Indian Sculpture c5.s2.t2: Mathurā
Indian Sculpture c5.s2.t2
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Mathurā
c5.s2.t2.1
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.
c5.s2.t2.2
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.
c5.s2.t2.3
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.
c5.s2.t2.4
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.
c5.s2.t2.5
At the same time, too, the Gandhāra Buddha type⁶⁵ is being purposely copied, and from now onward the folds of the garment covering both the shoulders becomes a favourite, though more and more linearised and conventionalised, attribute of Buddha images made in Mathurā.
c5.s2.t2.6
Hellenism at this phase plays by no means a negligible part in the sculpture of Mathurā. It is assimilated with understanding and a certain amount of freshness, for it meets an indigenous tendency of this school towards a somewhat detailed modelling for the sake of sensual associations.
c5.s2.t2.7
Colossal statues of the Kuṣāṇa kings, that had been set up in the Devakula at Māt, Mathurā, occupy a position of their own. Unfortunately, none of the heads of the figures of Kaniṣka, Vima Kadphises and of the satrap of western India, Caṣṭana, from the end of the first century A.D. have been preserved, but the bodies in themselves are sufficiently characterised to show what type of portrait was aimed at by the artists. The custom of setting up portrait statues, or carving them out of the rock, is substantiated by literature of about the same time as well as by actual remnants.⁶⁶ There was no novelty in the task, but only in the idiom of execution. The novelty is not of the Mathurā school that has produced innumerable images. Stern economy confines the main effect of the first and last named statues to the surface, to harsh angles and to lines incised as if with the stroke of the sword. The balance peculiar to all Indian sculpture is absent. Without the cohesion of ancient Mauryan ponderosity and without the rhythmic consistency of the early classical type, an upright posture weighs on the ground with the firmness of will. The angles of Kaniṣka’s coat, the enormous horizontal bar of his boots, the inscription of his name across the surface of his vestments, indicate that the artist was of the same race as his patron. A Scythian inspiration, that had learned in Mathurā how to model—as can be seen from the treatment of the chest—has commemorated the dignity of the Kuṣāṇa kings and of one of their contemporary rulers. The statue of Vima Kadphises,⁶⁷ however, is the work of a local and inferior craftsman, who endeavoured in vain to reach the arid altitude of the Scythian incident.