Indian Sculpture c6.s2.1

c6.s2.1

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.