Indian Sculpture c5.s3.t2: B. Fulfilment
Indian Sculpture c5.s3.t2
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B. Fulfilment
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So lavish had been the efflorescence of Gupta sculpture that for some time to come a large part of Āryāvarta remained spell-bound by its qualities. During the subsequent century (the seventh)¹²² the artists dwelt on the achievements of the past. A brooding heaviness possesses all form; yet it has none of the latent dynamism of contemporary and earlier Dekkhanī sculpture. What actually was added in Āryāvarta at this period is a coarsening of the plastic texture, and the tendency to formularise the tradition of the Gupta period. All the avenues of classical sculpture seem explored, and the only solace of these generations is to drag their heavy tread across paths that once had been in flower.
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The Sārnāth school, now exhausted from centuries of its highest conception and continuous creation, lingers in reminiscences of the past.¹²³ On broader, and therefore securer, foundations than the exalted refinement of Sārnāth genius, the central Indian artists impart the leavings of Gupta art with the now frequently inevitable Dekkhanī flavour¹²⁴ (Fig. 65).
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In the eastern school at this time the Gupta style of the sixth century is still alive in a provincial manner. Some reliefs from Pahārpur¹²⁵ and other sites in this respect connect Gupta sculpture and the Pāla and Sena school of eastern India (pp. 67, 111). But of deeper artistic significance, though not of greater consequence, are other panels at Pahārpur. They have to be assigned to a genuinely local and popular eastern tradition of immediate power and purposeful rhythms (Fig. 80). This, in the subsequent Pāla and Sena schools, is given but little scope. It survives up to the nineteenth century in Bengal scroll paintings and on painted book covers.
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Another provincial modification of the Gupta tradition, but more in the central Indian than the Sārnāth version, is offered by the wooden reliefs of the temple at Brahmor (Cambā, about A.D. 700).¹²⁶ Of about the same age, yet already ‘mediæval’ formally, are some large metal images from Cambā (p. 117).
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In the eighth century the heaviness is overcome by linear discipline. The outline firmly grips a modelling that has tightened. Its generalisations come near the ‘mediæval’ phase of Indian plastic art. The transitions from the classical to the mediæval are gradual. In Bihār (Nālandā, Fig. 81), in Bengal, in Orissā (Utkala, Fig. 83), in the Central Provinces (Sirpur)¹²⁷ and in south India (Kailāsanātha temple, Kāñcīpuram), this phase is equally conspicuous.
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South India: Māmallapuram
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While Āryāvarta, as far as sculptures go, had been largely seized by torpor, in the south the rocks were carved at Māmallapuram in the middle of the seventh century under the Pallavas. What preceded them in the beginning of that century is of little consequence. It only shows that the slender figures of the Veṅgī school had become aggrandised and simplified, but were at the same time subjected to the heavy impress of the Dekkhanī form (rock-cut reliefs at Bhairavakoṇḍa, etc.).¹²⁸
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Most conspicuous amongst the Māmallapuram reliefs is that of the Gaṅgā (part view, Fig. 71). Here the rock itself becomes material as well as theme. A cosmical event is visualised on a large scale, transcending shape and size of any regular frame. Such a composition is truly inspired by the rock, its quality and secret. The neat rectangles, roundels and other simple frames, such as were suggested by architecture or the necessities of any craft, appear slight and man-made if held against the mass of the rock that allows itself to be organised into relief. The idea is not new. Bhājā furnished the first example; Udayagiri, with its Varāha avatāra, had been the grandest attempt; while the Gaṅgā-relief of Māmallapuram is the completest. The unlimited conception of the relief had been transferred even to the walls of a structural temple, with little success, as can be understood.129
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Most of the other rock-cut reliefs of Māmallapuram are architectonic in their structure.130 Whether they represent Viṣṇuitic myths and Śivaitic divinities or the royalty, the rectangular frame is the keynote of the composition. Where single figures are made to fill sunk panels on the rathas (rock-cut temples), their extraordinary height is one with that of the shafts of the pilasters that flank those panels (Figs. 72, 73). But not only is the remarkable elongation of the figures in keeping with architectonic devices. Their postures, too, whatever bend the body may assume, have none of the swaying softness of Āryāvarta figures. The vertical direction remains predominant, and bases its slimness on the shallow curves which cling to the tall limbs and make them smooth. High and invariably pointed crowns, of many shapes, further enhance the verticalism of the figures. (Contrast Bādāmī, p. 71.) The body in its simplified appearance is but a richer pillar-shape itself. If this is the relation of the single figure, or the pair of figures, to their architectonic frame, the result in this peculiar appearance of the figures is maintained where they belong to a composition, such as that of a myth or of a representative scene, even where it is not part of a supposedly architectonic context (Fig. 74).
