Indian Sculpture c5.s3.t1.39

c5.s3.t1.39

Irrespective, however, of this, local idioms persist in the east and others are being evolved in the west. The eastern school is even now conspicuous by its warm sensuousness (stucco figures from Maṇiyār Maṭha,¹⁰⁵ Rājgir; Sultāṅgañj-Buddha), with which it endows the sublimations of Sārnāth. With this there goes as far as narrative reliefs are concerned a fondness of embellishments that have their own capricious and curly way.¹⁰⁶ The nervy manner in which pointed finger-tips are bent slightly backwards, deeper shadows shown around the eyes, and lines that are more drawn from the nostrils to the mouth, add one more note, emotional and somewhat irritable (Fig. 59). But essentially the eastern school bases its idiosyncracies on the Sārnāth school. It lifts to its impersonal level the charm and the failings of humanity.