Indian Sculpture c5: Chapter II. Classical Sculpture

Indian Sculpture c5

Language: English

Chapter II. Classical Sculpture

1. Foundations

Ethnical Factors

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THE persistence of an artistic attitude, irrespective of passing ages and the shifting of scenery, had not allowed for a long time any disturbance to alter its course. Even the new blood in the ethnical structure of the country did not affect it for many centuries. When finally it did, classical³⁰ art was born. Ancient sculpture is seen to be un-Aryan, so far as the Indus civilisation goes; yet not in point of time only, for even in the third century B.C., about two thousand years after the Aryan immigration, it remained essentially un-Aryan. The tardiness of Aryan utterance in Indian art is not only due to the tenacity of the pre-Aryan idiom. The explanation for it must also be sought for in the attitude of the Aryan invaders towards art³¹ and in their reaction to what they found in the country. One component of the heritage of the palæolithic period, that is, the naturalism or innervation of ancient Indian sculpture, originally repelled them. After they had settled in the country, however, they could not but succumb to it. Neither during the classical period, from the second century B.C. to the eighth century A.D., nor even in the middle ages, did the ancient trend ever become extinct. We call it ancient not only for its priority in time, but also because it survives in spite of all vicissitudes, like the soil of India itself, of which it is a spontaneous and ever-recurring creative product. The Aryan invaders, on the other hand, were reluctant to give shape to their work in the likeness of things.

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It must be borne in mind that the ethnical problem is not confined to the Āryan factor on the one hand and the non-Āryan on the other. The later includes various civilisations and correspondingly various traditions of art. Plastic art of the Indus and Ganges valleys, in its Indian peculiarity directly grown out of palæolithic art, is a tangible whole, irrespective of trends within it. As such it has to be considered as one factor only in the non-Āryan complex. It has become known but lately. The other factors, with their monuments, as yet have not emerged from the soil that may still cover some of them. Their fusion has been accomplished and is apparent in the early phase of classically Indian sculpture.

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Still, there are signs of friction and uneasiness in the early phase of classical plastic art as well as compromises and tentative solutions. Where, however, naturalism and rhythm are one, classical Indian plastic art has come into existence.

Plastic Quality

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Indus art had shown the tree, the animal and the human figure by the side of one another, or else interpenetrating each other. Indus art had pronounced this, but it had not completely expressed it in the medium of creative form. This the flowing linear rhythm of classical art facilitates. It divests the appearance of each type of isolation, it approximates the one to the other, by making the limbs of human figures not too different from the branches of trees, etc. (Fig. 15). Every part and all the figures are permeated by one and the same vitality, and this is carried from form to form by an inner rhythm that constitutes, together with the bodies through which it passes, the plasticity of Indian sculpture (Figs. 15–20, 24).

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An inner pliability bends and models the form. The paradox of the solid material (stone, etc.) and the fluid aspect of its artistic transformation make the high tension and complexity of Indian sculpture (Fig. 27). This may be called plastic. As an essential quality of classical Indian art it is not confined to sculpture, but is equally immanent in painting.³² Indian sculpture and painting are never merely decorative or ornamental. Their adaptations to a given surface and its equilibrium are by-products of the slighter kind in Indian art.

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Whereas it is the allurement of the illusionistic factor in Western art to break through the surface from outside with a deceptive display of space and depth, the temptation in Indian sculpture acts just from the other direction. A superabundant tendency of the plastic urge to swell into form from within the material does not easily brook limits imposed by anything except the extension of the material itself. Borders, neatly carved and decorated, are at times as, for instance, in Sāñcī and Amarāvatī³³ (Fig. 49), encroached upon and over-sected by a superabundance of figures, which will not acknowledge limits. In the case of reliefs carved in the rock, frames or regular limits need not exist at all, but the relief expands as far as the plastic impulse can throw it forth, bubbling with modelled form (Figs. 39, 74, etc.). The taming of this superabundance by limits and line is one of the tasks of this phase of classical sculpture.

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The fragment of the sorrowing woman from Sārnāth (Fig. 11) brings home this aspect more poignantly than the more exhaustive and somewhat later railing-reliefs from Bhārhut and Bodhgayā. That curve of the woman’s back encompasses the tender modulations of a young body. The heaviness of loin cloth, anklets and hair ornament, and the harsh stiffness of the resting leg, set off the delicate plasticity of the body. In spite of an unequal execution of the single parts, they cohere plastically. The outline as limiting, co-relative to the modelled surface, has accepted the part it is to play in classical sculpture.

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The enlargement and linear circumscription of the eyes of the burnt earthenware heads (Fig. 12), within a face relatively richly modelled, assigns to them a position stylistically between ancient and early classical art. The somewhat later faces from Bhārhut (Figs. 26 and 27) have not this far-seeing and wide-awake expression. Their flattened masks seem to disguise it.

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The majority of the sculptures of this period are reliefs. They belong to railings or gateways of stūpas, or they are rock-cut adornments of monasteries.

