Indian Sculpture c4.s1.2

c4.s1.2

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.