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Indian Sculpture c6: Chapter III. Mediæval Sculpture

Indian Sculpture c6

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Chapter III. Mediæval Sculpture

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MEDIAEVAL SCULPTURE

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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.

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III

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MEDIAEVAL SCULPTURE

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RATIONALISATION as a means of inflexion had set in by the fifth century (p. 57). What at that age had been laid down through the fullness of immediate artistic experience persists into the middle ages.¹⁴¹ Meanwhile, fresh blood from the north had begun to circulate in what were meant to be meticulous channels of classical tradition.

The Image

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The mathematical relations that underlie every work of art had begun to be consciously used at that time too. In future they were relied upon as the condition, *sine qua non*, of every image. For the image fulfils the function of a yantra.¹⁴² As such it has to guarantee a definite result. Each image, with its exact measure and attributes, serves as a means or instrument, as limited as the average man, within the sect to which he belongs, can make use of it towards the realisation of an ultimate goal.

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Mediaeval images, while taking for granted the transubstantiation of the human body achieved in the plastic art of the past, are a meeting ground for anthropomorphic predilections, such as, in the majority of cases, pleasing appearance or elaborate jewellery on the one hand, and for geometrical schemes on the other. Either of these are inducements for the eye to dwell upon. Their manifoldness or regularity attract the eye and invite fixation on every part of the image, which is unfolded before the devotee as a vertical field of concentration. When beheld or known in its entirety, it fills the mind, to the exclusion of everything else, of its own situation at a definite place, as well as of the separate existence of the devotee. When the image has fulfilled its purpose of being an instrument of concentration, it has ceased to exist, for then there is nothing but oneness in infinity.

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To facilitate concentration and simultaneous fixation, the image has to confront the devotee in its entire presence, condensed into a surface and unbroken in its effect by the third dimension. Itself object and aim, it is so only transitorily, a kind of junction, where the externalised vision is reflected in its own likeness at the place where it originated, that is, within the devotee.

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If meditation, irrespective of the system that it serves, in all its stages, could be embedded in the form to which myths and images had lent their names in earlier centuries, bhakti (devotion), though in need of an image, had not been able to become the substance of an adequate artistic form as far as images of divinities are concerned (see, however, p. 120). As far as images are intermediaries, they obey strict rules which make them fit for this purpose. As yantras they belong to an ‘applied art,’ where value is not connected with artistic quality; it lies in the service which they render to the devotee during pūjā.

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Similar to the symbol in early classical art (p. 25), the image from the religious point of view need not be—and frequently is not—born from within the creative genius, and it is not as a maker of images that the mediæval Indian craftsman realises his entire artistic experience. This refers mainly to the most popular types of images. The innumerable mediæval images of Buddha, Viṣṇu, Umā-maheśvara and others are scarcely more than figured yantras. But where the craftsman, himself a yogin, works at the image, the yantra no longer stands midway between devotion and the goal itself; it leaves with him its knowledge, while its mechanism disappears, and he sets forth the image from the all-filling presence of his samādhi.

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The image, almost exclusively treated as stele, i.e. as a relief slab, carries its symbolic attributes in not more pronounced a manner than its jewellery, although these symbols name the image by confining divinity to its special manifestation. Even when there is no slab and the image is worked in the round, its composition nevertheless is conceived in view of the surface, i.e. of the vertical field of concentration (Figs. 97, 99, 110, etc.).

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Whatever the positions of the accompanying figures may be, the principle for the main figure of the image is to face the devotee. This it does in the artificial dimness of the garbhagṛha, the inmost sanctuary. The light that filters in through the door comes, already tempered in its strength, from the hall or the porch in front of the sanctuary. The strong light of the day must not penetrate as far, so as not to detract from the magic power of the image. The garbhagṛha is without windows. The artificial dimness in which the image is kept has its natural origin in the cave temples. Even when lit up by the flicker of many lamps, and if not clothed and anointed so that it is hidden almost altogether—for the devotee knows the image; he carries it in his mind and its presence becomes acutely clear to his inner vision, once he has entered the appropriate atmosphere—the radiance around it is enveloped by darkness. However rationalised the method, however meticulous the canon of proportion of the image as a yantra, its setting is replete with its magic and with the concentration of the devotee.

Sculpture on Walls of Temples

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Different in purpose, and to a considerable degree in effect, from the cult-image, are the multitudes of the figures into which the walls of temples seem to dissolve. As during the early classical phase, so now once more quantity is a quality of Indian sculpture. But in the meanwhile nature, the vegetative aspect of life, had become condensed and transubstantiated within the human frame (p. 55). The many figures and groups, which now appear in seemingly unending succession horizontally, and in a less pronounced manner vertically, on the walls of temples, are added the one to the other without an immediate connection amongst themselves. They are connected by the system of which they are exponents and visualisations. Images of the Pārśvadevatās, i.e. of attendant divinities (Fig. 100) of the image in the shrine, are placed in niches, each, as a rule, in the middle of one of the three outer walls of the temple. Artistically these and other reliefs, representing divinities, are not very differently treated from cult-images, except for the slab of the stele being squared so as to fit into the niche, or other slight concessions to the architectonic surroundings (Figs. 111, 113), and by their not so strict adherence to śāstric prescriptions. The main figure, for instance, need not be shown in front view (Fig. 89). Figures of the aṣṭa Dikpālas (the eight guardians of the four chief and the four subsidiary directions) occupy their appropriate places on projections or in recesses of the wall. There is no hierarchy amongst these divinities and others. They are spread out collaterally, and the vertical direction results from adding such horizontal bands with similar or identical types of figures repeated one on top of the other.

