Indian Sculpture c6.s8.t2.2

c6.s8.t2.2

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.