Functional Devices of Inter-Relatedness

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A. Elimination of Time

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Certain features are constitutional to this phase, and beyond it. These are the formulæ that help to show the importance of, and the connection between, the single figures, and the kind of animation given to the figures. Like all early art that serves as a vehicle of communication in the service of religion, classical Indian sculpture, too, at its dawn adheres to continuous narration, i.e. in one and the same relief-compositions various incidents of one story may be depicted, with the necessary figure of the main person repeatedly shown. The figure of the donor of the sacred grove appears twice, supervising the purchase and dedicating the grove; it is shown at two significant stages of the story (Fig. 16). This mode of presentation visualises the main events of an entire story. It synthesises the duration into one visual unit. The basis is frequently the locality where the story took place, and the specifically Indian version is that not only immediately successive stages are brought together, but, however widely apart in time two or more of its events may be, that they took place on the same spot justifies their representation in one and the same composition.34 Time thus coalesces and is eliminated altogether. It is an invisible element. The significance of the story as a whole becomes ever present in the relief, just as it had been present in the mind of the craftsman while he visualised it. The subsisting link lies in the continuity, i.e. in the presence of the story to the mind of the craftsman and in the sameness of place. ‘Uni-local’ narration is the specially Indian and the most logical version of continuous narration. The continuity is one of connectedness and relation, and not of sequence along an intangible timeline. The sameness of locality acts as an equivalent to the inner field of vision, where the various situations of the story lie in readiness side by side. Vicinity and extensiveness, instead of sequence, are allocated by the early Indian artist to the happenings of the stories he carves.

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B. Visualization of the Third Dimension

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The conquest of the third dimension is one of the foremost tasks of every art tradition in the making. Each will solve it according to its susceptibilities. The system accepted by early classical Indian sculpture is not less systematical in its own way than that of the Italian Renaissance. But where the one endeavours to be optically correct, the other undertakes to be functionally consistent. Formulæ to serve this purpose in the main are adopted during the second century B.C., while in the first century B.C. the system is finally elaborated. They consist of a serviceable stock in trade, and have nothing to do with any optical perspective, be it a bird’s-eye view or any other. These devices are the outcome of a rationalisation of the connection of objects. An object does not present itself to the eye of the Indian artist as an illusion, different from the underlying reality. On the contrary, what the eye sees is the perceptible side of that underlying reality. It exists by itself, irrespective of the perceiving eye. But the eye can perceive it only because in it those qualities are active that are conspicuous in the object. The Indian craftsman, therefore, makes it his task to record the data of the visible. It consists of many things contained within their limits. None of them exists apart from the other. This compels him to exclude, as far as possible, the personal element, inasmuch as this contains modifications and shortcomings that detract from the validity of the record. To safeguard the process of artistic creation from the limitations of the individual, conventions were elaborated as to how to tackle the extensiveness of objects and their relation.

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The following are the most noticeable conventions:

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1. The figures are shown above each other on the ground of the relief, instead of being placed behind each other, as in actuality they are (Figs. 16, 17, 22, etc.). This translation from the dimension of depth into one of surface may have originated in the alignment of figures (cf. Mohenjo-Daro seals, Fig. 8), repeated in horizontal bands, not unlike Egyptian representations or that of the Ṛṣis, in the relief of Varāha avatāra (Udayagiri, Gwālior, Fig. 63) and on later statues of Varāha, but with an omission of the ground line. Its effect is, that figures, which according to optical perspective would be hidden or partly covered, can be shown in entirety or covered only to the desired extent.

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2. The figures neither decrease nor increase in size according to their distance or nearness, because they are not thought of in such terms at all. Yet their size is regulated, though not according to any sort of optical impression; for with the Indian craftsmen size is not a thing conditioned by what is seen, but it shows, on the contrary, the importance of each person or object. As such, however, it is not stationary, but is regulated according to the importance of other persons or objects with which it enters into relation.

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Thus, for instance, an elephant and a female figure may be given about the same size when the elephant is the Buddha to be born and the woman’s figure that of his future mother, Queen Māyā (Fig. 21). But an elephant, again, need not be larger than a lotus flower, where both of them are but the indispensable surroundings of the comparatively gigantic figure of the goddess Lakṣmī (Fig. 31).

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3. Just as the size of the figures is determined functionally by importance, so is the visibility of objects. The third dimension, according to Western perspective, has to be inferred, and cannot be seen as such, if rendered in relief; for then one surface only, i.e. the one parallel to the ground of the relief, can be shown entire. The early Indian craftsman, according to the demands of the scene and its visibility or knowability, will tilt into the relief any surface on the top and at the sides of the vertical surface, to show the whole cube or prism of each single volume or object. So it comes about that altars of the Buddha, for instance, which were centres of worship, show the whole of the top surface almost as well as the front surface (Fig. 17, 22). The same is true of houses, where the two sides as well as the gabled roof make a compact stereometrical shape (Fig. 24). This method, however, is carried out with utmost rigour in the rendering of rocks, specially in paintings (Ajaṇṭā, cave ix).³⁵ There the hill is imagined as an array of several boulders, and each of them is abstractly transformed into a prism, of which three sides at a time are delineated, in contrasting colours as far as possible, so that extensiveness may be punctiliously demonstrated.

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⁴ These functional formulæ condition a peculiar stage as playground for the single scenes and narrations in relief. It is flat, and on it the figures are served as if on a tray (Figs. 19, 21); atmosphere and horizon do not exist; whatever is tangible is contained within the frame of the relief and makes up the

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space, i.e. the extensiveness of that special story or event. It is replete with volumes of single figures and with the tension between them (Fig. 24). Static distance does not exist. Space as a void does not exist.

