Indian Sculpture c5.s1.t6.4

c5.s1.t6.4

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.