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Among the motifs which incessantly recur in their allotted places, the woman and tree motif (śālabhañjikā) and allied motifs, with their contiguity of human and plant figure (Figs. 87, 104, 111) and that of the rampant leogryph (śārdula), a combined animalic, or human-and-animal device (Fig. 92) are the favourites. This frequent repetition, now organised, had been anticipated in early classical sculpture (p. 33). It is by no means and in every case a creative expression of mediæval sculpture. None the less it is characteristic, inasmuch as it suggests the ever-present type, of which the single instance is one more and still one more example (see also attitude towards portraiture, p. 134). Repetition in all directions reiterates but one meaning, just as in a performance of a yātrā,¹⁴³ a popular play, the same episode is acted successively in various directions of the compass. The standardised situation of the aṣṭa Dikpālas and of other figures is moreover repeated vertically. The whole direction, as it were, is occupied throughout by its protecting divinity.

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¹⁴³ yātrā

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Of accentless and equal value, too, are figure-sculptures, floral and abstract devices, as they occur on the monuments.

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Though the former are outstanding in height of the relief, and therefore in conspicuousness, the latter do not stand back in wealth of motifs. Abstract devices, in fact, are essential assets of mediæval sculpture, while the floral element, so lavish in being its own landscape in the earlier classical reliefs, has become stereotyped where it has not altogether disappeared (Fig. 90). Neither of them takes part in the compositions of the figured panels. These or the single figures are surrounded by or set against them.

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The group had been simplified or dissolved in the process of transubstantiation. Now it further falls asunder. In exceptional cases, and in a modified degree only, are narrative panels reminiscent of early classical wealth (Fig. 86). Beside these, there are scenes of converse between teacher and pupils, illustrations of legends, Maithuna couples, friezes of animals or warriors, and the like (Figs. 88, 91, 101, etc.). None of them are regulated and restricted by prescriptions, as the images are. It is in them that the middle ages reveal a subtle and highbred sophistication.

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The ground of the relief now acts as such in the likeness of a curtain which drops behind the scene. The figures do not appear as if on a tray (p. 21), nor do they burst through, or emerge from, the ground (p. 81), but, while some cling to it, others are shuffled in front of it (Fig. 86). Houses and other objects are usually shown in front view. A position in three-quarter profile, set at an angle against the ground, is given preference in the case of human figures where front or profile views are not chosen. The dynamic urge of the stone is at rest. It has found form in the innumerable figures and compositions, with or without frame, in which the living forces that are in the stone and in the craftsman display themselves without effort (Figs. 86–90, etc.), but to a different extent in the various provinces.

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In Orissā sculpture is more intimately connected with the ground and with the volume of the stone (i.e. that of the temple, p. 113). But even there the urge to become form is fully appeased. For the figures do not appear as if thrust forth from the un-formed mass of the stone, but the latter steps out in architectonic projections or recedes with niches (Figs. 103, 104), either of which are further differentiated by abstract and vegetative devices and by figure sculpture. In Orissā the mass of the stone, the architectonic volume itself, has been completely translated into plastic form. Figure sculpture is its highest exponent.

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The treatment of the religious subject-matter is the same within each province and also irrespective of creed. Buddhist and Jaina images, though far less in number than the many types and varieties of Brāhmanic images and reliefs, are regulated in one and the same manner, by śāstric prescriptions. They are to be distinguished by the attributes they carry, and by bodily peculiarities and other characteristics, that serve for their cognisance and are laid down in the sacred texts. Only in the case of the Jaina figures of Tīrthaṅkaras and saints formalism and rigidity prevail, not only beyond the Brāhmanical or Buddhist, but also beyond older Jaina figures.¹⁴⁴ But even there it is not the creed itself, but its spread, specially in western India, is responsible for the abstract mediæval Jaina image; whereas in the classical period (Mathurā) no such pronounced distinction existed between contemporary Jaina and non-Jaina images.¹⁴⁵

Differentiation According to Time

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Mediæval Indian sculpture is conditioned to a considerable extent by the ethnical past and structure of the country. But, taken as a whole, mediæval sculpture, from the ninth to the thirteenth century, and after the prelude of the eighth century (pp. 72, 78), proceeds in the same direction and with almost even tread, irrespective of differences in the ethnical texture. Within this synchronous unfoldment each province gives fullest expression, and reaches its zenith at that particular moment which is most congenial to its inherent trends. Such conspicuous constellations were, for instance, the ninth century in Bihār and Bengal (Fig. 97, Pāla school), the tenth century in Rājputāna, or the thirteenth century in Orissā (Figs. 88, 104).