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Some of the most logical applications of this method are to be found in a typical scene, where a group consists of a railing surrounding a sacred tree and umbrellas (Bodhgayā, Fig. 18; Ananta Gumphā, Khaṇḍagiri).³⁶ There the sacred tree is shown in outline as if on one level with the eye; the railing, however, stands on edge, and all the four sides of its quadrangle are to be seen as if looked at from above, whereas the inside of the open sunshades appears as if viewed from below. The sacred tree, i.e. the main object, is given a view that makes it unmistakably and fully visible, whereas the function of surrounding as well as of giving shade to the sacred spot demand their appropriate formulæ.

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This system builds up the logical relationship within the single compositions. Yet it is only a scheme and needs filling. This is done by the single objects themselves having extension two dimensional as well as cubical, by the dynamic or rhythmical manner in which they are connected, and by such over-secting and foreshortening as are desirable (Figs. 15–17, 19). The latter are employed with ease; they do not achieve any illusion of depth, for this does not extend beyond their plastically tangible volume.

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In the reliefs of Bhārhut, and to a large extent of Bodhgayā, etc., a markedly linear and rhythmical tendency keeps in check the extent to which over-secting and foreshortening are being made use of. No rhythmical discipline, however, of this kind coerces the freedom of movement nor the volume of the figures in Sāñcī (Figs. 33, 34).

Co-ordination of Relief Figures

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Placed as a definite unit into this context, the human figure acts an integral part, but not to any further extent than, for instance, a tree; it does not bear any accent. Such a thing as scenery does not exist. For nothing is superfluous, and every item has its allotted place in the story and the composition. Nor is any setting required, for the diction is direct and has its background in the mind of the craftsman and people alike. The co-ordination of nature, man-made things, and man himself, is complete (Figs. 15–20, 22, 24).

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Where man and his work are apprehended as a part of nature, the life given to the human figure is neither different in kind nor degree from that of plants or animals. Psychology is unknown, but there is a great gulf between the quiet and vegetative being of all figures in Bhārhut and the sheer intensity of life experienced by figures in Sāñcī (Figs. 33, 34). But both are spontaneous. They live fully, unbroken by any working of the mind, at one with themselves and with whatever happens to be their neighbour. No knowledge stands prohibitively between them. Each abides within itself. All are parts of nature.

Local Idioms and Collective Method of Work

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A tradition, brought about by a widespread and intricate fusion of people on one soil in common, prevails throughout the early classical phase. Nevertheless the contributions of local idiosyncrasies are clearly discernible; besides these provincial differences, even on one and the same monument various trends are noticeable. Craftsmen from one part of the country gave their services to great tasks in other parts of the country (Sāñcī, etc.).³⁷ This collective method of working is as much responsible for differences of levels and trends in one and the same monument as it is essential for the formation of a lingua franca of artistic conventions.

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Conspicuous as local idioms are, those of (1) Madhyadeśa,³⁸ with monuments at Bhārhut, Sāñcī, Bodhgayā, Mathurā, etc.; (2) Kaliṅga, i.e. Orissā; (3) South India, with sculptures from Veṅgī³⁹ and Guḍimallam; and (4) Bhājā, in the Western Ghāṭs. Madhyadeśa then was leading. Its influence is patent in Kaliṅga and to a lesser extent in Veṅgī sculptures. Bhājā stands apart. It derives its peculiar quality from similar origins to those of the bulk of work in Sāñcī, stūpa I, and part of Bhārhut reliefs (Ajātaśatru pillar, etc.), but is nearer to the sources than either.

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The reliefs on railings and gateways of stūpas⁴⁰ mostly narrate stories of the life and previous incarnations of the Buddha; others contain mainly vegetative devices. They are arranged in oblong, square, round and half-round panels, according to the exigencies of architectonic decoration. Yakṣas and Yakṣīs, Nāgarājas and Devatās occupy prominent positions. In large size, and frequently accompanied by their tree and vāhana—the vehicle in the shape of an animal—or by both (cf. the human figure, tree and animal on Indus valley seals), and in bolder relief than that of the other compositions, they cling to, or project from, the entire surfaces of railing posts without frames (Bhārhut, Figs. 26, 27); or else, fully carved ‘in the round,’ they act as brackets (Sāñcī).⁴¹ The bold and frameless relief of some of these large figures is a compromise between full and three dimensional extension (Mauryan Yakṣas, Figs. 2, 24) and the flat post. On the Sāñcī gates another type of large-sized figures in the round, namely horsemen⁴² or riders on elephants, are placed between the small upright of the toraṇas. Both of these types, or else the notions underlying them, are pre-Buddhistic.⁴³

Attitude Towards Symbols

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Symbolic representation, however, is confined to the allusion of the Buddha’s presence.

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Indian plastic sense is averse to the symbol, which is the substitute for a reality. The un-formed clamours for form, for this is the way in which it shows its reality. Symbols are ready-made and block the approach of the un-formed towards form. They stand in the way of creation. If in ancient Indian sculpture, of the Indus civilisation and in the Mauryan age, animal or plant were represented in lieu of the corresponding divinity, they were meant to be vāhanas, i.e. vehicles of the divinity, and not abstracts or parts of its appearance, such as footprints or hair relics, or of its presence, such as the seat or the walk (caṅkrama), in the case of the Buddha. They were truly vāhanas, of which the artistic treatment in the Indus art ‘conveyed’ divinity. The sacred tree, alone amongst the symbols for the Buddha, has maintained some of these earlier qualities. Non-iconic signs for the Buddha are an exceptional incident within the whole of Indian plastic art and their origins are to be sought for in a mentality which is not that of the Indian craftsman. He had, however, to submit to it.

