Indian Sculpture c5.s1.t7.17

c5.s1.t7.17

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