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In the ninth century, on the whole, ponderosity, as bequeathed by the seventh century and the linear tendencies of the eighth century, are being relieved by a homely glow of life, conveyed by a comfortable leaning towards naturalism which is restrained according to prescribed rules. The weightiness of the past had been incompatible with so slight an experience (Figs. 97, 105).

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By the tenth century vitality and form are commensurable. Composition and figures gain a dignity that, far from being imposing, has the quiet assurance of a well-being, firmly founded on the observation of a prescribed conduct of life and on rules of image-making as well (Figs. 88, 98).

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In the eleventh century this self-possessed surety is overcome by its own perfection (Figs. 99, 100). With all that self-consciousness and elegance, proportions as well as the inner message—while the iconographic facts, on the whole, needless to say, remain the same—become attenuated. Accessories are now no more the embellishments to be dispensed with, until by the twelfth century they frequently overwhelm the compositions with their meticulous exuberance (Figs. 96, 109, 111).

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But at the same time more elementary forces awake afresh. The attempts of the ninth century are being taken up on a base already prepared, a luxurious naturalism flowers into being in that pristine spontaneity which only the Indian soil can give. Irrepressibly this aboriginal trend surges even at the end, when all resources seem tapped, and the last consequences are drawn and played upon. Thus it remains in the thirteenth century, wherever Indian creativeness was not destroyed altogether or checked by the rule of Islām (Fig. 104).

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It is significant that now, as during the phase of early classical art, quality is of more or less the same degree throughout the country. If in the early classical age spontaneity in tackling the problems of narrative representation laid down rules of composition, the sure foundations of regulated art, ritual and iconography now supply the somewhat rigid backbone of sculpture. It is covered by a plastic texture more delicate (Figs. 84, 113) or hard (Figs. 89, 99, 104, 110), as the case may be, yet less elastic, more nervy (Figs. 85, 92), yet less blooming, than in any aspect of the classical age.

Reflective Attitude

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Together with the extensive use of canons of appearance, the attitude towards the inner experience and towards creating now becomes conscious. A critical distance separates the thing visualised from the mode of creating it. In this gap, between inner experience and form, the artist now mirrors his own attitude towards both; not, however, as an individual, but subject to an unavoidable situation. From being entirely borne by the experience of nature, expansive and manifested, and again inflected and transubstantiated, Indian sculpture now has become reflective in its attitude.

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The readiness for it was shown by a relief like that of Rāvaṇa shaking Kailāsa (Fig. 78). But there the elements of form themselves were still untouched, and only their relation foreshadowed psychological suggestiveness. The surroundings of the figures given human shape were made to envelop them and to resound in depth, and in light and darkness, according to their degree of vehemence or stillness. By referring them to the human figures they lost their independence and juxtaposition. They became expressive of the being and experience of the single figures, encompassing them each in its own world, and reflecting the inner situation or attitude of each of them.

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The miracle of transubstantiation had become true long ago. This last possibility which the creative mind gives to nature is always remembered, is always experienced; but it is not the one and only experience. For with all its integrated power, the material upon which it relies, i.e. nature, remains unchanged, and so does the ceaseless movement of the inner life.

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Now the state of the ‘in-look’ as a rule is left behind, and the eyes open once again and face the world. How can they face the world once more? They seem to keep it at a distance watchingly (Figs. 87, 88, 110), superciliously (Fig. 93), compassionately (Fig. 84), or else they seem so entirely filled with power and bliss (Figs. 99, 104, 113) that they swim in it glancelessly, open to the world like overbrimming pools. The latter, however, is only the case in such art provinces where artistic form remains conservative and untouched by the specifically mediæval problem.

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The distance that now is being kept is of a different order from the aristocratic aloofness of the figures in Māmallapuram (p. 81). Whatever attitude they assumed—overbearing, submissive or amused (Figs. 71, 73)—it was the outcome of an inner state of innocence, of an unbroken sense of being.

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But after the eighth century the glance, in order to reach the world, has first to pass the state of the in-look. With a lingering sense it goes out for something definite; but there is no such thing; there is nothing to be gone to; so that in compassion, or resignation (Fig. 84, 92), it sheds to the outside what it has seen within, and it is in this way that it fills the vast reflex of what it has beheld within—i.e. the world. Such an attitude has no solution. It is documented when the craftsman is able to give form to it. In definite and measured art-form an insoluble situation is stated. While the problem remains eternal its form in lavish number is grown on the soil of mediæval India.

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By its existence it asserts creativeness as such, as the last and real, whatever its subject, the void or the veil of the within and the without. Creative form makes definite and full what as inner experience has just been relative and void. Not only is the smile that plays over some of the faces of mediæval figures seemingly inscrutably complex (Figs. 92, 93, 101), but their whole appearance is paradoxical, with a fullness of limbs oftentimes provokingly postured and a freedom from all that is sensual, a heroic coolness without effort (Figs. 87, 90). That such apparent contradictions are as they are, simultaneously and inseparably one, does not solve them, but that they have become form, straightaway and through all the safeguards and restrictions imposed, redeems them from separation and establishes a state beyond them.

