(meaning
"seal") A mudra is a stylized hand gesture in Indian dance, theater,
and iconography that expresses a particular meaning, ranging from real things
like animals, common items, and Hindu deities to abstract things like emotions.
Performers in the performing arts, notably dance, use gesture
alone to create elaborate tales.
Many of these gestures are qualities associated with certain
deities in the context of iconography.
The words mudra and hasta ("hand") have
considerable syntactic overlap; one difference is that some hastas merely describe
the location of the hand, while others have symbolic value, but mudras always
have extremely particular symbolic meanings.
Discover more about Hindu Art, Architecture, and Iconography here.
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