Indian Sculpture c5.s1.t3: Functional Devices of Inter-Relatedness

Indian Sculpture c5.s1.t3

Language: English

Functional Devices of Inter-Relatedness

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).