Indian Sculpture c5.s2.t2.2

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.