The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c9.66

v1.c9.66

"We find the great mass of Indian sculpture as reliefs on the facades of their rock temples, or on the outside of the pagodas. These productions of an extravagantly luxuriant architecture are often completely covered with sculptures. Equally frequently are they introduced also in the interior, in niches and on capitals and cornices. The Brahminical temples surpass in richness and fantastic wildness the Buddhist shrines, although at a later period Buddhism also could not resist the more splendid decoration of its monuments. The insulated statue, the highest and truest production of sculpture, is lacking to Indian art. Even the frequently colossal images of the seated Buddha, in the principal niche of Buddhist caves, are not statues but haut-reliefs. Deficient in freedom as she appears intellectually, Indian plastic art shows herself thus also outwardly; she is the slave of architecture, to which she must be subservient in all its caprices; mistress and slave, alike devoid of all pure artistic intention, combined in mystical confusion wild, fantastic, and monstrous".²²