The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c10.7

v1.c10.7

**Extent of Bhuvanes'vara sculptures :** The total amount of sculptured work on the temples of Bhuvanes'vara, is probably greater than what is to be met with in Sāñcī or Amarāvatī; but it is more ornamental than historical. The bulk is made up of mouldings, scrolls, floral devices, and animals, and the number of human figures to be seen is limited to perhaps two or three thousand. Most of those figures, besides, are placed singly in conventional attitudes; and [78] do not yield the same amount of information which storied groups are calculated to afford. Many of them again are repetitions, and others represent scenes, such as eating and drinking, playing and love-making, which are common to humanity in every part of the world. There are, nevertheless, several groups of great interest and even the single figures are not entirely useless as *indicia* of manners, customs, habits, and ideas of their time. Had these three collections belonged to the same province, and been the handiworks of the same race of men, bearing in mind the strong vitality of custom in this country, one could have taken the Sāñcī gateways of the first century, the Amarāvatī rails of the fourth, and the Bhuvanes'vara sculptures of the seventh century, as three consecutive chapters of a single history. Such is, however, not the case. They are entirely separated from each other by distance, by nationality, and, in one case, by religion, and the picture of domestic and social life they represent, cannot be strictly faithful of the whole of India. Nevertheless, their indications and suggestions must be applicable, of course with some reservations, to most parts of the country. The civilization of the Aryans, there are irrefragable evidences to show, had spread over nearly the whole of India long before the time when the sculptures under notice were designed, and it would be unreasonable to suppose that social life and art had been left in each province to follow their own individual course, utterly unaffected by it. Two states of civilization can no more remain in contact for any length of time without influencing each other, than two opposing forces can meet without a counteraction. The languages and the religious systems of the different races of India, bear the most unmistakable evidence of this law, and it may be fairly assumed that it is to be equally met with in domestic and social life. It has been already shewn that architectural details and ornamentation have been very much alike in all parts of India, and the general style of sculpture, making due allowance for differences of material, age and capacity, is likewise the same. The inference, therefore, that the civilization they delineate as regards dress, ornaments, household furniture and utensils, arms, musical instruments, and social life, was, within certain limits, similar, cannot be open to any serious objection. It would be foreign to the subject of this work to enter at length into a disquisition on the state of civilization in ancient India, but a few remarks bearing upon the evidence of the sculptures that have been met with, will perhaps not be quite out of place.