The Specifically ‘Mediæval’ Factor

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The complexity of the ethnical texture of the Indian people, which had called forth classical sculpture, was reinforced just when it had given form to all that was alive in it. This took place during more than the first half of the first millenium A.D.¹⁴⁶ Northern immigrations from the Kuṣāṇas to the Gurjāras had been ever-recurrent features. It took centuries for the immigrants to settle down and mingle with the people. Even after they had become a novel alloy, some more time had to pass before this new context showed itself in the plastic form of classical sculpture.

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Reactions to the influence of new blood are registered slowly but precisely by artistic form. In the case of the northern factor, it may seem difficult to demonstrate its share in Indian figured art, because on the whole the northern nomads, prior to their coming to India, ignored the human figure in the abstract and decorative way of their various crafts. (Exception: Luristān bronzes.) The whole problem of this abstract art has been treated by Strzygowski; it affects Indian form in the middle ages and not for the first time. The western school mainly will show this factor at work.

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Ancient, classical and mediæval, when taken in the direction of the arrow of time, denote the reactions of India, the motherland, with its creative soil, to the people it nourishes. While the foreigners of various origins in the course of time were adopted by the country, they grew into her ways and certified their Indian birthright by the indelible impress the country gave to their art. They were not iconoclasts, like most of the Muslim invaders. But what they found in India was alien to them; yet not wholly so, for already classical sculpture had integrated much that had not been aboriginal (p. 16). A prolonged stay, from generation to generation, in the country, and mingling with it, compelled them to yield to its influences.

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This provokes a partly new measure in some of the provinces of mediæval Indian sculpture as well as painting. To overlook it and to estimate this mediæval phenomenon as a downward movement of the prior, i.e. the classical Indian complex of form, would be like interpreting the early Christian art of Europe merely as a decay of classical Græco-Roman traditions. The northern factor, that had its share in the building of classical Indian art, now, although carried by a variety of different immigrants, who had come to India from the north, whether their original homes lay in the north-east or in the north-west, leads to a reinforcement of tendencies already present. In it precious blossoms bestir themselves to outlast the overwhelming vegetation that was classically Indian.

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Significantly enough, the northern impress in a radical version is given to the wall paintings at Ellora of the ninth century and of later date.¹⁴⁷ There the iconography is classically Indian. While acknowledging its rules, the novel form asserts itself ruthlessly. It does not change, but altogether replaces the round modelling by linear angles and three-dimensioned body-space by a flat-coloured surface. In sculpture, on the other hand, a similar, yet never quite so one-sided, form is reached, though not before the tenth century. Classical Indian art, whether painting or sculpture, had been essentially plastic. The northern element, however, is linear. Painting is more congenial to the mediæval artist. Technically it affords no obstacles to his vision, once it has ousted the classical idiom. Sculpture, however, intrinsically three-dimensional, resists with greater tenacity the onrush of the mediæval, and when this can be averted no longer it enters into one more amalgamation.

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But it is characteristic that within approximately one century, and on the same monument, i.e. the Kailāsanātha temple of Ellora, there should be the relief of Rāvaṇa shaking Kailāsa (p. 88), and the fresco of Viṣṇu with his consorts, etc., referred to here. Though composed with the last possibilities of classical form, the relief is given a psychological turn altogether unsupported by contemporary sculpture in Ellora. But it is not before the tenth and eleventh centuries that reflective fineness distinguishes the plastic art of central India, though not of the Dekkhan.

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The most active mediæval trend has an originally northern stock for its carrier. Its extension depends upon the spread of the latter, i.e. mainly in western India, and coincides with the spheres of its influence and contact.¹⁴⁸ Outside these, although the line is nowhere quite strictly drawn, classical heritage is preserved.

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¹⁴⁸ Outside these, although the line is nowhere quite strictly drawn, classical heritage is preserved.

Western Schools

(A) Gujarātī, or Westernmost School

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The western school flourished in three ramifications, of which the one lies to the west of a line which begins at the latitude of Delhi, and may be drawn through Ajmīr southward to the river Tāpti, and, as some of the best-known monuments lie in Gujarāt, it may be called Gujarātī. The next ramification extends east to this line, up to another that may be drawn through Bharatpur and parallel to the former. This ramification may be called Rājput. The third ramification, although it intermingles with branches of local origin, extends to another parallel line, that may be drawn through Allāhabād. This may be called central Indian, although not according to the present division of provinces. These demarcations are not rigidly valid. They give only approximate indications. In these schools truly mediæval features are most relevant. They had been in the process of formation in the Gupta age (pp. 67, 74), but only as late as the tenth century are all their peculiarities consolidated.

