Symbolism of Hand gestures: from Hindu Dance to Socio-Political Movements in Hong Kong

With the raise of delightful Indian music, the hands of female dancer start to lead the first move. Every move is slow and smooth, but also precise and elegant; like a sculpture becomes alive, dancing and immerse in the music. The movement of hands is constantly changing by making different gestures, like casting spells to make audience to trace its moves.

Hand gesture is the one of the main features of traditional India dance, which is famous for its tenderness moves and precise meanings behind. In this journal, I would like to have a deep look in the symbols and meanings of the hand gestures in Hindu dance, followed by an analyze to three of the commonly used hand gestures in the recent Socio-Political Movements in Hong Kong.

Dance that born from worship: Bharat Natyam

Bharat Natyam is a classical Hindu dance comes from South India. It consists of a series of expressions through facial, body and hand movements, which is famous for the grace, purity and tenderness pose, as well as its symbolic meaning behind hand gestures. The symbolism of gestures in Bharat Natyam has huge connection with religious beliefs in India and can be traced back to a long history.

It is recorded that the root of origin is ‘Yajur Veda’, ‘the symbolic formulae of sacrificial rites’(Ragini,1990), which gesture was created to evoke spiritual moods through ceremonial acts imaginatively performed as worship. An intricate ideography of symbols is designed to represent the gods and their emblems, heaven and earth, and the nether regions, the five elements, the sun as well as the moon. The significant elements in Indian religion were given pictorial form as symbolic hand poses in Vedic ritual. Hence dancers can worship gods by performing dance and making different hand gestures.

According to ‘The mirror of Gesture’, the Vedic priests who assumed the roles of gods, enacted the creative activities of the gods and their victorious achievements. Gods have certain identical items to represent themselves; it inspired the hand gestures and movement of the traditional dance. For instance, the lotus represents Braham; thunderbolt is for Indra, the lingam (phallic pillar) stands for Siva, etc. By showing these symbols with hand poses when worshipping deities is auspicious and highly pleasing to the gods, according to the Indian traditions.

The Indian dancers have conserved this tradition and the symbols of hand gestures. And gradually develop this folk dance into one of the most popular and widely performed Hindu dance in the world. Today, the traditional Hindu dance is no longer just a dance to worship gods, but also as a world-class performing arts as well as a precious intangible art in the world, and a way to understand the religion and culture in Indian.

Soul in Hindu dance: Hand gestures

Hand gesture, as ‘Mudra’ in Indian, is the soul of the Hindu dance. According to Hsieh Ho, The expressive gestures ‘reveal the rhythm of the spirit in the gestures of living things’.

The palm of the hand is the center of expressive gesture in the Hindu dance. Showing the palm with the movement of the fingers is highly recognizable in Hindu dance. The movement of hands is regarded as ‘Hasta-prana’, which means the ‘lives of the hands’. It is refers to the movements of the hands and fingers that give life or meaning to gestures. For instance, fluttering fingers shows the rays of the moon or love’s passion.

"Yato hasta stato drishti"..."Where the hand is, the eyes follow"

"Yato drishti stato manaha"..."Where the eyes go, the mind follows"

"Yato manaha stato bhava"..."Where the mind is, there is the expression"

"Yato bhava stato rasa"..."Where there is expression, there is mood/flavor (appreciation of art)"

- From the Natya Shastra, a text on the performing Hindu arts, often quoted by Indian classical dance instructors.

The Hindus have devised a formalized and cultivated gesture language, which is ‘divinely expressive of the spiritual moods and qualities of their deities’. Apart from the spiritual significance and symbolic meaning, some of the gestures are wonderfully articulate with a grace and tenderness, which is truly spiritual and non-human.

Hand gestures can be divided into two categories, which is sing hand gesture, ‘Asamyuta Hastini’, and two hand gestures,‘Samyuta Hastini’. There are specific moves and gestures for different meaning and symbols in Hindu dance. For ‘Asamyuta Hastini’, there are 32 gestures while ‘Samyuta Hastini’ has 16 gestures; each gesture has particular meaning behind.

Here are the most commonly used hand poses.

From the above, hand gestures in Hindu dance is introduced. It is noted that every gesture has its own particular meaning and symbolize message or worship gods. The importance of hand gestures in Indian dance culture is presented.

In Hong Kong, there is no particular folk dance or gestures to represent us. However, in recent years, especially among the past few months, several hand gestures or movement have been used to symbolize ideas or spread messages in the socio-political activities of Hong Kong. Three identical gestures are noted and would be analyzed in the following.

1. The Crossing hands gesture.

In 2012, the emerged of protests against the moral and national education has noted as one of the major and significant demonstration in recent year in Hong Kong. The Hong Kong government tried to implement the moral and national education course in secondary schools, but was suspected by the citizens and students that the course is brainwashing and has political concerns. A large number of students gathered at the heart quarter of the government office and urge the government to stop the implementation of moral and national education.

The gesture of rise up and crossing hands was the featured pose during the movement. It is used to show the resistant and fight against towards the brainwashing education. This pose became popular and well known by the Hong Kong citizens in the late-2012. People posed this gesture to show their support to the protest against national education.

2. Holding up a umbrella

On 28th September 2014, the pose of holding up an umbrella has become an iconic image around the world after the tear gas, pepper stray and all the riot acts carried by the Hong Kong police.

It was all started by the class boycott movement, which urges to have universal suffrage and show disappointment to the 831-decision by the Beijing government. The event fired up when the student leader Wong Joshua was being arrested due to ‘break in’ the Civil Square, followed by the launch of Occupy Central Movement. In order to protect themselves from the pepper stray, protesters carried umbrellas, wear goggles and mask. But at the evening on 928, the police used tear gas to disperse protesters, which evoke huge resistance from the citizens. They held up their umbrellas to protect and showed anger towards police’s riot and unreasonable acts.

This movement of holding up umbrella marked the turning point of the civil disobedience movement; it changed the demonstration from ‘Occupy Central Movement’ to the ‘Umbrella Revolution’. The image of holding umbrella has been captured by all the newspaper and spread to the world. From the moment that tear gas was used, the pose of holding up umbrella become a iconic move and a sign to represent the peaceful protest and the desire to urge for universal suffrage.

3. Three fingers holding up

It is the hand gesture representing ‘Freedom’ and the hopes to against the autocratic government in the famous fiction/movie ‘Hunger Game’. This hand gesture has been adopted by the Thai protesters as well as the Hong Kong protesters, and used to show against the government.

After the clearance of the Mong Kok occupy zone, many Hong Kong people went to Mong Kok and claimed that the Chief Executive has encouraged people to shops near the occupied zone after clearance, so here they are to ‘shop’ ( as named as ‘9Wu movement ’). People are inspired to do that ‘three finger raising up’ gesture after they watched the movie trailer of the new ‘Hunger Game’ movie on the Sai Yeung Choi Street. They have imitated the move. The original move is first to kiss the three fingers then raise them up, while the Hong Kong protesters changed it and turns it into a simple move: just raise up the three fingers of one hand.

These featured hand gestures may have the potential to be the image of Hong Kong. As the civil disobedience movements in Hong Kong have been highly recognized around the world; especially the image of people holding up the yellow umbrella, which become the sign of urging for democracy and justice. I do believe that it is possible that those movements can become the hand gestures of Hong Kong in the coming years.

#aesthetic #dancing #selflearning