The Antiquities of Orissa v2.c16.79

v2.c16.79

Believing, then, that the friezes portray the different stages of a connected story, the first question to be decided is, are the two friezes intended to delineate the same story, or two different sotries? The identity of the battle scene in the two friezes does not, however, leave much room for doubt in the matter, notwithstanding the difference of the third scene in the Gaṇeśa frieze.¹² In pictorial representations, it is impossible to detail all the circumstances which an historian finds it his duty to record; the artist is obliged, from the nature of his art, to seize only the more salient and striking points of his story—those which are likely to produce the most effective representations—and the omission of the attempt at rescure in one version, and its insertion in the other according to the taste or fancy of the artists, therefore, cannot alter the subject. The general character of the two friezes is so very alike that it irresistibly impresses on my mind the identity of the story, notwithstanding slight differences of drapery and accessories, and I can appeal to the treatment of Biblical and also historical subjects by different mediaeval and modern artists of Europe, as striking illustrations of such deviations, without altering the subject. It is worthy of note, also, that the hero on the elephant is dressed in a *kilt*, but when descending from it he appears in a *dhuti*, just as in the battle scene both in the Rāṇī Naur and Gaṇeśa bas-reliefs, showing clearly that the artist was not mindful about the unity of the dress of his figures.