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While the full slenderness of the Veṅgī type persists as far as proportion goes, its ripe sensuousness is lost, for its peculiar modelling has dwindled away as if it had been ironed. A simplified appearance results, so that the arms or legs, when stretched, are column-like. Yet these limbs, when bent, have all the pliability a Veṅgī artist could have endowed them with. This simplification, though it reduces the sensuous appeal of appearance, conduces, on the other hand, to such possibilities as are now sought after (see p. 54). There is a keen vigour and resolve in the movement of the limbs that have divine energy for their motif power (Fig. 71). Instead of the languorous relaxation of the Veṅgī figures, those of Māmallapuram, on the other hand, persevere, under all circumstances, in carrying their bodies according to a destined measure.
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With this attitude the physique of the figures is also somewhat different, not so much in the case of the male as of the female figures. The male figure, with elongated torso, is supported by long legs, its broad shoulders are still conspicuous. (See Veṅgī, p. 49.) But otherwise the form has become superhuman, with its slim waist and without any allusion to the nervy modelling of the broad chest of the Veṅgī type (Figs. 71, 73). The shoulders and chest of the female figures, moreover, have become narrow, and the breasts small. When standing, their bodies rest submissively, and in a curve almost concave on firm hips. In keeping with this comparative slightness is a sparing use of jewellery and apparel (Figs. 73, 74). These, in fact, in the case of woman, are reduced to a minimum. Yet the crowns they wear are as variegated and elaborate as of the male figures (Figs. 71, 73). In their case, loin-cloths, girdles and scarves are simplified to narrow and flat bands or pads. When the figures, according to their inscriptions, are intended to be portraits, and even portraits of royalty,¹³¹ nothing shows this except a greater ease of attitudes than in the case of the figures of gods. The long oval of the face remains unaltered in cast and expression. The eyes, as the case may be, look with defiant frankness or modestly at the world. But when suggestive of a meditative mood they are just half-closed or else fully-closed. But they never look inward (Figs. 71–74; see, however, p. 63).
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No subtleties of inner experience are reflected in any of them. Gods and mortals, men, women and animals, young and old are of a disciplined strength and cultured aloofness. All of them are exclusively aristocratic. While the figures themselves are not shown as going through any spiritual experience, the manner in which they are shaped as well as related comes from a spiritual experience of the artist.
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Although the figures are carved on a flat ground, its surface is not intended to act as such. Some of them seem to pierce through it as if it were a thin membrane, and to emerge from behind the surface into the light of day (Fig. 74). So brimful is the mass of the un-formed rock with life and figures that it cannot contain them. They burst its surface, and the scene of the relief appears pushed forth by the un-bounded mass, ceaselessly productive, of which the body of mother earth is built. Out of and in front of it myths are formed, avatāras appear, and human figures are meant to be portraits.
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When the compositions are made to fit into rectangular frames the figures themselves build up their own architecture. The open curve or parabola (p. 51) is still a favourite device.¹³² But whatever tradition has been inherited from the Veṅgī school has now been stabilised, and is supported on decisive verticals or horizontals.
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Unbounded mass, as suggested by the relation of the figures towards it, has, paradoxically enough, architectonic discipline for its correlation. This antithesis of the suggested unbounded and the neatly defined and disciplined gives but two essential aspects of one and the same reality.
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From the inmost life of the rock the figures are dismissed into form. From its shapeless weight they surge into concreteness. A disciplined bodily appearance, a disciplined facial expression, a tendency to subject themselves to an architectonic order: such is the response given by the reliefs at Māmallapuram to the urge of the rock, to be redeemed by its conversion into definite form and order. In it the almost complete absence not only of all vegetation, but also of all ‘decorative’ devices, such as scrolls, etc., is noteworthy.133 Human and animal figures make up the entire relief.
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Absence of the meditative attitude, as against Gupta sculpture, freedom from the depth of the Dekkhanī wisdom of the earth and of the body (see, however, p. 78 with regard to weight of Dekkhanī form adapted to ‘architectonic’ compositions), steadiness in comparison with the Veṅgī school, give scope to an impersonal attitude in a disciplined and reserved manner.
