Indian Sculpture c6.s8: Eastern Indian Store Houses of the Classical

Indian Sculpture c6.s8

Language: English

c6.s8.t1 (A) Bihār, Bengal — 2 parts
c6.s8.t2 (B) Orissā — 12 parts

Eastern Indian Store Houses of the Classical

(A) Bihār, Bengal

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In contradistinction to the west, the east—comprising Bihār and Bengal as one art province under Pāla and Sena rule (excepting western Bengal, with a form-dialect of its own) and Orissā and Mayūrbhañja—has scarcely any mediæval features, in the sense of embodied northern idioms, apart from Orissā, and this to some extent only. It carries on the classical traditions as framed within the Gupta period, though on a lower level. A store-house of the classically Indian, the east preserves its main features, though somewhat stale, along with such eastern idioms as had become conspicuous in the classical age (p. 67). In the ninth century in Bihār, and again in the twelfth century in north Bengal, the fullest expression of what is exclusively eastern is given.

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The metal images of Nālandā (Bihār, ninth century, Fig. 97), with a sturdy and pliable modelling and an ambiguous expression of allurement, bodily as well as spiritually, are on a higher level of creative experience than the mature naturalism set off by the rich and even over-wrought decoration of the twelfth century images of Bengal. Most of the sculptures of this school are steles, and their simplicity in the ninth century, their sobriety in the tenth (Fig. 98), their refinement in the eleventh, and luxuriance in the twelfth century, are symptomatic (p. 99). Executed in black stone, the dignified yet sensuous serenity of these eastern Indian images stands in telling contrast to the work of the west.

(B) Orissā

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(a) Utkala

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Heir to Gupta tradition, but of wider range than the Bihār-Bengal branch of the eastern school, are the images and architectonic sculptures of Orissā, chiefly those of Utkala. The ancient Utkala, the northern part of Kaliṅga,155 with its colossal Buddhist images of the eighth and ninth centuries (Fig. 83), imparts to the classical tradition a wider-flung, if less subtle, linearism, divests its modelling of much of its sensitiveness, and replaces it by a reduction to the plane and to stereometry, both definitely related to, and part of, the linear melody. These images exist in a sterner yet more limpid atmosphere, where every abstraction is compensated by a hesitating warmth of feeling. It settles down in a short-featured physiognomy, which incorporates some of the grace of the people of the locality.

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(b) Kaliṅga

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But in the eighth and ninth century, too, and still more subsequently, the school of Kaliṅga (Bhuvaneśvar, Purī, Koṇāraka, Baudh, etc.) was in the ascendency, and the sculptures of Utkala kept pace with it. It is characteristic of Orissān sculpture, on the whole, that it was more prone to absorb the idioms of other art provinces than, for instance, the Pāla-Sena school of Bihār and Bengal, which kept within its self-contained resources. So it comes about that traces of the latter school are noticeable in the subsequent images of Utkala;156 whereas the art of Kalinga, as it had been already in the early classical phase (p. 34), so now, too, is related to that of Bihār and Bengal, but its artistic consistency is of a higher degree, while at the same time western peculiarities leave their indelible impress.157 With all that, the sculptures of Kalinga preserve a character quite their own. From the beginning (for example, Paraśurāmeśvar temple) there exists a living context between the ground, i.e. the wall, and the figure.158 This in all other mediæval sculptures of northern India had not been so intimate (Figs. 87, 91, as against Fig. 103).

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In Orissā, the problem of relating the figure and ground, in the early stages, leads to a flattening of the bodily volume, so that it appears to have been caught by the ground with invisible tentacles. For figure or ornamental device are but signs of the extreme livingness of the temple-body, where it is brought into contact with surrounding space. In the tenth century the surface itself of the temple-wall boldly steps out into the third dimension, while closely hugging to itself the ornamentation, that by now has become furrowed and roughened by a greater depth and a play of light and darkness full of contrasts. This wall-surface now, with bold profiles, itself three-dimensional, seems to crumble into the organised intricacy of its light-dark ornamentation, and the two together put forth figure sculpture furthermost exposed into space. The ultimate possibility of this is reached in the Sun temple at Koṇāraka (thirteenth century, Fig. 103). There architecture, on the grandest scale, has its surface covered and differentiated by ornamentation, and jointly they step forth with figure sculpture, not only in relief but fully carved in the round, severed almost (in the upper storeys) from the architectural body, and actually the colossal horses, elephants, etc., are away from it right in the plane, yet dynamically, and in a wider sense, one with it; for the atmosphere itself, that is comprised within the lines that can be drawn pyramidally from the top of the building to these outlying figures, has been integrated into the volume and become part of the body of this architecture; this, ultimately, is but a supreme fulfilment of the classically Indian conception of volume (Ellora, etc., p. 89). Architecture thus in Orissā is but sculpture on a gigantic scale, and the modelled figure, as well as space itself, partake in its discipline.

