Indian Sculpture c4.s1.9

c4.s1.9

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