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Symbols again play a considerable part in later centuries. But then they are additional attributes to figures of divinities, themselves endowed with form. Wheel, flame, lemon, lotus, etc., held in the hands by various divinities, are part of their apparel, and belong to the same category as crown, scarf or armlet. Nor do they then stand for an entire reality, they support only one of its many qualities, objectified and rationalised.

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The sacred tree, the seat, the wheel, the stūpa and the footprints are the ever-recurring devices substituted for the accomplished one. Or he may be present even—by not being alluded to at all—in the absence of concrete symbols (Figs. 16, 19). But not only are the symbols worshipped and treated as the centre and origin of an hieratical symmetry of composition (Fig. 18), but they also take part in the narration, and this they do to such an extent that they are divested of unchangeable permanency and are torn asunder. Such are the footprints in Bhārhut, which, apart from each other, climb down, the one on the top-most and the other on the lower-most rung of a ladder, to bring home the Buddha’s descent from the heaven of the thirty-three gods (Fig. 22). In Sāñcī, moreover,44 footprints, tree-motif, wheel and umbrella are combined in vertical succession, alluding in a childish way to the bodily appearance of man. There were definite injunctions in Buddhism against depicting the human form and taking delight in it, and there was felt a general awe of doing so.45 But these were expressions of religious experience and not of the artistic urge. The way in which the inexorably prolific sensuousness of the Indian artist struggled with, and eventually overcame, the scruples of the mind, and succeeded in dragging the symbol into the current of life and form, can be followed from generation to generation in the course of classical sculpture. The narrative reliefs in the second century B.C. select Jātaka stories as their favourite themes; whereas in the first century B.C. events from the actual life of the Buddha and his miracles are preferably chosen.

Madhyadeśa

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(A) Railing of Stūpa II, Sāñcī

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The ground balustrade of stūpa II, Sāñcī (second century B.C.), almost exclusively decorated with low reliefs in ‘plant style’ (Coomaraswamy), is the most logical effort in this line during the early classical period (Figs. 29–31). The lotus-creeper is vegetative life visualised. Its rhythmical sway is also peculiar to stems of trees, as shown in Indus art. Stem of tree and stalk of lotus in Indian sculpture are channels which the recurring movement of vegetation bends according to its own rhythm. The stalk of the lotus issues and rambles through the reliefs, and from its own fertility, like a diver from the deep sea, brings forth unexpected treasures—flowers in abundance and spirits too, animals, human figures and symbols. The animal, too, even if shown by itself alone, takes part in this rhythm (Fig. 14). An angular reticence of the postures of some of the human figures ill-fits the heaving, sprouting luxuriance of the theme. The craftsmen seem to have subdued modelling by a linear scheme, that allowed a seeming quiet where wilder forces and more powerful handling appeared to be out of place. Primeval Indian folk art is overlayed by rhythmical discipline.

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These early reliefs of stūpa II, Sāñcī, are but patterns in disguise—rhythmical exercises in linear composition, and hesitating in the handling of the human figures which have been subjected to its yoke.

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(B) Bhārhut: Main Trend

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With a similarly careful awareness, the artists in Bhārhut (second half of second century B.C.), too, approach their themes. But there is relatively more ease in their attitude and a more leisurely expansiveness. The lotus scroll moves with homely assurance through its self-created jungle, which, in its turn, and with all the exuberance of vegetation, of which jewellery and apparel are also part, obeys a rhythm of slow but ceaseless measure⁴⁶ (Figs. 15, 24). Its movement is felt even where it is not itself shown and in some of the roundels the beginning and end are joined in an elastic balance (Fig. 16). By it are supported the actors of the story, loosely dispersed over the ground of the relief. Their distances, i.e. the tension between the single figures, their positions and gestures recline, and are carried by that swaying free rhythmical movement. No attempt is made to group the figures; each abides in the place assigned to it with a generous sense of well-being, in which quietly breathes the life of Bhārhut.

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Few of the difficulties of ‘primitive’ art, such as a limited range of attitudes, are to be found here. For although this is an early stage of classical art, yet it has the vast experience of ancient practice behind it. But the use it makes of it is circumscribed by an orientation that realises life as a ceaseless flow and has lost interest in the compactness of detached objects. (See Chapter I.) How the latter was gradually abandoned is tangibly shown by some of the large pillar figures; for instance, that of Sirimā Devatā and that of Sudarśanā Yakṣī (Figs. 26, 27). While the one consists of an inane superposition of massive forms, the other, mellifluous in gliding lines, balances her body like the languid stalk of a full-blown flower. Monumental stiffness, with knees stretched and arms pressed to the body, has melted into a lyricism of vegetative grace.

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The majority of compositions in Bhārhut are subject to this gentle rhythm; a group of reliefs, however, of which those of the Ajātaśatru pillar are most prominent, is not touched by its caress (Fig. 22). Harsher and less imaginative, the figures are densely packed, lacking melody though not discipline and are set in horizontal rows (cf. Fig. 8), which crowd the panels with their mechanical parallels. The relief in their case is so full of figures that the ground, with its calm and bare surface, no longer can be seen. This trend, which was destined to rule almost exclusively in the work on the Sāñcī gateways, is unaware of the silent and secure wisdom of swaying balance and self-supporting rhythms. Whereas the freely rhythmic manner is a favourite solution in Indian art, the seemingly inexhaustible onrush of form after form is one of its main problems.

