The Antiquities of Orissa v2.c16.s2.135

v2.c16.s2.135

**State of Sculpture and Architecture in Orissa, at the time the caves were cut :—**But whether the fine arts of Orissa owe their origin to Greece or to India, this much is certain that they had attained considerable excellence at the time when the rock-cut dwellings of Udayagiri were excavated. The friezes we meet with there are not the results of first essays at sculpture,—mere outlines of a syn bolical character,—but regular works of art, rude though they be, evincing much technical knowledge and sufficient mastery to give shape to life and feeling. The expression of pain in the wounded soldier, of determination in the combatants, of despair in the captive led by the hand, of resignation and devotion in the imprisoned fair one, are in admirable contrast to the unnatural smile on the face of the victim whose neck is about to be cut in the metope of Silenos representing Perseus and Medusa, and other works of the early schools of Greece. If there is a want of finish and of fineness in chiselling in the Udayagiri works, there is no lack of vigorous action deilneated in every limb. Long ages of neglect and decay have defaced the figures as we now see them, but still it is not difficult to perceive that their conception, and execution, their grouping and disposition, their drapery and ornaments, were such as only men theoretically and practically familiar with sculpture for a long time could execute. Faces are shown in bas-relief in every position, full face, three-quarter face, and half-face, and in each the eyes are chiselled as they should be, and not done, as in ancient Egypt, in full on a profile face. The definite quantitative relations of the different members of the body are generally well preserved; no inharmonious dimension offend the eye; no poverty of lines disgusts the feeling; no copying or imitative style betrays the symbolic stiffness and lifelessness of ancient Egypt and Persia; every feature, every contour, every joint, bears the stamp of the independent workman exerting himself to produce pleasing combinations of grace and form, and to imitate nature to the best of his ability and not to copy lay figures, or to work out the theoretical canons of a bloated priestcraft. The artists were unquestionably rude; their art had not attained that excellence which has been the glory of Hellenic race; they doubtless lacked the genius which endows dead stones with vivid life; but they thought for themselves, and worked for themselves, and were no servile copyists of a foreign art. The state of civil society at at the time, in Orissa, was sufficiently advanced to require works which could not have been produced in the condition we find them without a long course of previous training; and this presupposes that the art had flourished for a considerable period before the middle of the fourth century B. C., when Aira reigned in Kalinga, and caused the rock-cut dwellings to be excavated.