Indian Sculpture c4.s1: 1. Sculpture of the Indus Valley
Indian Sculpture c4.s1
- Language
- English
Contents
- c4.s1.t1 Chronology of Indian Plastic Art — 3 parts
- c4.s1.t2 Summary — 1 part
1. Sculpture of the Indus Valley
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ABORIGINAL in trend and quality, the earliest works of Indian plastic art yet known, from the fourth and third millenium B.C., do not mark the beginning of sculpture in India. On the contrary, the few but variegated relics found at Harappa, Mohenjo-Daro, Jhukar, Amri and elsewhere in the Pañjāb, Sind, Baluchistān and Seistān,² suggest a high sophistication based on age-old artistic experience. The art of the Indus valley had already reached its creative climax when it indulged in deliberately subtle or snugly powerful form. The main medium in India of translation from actual seeing into artistic form is modelling. In this respect the heritage of the palæolithic art is carried on into the chalcolithic stage, to which the Indus civilisation belongs.
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Within this common basis of modelling, a variety of trends seems to point to distinctions of purpose. Among human figures, the massive portliness (Fig. 1) or the slender and ambiguous sensuousness (Fig. 3) of the two Harappa statuettes, or the wiry vigour of the bronze dancing-girl (Fig. 4) from Mohenjo-Daro, contrast with the dignity of another group of stone figures from the latter site,³ which are characterised by an attitude of concentration with yoga-glance and the corresponding fixation of the mind. This bestows a remote greatness on them. There, too, the body is not appreciated as such, and is, therefore, not shown nude. It is, on the contrary, rigidly compressed into garments. The first group seems to anticipate and out-do even that component of naturalism which we find in Greek art and which is derived in the figures of the Indus valley from forces deeper rooted in primeval experience. The more abstractly conceived figures, however, have some counterparts in the statuary of Mesopotamia. But neither of them can be understood with the help of cognate civilisations. For the easily carried bulk of the one (Fig. 1), the gliding bodily movement of the other (Fig. 3), anticipate inalienable features of Indian sculpture of subsequent ages—the long eyes, with upper eyelids summarily but sensitively modelled, their glance directed towards the tip of the nose in a yoga-like concentration,⁴ and the summary treatment of the full cheeks of the second group are physiognomical characteristics without which Indian sculpture of later days can hardly be imagined.
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The human figures shaped by the artists of the Indus civilisation are thus the far distant, although not solely responsible, ancestors of the multitude of images and groups that were carved and moulded thousands of years later, during one and a half millennia, throughout the many provinces of Indian art. They contain a leaven whose efficacy outlasted the struggles of many novel civilisations and their amalgamations. Yet at the time when we first meet its products it had not begun to act just then, but much earlier.
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On a higher level of spiritual convention are the reliefs of animals, real or imaginary (Figs. 6, 8, 9), i.e. composite—that occupy so prominent a place on the majority of seals. Invariably shown in profile, the ‘naturalism’ of the treatment of their, at times emasculated, yet always mighty, bodies is instinct with aristocratic aloofness (Fig. 6). A sustained animality also breathes through the sacred stillness of their pose. Naturalism, here, as elsewhere in Indian art, is not an endeavour as in Western art, but it is an unavoidable condition. Its meaning will be explained along with the versions in which it appears in Indian sculpture.
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Appearance, in the Western sense of an illusion, is unknown to the Indian mind. What is visible is real to the Indian artist and contains the data that facilitate a creative rendering of the potentialities of dynamic movement and power that are in the animal. Aloof in stillness, the animal does not stir. But pent up and concentrated within its outline, that swells its volume and bulges into form, what sustains its animality.
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The modelling, which is a heritage of palæolithic achievement, has crystallised, through the pressure of ages, into a phantom of its pristine force. The outline, with a predilection for the horizontal, is brittle, not flowing, and where it condenses into line itself, as in the curves of the horns or the tails, its sensibility is that of an insect’s feelers. In spite of obvious affinities with animals as treated in Mediterranean art, the brute force in these is altogether different from the sophisticated ‘innervation’ of the animals on the seals belonging to the Indus civilisation.
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Innervation is the energy which brings about movement. But even where figures are shown standing still, they may yet be innervated. A strain, which does not result in movement, may keep the figure spellbound with pent-up energy. The powerful and partly over-exaggerated modelling of the bull does not suggest any action. It shows the vitality of the animal at play (Fig. 6).
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The seals, inexplicable as long as their script remains undeciphered, show further that the trees were of much consequence. An aśvattha-tree on one of them is conspicuous by a linear stylisation, and the rendering of the leaves there is not wholly unrelated to those of the Bodhi-trees in Bhārhut, in the second century B.C.5 Other trees on these seals contain, in the sinuosity of their stems (Fig. 5), the swaying movement of growth peculiar to the rendering of trees and vegetation (lotus-creeper) throughout Indian plastic art. (See pp. 16, 37).
