Indian Sculpture c6.s8.t2.9

c6.s8.t2.9

A smoothness of modelling, less resting on the single features and their elaboration than in the school of Bihār and Bengal (Fig. 98), makes the entire figures appear truly modelled in the round, as if turned on the lathe (Fig. 100). With this goes a freer and more speedily-gliding outline of greater sinuosity. This may be seen in sculptures of the eighth century from Utkala (Fig. 83), as well as in those of subsequent age. In no other art province has the outline such pliable amplitude. From the tenth century onwards, however, in many reliefs on the Liṅgarāja or the Brahmeśvar temples and others, westernisms introduce a sharper and thinner note. They lend an ambiguous appeal to the faces and to the entire plastic context (Fig. 101). Neat angles are not capable of arresting the fluid movement, limbs stiffened in modelling are part of compositional curves, while the context of body and jewellery is less organic. The faces in such reliefs are differentiated psychologically in a manner of which the sculptures of Orissā are innocent, where they are not touched by the western impress. Both the types may occur on one and the same monument (Fig. 102). This relief on the Brahmeśvar temple, for instance, is an embodiment of plastic imaginings, clad with the likeness of human features to give more suggestive expression to a plastic context, as little differentiated as possible, and heaving, with its own volume, which it throws up in the likeness of intertwined limbs and bodies. Substantial though the latter are, they spread and bend with a weightless ease, blissful in having acquired form and facial expression. None of the pointed psychology (Fig. 101) in this deep unconcern, that seems to sink back from where it has arisen, into the undifferentiated state of oneness.