Indian Sculpture c6.s8.t2.4

c6.s8.t2.4

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).