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Viewed against this consistency, the architectonic sculptures of all other monuments of northern India relatively are mechanically applied and highly modelled devices on a flat and unfeeling wall. (Khajurāho, Fig. 91.) The relation, however, is different in the south, where (Māmallapuram, Fig. 72) an architectonic restraint, i.e. the horizontal-vertical order of pillar and niche, is the compulsory frame of the reliefs.¹⁵⁹ This architectonic order, however, is given up in Vijayanagar, where reliefs are inserted in flat walls as if they were drawings in frames (p. 120, Fig. 114).

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More than with regard to figure sculpture (p. 115), in the case of decorative devices, many of the mediæval patterns, and the method of handling them in flat tiers, with the sharp contrast of light and darkness, are embodied in Orissān ornamentation, yet as accents only, in the sumptuous possibilities of modulated light and dark effects that play over obliquely cut scroll devices. (For the latter see Fig. 101, bottom.)

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As a part of this rich context, the Orissān figures, while keeping time with all other mediæval sculpture, are distinguished throughout by an amiable luxuriousness of mood and appearance. Their generous grace remains untouched by the heaviness of ninth century treatment, by the elegance of later centuries, and on the whole also by the profuse details that had suffocated many of them in the thirteenth century. Yet, just at that last moment, an efflorescence of naturalism sets in once more. The same, however, was the case in late Sena sculpture. What worked at the ‘beginning,’ i.e. amongst the earliest relics known to us of Indian sculptures (Harappa), enlivens what was to be its forced end (Musalmān invasion). The unmitigated naturalism of the Indian soil persists. At this phase it conducts the plastic treatment to model the surface as if it were swelled from within by the living breath (Fig. 104). This, however, is true for the eastern school only, and in another version for the south (Fig. 113). In the centre, north, west and the Dekkhan this eternal atavism is less frequently conspicuous in the middle ages.

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A smoothness of modelling, less resting on the single features and their elaboration than in the school of Bihār and Bengal (Fig. 98), makes the entire figures appear truly modelled in the round, as if turned on the lathe (Fig. 100). With this goes a freer and more speedily-gliding outline of greater sinuosity. This may be seen in sculptures of the eighth century from Utkala (Fig. 83), as well as in those of subsequent age. In no other art province has the outline such pliable amplitude. From the tenth century onwards, however, in many reliefs on the Liṅgarāja or the Brahmeśvar temples and others, westernisms introduce a sharper and thinner note. They lend an ambiguous appeal to the faces and to the entire plastic context (Fig. 101). Neat angles are not capable of arresting the fluid movement, limbs stiffened in modelling are part of compositional curves, while the context of body and jewellery is less organic. The faces in such reliefs are differentiated psychologically in a manner of which the sculptures of Orissā are innocent, where they are not touched by the western impress. Both the types may occur on one and the same monument (Fig. 102). This relief on the Brahmeśvar temple, for instance, is an embodiment of plastic imaginings, clad with the likeness of human features to give more suggestive expression to a plastic context, as little differentiated as possible, and heaving, with its own volume, which it throws up in the likeness of intertwined limbs and bodies. Substantial though the latter are, they spread and bend with a weightless ease, blissful in having acquired form and facial expression. None of the pointed psychology (Fig. 101) in this deep unconcern, that seems to sink back from where it has arisen, into the undifferentiated state of oneness.

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The western elements in figure sculpture are incidental in Orissā. Koṇāraka, where it is at its best, knows them not. Hardened in greatness, its sculptures monumentalize the tough roundness suggestive of a fullness of life which is essentially Indian (Fig. 104).

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Artistically, Mayūrbhañja lies between Bengal and Kaliṅga as understood here.155 It is the northernmost of the Orissān states, and borders on Bengal. A greater precision and almost metallic sharpness in details such as jewellery, and a more emotional physiognomical expression, bring it near to the former, whereas amplitude of movement and largeness of modelling establish a deeper-rooted share of Orissān tradition (Fig. 99).