Indian Sculpture c6.s2.2

c6.s2.2

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.