Indian Sculpture c8.225

c8.225

This is done differently in various localities and by the different generations of craftsmen, and it is carried out logically in the single sculptures. But the linear composition of these images is not dynamic, neither centripetally nor centrifugally (see, however, classical images and compositions, Figs. 66, 67, 80, etc.). Its coherence is conditioned by an attitude on the side of the craftsman which corresponds to the attitude of simultaneous fixation on the side of the devotee. Accentless distribution in these mediæval images is furthest remote from a spontaneously dynamic structure. Nevertheless the latter, even if no longer active, is the basis on which coherence is made possible. When, at a later age, in the images that belong to the Mughal rule, this coherence is no longer there, Indian plastic art has ceased to exist, although images continued to be made and were fit for worship.