Indian Sculpture c6.s8.t2.8

c6.s8.t2.8

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.