Indian Sculpture c6.s8.t1.1

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.