Indian Sculpture c5.s1.t7.19

c5.s1.t7.19

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.