The Antiquities of Orissa v2.c18.60

Language: English

v2.c18.60.1

The testimony of Dr. W. W. Hunter is also worthy of note. He says, 'The most exquisite memorial of sun worship in India, or I believe in any country, is the temple of Konarak upon the Orissa shore. It concentrates in itself the accumulated beauties of the four architectural centuries among the Hindus. Notwithstanding the indecent sculptures which disgrace its exterior wall, it forms the climax of Bengal art and wrung an unwilling tribute even from the Muhammadans'²¹. Referring to the tact and talent of the artists, he observes: 'Sculptures in high relief, exquisitely cut, but of an indecent character, cover the exterior walls and bear witness to an age when Hindu artists worked from nature. The nymphs are beautifully shaped women, in luscious attitudes; the elephants move along at the true elephant trot and kneel down in stone exactly as they did in life. Some of the latter have, however, the exaggerated ear and conventional mouth of modern Hindu sculpture and the lions must have been altogether evolved from the artists' inner consciousness'²². 'They handled their colossal beams of iron and stone with as much ease and plasticity as modern workmen put up pine-rafters; and fitted in blocks of twenty to thirty tons with absolute precision at a height of eighty feet'. 'Among the life-sized pieces, elephants crouch in terror under rampant lions, while mutilated human figures lie crushed beneath the flat pulpy feet of the elephants.

v2.c18.60.2

Clubmen, griffins, warriors on prancing horses, colossal figures of grotesque and varied shape, stand about in silent stony groups. The elephants have the flabby underlips of nature and exhibit a uniformity in all the essential points of their anatomy, with a variety in posture and detail, which Hindu art has long forgotten. Two colossal horses guard the southern facade, one perfect, the other with his neck broken and otherwise shattered. The right hand stallion has a Roman nose, prominent eyes, nostrils not too open and in other respects carved from a well bred model; excepting the jowl, which is bridled in close upon the neck, making the channel too narrow—a mistake which I have also noticed in the ancient sculptures of Italy and Greece. The legs, too, have a fleshy and conventional look. He is very richly caparisoned with bosses and bands round the face, heavy chain armour on the neck, tasselled necklaces, jewelled bracelets on all four legs, and a tasselled breast-band which keeps the saddle in position. The saddle resembles the medieval ones of Western chivalry, with a high pummel and well-marked cantle, but has a modern girth, consisting of a single broad band clasped by buckle outside the fringe of a sumptuous saddlecloth. The stirrup irons are round, like those of our own cavalry.

v2.c18.60.3

A scabbard for a short Roman sword hangs down on the left, a quiver filled with feathered arrows on the right, while a groom adorned with necklaces and breast jewels runs at the horse's head, holding the bridle. The fierce war-stallion has stamped down two of the enemy; not kicking or prancing, but fairly trampling them into the earth. These appear to be Rākṣasas [156] or aborigines, from their woolly hair, tiger-like mouths and tusks, and their short curved swords like the national Gurkha weapon, (*kukuri*), half billhook, half falchion and equally suited for ripping up a foe, or for cutting a path through the jungle. They wear heavy armlets, but no defensive armour, excepting a round shield made of several plies of metal richly carved, with a boss in the centre and tassels or tufts of hair hanging down from it. The shields appear to have borne some heraldic device and the most perfect of them still exhibits two lizards climbing up on either side of the boss, done to the life. Such quasi-armorial bearings frequently appear in Orissa. Stirling noticed one at Bhuvaneśvara in 1820 and the chiefs of the adjoining Tributary States have each a heraldic device or emblem of signature, handed down in their families from remote generations²³.