South Indian Bronzes: A Historical Survey of South Indian Sculpture with Iconographical Notes Based on Original Sources c8.16

c8.16

If one compare and examine different examples of the same theme, say the Natarāja or the Ganesha, it will be found that they have been treated with artistic skill varying with the degree of the genius or the technical power of each performer. The rules and canons are only limitations for the mediocre and the incapacitate—and not to the real artist to whom the fixed convention of a particular theme is never a barrier to his artistic expression. The canons or the *dhyāna mantras* which have defined on strict lines the conception and the form of the subject have not proved to the masters of South Indian school of bronzes any serious impediment to their artistic skill. It was in later times when the artists divorced from the culture and training of their predecessors, failed to grasp the meaning and significance of the original conceptions suggested in the *dhyanas* or failed to interpret the spirit of these conceptions that they fell back merely on the rules and canons which alone could not help them to create artistic images. The conceptions of the Brahmin iconographers could only be interpreted and expressed in forms by those artists who could enter into the spirit of these conceptions and sympathise with the meaning and significance of their ideals. The ancient Greek artists had also their canons and systems of proportions but the beauty of the great schools of Greek Sculpture was no more due to these formulas than the artistic excellence of these South Indian bronzes was due to the systems laid down in the *Silpa Sāstras*. Polykleitos (440-410 B.C.) who composed a *Treatise on Proportion* with a model in marble known as Doryphorus used a system founded on the Egyptian rules. There was also a system attributed to Vitruvius which used to be followed by Leonardo da Vinci and also by Lysippius. The system of proportions was therefore a very ancient practice and had their uses for the practical sculptor. The Buddhist image-makers had also their system of proportions. The rules of the South Indian sculptors are however quite different from those practised by the Buddhist artists and the Hindu sculptors of the North.