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In the westernmost branch a strained motion (instead of the easy and swaying state of poise in which classical reliefs had dwelt) in its nervy elegance overstresses the curves, so that they have a tendency to become angular (Fig. 85). Limbs and body are bent with the tension of a bow from which the arrow is just to fly off. But this relief is not granted. The curves of limbs and body frequently deflect from the convex into the concave, and this the more the later the date of the relief (Fig. 86).

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The body may be thrown forward in an attitude of utmost vigour (figures below the upper left hand and below the right knee of Narasimha, Fig. 85), with a chest as if swelled from within by inherent power. But this pose has no artistic reality, for what matters is the negative, the concave curve of the back, ready for a burden of self-forgetting experience to be placed on it. The slender and rounded limbs are bent in sharp angles, and seem to split the linear composition into many fragments. Their joints act at the same time as so many centres where nervous energy is bundled up and from where it radiates to its next station. This is undergone with much grace of appearance, a discipline more easily assumed for its smoothness is inherited from the past, a dilution of the classical.

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In it accessories (Fig. 84) such as halos of lotus-shape, flames or jewellery, have a tendency to become flat and sharply edged, so that they make a thin pattern against a dark ground, or else by contrast the volume of such devices is even exaggerated, and gives them an undue prominence, heavy, intricate and dissociated from the body and from the plastic context as a whole.

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The later the date the more marked become the sharply concave accents into which have dwindled limbs and movements. Meagre horizontals, verticals and diagonals, seem as if drawn out from the plastic body and make a sparse and delicately linear network (Fig. 86).

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With this aspect Indian sculpture presents its utmost periphery. Furthest remote from, yet connected with, the centre, this phase makes the most exasperating demand on its vitality. By a nutrition still flowing from sources that yet are not exhausted, the circumference is preserved intact, in spite of the incessant danger of shooting off at a tangent from any of its points.

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The material of the major part of the sculptures (white marble) lent itself to being worked to the utmost possibilities of nervy fragility. Overwrought gestures and positions express an almost unbearable inner tension, more and more stressed, but also increasingly rigid as time goes on.

(B) Rājput

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The Rājput sculptures, on the other hand, are distinguished by youthfulness and a vigorous modelling of the body (Figs. 87, 88). Classical tradition has a stronger hold in them. Movements at rest, whatever action they are meant to convey, create for each figure an existence problematic in their suspense. The body yields to what is earthly in it, while it carries it as a property that does not seem to belong to it. The tribute it gives to nature, in the summary of its full modelling, is taken from it by the rigid and lifeless support of the legs, and by the detached manner in which apparel and jewellery are laid on (Fig. 87). The faces absorb the whole situation with telling awareness. Steeped in, and looking out into, a void that seems everywhere except for their own presence, they gather in their round contour the self-sufficiency of every moment that passes and sustains them.

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But not only in the western school are these idioms to be found. Race infiltration extended to the east as well as to the south. In Orissā, specially from the tenth century onward (Liṅgarāja, Brahmeśvar temples), in the Dekkhan, in Ellora (ninth century paintings, etc., and, later, for instance, Palampet,¹⁴⁹ twelfth century), and last in the south, in Vijayanagar¹⁵⁰ (p. 120) some northern share is noticeable. This mainly applies to figure sculpture. Abstract mediæval ornamentation, on the other hand, did also penetrate as far as the present Allāhabād, and further to Orissā. It neither knows of the roundly-modelled vegetative scroll of early classical art nor does it favour the oblique cut, with its rich light and dark gradations, so much in vogue from the first centuries of our era onward. But sharp and definite as is its linear trend, it accurately places side by side the high and flat surface of decorative devices and the undifferentiated darkness of a deeply-sunk ground, cut into the stone at right angles.¹⁵¹

Central India (Inclusive of the Modern Central Provinces)

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Central India geographically occupies an intermediate position. So, too, does its sculpture. Tendencies of east (p. 111) and west co-exist or are mingled. Sculptures, ample with a classical volume, however stereotyped, unfold their smooth charm, for instance, at Garhwā¹⁵² not less than in Khajurāho. Altogether, central India is marked artistically at that time by two broad divisions—which may be called the Candela and the Haihaya schools respectively, after the ruling dynasties. Dynastic names are introduced here and elsewhere for the plastic idioms, and on the whole coincide in these cases with the respective periods and provinces ruled over by these dynasties. But, otherwise, the rulers now, as at all times, played—if any—then only the part of patrons, and did not, excepting Kaniṣka, who was a foreigner (p. 42), interfere in any way with the trend of art.

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The former division, with Khajurāho and Mahobā¹⁵³ as centres, extends to the west as far as Bharatpur and to the east as far as Allāhabād, whereas the monuments of the latter belong to the country south of Allāhabād and about Jabalpur. In either of them there is side by side a mixture, or juxtaposition, as the case may be, of eastern and western trends. Yet the results achieved vary considerably in Candela and Haihaya sculptures.

(A) Candela Sculpture

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In the sculptures carved under the Candela dynasty the western trend has found most forceful utterance, side by side with a continuation of the classical, and at times combined with it. Candela sculpture stores classical tradition but faintly touched by mediævalisms, as well as some of the most decisive features of the latter.

