Indian Art: A History of Indian Art from the Earliest Times up to the Third Century A.D. c16.73

c16.73

(ii) Figures of fashionable men and women found at the numerous Gupta sites, of which the female heads are charming. Completely pressed out of moulds they represent the best traditions in style associated with Gupta art. They illustrate a pleasing variety of hair styles. In some cases painted lines and colours are preserved on them. Over two thousand specimens may be counted which together visualise to us the charming ideals of feminine beauty embodied in the works of such poets as Kālidāsa and Bāṇa. In them we come face to face with a veritable gallery of human beauty. In coiffure styles there is great similarity amongst figurines of all sites, which is due to their being the products of a common aesthetic culture. The alakāvalī style shows hair arranged in frizzled locks on the two sides of a central parting (keśa-vīthī). This fashion is often alluded to in Kālidāsa as the mark of a beautiful face. For example, in the Raghuvamśa (VIII, 53) he speaks of the alaka hair of Indumatī twisted in short spirals (valibhṛtaḥ). Similarly Yakṣiṇī parted from her husband has her alakas falling loosely on the shoulders owing to her denying herself the usual make-up. Even the male heads show the alaka hair in gorgeous wig-like arrangement. As observed by Sir John Marshall on the basis of Bhita figurines the men who so adorned themselves "must have been foppish to a degree, with their long curls falling loose on one side only, or elaborated like a full Gregorian wig, or coiffure with jewels in the Antoinette style, or disposed more severely in the royal manner of Persia.¹”