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Irrespective, however, of the contexts into which they are implicated, the single figures are hesitating in their movements (Figs. 16, 17, 22, 24); these almost seem to come about without their knowledge. So unaccentuated are their actions that the manner in which hungry jackals prick up their ears does not differ in intensity from the way that branches curve (Fig. 15). A state of being, irrespective of all actions, has found variegated form in all those modest figurines. They exist in a permanent mood of shy approval, which at times amounts to veneration of that unending life that carries and supports them for the moment they are there.

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The physiognomy, common to all the faces in Bhārhut, sets each feature clearly marked into a but little differentiated round or oval, flatly modelled. These masks, with wide open eyes, which bulge but have no pupils, and are not seeing at all, are intent with the keenness of the life they are made to fit, eager but undirected (Figs. 21, 22, 24, 26, 27); whereas that of Sirimā (Fig. 26) is attracted by the without, the within is kept in abeyance by that of Sudarśanā (Fig. 27).

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(D) Bodhgayā

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The part of the square railing of Bodhgayā of the first half of the first century B.C. is an elegant, if superficial, sequel to Bhārhut. The scrupulously exhaustive manner of telling stories has dwindled into abbreviations, comprehensible to those only who are well-acquainted with the subject pictured. The same subjects in their versions in Bhārhut and in Bodhgayā (Figs. 16, 17, 19, 20) show this clearly. The figures now move with greater self-assurance and their rhythmical ease is not confined to the surface only, but extends into depth.

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They are placed at a slight angle with the ground of the relief, so that the whole body offers a broader surface to be modelled. The flying Kinnara of Fig. 20 may be contrasted with the woman in the tree from Bhārhut (Fig. 15), whose chest, although placed in a similar position, appears pinned to the surface by the four corners marked by her hands and feet.

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In equal measure, with an increasing freedom of physical movement, the surface of the body awakens also. The Sārnāth fragment (Fig. 11) had already anticipated this, but there was little scope for this quality in the second century B.C. Now, however, with bolder movements and prouder carriage, the surface of the stone is modelled in detail and with subtle gradations, so as to give a suggestion of soft, warm flesh. (Fig. 19, the man with the basket, for instance.) Sensuousness is tempered and supported by the lyrical measure of linear movements. To this stage approximately belong also, besides part of the Bodhgayā railing, the carved railings from Patna, Sārnāth, and fragments from Mathurā⁴⁷ (Fig. 40).

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(E) Sāñcī, Gateways of Stūpa I

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The Southern, the earliest (middle of first century B.C.) amongst the gateways of the Sāñcī stūpas, marks a decisive turn from the trend prevalent in Bhārhut and on ground balustrade of stūpa II, Sāñcī. What had struggled for expression in the work on the Ajātaśatru pillar has now broken into boisterous freedom. There still are some reliefs (Lakṣmī panel and lotus landscape panel)⁴⁸ permeated by the endless melody of Bhārhut. Yet it is silenced where the clash and din of tumultuous groups clamour for self-assertion and expansion (Fig. 33). No longer are the single figures loosely scattered in the composition. With a larger freedom of bodily movement and increased depth of the relief, they are turned at various angles and enter into group connections. The group now is the acting unit, and within its compass what variety of poses, what outbursts of blossoming, frolicsome and frenzied existence! As if from a cornucopia the wealth of figures throngs forth from the stone, increasing in vigour and reverberating with its onrush like the sound of a trumpet. The relief on the whole offers its field full to the point of bursting, with figures and nameless darkness between them. Instead of placidly swaying and clearly pronounced linear rhythms, what bewildering mass of compositional factors! With diagonal movements, and with planes intersecting, the figures appear as if breaking out of the solid mass of stone; loaded with energies that could carry them farther afield, they are kept with difficulty only within the confines of the relief. The boundless un-formed demands an almost boundless supply of form. Unmitigated creativeness fiercely and inexorably throws forth form next to form.

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To measure the degree of maturity of Indian art by Western standards—not to speak of influences—is nowhere as futile as it would be in case of the Sāñcī reliefs. Daring in diagonal arrangements, furtively broken by light and darkness, modelled with a delicacy and experience that would do credit to the Western Baroque, the genius which produces this seeming similarity assigns it to quite a different level. No consciously exalted striving and no exaggerated and calculated effects, but an inexhaustive young resourcefulness to cope with its onrush, seizes all possibilities that promise adequate form. Side by side, intersecting movements in depth and yet a reference to the surface, fullness of modelling and a clear cut outline—all these, achievements already of the South gate, shortly afterwards are also to be seen on the North gate; but about a generation later in the East and West gates ultimate outbursts of tumultuousness are not far from aridity (Fig. 34). It finally seizes the Sāñcī tradition in the work on the ‘Fifth gate’ (about the Christian era), the only gate of stūpa III.49

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On the whole, however, chronological sequence does not imply one line of stylistic development. Some of the panels of the South gate, which is the earliest, represent the climax of the specifical trend of Sāñcī, and are the work of craftsmen most alive to its urge (Fig. 33). Those craftsmen, however, of lesser sensibility and more addicted to the older version of this idiom (as practised in Bhārhut on the Ajātaśatru pillar), keep it valid throughout the sculptures of Sāñcī, but without the spellbound cogency of repetition that had kept the figures there so tightly gripped. This leads to stiffness without rhythm, to a discipline that only succeeds in mechanising the composition (Fig. 35).