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An emaciated human body or the figure of a mimicking animal is employed amidst hosts of joyous beings in the Gaṅgā-composition (figures of Bhagīratha; cat and mice).134 In these reliefs and to an aristocratic simplicity, everything appears obvious and light. Although cut out of the rock, the reliefs are either on the surface of the rock or in caves not deep, and therefore not dark enough to give them the effect of the sculptures of the contemporary caves at Ellora, Dekkhan, for instance (p. 83). Here rules a paradox of high tension: everything is clear and definite in front, and comes out of the boundlessness of mass, itself formless, yet containing and brimful with the possibilities of form.
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What follows in the eighth century in south India can be seen in the sculptures of the Kailāsanātha temple at Kāñcīpuram. The fate that had befallen post-Gupta sculpture in northern India at that time is the aftermath, too, of the final achievement of the classical stage in the south. A thinned plastic context is handled with linear precision.
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Dekkhan, Seventh Century
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In the Dekkhan the tradition of the sculptors of Bādāmī, etc., was carried on and brought to its fulfilment in the caves at Ellora, Auraṅgābād (cave iii), Elephanta, etc. The relation in the plastic treatment between the sixth century (Bādāmī) and the seventh (Ellora caves: Dhumar Leṇā, Rāmeśvar, Rāvaṇa kā Khai and Das Avatāra)¹³⁵ is parallel in one aspect, and to some extent only, to that between Bhārhut and Sāñcī. (See p. 32.) A more differentiated modelling in Sāñcī as well as in Ellora gives the impress of naturalism to either. But whereas the differentiated modelling in Sāñcī and Bodhgayā had been in the trend of an unfoldment from the animation of the movement to that of the surface of the body, that of Ellora tends towards condensation of force and its localisation in parts of the body (Fig. 75). In Bādāmī that force has been diffused throughout the body as the unit that contained it, and from there it extended even beyond the body (Fig. 67; p. 71). In Ellora, on the other hand, the figures are but concretions of a widespread energy that accumulates, and in its turn tends toward its own dissemination (Fig. 75). Contraction or swelling of the modelled parts, therefore, are physiognomically expressive of forces that transcend the limits of the physique. (See Amarāvatī, p. 52, and the solution given there by linear rhythm.)
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The outline now has none of the effortless consistency of the preceding century. It is kept in tension, whilst a side-wards flexion is given to the chest. Marked angles keep the piled-up energy of the movement pressed against a mighty physique.136 Heavy limbs are accompanied almost imperceptibly by detailed but subdued jewellery, while the more lavish crowns and coiffures conform to iconographical prescriptions. The eyes have not the in-look of the Gupta figures, nor the expression of absorption given to them in Bādāmī. The full expansion of the tide of life surges noiselessly to its brim, i.e. to the eyes, and in them it just touches upon the outer world.
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The entire relief-panel as such is frequently sunk into the bottom of a three-sided recess (for rudiments of this treatment see Bhājā and Udayagiri). The two projecting side-faces, as well as the one above, delimit the depth of this totality, which is much higher than the foremost surface of the carved figures of the actual relief. Frequently, moreover, the sunk panel is flanked by projecting pilasters, so that the sculptures dwell in a stepped and twofold recess.136 They are set back into depth, and in front of them a figureless compartment acts as a reservoir of atmosphere. This shifting of the relief behind an atmospheric reservoir, back into depth, is quite different from what was done about the same time by the craftsmen at Māmallapuram (p. 81), who showed the scene of the relief as if coming forth from the undefined mass. Yet in either case the relief, in its main artistic effect and significance, is no longer contained within the tangible extension of the carved surface.
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In the western caves, from now onwards, the relief itself and the reservoir space, into which it is embedded, are filled with and exist in a world of light and darkness. These, with one exception (p. 88), are not expressive of the mood of the figures to which they would give a suggestive staging; on the contrary, they belong integrally to the entire plastic conception and composition. Light and darkness, thus plastically conditioned and confined, acquire a strangely material quality, as if particles of matter were intermingled with light and warm sun-filled abysses. Nothing formed dares to escape this resilient body-space of light and darkness.
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This body-space transcends the plastic volume with the means of the transcended. While the body is being transcended, space is converted at the same time into a vaster yet limited body. Its limits comprise the plastic body of light and darkness.
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In this inseparable state of conditioned form, light and darkness effect in space what modelling effects on volume. They do not destroy the tangible continuity of the modelled form, but are themselves a widened and transposed modelled form. Modelling, as practised in western caves, in the seventh and eighth centuries, extends the surging of creativeness to every part of the visible, i.e. to line, surface, volume, light and darkness. Its limits are drawn by its inner movement.
