Indian Sculpture c8.127

c8.127

This image of the school of Mathurā is its greatest contribution to Indian plastic art. The massiveness peculiar to sculpture from Mathurā of the Kuṣāṇa period is still there. It gives to all its works a character of their own. In the first century B.C. it lent an amplitude of form to reliefs otherwise at one with the art-language of Madhyadeśa at that age (Fig. 40). With it went an animation of physiognomies which in the subsequent centuries, i.e. during the Kuṣāṇa period, was full of physical satisfaction. At that phase, specially in the first century A.D., ancient Indian ponderosity was conspicuous. This was interpreted in terms of sensualism and with a differentiating modelling, by the end of the first, and first half of the second century A.D. This phase was widely approved by other schools (Dekkhan and Veṅgī). During the second half of the second century, and subsequently, sensualism and modelling recede for the sake of a sterner discipline of surface and outline. This, however, at that phase was done in a hesitating and thoughtful manner, whereas in the fourth century this measure forms the basis for an inner vision, which piles up mass against mass, restrained and clearly defined, but welded together by a sweeping movement.