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None of the nervous elegance of the westernmost branch (Figs. 84–86), none of the earthbound futility of the Rājput type (Figs. 87, 88), have found their way into central India. An intensity near to violence clasps the modelling, with sharply curved outlines. This is flattened out, or else it congeals under its tightness. Limbs jerk across the compositions like poles, so stiff yet with a purposeful ardour (Fig. 89). The facial physiognomy is in keeping with that of the compositional elements. Valiant in its pointed angularity, it registers defiance and a supercilious knowledge; while a faint softness, sometimes even a smile, spreads upwards from raised corners of the mouth. This still belongs partly to the innocence of the body (Figs. 92, 93).

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The stagnant modelling, congealed in its naturalism, i.e. in its aim to render the softness of the flesh as if brought about by the living breath, perseveres against the flattening tendency. This often results in numbness (Fig. 91), the more marked the more violently an all-round movement seems to turn the figure (Fig. 90). The turning of the figure around its axis, and the bending of all the joints, has the object of showing the female body simultaneously in its all-sided charms. Artistically it reels round into stagnation; its obvious erotic provocation is overstressed, and becomes annihilated by the way in which it is pronounced.

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The psychological aspect of mediæval, and of Candela sculpture specially, is not confined to human appearance only. The figure of the animal is resuscitated to a place of prominence, which it had held long ago in the art of the Indus valley. Supernatural potentialities of psychological knowledge are embodied in bulls and śārdulas (Figs. 92, 94).

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The animal had been graciously present throughout the classical phase. During this enchanted millenium the vegetative had overgrown its animal vitality. It was, whether animal or super-animal, but one stage of life, and this as a whole had been experienced in the rhythmic security of the entire composition. The aloofness and portentousness of the animal, as figured by Indus art, now once more are manifest, though they form the basis only of a further differentiated and dynamic animality. Ancient as well as mediæval Indian art acknowledge the supremacy of the animal, whereas throughout the classical phase the vegetative comprised every type of life.

(B) Haihaya Sculpture

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The Haihaya school¹⁵⁴ gives to all its products a familiar stamp. At the very outset, i.e. in the tenth century (Fig. 95), in its heavily crowded composition it shows itself to be an up-to-date issue of one more immortal trend of Indian sculpture that had reached a climax in the early classical age in Sāñcī. What had been exuberant has now become cumbersome. Yet it applies what is left with zest, in the crowding of details of form roundly—yet by no means richly—modelled in very high relief, and appears in the tenth century in advance of what was the twelfth century phase elsewhere, with its crowded detail, and nothing but detail. While in the Candela school the fundamental forces of Indian plasticity are still active, and overcome new obstacles by approved methods, the Haihaya craftsmen allow novel problems to sink into old forms. Creativeness and absorbing receptiveness are the twofold aspects of mediæval sculpture in central India.

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To enter in detail into the structure and psychology of each artistic province is a task beyond the limits of a general outline. Yet salient features of each have to be pointed out, so that the living and connected expression of the mediæval artistic physiognomy may be understood.

Eastern Indian Store Houses of the Classical

(A) Bihār, Bengal

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In contradistinction to the west, the east—comprising Bihār and Bengal as one art province under Pāla and Sena rule (excepting western Bengal, with a form-dialect of its own) and Orissā and Mayūrbhañja—has scarcely any mediæval features, in the sense of embodied northern idioms, apart from Orissā, and this to some extent only. It carries on the classical traditions as framed within the Gupta period, though on a lower level. A store-house of the classically Indian, the east preserves its main features, though somewhat stale, along with such eastern idioms as had become conspicuous in the classical age (p. 67). In the ninth century in Bihār, and again in the twelfth century in north Bengal, the fullest expression of what is exclusively eastern is given.

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The metal images of Nālandā (Bihār, ninth century, Fig. 97), with a sturdy and pliable modelling and an ambiguous expression of allurement, bodily as well as spiritually, are on a higher level of creative experience than the mature naturalism set off by the rich and even over-wrought decoration of the twelfth century images of Bengal. Most of the sculptures of this school are steles, and their simplicity in the ninth century, their sobriety in the tenth (Fig. 98), their refinement in the eleventh, and luxuriance in the twelfth century, are symptomatic (p. 99). Executed in black stone, the dignified yet sensuous serenity of these eastern Indian images stands in telling contrast to the work of the west.

(B) Orissā

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(a) Utkala

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Heir to Gupta tradition, but of wider range than the Bihār-Bengal branch of the eastern school, are the images and architectonic sculptures of Orissā, chiefly those of Utkala. The ancient Utkala, the northern part of Kaliṅga,155 with its colossal Buddhist images of the eighth and ninth centuries (Fig. 83), imparts to the classical tradition a wider-flung, if less subtle, linearism, divests its modelling of much of its sensitiveness, and replaces it by a reduction to the plane and to stereometry, both definitely related to, and part of, the linear melody. These images exist in a sterner yet more limpid atmosphere, where every abstraction is compensated by a hesitating warmth of feeling. It settles down in a short-featured physiognomy, which incorporates some of the grace of the people of the locality.