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How far this creative bodily unity of space and volume, both suffused with light and darkness, may lead, the interior of a cave in Aurangābād (cave iii) shows.¹³⁷ There human worshipping figures, fully carved in the round, squat in the interior of the cave, which is transformed into a rich and luminously dark body, into which the devotee who enters the cave becomes absorbed. This intimacy of the object of devotion and concentration, the stone effigies of worshippers, and the living bodies of those who may enter, is the widest possible application to which the plastic conception of volume lends itself with the help of modelling and of light and darkness.
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Dekkhan, Eighth Century
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In the eighth century a strong south Indian influence acts on the reliefs of the structural Virūpākṣa temple (about A.D. 740) and others at Paṭṭadakal, as well as on the reliefs of the Kailāsanātha temple of Ellora.¹³⁸
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The Elephanta cave reliefs, however, are not touched by this southern influx. They embody the last perfection of western Indian cave sculpture.
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The southernisation of the Paṭṭadakal reliefs consists in an attenuated and refined appearance of the figures. With a great technical experience, variations are added to the themes given by the Bādāmī tradition and the Kāñcī (Kailāsanātha) example.
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The latter, though it had acted as the prototype, was altogether eclipsed by the quality of Paṭṭadakal reliefs. Yet, in spite of a refined taste, ambiguities could not be altogether overcome. A combination, whimsical at times, of architectonic proportions, flat panels, and figures in high relief, reveals the heterogeneous origin of the various factors. Among these the scroll work, so conspicuous from the days of Bādāmī, is widely used, yet with discretion, in the perforated stone windows. The synthesis of western Dekkhanī with south Indian tradition, withheld from the structural temples at Paṭṭadakal, was the work of sculptors who carved the rock-cut Kailāsanātha temple and the chapel of the river goddesses at Ellora.
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In these the southern element is absorbed by the tradition of the Dekkhan. The slender type of the body, with its easier and quickened gestures, is assimilated by the heavier form of the Dekkhan with its sustained power. Compared with the seventh century work of Ellora, it is the activity of the mythical event, and not its everlasting presence, that is expressed in the carvings of the Kailāsanātha temple. (Cf. the Mahiṣāsura Mardinī scene in Ellora with that in Māmallapuram.)¹³⁹ No longer are myths realised in their pristine greatness. Where they are not rendered as a matter of routine the figures appear immediate in the momentousness of their actions (Fig. 77).
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Diagonally thrust forth in an ascending curve, the head with its high crown slighty thrown back, the arch of the movement of the single figures is more or less highly strung (Figs. 76, 77). It is crossed by the heavy horizontal of the shoulders. The entire strength thus appears congested in the chest. From there the whole body appears as if suspended. According to the degree of the virulence of the action, the modelling of the body and curvature of the compositional arch are modified. This attitude is one of the favourite motives amongst the figures of the Kailāsanātha temple at Ellora. It may be slackened or speeded up. The various degrees of its innervation can also be measured with the help of the more or less detailed and strained modelling in the single instances (Fig. 77, the main figure and the small figure). Innervation, which had melted away during the preceding centuries, becomes noticeable again, although in a temperate measure.
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This treatment makes the flying figures, for instance, attuned to any degree of speed. They know not the bliss of effortless soaring. A violent abandonment to the intensity of the moment is nowhere so convincingly shown as in the Maithuna couple¹⁴⁰ from the Kailāsanātha temple of Ellora. What had been pent up within the body, and mastered, although threatening in its potency, in some of the reliefs in Bādāmī and Ellora, now bursts all restraint, with attitudes expressive of rapture and elation. Between the active state (i.e. that of mastered and therefore latent power) and the passive aspect (i.e. that of abandonment to the manifestation of that power) there lies the wide field of psychological possibilities.
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Truly of rock-cut type, one composition extends over two faces of the rock at an angle of 90 degrees. But where relief compositions are fitted into simulated architectonic panels, the sculptors are not always on firm ground, for the cave relief conception predominates, but is curtailed at times.
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In the scene of Rāvaṇa shaking Kailāsa (part view, Fig.
