Indian Sculpture c6.s6: Western Schools

Indian Sculpture c6.s6

Language: English

c6.s6.t1 (A) Gujarātī, or Westernmost School — 7 parts
c6.s6.t2 (B) Rājput — 2 parts

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