Indian Sculpture c8.30

c8.30

11. Sorrowing woman. About 200 B.C. Sārnāth Museum. Fragment of an arch, with lotus, woman and portion of a funeral pyre. These are treated as plastic units by the side of each other. The summary modelling, however, gives way to delicate modulations in the profile of the nude body. In its plastic and linear expressiveness, the work stands between the treatment of the Mauryan Yakṣas and that of Śuṅga sculpture in Bhārhut, sharing characteristics of both. Qualitatively it is above either, a lingering caress of tactile subtlety, that apprehends the surging and receding of the modelled stone, as youth that buds forth into the self-created limit of an emotion, which knows of no outside and comprises the whole existence like sleep itself. In this way intense emotion leads into pure intensity, which has absorbed the particular emotion. No face need be shown, where the breathing body and the large and smooth lotus bud co-exist as plastic values, but with a different degree of animation.