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In its most vital compositions, the work of Sāñcī is tumultuously naturalistic. There a profusely surging plastic mass demands a high relief, with a rich interplay of light and darkness, that, combined with the three dimensional tangibility of objects, their variegated grouping and the freedom of the movement of the full-limbed figures, produces massive and vigorous compositions. Their coherence results from the impetuousness of this special creative impulse. The living stone, it seems, eagerly clamours to burst out into scenes full of its own life, which it imparts to the touch of the craftsman. Reluctant to recognise limits, the force which inheres bursts the volume in which it inheres. The frames, so neatly outlined, are at times transgressed upon by the figures. On the West gate,⁵⁰ in the scene of the War of the Relics, the composition brims over them. In this accomplished rendering (an earlier version of the same scene is on the South gate), the incompatibility of any frame with a composition that follows its own dynamic expansiveness is actually realised. This trend demands an extensiveness of which the limits are settled by its own propelling force, just as seeds will burst out from the seedpot and fall down according to the energy that has thrust them forth.

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Supplementary to this, and almost in opposition to its lack of rational design, the other tendency stresses the vertical and the horizontal in keeping with the order prescribed by the frame (Fig. 34). In some compositions it goes further than that, and endeavours to tie the entire throng of figures to the ground of the relief, parallel with it and preventive of any outburst from the un-formed depth of the stone diagonally into the light of day (Fig. 35). But the achievements of this restraint are not primary. Its qualities in respect of modelling, sense of volume and light and darkness, belong to the former group. The trees, for instance, even where they have not thrown off altogether the continuous outline filled by modelling (see Figs. 15, 17, 18, 20, etc.), with their branches jutting out freely,51 but observe the outline that neatly binds the foliage into a round or otherwise regularly shaped bouquet, are dishevelled within and eaten up by darkness (Figs. 34, 35).

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Buoyancy, with its rich resources, is not in keeping with the meagre orderliness that attempts to tame them and arrives at compromises at times, but fails on the whole. Of this, the Fifth gate, with its inconsistency of mollified volumes in rigid orderliness, gives evidence.

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Some of the scenes, such as the War of the Relics, the Chaddanta Jātaka52 and in other monuments other scenes—the dream of Māyā, for instance, in Amarāvati—are repeated. This recurrence of the one and the same scene on one monument establishes the ever-present actuality of the scene. What matters is not that it once happened, but that in all its importance it did happen and this cannot be repeated too frequently. In its significance the scene is ever present. The repetition of the same scene in several compositions on one monument is a feature cognate with the timelessness in the rendering of each composition (p. 18).

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All the while the human figures have remained squat in proportion, with short necks and heavy heads, non-Āryan as well as non-Drāviḍian in type, even more noticeable than in Bhārhut, where the relatively flat treatment and strongly linear compositional rhythm have made use of them more as signs or names than in their actual pertinence. In Sāñcī, however, a sturdy type is chosen without the mundane ease and self-assurance of the Bodhgayā figures, but unthinkable without its Śuṅga and Mauryan ancestors (Fig. 32). Yet however wide apart the main Bhārhut tradition of the flowing linear rhythm may be from that of Sāñcī, the later craftsman could not but unwittingly imbibe and carry on its achievements. The result is that a mollified volume is bounded by an outline ever more fluid in its gliding sinuousness. While lyricism and generalisations formulated during the second century B.C. were during the first century B.C. drowned in the onrush of more vigorous expressions, these ultimately, if outwardly only, were smoothed and disciplined by the former achievements.

Orissā (Kaliṅga)

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The sculptures in Orissā during the second and first centuries B.C. have a provincial aspect. They mainly depend on Madhyadeśa, but to some extent also on the south. While the Mañcapurī cave relief in Udayagiri preserves the Mauryan idiom in certain features, such as the compact rendering of the main actors, and is also instinct with the vitality (Fig. 37) which distinguishes the relatively later work of Sāñcī, the reliefs on the Ananta Gumphā, Khaṇḍagiri, are not only stylistically,⁵³ but, even in their iconographic types (relief with Sūrya, etc.), directly dependent on Bodhgayā railing reliefs. Other relics of a capital, for instance, and posts and a fragment from a railing, add one further characteristic only, where a pillar figure is treated with that utmost economy of relief so peculiar to the marbles of Jaggayapeṭa.⁵⁴

South India (Veṅgī and Guḍimallam)

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Marble slabs of the stūpas and railings of south India, from Jaggayapeṭa (Fig. 38) and some from Amarāvatī belong to the second and first centuries B.C. respectively;⁵⁵ yet, in spite of the stylistic connectedness of contemporary form, their linear sensitiveness is more highly strung and their modelling, with a minimum of means, is generous. Not unlike, however, to figures on the ground balustrade, stūpa II, Sāñcī, those of Jaggayapeṭa frequently stand on boulsters, with their feet as if dangling, and this impression is further intensified in their case by an extraordinary length of limbs, drawn out to an unearthly slenderness. The bodies themselves, however, are as sturdy as any in Madhyadeśa. Yet stilted limbs, scarves fluttering away from the figures in thin and sharp diagonals, angular movements with sustained power and a self-assurance of outline, speak of energies ethnically different from those in Madhyadeśa and assignable to the Drāviḍian element.

