Eastern Indian School of Mediaeval Sculpture c6.82

c6.82

Inscribed specimens which can definitely be referred to the pre-Pāla period are very few in number. Thus the Calcutta Museum, which contains by far the largest number of specimens of this school of sculpture, can boast of only two or three specimens, which can be definitely referred to the pre-Pāla period. Unfortunately the image of the Sun god discovered by Cunningham at Shahpur, which was dedicated in the sixty-sixth year of the Harsha Era = 572 A. D., cannot be found now. This image, if it is rediscovered at some later date, will furnish important evidence about the condition of plastic art in the eastern provinces, after the decline of the early Guptas, in the seventh century A. D. and before the rise of the Pālas in the eighth. It is true that King Lalitāditya of Kāśmīra had taken away an image of Buddha from Magadha, which he gave, later on, to his minister Chaṅkuṇa, but we do not know whether Chaṅkuṇa and his master were attracted by the reported sanctity of the image only or by its artistic merit.⁵ Among the very few specimens in the Indian Museum, Calcutta, which can be definitely assigned to the pre-Pāla period, is an image of Buddha which was dedicated by a general (*balādhikṛita*) named Malluka, which was discovered at Bihar in the Patna district of Bihar and Orissa and was removed to the Calcutta Museum before the transfer of the Bihar collection in 1898.⁶ The form of the characters used in this inscription bears very great resemblance to those used in the Deo-Banarak inscription of Jīvitagupta II. The image is a short one representing the Teacher in the attitude of giving protection. The head and body are disproportionately large in comparison with the legs.⁷ The second inscribed specimen comes from the modern Śaiva monastery at Bodh Gaya and represents Buddha being protected by the Nāga Muchalinda from heavy rains. The Buddhist creed is inscribed in two lines and the characters of this inscription are not very far distant from those of the preceding inscription. In this image the coils of the Nāga's body are conventional and impossible in reality and the image itself is a squat heavy affair without any artistic merit.¹ Another image of Buddha, belonging to the Indian Museum Collection (No. 3746), is uninscribed, but most probably belongs to this period.² We find a total want of grace in the delineation of the body though the sculptor was more fortunate in carving out a smiling face. The third image in the Indian Museum Collection which can be ascribed to this period is also that of Buddha (No. 3711)³ which bears a mutilated inscription in two lines, probably in verse, on its pedestal. This image is the best specimen of the pre-Pāla period that has come to light, up to date, but here also the want of proportion between the body and the legs is at once noticeable.