Indian Sculpture c8.18

c8.18

4. Bronze figurine of a dancing girl, Mohenjo-Daro.¹⁷² The pleasure of drawing out the metal into long or winding wires gives their peculiar shape to arms, bangles and head-dress. With this technical imagination is combined a naturalism of modelling, as in the case of the stone figures. It is conspicuous in the treatment of back and legs by an alertness of force and refinement. The heavy bangles all along the left arm and the spiral of the coils of hair weigh upon the figure and seem to drag it forward. They make the more provocative the tilt in the hip joint. With such an attitude the Yakṣī from Dīdargañj¹⁷³ (Fig. 25) is also acquainted, and in metal images from south India the conventional posture of Lakṣmī, Pārvatī and other consorts of gods is based on the same suggestiveness (Fig. 116).