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(b) Kaliṅga

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But in the eighth and ninth century, too, and still more subsequently, the school of Kaliṅga (Bhuvaneśvar, Purī, Koṇāraka, Baudh, etc.) was in the ascendency, and the sculptures of Utkala kept pace with it. It is characteristic of Orissān sculpture, on the whole, that it was more prone to absorb the idioms of other art provinces than, for instance, the Pāla-Sena school of Bihār and Bengal, which kept within its self-contained resources. So it comes about that traces of the latter school are noticeable in the subsequent images of Utkala;156 whereas the art of Kalinga, as it had been already in the early classical phase (p. 34), so now, too, is related to that of Bihār and Bengal, but its artistic consistency is of a higher degree, while at the same time western peculiarities leave their indelible impress.157 With all that, the sculptures of Kalinga preserve a character quite their own. From the beginning (for example, Paraśurāmeśvar temple) there exists a living context between the ground, i.e. the wall, and the figure.158 This in all other mediæval sculptures of northern India had not been so intimate (Figs. 87, 91, as against Fig. 103).

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In Orissā, the problem of relating the figure and ground, in the early stages, leads to a flattening of the bodily volume, so that it appears to have been caught by the ground with invisible tentacles. For figure or ornamental device are but signs of the extreme livingness of the temple-body, where it is brought into contact with surrounding space. In the tenth century the surface itself of the temple-wall boldly steps out into the third dimension, while closely hugging to itself the ornamentation, that by now has become furrowed and roughened by a greater depth and a play of light and darkness full of contrasts. This wall-surface now, with bold profiles, itself three-dimensional, seems to crumble into the organised intricacy of its light-dark ornamentation, and the two together put forth figure sculpture furthermost exposed into space. The ultimate possibility of this is reached in the Sun temple at Koṇāraka (thirteenth century, Fig. 103). There architecture, on the grandest scale, has its surface covered and differentiated by ornamentation, and jointly they step forth with figure sculpture, not only in relief but fully carved in the round, severed almost (in the upper storeys) from the architectural body, and actually the colossal horses, elephants, etc., are away from it right in the plane, yet dynamically, and in a wider sense, one with it; for the atmosphere itself, that is comprised within the lines that can be drawn pyramidally from the top of the building to these outlying figures, has been integrated into the volume and become part of the body of this architecture; this, ultimately, is but a supreme fulfilment of the classically Indian conception of volume (Ellora, etc., p. 89). Architecture thus in Orissā is but sculpture on a gigantic scale, and the modelled figure, as well as space itself, partake in its discipline.

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Viewed against this consistency, the architectonic sculptures of all other monuments of northern India relatively are mechanically applied and highly modelled devices on a flat and unfeeling wall. (Khajurāho, Fig. 91.) The relation, however, is different in the south, where (Māmallapuram, Fig. 72) an architectonic restraint, i.e. the horizontal-vertical order of pillar and niche, is the compulsory frame of the reliefs.¹⁵⁹ This architectonic order, however, is given up in Vijayanagar, where reliefs are inserted in flat walls as if they were drawings in frames (p. 120, Fig. 114).

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More than with regard to figure sculpture (p. 115), in the case of decorative devices, many of the mediæval patterns, and the method of handling them in flat tiers, with the sharp contrast of light and darkness, are embodied in Orissān ornamentation, yet as accents only, in the sumptuous possibilities of modulated light and dark effects that play over obliquely cut scroll devices. (For the latter see Fig. 101, bottom.)

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As a part of this rich context, the Orissān figures, while keeping time with all other mediæval sculpture, are distinguished throughout by an amiable luxuriousness of mood and appearance. Their generous grace remains untouched by the heaviness of ninth century treatment, by the elegance of later centuries, and on the whole also by the profuse details that had suffocated many of them in the thirteenth century. Yet, just at that last moment, an efflorescence of naturalism sets in once more. The same, however, was the case in late Sena sculpture. What worked at the ‘beginning,’ i.e. amongst the earliest relics known to us of Indian sculptures (Harappa), enlivens what was to be its forced end (Musalmān invasion). The unmitigated naturalism of the Indian soil persists. At this phase it conducts the plastic treatment to model the surface as if it were swelled from within by the living breath (Fig. 104). This, however, is true for the eastern school only, and in another version for the south (Fig. 113). In the centre, north, west and the Dekkhan this eternal atavism is less frequently conspicuous in the middle ages.

