Indian Sculpture c5.s3.t1.59

c5.s3.t1.59

This dynamism, latent within the heavy mass of the body, is not compatible with Buddhist notions. But Indian sculpture has at all times essentially carried out its own inherent trends, and only secondarily put them into the service of religion. These may coincide, as in the Brāhmanical rock-cut sculptures of the Dekkhan, or in the Buddhist images from Sārnāth (but see p. 62 with regard to the lateness of artistic formulation of Buddhahood). It does not, however, tally in the Buddhist rock-carved reliefs of the sixth century in the Dekkhan.¹¹² Ajaṇṭā, although with a more sensitive treatment of the plastic surface, stands nearest to the work of Bādāmī, where divinities and figures not exclusively Buddhistic are carved (Fig. 70). But numberless reliefs of the Buddha, seated or standing (Fig. 68), and of other divinities, pass through a lost cause, swelled from within by energies that serve no purpose in remaining there. The form that is their outcome, for all its weightiness, is feeble and seems to collapse (Fig. 68) or else to stiffen (Kaṇheri, cave lxvi) under its own burden.