Indian Sculpture c5.s3.t1.16

c5.s3.t1.16

Just as the notions of bodily appearance are much older than their plastic versions in Gupta and other contemporary sculpture—the feminine ideal, for instance, goes back to the palæolithic age⁹¹—so has the plastic transformation of the body been prepared from the end of the Mauryan period onward. As soon as the swaying linear rhythm had begun to animate the figures, and to bend them according to its demands, their compactness was dissolved and transmuted into an appearance more flowing. This comprises the outline, ever more sinuous and gliding, as well as the surface, with its subtle ups and downs of plastic rhythm. In the early centuries of the Christian era this process had continued, but other problems at that time were paramount. Now the latter having been formulated, the continuity of the movement attains balance between the ever-present foundation of ‘ancient’ volume (mass), and its linear superstructure.