Indian Sculpture c6.s1.2

c6.s1.2

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.