Indian Sculpture c6.s5.5

c6.s5.5

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.