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78), surpassing intellect, paired with the highest artistic accomplishment, synthesises the entire repertory of mature form with the possibilities of psychological differentiation. The slender sublimity of Śiva and Pārvatī has its contrast in the gravity of the attendants, true guardians and exponents of cave imagination. But not only are ethno-geographical differences transmuted into psychologically suggestive contrasts; the formal values are being connected psychologically and reflectively. The grading, or else the suddenness, in the staging of light and dark effects, by receding cuts into the rock, so as to echo the emotion of each figure, testify to an unfailing taste. The figure of Śiva, with an elegant pose of effortless command, is set against a flat wall. That of Pārvatī, on the other hand, shrinkingly reclines in front of an ever-deepening darkness, into which rushes the figure of a female attendant, the most fascinating amongst all the figures in this composition; deepest darkness looms behind Rāvaṇa, in his isolated cave. Depth and darkness are parcelled out according to the demands of psychological suggestiveness with which the artist invests each single figure. In this relief Indian art seems to enter upon possibilities which the future had to acknowledge, although the means of formulating them were then of a different order.
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The cave reliefs of Elephanta (eighth century), on the other hand, are flawless in their elemental dimension. They are the last word the Dekkhan had to say artistically, while it spent itself in this attainment. Fulfilment of the promise contained in Bādāmī, their cosmical and earthborn grandeur is coined with the precision of an age that bears the stamp of the final (Figs. 79, 82; see also Nāsik, p. 72, Fig. 69).
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Transcendental states of inner experience had been visualised by form, based on the transmuted human body. (See previous chapter.) So it remains throughout Indian plastic art. But beyond this the rock-cut sculptures of the Dekkhan and the south widened the notion of the ‘body’ in a cosmic sense. In it are integrated depth of the earth, light of the sun, vibrating atmosphere, and their coherence through dynamic movement.
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1. Character of form: Plastic conception comprises volume and space, light and darkness as one ‘body-space’ on the basis of transubstantiated form.
2. Geography: South India and the Dekkhan contribute their distinctive versions.
3. Chronology: Form equivalent to modes of universal consciousness. Substratum: the cosmic body.
4. Inner meaning: Identity of inner life and cosmic substance.
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the *Goths*, the *Vandals*, the *Suevi*, the *Burgundians*, the *Alani*, the *Huns*, the *Franks*, the *Saxons*, the *Thuringians*, the *Rugians*, and the *Heruli*. The names of these tribes are familiar to the reader, but their origin, their migrations, and their settlements are involved in the deepest obscurity. The most probable opinion is that they were all of German or Scythian extraction, and that they had been driven from their native seats by the pressure of the Huns, a formidable nation of Tartars, who had crossed the Volga and the Tanais, and were advancing with rapid strides towards the frontiers of the Roman empire.
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The first of these nations that crossed the Danube was the *Goths*. They were divided into two great branches, the *Visigoths* or Western Goths, and the *Ostrogoths* or Eastern Goths. The Visigoths, under the conduct of Fritigern, implored the protection of the emperor Valens, and were permitted to settle in the province of Thrace. But the perfidy of the Roman governors, and the insolence of the Roman soldiers, soon provoked them to rebellion. They defeated the imperial armies, and Valens himself perished in the battle of Hadrianople.
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The death of Valens was followed by the accession of Theodosius, who, by his wisdom and valour, restored the discipline of the Roman legions, and compelled the Goths to accept a peace, which was rather a truce than a permanent settlement. The Goths, however, remained in the heart of the empire, and their presence was a constant source of danger and alarm. They were no longer the rude barbarians who had first crossed the Danube; they had learned the arts of war and the policy of the Romans, and they were ready to take advantage of any opportunity to assert their independence.
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The reign of Theodosius was the last period of the glory of the Roman empire. After his death, the empire was divided between his two sons, Arcadius and Honorius. Arcadius reigned in the East, and Honorius in the West. The division was fatal to the interests of the state. The two brothers were weak and indolent, and they were governed by their ministers and favourites. The Goths, under the command of Alaric, took advantage of the weakness of the government, and invaded Italy. They besieged and took Rome, and the eternal city, which had for so many centuries been the mistress of the world, was plundered by the barbarians.
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The fall of Rome was a shock to the whole civilized world. It was the end of an era, and the beginning of a new and darker age. The Goths, after the death of Alaric, retired from Italy, and settled in Gaul and Spain, where they founded kingdoms which were destined to last for several centuries. The Vandals, under the command of Genseric, crossed into Africa, and established a powerful kingdom, which for a time threatened the security of the Mediterranean. The Franks, under the command of Clovis, conquered Gaul, and laid the foundations of the French monarchy. The Saxons, under the command of Hengist and Horsa, invaded Britain, and established the kingdoms of the Heptarchy.