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A smoothness of modelling, less resting on the single features and their elaboration than in the school of Bihār and Bengal (Fig. 98), makes the entire figures appear truly modelled in the round, as if turned on the lathe (Fig. 100). With this goes a freer and more speedily-gliding outline of greater sinuosity. This may be seen in sculptures of the eighth century from Utkala (Fig. 83), as well as in those of subsequent age. In no other art province has the outline such pliable amplitude. From the tenth century onwards, however, in many reliefs on the Liṅgarāja or the Brahmeśvar temples and others, westernisms introduce a sharper and thinner note. They lend an ambiguous appeal to the faces and to the entire plastic context (Fig. 101). Neat angles are not capable of arresting the fluid movement, limbs stiffened in modelling are part of compositional curves, while the context of body and jewellery is less organic. The faces in such reliefs are differentiated psychologically in a manner of which the sculptures of Orissā are innocent, where they are not touched by the western impress. Both the types may occur on one and the same monument (Fig. 102). This relief on the Brahmeśvar temple, for instance, is an embodiment of plastic imaginings, clad with the likeness of human features to give more suggestive expression to a plastic context, as little differentiated as possible, and heaving, with its own volume, which it throws up in the likeness of intertwined limbs and bodies. Substantial though the latter are, they spread and bend with a weightless ease, blissful in having acquired form and facial expression. None of the pointed psychology (Fig. 101) in this deep unconcern, that seems to sink back from where it has arisen, into the undifferentiated state of oneness.

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The western elements in figure sculpture are incidental in Orissā. Koṇāraka, where it is at its best, knows them not. Hardened in greatness, its sculptures monumentalize the tough roundness suggestive of a fullness of life which is essentially Indian (Fig. 104).

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(C) Mayūrbhañja

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Artistically, Mayūrbhañja lies between Bengal and Kaliṅga as understood here.155 It is the northernmost of the Orissān states, and borders on Bengal. A greater precision and almost metallic sharpness in details such as jewellery, and a more emotional physiognomical expression, bring it near to the former, whereas amplitude of movement and largeness of modelling establish a deeper-rooted share of Orissān tradition (Fig. 99).

Himālayan Sculpture

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The mountain districts of the north were not plastically gifted. Yet they stored and were able to combine in compositions, balanced and disciplined, such impressions that history chanced to make on them. To a certain extent even Gandhāran Hellenism can be seen in the proportions and the treatment of some reliefs. Apart from this, sculptors trained in the Gupta tradition (cf. Brahmor wood-carvings, about A.D. 700, Cambā)160 found a way into these high and remote hill tracts, and later on, specially in Kaśmīr, Pāla sculpture was given a welcome. All these were remembered in the sedate as well as stately images of the ninth and tenth centuries (Fig. 105). Later on the western schools to some extent also had their say. But however tactful the appropriation of all the trends, the whole is not essentially Himalayan sculpture. This, in its purity and unfoldment, is left intact only in the fountain stones of Cambā.

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The large metal images of Cambā have been already referred to (p. 78). By their linear incisiveness they anticipate the mediæval trend. If, on the other hand, the popular art practice of Cambā, albeit mostly of later date, is taken into account, the linear abstractions of these images, otherwise inexplicable at such an early date, appear organic qualities of this hill art.

Fountain Stones of Cambā

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The earliest and simplest of these fountain stones could be ancestors of the roundels of Bhārhut, although what is preserved of them does not ante-date the eleventh century. Plain lotus discs are set into squares.¹⁶¹ (See also early ceiling paintings, cave ix, Ajaṇṭā.) This non-iconic art, however, harbours variegated devices, amongst which the intertwined band of serpent-origin is of considerable interest. The treatment given to figures, when interwoven with the abstract patterns, is on similar lines to the treatment of the figures in Sāñcī, ground balustrade of stūpa II (p. 27). The predilection for the pattern, with human and other figures—if at all—subservient to it, is preserved in the fountain stones of Cambā even at this late phase, with the conservatism of the hills (Fig. 106).

Dekkhan

(A) Northern Part

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In the Dekkhan the repercussions of the specifically mediæval trend are sporadic only. Local tradition survived in the monuments of Dhārwār and Hyderābād,¹⁶² whereas the carvings of Mysore exhibit, though on a similar basis, the froth of the trends of this phase of Indian sculpture. The northern Dekkhanī monuments frequently contain compositions which once had been of transcendental conception. Creative power of an unsurpassable degree is clipped to fit a given size and decorative purpose (Fig. 108), it is surrounded by, or drowned in, an ornamentation of high quality. But the modelling has hardened. Its generalisations are stiff and lack firmness. The breadth of Dekkhanī sculpture survives in them in postures which are distended, but do not suggest superhuman power (Fig. 110). The art of the Dekkhan had spent itself by the eighth century.

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(B) Southern Part

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The same motifs abound in the sculptures of Mysore. Their range is further enlarged by friezes filled with manifold scenes. Although carved in very high relief, and frequently altogether in the round, they appear pressed between the two surfaces of the relief, and are tied down by ponderously exuberant ornamentation (Fig. 109). Even in large panels and in the case of images and bracket figures, where one human-divine figure predominates, it is rigid with, and suffocated by, a meticulous burden of carvings, as artistically meaningless as they are technically elaborate (Fig. 111). In this exhibition of the skill of the stone-carver mediæval sculpture has reached its lowest level. There, in the carvings of the twelfth century—time has hardened them to metallic appearance—the relics of Indian plasticity are seized by torpor and by the exasperation of intricate artifices.

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