Indian Sculpture c9.105

c9.105

78. In the majority of the reliefs of the railing, i.e. of the middle of the second century, the integrity of the outline is kept intact. Towards the end of the century and later, specially in the Nāgārjunikoṇḍa and Goli reliefs, the density of the modelled figures precludes a clearly tangible outline. But this also refers to the reliefs of the Ajātaśatru pillar, Bhārhut, to Sāñcī, etc., and is the form adequate to an ageless trend of Indian art. It is not a style of a late period (Bachhofer, op. cit., pp. 60, 61, German edition), but one of the possibilities of form which had its chance already at an earlier phase (notes 74, 75), but was superseded when the school was at its height. After this high tension was relaxed, this trend once more, in its specific Veṅgī version, and with means more complex, came into its own.