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The tree, where associated with the human-divine figure, plays a significant role. This is not so much when the figure squats on its branches, as when it stands, sometimes by the side of a tree, sometimes between the two halves of the tree, which seems to have been rent asunder. Branch-like the split stem is joined below the figure in a U-shape (Fig. 8). At times it is joined above it like an arch (Fig. 7). Sometimes the leaves, more and more denaturalised, approach the shape of flames or rays, and the arch curls upwards at its bottom, anticipating in some respects the innumerable halos and niches of variegated shape that were to surround the gods of India. The tree is bent into an arch of vegetative origin (Fig. 7). This aspect of the prabhāmaṇḍala, the halo around the entire divine figure, persists to the end of Indian sculpture and is subsequently amalgamated with other origins of the halo.⁶
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Other devices on seals, sealings and on terra-cottas are also relevant, if as motifs only, for the future: the centrifugal combination of various figures or their parts diverging from one centre;⁷ the many-headed divinity and the standing figures with long arms so that the hands touch the knees;⁸ the over-high head of goddesses, which anticipates the uṣṇīṣa, i.e. the excrescence of the head of Buddha images;⁹ the mode of sitting;¹⁰ the part played by the Nāga (serpent¹¹); and the alignment of repeated figures (Fig. 8), as well as the freely symmetrical arrangement of single figures on the surface of the relief.¹²
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What hitherto has come to light of Indus sculpture shows that the vitality of the human body is understood by a supple firmness of modelling, outline and texture of the surface, yet it is not appreciated as much as that of the animals, who seem to be of nobler lineage and to belong to a higher plane of existence. Trees, though not as frequently, are given the same importance as bulls, mythical animals, elephants, etc. It is by being associated with these trees that the human-divine figure, either by its co-existence in the same composition (Fig. 9) or else by entering into the tree (Fig. 7) or again by embodying into itself partly animal limbs, such as horns, hoofs or tail (Figs. 8 and 9), gains a wider importance.
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Another way of making the human figure appear superhuman consists in a multiple of heads or limbs¹³ (see also four-armed human pictographs of Indus script). These, however, are not a number of different heads or limbs, but they represent stages of one movement and have to be understood dynamically¹⁴ (see also figures radiating from one centre) as indicative of the potency of the superhuman being in the simultaneousness of their presence. Multiplicity of the parts of the body for ever remained an outstanding feature of Indian divinities; it is full-fledged in the art of the Indus valley, but anticipated in the palæolithic period, where parts of the animal’s body were reiterated, indicative of various stages of movement.¹⁵
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The plastic art of the Indus civilisation contains the accumulated store of ancient tradition. This in future was destined to carry an ever fresh life and with an influx of new blood was given a partly new meaning.
Chronology of Indian Plastic Art
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The plastic art of the Indus civilisation must have begun in the palæolithic age, and continued to that of Mohenjo-Daro, Harappa, etc. But there it did not come to an end. Potentially it persisted further, and underlay Indian sculpture as long as it remained creative. This compels us to view Indian art under its own chronology,¹⁶ which is twofold. On the one hand, chronology in the accepted sense indicates what happened along the arrow of time in the direction from now to then. On the other hand, it suggests what persisted throughout those happenings and which could not have come about without that underlying and persistent potency. Chronology along the time line rests upon ephemeral factors, such as mainly invasions by foreign civilisations. These last, however, once they had begun to participate in the art of the country, were drawn into and supported by the vitality of its soil. Every seemingly passing aspect of Indian art, if at all it is an aspect and not a stray incident, sank into and drew its forces from the fertile and enduring potency.
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This chronology is potential and enduring on the one hand, and transitory on the other. Between these two—the movement on the surface and the existence as well as the movement underground—an active and ceaseless connection is established.
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Plastic art of the Indus valley is mainly conspicuous for its ponderosity and its naturalism, i.e. innervation. Animals chiefly, but also trees, with their sinuous stems suggestive of vegetation, occupy exalted positions. Associated and combined with them, the human figure becomes divine. It also transcends human limits by such devices as multiple heads and limbs, indicative of superhuman potentialities. In the case of animals with multiple heads, super-animalic potentialities are suggested. Nature and the supernatural are experienced as dynamically connected.
Summary
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1. Character of form: Dynamic naturalism = innervation.
2. Geography: Aboriginally Indian. At present traceable in the Indus valley and further east.
3. Chronology: Link between palæolithic and later Indian art.
4. Inner meaning: Matter of fact representation of the supernatural by the side of, or within, the seen.