South Indian Bronzes: A Historical Survey of South Indian Sculpture with Iconographical Notes Based on Original Sources c10.2.2

c10.2.2

It will be difficult to find in the whole array of Indian Buddhist sculpture such beautiful examples of power and action suggested in the rythmic spring and sweep of the body rendered in terms of a generalised and refined anatomy from which all superfluous details have been eliminated. It challenges comparison with Kon-go-ya-sha, the great Japanese representation of Vajrayaksha¹ or the Greek Lacöon. The representation of the female form is also a characteristic feature of the South Indian school of bronzes which has introduced many new types never attempted by the Buddhist sculptors. The various images of Tara with its numerous *tantric* developments which one finds scattered throughout the whole field of Buddhist art hardly suggested any types to the South Indian sculptor for the representation of the innumerable conceptions of Pārvati and other female deities which people the South Indian Pantheon. Images such as that of Siva Kāma Sundari (Plate XXXIII), Pārvati (Plate XXXIV) and Ādhārasakti (Plate XLII) are original contributions to the figure sculpture of India made by these Saivaite artists of the South. Mr. Havell’s observation that “it is often difficult to distinguish between Mahāyāna sculptures of the 8th and 9th centuries and those of the Saivaites,” generally applies to the representation of the male deities rather than the female conceptions.