The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c9.130

v1.c9.130

**Drapery :** In the delineation of drapery, Orissan artists have also displayed much greater proficiency than those of the ancient schools with whom I have hitherto compared them. The Egyptians were, as already shown, the most defective in this respect. Anything like a graceful fold is nowhere to be met with in their works. The most colossal figures of sovereigns and other great men, such as that of Asymandyas at Thebes, appear all but nude, having nothing more on their persons in the way of dress than a strip of cloth round the waist reaching a little below the middle of the thigh. On many females of rank a line across the legs and another near the neck indicate the limit of the dress, but its texture is nowhere else visible, and the figures, to all intents and purposes, are naked. The tunics on soldiers are indicated by two oblique lines on the sides, but nothing like a fold appears anywhere. The sculptures of Assyria are equally defective in this respect, though the ornamentation on their cloth is more carefully shown than in Egypt. The most ancient specimens of Greek art are in this respect no better. Taking, for instance, sculptures in the temple at Assos, now in the Museum of the Louvre in Paris, or the Metope from Selinus, representing Perseus and Medusa, now in the Museum at Palermo, or the seated figure of Minerva found at Athens and preserved at the Acropolis, or the statues from Miletus, now in the British Museum, the drapery appears, in a rude symbolical style, without any attempt at imitation of natural folds. If the object of drapery be "not fully to conceal the body, nor to disfigure its outline and structure, but to harmonise in its folds with the form and organization of the body, and with the grace of its movements, clinging to it and receiving from it, its law, just as in music the instrumental accompaniment follows the melody which the human voice gives forth",—in short, if it be intended as an adornment, and not a cloak, all the three nations named, viz., the Egyptians, Assyrians, and the Greeks of the 6th century B. C., failed to employ it in its true character. Orissan artists, on the other hand, worked differently, and took considerable pains in most of their more finished works to display the folds of dress with every regard to nature; and the success they attained in this branch of art was not small. The folds of the turban, the movement in the floating ends of the *cādar* or hymation, the plaited fronts of the *dhuti*, or *koñcā*, the folds of skirts of tunics and *jāmā*, as also the wrinkling of cloth tied round the waist, and of sleeves, are all delineated with care, and bespeak an artistic knowledge and capacity in many respects superior to those of the ancient schools.