Indian Sculpture c6.s8.t1: (A) Bihār, Bengal
Indian Sculpture c6.s8.t1
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(A) Bihār, Bengal
c6.s8.t1.1
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.
c6.s8.t1.2
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.