Indian Sculpture c6.s6.t2.2

c6.s6.t2.2

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