Indian Sculpture c5.s3.t1.58

c5.s3.t1.58

The weightiness of the main figures is made conspicuous by heavy and very high and cylindrical crowns. While by their height they seemingly elongate the verticalism of the figures, by their weight, however, they press down upon their actual height, so that they appear burdened with the dignity they have to support. By this counter-movement of the ascending growth of the figure and of the descending crush of the crown, tense and unrelieved energies accumulate within the bodies. Nothing could be less familiar to contemporary sculpture from Sārnāth, where slight heads are lightly carried on plant-like and swaying bodies.