Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c31.31

c31.31

When it is realized that practically every surface of the interior, including the pillars, is elaborated with sculptured forms, the rich effect may be imagined, but it was in his treatment of the vaulted ceiling of the nave that the marble carver found his supreme expression. This dome is built up of eleven concentric rings, five of which, interposed at regular intervals, depict patterns of figures and animals, a plastic record of some ancient half-obliterated memory. The lowest contains the fore-fronts of elephants, their trunks intertwined, as many as one hundred and fifty of these in close rank. A few mouldings above is another border representing images in niches, also repeated many times, and again over that a similar course of dancing figures. This is followed higher up in the concavity by a series of horsemen, finishing in the topmost story with more figures engaged in an endless dance. Between these various figured courses are ornamental repeats, gradually becoming more pronounced until towards the apex they culminate in a grouping of pendents not unlike festoons of foliage suspended from the high trees of a forest. But this is not all. Boldly superimposed athwart the lower of these circular rings is a series of sixteen brackets consisting of female figures representing Vidyadevis or goddesses of knowledge, each contained within an aureole, their high semi-detached projection giving them the appearance of supplementary braces supporting the vault. (Plate CX).