 We say here “sentimentally,” rather than “aesthetically,” reflecting that both words are
the same in their literal significance, and both equivalent to “materialistic”; aesthesis being “feeling,”
sense the means of feeling, and “matter” what is felt. To speak of an aesthetic experience as
“distinterested” really involves an antimony; it is only a noetic or cognitive experience that can be
disinterested. For the complete appreciation or experiencing of a work of traditional art (we do not deny
that there are modern works of art that only appeal to the feelings) we need at least as much to eindenken
as to einfühlen to “think-in” and “think-with” at least as much as to “feel-in” and “feel-with.”
The aesthetician will object that we are ignoring both the question of artistic quality, and that of the
distinction of a noble from a decadent style. By no means. We merely take it for granted that every
serious student is equipped by temperament and training to distinguish good from bad workmanship.
And if there are noble and decadent periods of art, despite the fact that workmanship may be as
skilful or even more skilful in the decadent than in the noble period, we say that the decadence is by
no means the fault of the artist as such (the “maker by art”), but of the man, who in the decadent
period has so much more to say, and means so much less. More to say, the less to mean - this is a
matter, not of formal, but of final causes, implying defect, not in the artist, but in the patron.”13
We say, then, that the “scientific” art historian, whose standards of explanation are altogether too facile
and too merely sensitive and psychological, need feel no qualms about the “reading of meanings into”
given formulae. When meanings, which are also raisons d’être, have been forgotten, it is indispensible
that those who can remember them, and can demonstrate by reference to chapter and verse the validity
of their “memory,” should re-read meanings into forms from which the meaning has been ignorantly
“read out,” whether recently or long ago. For in no other way can the art historian be said to have
fulfilled his task of fully explaining and accounting for the form, which he has not invented himself,
and only knows of as an inherited “superstition.” It is not as such that the reading of meanings into
works of art can be criticised, but only as regards the precision with which the work is done; the scholar
being always, of course, subject to the possibility of self-correction or of correction by his peers, in
matters of detail, though we may add that in case the iconographer is really in possession of his art, the
possibilities of fundamental error are rather small. For the rest, with such “aesthetic” mentalities as
ours, we are in little danger of proposing over-intellectual interpretations of ancient works of art.
1 A derivative of sumballo (Greek) especially in the senses “to correlate”, “to treat things different as
though they were similar”, and (passive) “to correspond”, or “tally”.
1 Cf. the Hasidic Anthology, p. 509: “let us now hear you talk of your doctrine; you speak so beautifully
... .. May I be struck dumb ere I speak beautifully.” As Plato demanded, “About what is the
sophist so eloquent”? a question that might be put to many modern artists.
2 We need hardly say that nothing in principle, but only in the material, distinguishes the use of
verbal from visual images, and that in the foregoing citation, “representations” may be substituted for
“words.”
3 Pancatantra, I. 44.
4 Edgerton, Fr., “indirect suggestion in poetry: a Hindu theory of literary aesthetics,
Proc. Am. Phil. Soc., LXXVI, 1936, pp. 687 f.
5 Tertullian, Docti rationem artis intelligunt, indocti voluptatem.
6 As remarked by Victor-Emile Michelet, Le Secret de la Chevalerie, 1930, p. 78. “L’enseignement
vulgaire considère que le poème épique en vertu de sa tradition et de la technique du genre, renforce le
récit des exploits guerriers par des inventions d’un merveilleux plus ou moins conventionnel destiné à
servir d’agrément et d’élément décoratif.”
7 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa., 1. 5.4. ad 1, and Comm. on Dionysius, De Div. Nom. V
8 And thus, as recognised by Herbert Spinden (Brooklyn Museum Qtly., Oct. 1935), “Our
first reaction is one of wonder, but our second should be an effort to understand. Nor should we
accept a pleasurable effect upon our unintelligent nerve ends as an index of understanding.”
9 Andrae, W., Die ionische Saule 1933, p. 65. The reader is strongly recommended to the whole of
Andrae’s “Schlusswort.” Cf. Zoltan de Takacs, Francis Hopp Memorial Exhibition, 1933 (Budapest,
1933), p 47: “The older and more generally understood a symbol is, the more perfect and
self-expressive it is” and p. 34: “the value of art forms in (the) prehistoric ages was, therefore, determined,
not simply by the delight of the eyes, but by the purity of traditional notions conjured by the
representation itself.
10 Strzygowski, J., Spuren indogermanischen Glaubens in der bildenden Kunst, 1936, p. 334.
11 Gleizes, A., Vie et Mort de I’Occident chrétien, Sablons (1936), p. 60 “Deux mots, barbarie et
civilisation, sont à la base de tout développement historique. Ils donnent à la notion de progrès la
continuité qu’on lui désire sur tous les terrains particuliers en éveillant l’idée d’infériorité et de
supériorité. Ils nous débarrassent de tout souci d’avenir, la barbarie étant derrière nous et la
civilisation s’améliorant chaque jour.” I cite these remarks not so much in confirmation, as to call
attention to the works of M. Gleizes, himself a painter, but who says of himself “Mon art je l’ai voulu
métier ... Ainsi, je pense ne pas être humainement inutile.” M. Gleizes’ most considerable work is La
Forme et I’Histoire; vers une Conscience Plastique, Paris, 1932
12 Despite the recognition of a typical “descent,” the notion of a meliorative “progress” is so attractive
and so comfortably supports an optimistic view of the future that one still and in face of all the evidence
to the contrary fancies that primitive man and savage races “drew like that” because they “could not”
represent natural effects as we represent them; and in this way it becomes possible to treat all “early”
forms of art as striving towards and preparing the way for a more “mature” development; to envisage
the supercession of form by figure as a favourable “evolution.” In fact, however, the primitive “drew
like that” because he imagined like that, and like all artists, wished to draw as he imagined; he did not
in our sense “observe,” because he had not in view the statement of singular facts; he “imitated” nature,
not in her effects, but in her manner of operation. Our “advance” has been from the sublime to the
ridiculous. To complain that primitive symbols do not look like their referents is as naive as it would be
to complain of a mathematical equation, that it does not resemble the locus it represents.
13 It is extraneous of the business to the art historian or curator, as such, to distinguish noble from
decadent styles; the business of these persons as such is to know what is good of its kind, exhibit, and
explain it. At the same time, it is not enough to be merely an art historian or merely a curator; it is also
the business of man as patron, to distinguish a hierarchy of values in what has been made, just as it is his
business to decide what it is worth while to make now.
