Disability as a subject of study has not received much consideration in studies on South Asian religions. This paper will call attention to the relationship between religious ideals and concepts of bodies and disabilities in early South Asia. In this paper, I will examine the abundant depictions of dwarf figures, or little persons, from early Brahmanical and Buddhist traditions to argue that the predominance of these depictions may imply that dwarfism was treated as distinct from other physical disorders. To this end, I will use textual and visual sources from c. 1st-5th centuries CE spanning across the northern and central parts of the Indian subcontinent. These sources help trace both ideal and non-ideal representations of dwarf bodies. While texts like the Sanskrit Manusmṛti and the Pali Vinaya include dwarfism as one of the ‘non-ideal’ or ‘disabling’ conditions, visual depictions of religious figures with dwarfism often portray them as other ‘ideal’ figures – a contradiction that can be found in both textual and visual portrayals from both religious traditions. These portrayals highlight two related narratives. Firstly, even though dwarf bodies are considered ‘disordered,’ whether they are ‘disabled’ depends on their particular social and religious context. Secondly, the abundance of both ideal and non-ideal depictions of dwarf bodies indicates their ‘special’ position among bodies with physical disorders.
Studies examining depictions of dwarf figures from the early Indian subcontinent have underscored their striking presence, as exemplified by their illustrations in a variety of characters both in texts and images (see, e.g., Zin 2015, Das 2022, Singh and Sharma 2023). The prominent dwarf characters include those of a jester (vidūṣaka), class of inferior deity (gaṇa), dwarf/dwarf deity (vāmaṇa), (both malevolent and benevolent) nature spirit (yakṣa), and those that are meant to emphasize the height of taller figures, or that are simply present in the courtly setting. This abundance and variety of imagery both in religious and non-religious contexts make dwarfism a good example to explore the impact of religious thoughts on concepts of disability since the features of this condition can be clearly traced through both literary and visual evidence, which is not the case with other disorders that occur prominently—vision disorders and skin disorders. The predominance of dwarf imagery, especially in the visual culture, suggests that dwarfism may have been treated as distinct from other disorders. Despite dwarfism being one of the various non-ideal and disabling conditions, an ideal dwarf figure itself defines a non-ideal dwarf figure, rather than being defined by an ‘ideal body’. This does not apply to other disordered bodies since they are directly juxtaposed to an ideal body. While for other disorders, the degree of the condition in relation to its ideal state shapes the social meaning, for dwarfism, it is the type of condition within this category itself that assigns meaning to it.
I will demonstrate the special position of dwarf bodies in four parts in this paper using textual and visual depictions from early Brahmanical and Buddhist traditions. To do so, I will place the characters under examination under two broad conceptual heads: ideal, benevolent dwarf figures and non-ideal, malevolent dwarf figures. I will show that where ideal dwarf bodies are considered auspicious and desired, non-ideal dwarf bodies are inauspicious and undesired, i.e., ‘disabled’. With a focus on both physical and social features, the first two parts of the paper will outline the characteristics of ideal and non-ideal dwarf figures respectively. I will demonstrate how these features are conceptualized as inherently relational to each other while also conforming to and differentiating from the typical features of ideal and non-ideal bodies that define disordered and disabled bodies. The paper’s third part will discuss case studies taken from narrative texts and visual evidence to show how concepts of ideal and non-ideal dwarf bodies apply in different spatial and temporal settings. Uncovering the varied settings presented in a number of such examples in both literary and material evidence will give substantial data to examine why we might have both ideal and non-ideal dwarf representations in abundance. Building on this, the final section of the paper will compare these portrayals with perceptions of bodies possessing other prominent disorders, as mentioned above, in order to provide potential reasons for the special position held by people with dwarfism among other physically disordered bodies in early Indian societies.
Citations:
Das, Shilpa. 2022. “Disability in Ancient Indian Art and Aesthetic Theory.” In The Routledge Companion to Art and Disability, edited by Keri Watson and Timothy W. Hiles, 75-93. New York: Routledge.
Singh, Pushpraj and Preeti Sharma. 2023. “Entertaining the Royalty. A Forgotten Tradition of the Vidushaka in Ancient Indian History.” Historia i Świat, 12, 237–254. https://doi.org/10.34739/his.2023.12.14
Zin, Monika. 2015. “The jester and the vidūṣaka.” In “In ihrer rechten Hand hielt sie ein silbernes Messer mit Glökchen…” / “In her right hand she held a silver knife with small bells…”, 379-96. Studien zur indischen Kultur und Literatur / Studies in Indian Culture and Literature. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
This paper will examine the abundant depictions of dwarf figures, or little persons, from early Brahmanical and Buddhist traditions to argue that the predominance of these depictions may imply that dwarfism was treated as distinct from other physical disorders. To this end, it will use textual and visual sources from c. 1st-5th centuries CE spanning across the northern half of the Indian subcontinent. While texts like the Sanskrit Manusmṛti and the Pali Vinaya include dwarfism as one of the ‘non-ideal’ or ‘disabling’ conditions, visual depictions of religious dwarf figures often portray them as other ‘ideal’ figures – a contradiction that can be found in both textual and visual portrayals. These portrayals highlight two related narratives. Firstly, even though dwarf bodies are considered ‘disordered,’ whether they are ‘disabled’ depends on their socio-religious context. Secondly, the abundance of both ideal and non-ideal dwarf depictions indicates their ‘special’ position among other physically disordered bodies.