Living Images-the icon as transcendence within immanence.

The devotional poetry of the Tamil saints exemplifies the premise of Davis's book "Living Images". The itinerate poets wandered from temple to temple singing praises to the living embodiment of the Gods in the material icons and expressing their personal relationship with these images. This relationship models the penultimate Hindu view of the way in which the devotee should approach the image; as simultaneously site for the possibility of transcendence contained in the immanent manifestation in material form. As the poet Sambandhar wrote of his experience of Siva in his aspect as Vrsabhabahana:

A heron feather and the bright datura
Adorn his matted hair
His flame red body
Is covered with white ash
Over his girdle and loincloth
He has bound a tigerskin
Encircled by lovely snakes
Thus, with anklets ringing,
The Lord of Citticcaram shrine
Comes riding on his bull.

In this devotion description of the iconography the poet is describing his aesthetic of devotion. He is not simple describing physical objects as found on the small descriptions of the deity when displayed in a museum he is describing the living divinity inherent in the image. As Davies succinctly puts it "The poet conflates the image and God." What the poet sees is grounded within the premise that God is simultaneously transcendent and immanent, ubiquitous and yet forcefully present in certain places.

This is the premise of the entire book that Davis has so adroitly woven through his various examples of the lives of various images and their "lives" throughout history. The primary power that shapes the trials and tribulations, honours and status of the Hindu image originates in the belief by the devotee that these physical representations are inseparable from the living presence to the divinity itself. Through this premise the devotional fabric of the medieval India culture shapes the course of the events of these images and their confrontations and encounters with other cultures who may not adhere to this same framework. He carries the premise into his style of presentation in the book by calling the stories he presents biographies, the life story of the image through the passage of time.

In many cases the images go into hiding and re-emerge to become part of the social fabric of the cultures that come into contact with them. Beginning with the Didarganj yakshi that emerges from the riverbank of the Ganges Davis illustrates that images have lives. The image encounters the two societies present in Didarganj at that time (1917), the local devotees who enshrine the image and incorporate it into their living rituals unhesitatingly and unquestioningly and the British officials who assert their authority and superiority over the local community and carry it away to a museum. The image has different value for these two audiences, cult value for the villagers and exhibition value for the British officials. The illustrations that Davis uses act as a brilliant foil for the points he makes about the various societies of influence on the images. Davis's theory is both modern and creative, allowing a comprehensive look into the complex, rich and sophisticated society within which these images originated.