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The marbles of Amarāvatī, of the first century B.C., are already of a slightly deeper cut relief, with a predilection, too, for a fuller modelling of the body.⁵⁶ Yet never hitherto has the lotus creeper been so delicately burdened with ingenious flowers, nor were men or beasts given such tough elasticity and elegance. Subtly passionate faces carried by a delicately modelled but forcefully built body, that steps out lightly on legs with an unearthly tread, these are peculiar to Amarāvatī from now onward.

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Outside the school of Veṅgī, the Śivaliṅgam from Guḍimallam (Fig. 36), North Arcot district, occupies a position of its own. Vehement in its sturdy presence, the figure in front of it has but little in common with those of the Veṅgī marbles, except that there, too, the body was shown as vigorous; but this was minimised by a decisive outline and the delicacy of the flat modelling. Nor is it on the same level with the milder version of Yakṣa and allied figures from central India of the same phase. On the whole it belongs to ‘ancient’ sculpture in India, and shows one of its possibilities. With the firm pressure in the resolute manner of standing, with its tight modelling and the sightless grin, replete with the savour of its own juice, it sums up an aspect of ancient Indian art not preserved in any other monument.

Dekkhan

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Coming as if from the unsounded depths of the earth, in comparison with other contemporary sculpture, are the large rock-cut reliefs of Bhājā, in the Western Ghāts (Fig. 39). They are the relatively purest examples of plastic art, heaving with a modelling in unheard of proportions, akin to the settling down of the surface of the earth when the inner fire was receding further and further inward from the crust that cooled into shape. The demon over whom passes the chariot of Sūrya and the elephant of Indra⁵⁷ have the brooding weightiness of the earth. These reliefs, even if they decorate a Buddhist monastery, as in fact they did, are free from measure and restraint. They contain those possibilities of Indian sculpture that brought about the Varāha relief cut in the rock at Udayagiri (Gwālior, early fifth century) and those of Ellora and Elephanta (Dekkhan, seventh and eighth centuries). The reliefs are not contained in any frame, but they extend as far as their inherent expansiveness carries them and the rock allows. The reliefs in Sāñcī show this characteristic, transferred, as it were, from the scope of the rock to the limitations of framed compositions (p. 32). The rock-cut reliefs, moreover, are not confined to one surface only of the rock, but are conveyed over the side-wings at right angles, in an untamed, plastic exuberance. They appear to be truly aboriginal, even more striking in their Indian peculiarity than other contemporary reliefs.

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There are thus immanent in the early phase of classical sculpture those foundations which, through the coming centuries, were to uphold the structure of the subsequent phases of classical Indian art. Āryan, but to a greater extent non-Āryan, forces have met and united. Rhythmical design redeems a measureless vitality from its plastic exuberance. Exuberant plastic vitality in its turn graces their corresponding patterns, with the cognisance of an ever-productive soil.

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With all the convincing spontaneousness of an early expression, integral motifs, which were to persist under one or the other aspect, were formulated at this period. The most prolific is that of the lotus creeper. The reiteration of its ample curves, fertile with the wealth of life—floral, animal, human and of man-made things—is more than a favourite motif. Where its generous vegetation is not explicitly shown, implicitly it underlies and is reborn ever afresh, an eternal melody of many compositions and attitudes.

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The texture of the plastic language is tantamount to a twofold outlook: everlasting because ever recurring, and steadily rhythmical in one version (for instance, Bhārhut), the other condenses the display of all inherent potentialities into one moment of outburst or manifestation (for instance, Sāñcī). Being as an ever-becoming, being concentrated in its plenitude yet not spent in the explosiveness of one moment—these are the twofold expressions of this plastically dynamic diction.

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1. Character of form: (a) Fluid and plastic, (b) dynamic and compact.
2. Geography: Three marked but connected provinces; Madhyadeśa, Veṅgī and Dekkhan, on the basis of different factors and degrees of ethnical mixture.
3. Chronology: An early art, while the three main provinces contribute their own aboriginally or otherwise ethnically conditioned heritage.
4. Inner meaning: Abandon to the unending and vegetative rhythm or to the intensity of the moment.

2. Early Maturity

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WHILE the artistic activities of the former period had been diffused through the country, they are now concentrated in Mathurā and Veṅgī. During the first and second centuries A.D., Mathurā is of primary importance, whereas just previously (Fig. 40) the idiom of its sculptures, although broader and more relaxed as far as modelling goes and livelier in the rendering of physiognomy and movement, conformed with reliefs (p. 39) as those from Bodhgayā. Although it gives to Indian imagery its pantheon of Buddhist and Jaina as well as of Brāhmanic denominations, it fails—or, rather, never makes the attempt—to experience and create the spirituality of any. Firmly footed on earth-bound Mauryan survivals, it imbues the massiveness of its large-sized figures with the self-sufficing serenity of physical superiority.58 Reliefs are of minor importance, but, even so, they have undergone relevant changes. The main interest, however, is devoted to the large-sized cult image. Mauryan colossal statues are its ancestors, as far as appearance is concerned. But what with them had been dignity and civilised bearing is a more relaxed, while cruder, sturdiness in Mathurā.

