Indian Sculpture c5.s3.t1.55

c5.s3.t1.55

The reliefs of the four caves of Bādāmi, too, are of essential importance. When calling to mind the suavity of Sārnāth sculpture, grave weight of subterranean forces seems gathered in the looming inertia of their full and heavy forms. In Gupta sculpture of the sixth century absorption and bliss of the mind had transmuted the appearance of face and body to a calm that was unearthly yet tender. In the Dekkhan, however, that absorption is not of the mind only, and there is no bliss. The whole being seems to lean back and to sink deeper and deeper into its origin and destiny, where all is so silent that the pulsing of the blood roars against the limits of the body like breaking sea-waves (see Kārli, p. 43). This sinking back into the un-formed, yet ever-balanced in its tension, is a state of the most condensed energies. They may appear as if seized by drowsiness; though now pent-up in a sort of self-intoxication, they are ready to break out any moment into powerful gestures and divine fury (Fig. 67, also Viṣṇu on Ananta, cave iii, and Trivikrama relief, cave ii).¹¹¹