The Antiquities of Orissa v2.c16.s2.133

v2.c16.s2.133

The hair of the head in the sculptures under notice, is dressed in large chignons or *maulis* just as one would expect in Indian figures, and not in curls, or flowing tresses, or close-cropped scrubbiness, as was common in Greek male figures in ancient times. The chignons of the Greek females were formed in a manner quite different from anything to be seen in Orissa. The features are generally so worm out that they cannot afford any satisfactory indication one way or another; but the noses are not Greek; the mouths are large and wide very unlike Greek, the eyes are too long and narrow, and the ears too long and pendulous, coming much below the line of the mouth, to be Greek; the posture is throughout Indian and not Greek; and the drapery, with two exceptions, is likewise thoroughly Indian. The exceptions I refer to are the clothes shewn on the booted figure of the Queen's Palace, and on the rider on the elephant and on his followers in the Gaṇeśa frieze. I call them exceptions because they are unlike the others shown at Udayagiri, but as I have already stated elsewhere (*ante* I, p. [82] and II, pp. [5], [10]) they are not Greek, nor anything approaching Greek clothing that I am aware of. Thus then there is no evidence whatever to show that the sculptures are Greek, or imitations of Greek art, and therefore I cannot but reject the theory of their Greek origin as quite untenable.⁵⁶ In fact, I believe, the theory owes its origin to the [45] difficulty which European writers feel in attributing to the natives of this country the capacity for carving such vigorous representations of human beings as these bas-reliefs show,—a difficulty by no means unaccountable, seeing that the Indians in the present day produce nothing of the kind, but which would at once disappear when we call to mind the fact of their subjugation for six centuries under ruthless masters who deemed it a religious duty of great merit to knock down or deface every representation of the human form they met with.