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Where did this demand for images come from, and where did the Buddha image originate?59

Origin of Buddha Image

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Representations of some of the gods in human shape are as frequent as they are standardised in Bhārhut and other monuments. Early classical sculpture, however, does not show these gods as being worshipped. Allusions to the anthropomorphic appearance of divinities occur in the Rgveda.⁶⁰ Anthropomorphic, too, are some figurines and representations on seals of the Indus art. That these had been worshipped is shown on one fayence sealing from Mohenjo-Daro.⁶¹ But anthropomorphic images, it appears, as an essential part of the ceremony of worship in any of the forms of cult that are recorded in scripture, were not in vogue in India prior to its contact with Hellenism. This did not exclude a tendency towards image worship amongst the masses which had maintained this attitude from early days, such as those of the Indus civilisation. Yakṣa statues, for instance, although distinctly not images (p. 9), may nevertheless have been worshipped by the people. The Yakṣa Maṇibhadra, from Pawāyā (Gwālior, about the beginning of the Christian era, i.e. of later date),⁶² is inscribed as ‘Bhagavān,’ i.e. ‘Worshipful.’ That an anthropomorphic tendency existed amongst the craftsmen, and allowed itself to be repressed with difficulty only, is shown within the non-iconic reliefs themselves from Bhārhut and Sāñcī (p. 26).

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This innate tendency of the Indian craftsman towards giving shape in the likeness of living things, asserted itself in Mathurā unreservedly.

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The Buddha there is given the appearance of a Yakṣa, who excels others of his kind by being a Cakravartin (a world-ruler), endowed with marks of a ‘great being.’ In this powerful and worldly manner the craftsmen from Mathurā fashion their images of the Buddha, whom they prefer to think of and to call a Bodhisattva. Popular belief and imagination interpret according to their own resources what the Buddha means to them. The ‘Bodhisattva’ image from Mathurā is a robust figure (Fig. 41). In conception and treatment it has ancient Indian sculpture for its background. That the earliest preserved image dates from as late as the end of the first century A.D., whereas in Gandhāra the Buddha was shown in human shape at an earlier date (p. 45), may be due to the accident of preservation. But in no case does priority establish a claim of the Gandhāran type as origin of the Buddha image. The type as formed in Mathurā is totally different and in keeping with the quality and meaning of contemporary Indian sculpture. It is, moreover, the outcome of an aboriginal attitude of the masses towards image worship.

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The image from Gandhāra, on the other hand, is a resourceful adaptation of Indian notions by syncretistic craftsmen. A weary eclecticism distinguishes it. The two types of the Buddha image, from Mathurā and Gandhāra, have different origins, psychologically as well as culturally. The character and the later date of the image set up by Friar Bala,58 A.D. 81, and of other figures from Mathurā, prove the independence of this thoroughbred Indian type.

Mathurā

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With the notion of the cult-image foremost in the mind of the artist, his conception of the importance of the human figure and of its relation to its surroundings changed. Compared with those in the early reliefs, the figures now have actually grown up, so much so that the height of the main figure in a number of scenes now preferably is equal to the entire height of the panel63 (cf. Āmohinī relief, Mathurā, A.D. 14), and the subsidiary figures are graded accordingly. This novel proportion, when strictly followed, excludes the use of ‘spatial’ formulæ as well as of continuous or uni-local narration. Large figures are boldly carved, isolated objects are more definitely foreshortened than hitherto; they are set against the plain surface of the ground.

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During the first century A.D. the quality of Mathurā figures, be it in relief or in the round, is heavy with the burden of Mauryan tradition; but this volume has been modified in unavoidable heritage to the Śuṅga idiom. Whatever there was left of innervation in the bodily bulk of the third century B.C. has melted into relaxed flesh, encumbered by scarfs, thrown across shoulders and drawn across legs and hips. The scarfs preferably are not allowed to lie flat, but are twisted into bulging ropes, and into loops dangling sideways on one side only. To treat the garment as separate volume, where it does not cling to the body, had been a Mauryan feature. In the subsequent period, however, the garment was made as invisible as possible, and indicated by a few scratches only in the modelled surface of the body, or else it hung like an apron in front of it, where it was meant to suggest the loose ends of drapery. Now, however, as in the case of the body, so in that of the garment, Mauryan and early classical traditions attempt a cumbersome fusion.

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The faces of these figures are full of *bonhomie*; their open eyes and smiling mouths ill-fit the head of a Buddha. When, by the end of the first century A.D., the Buddha-Bodhisattva was given an image, it is that of a ruling and self-pleased figure⁶⁴ (Fig. 41). The garment covers the left shoulder only. The body clearly shines through its transparency, and is modelled with soft and summary treatment up to the waist, while the legs, stiff and hardly modelled, are decisive in their outline.

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In the beginning of the second century A.D. the reins are loosened, the possibilities of movement have increased and for the first time the figures exhibit their gestures. All ‘early’ spontaneity has vanished. In Mathurā, in the second century A.D., a complaisant lewdness (Bhūteśvar pillars, about A.D. 130) is carried by exuberant limbs (Fig. 28). Rustic stolidity, with its attempt at largeness, has become a thing of the past. It helped to prepare a more excitable, though not a nobler, appearance. The naturalism of Mathurā, in the first and second centuries A.D., has physical mass for its substance and sensual appeal for its aim. The former is gradually absorbed by the latter. Flesh—tight, resilient or relaxed—is suggested by the modelling. At no other stage of Indian sculpture has the plastic sense been so entirely steeped in the physical.

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