Maurya and Shunga Art c12.6.2

c12.6.2

A panel of the so-called Prasenajit pillar and the figures of Yakṣiṇīs Candrā and Sudarśanā may be cited as examples of this flowing and rhythmical linear movement. In the former a slowly gliding curve passes over the bodies of the seated figures that constitute the music party. It sways each individual figure and bends it to the tune of the curve, but it does not stop there. It flows uninterruptedly along the swaying hands of the four dancers, through the movements of their bodies including that of the young one at the bottom. The entire composition is held by this slow but ceaselessly flowing linear rhythm that imparts life to the scene portrayed. Another scene equally vibrant with life shows the potency of this linear rhythm in no uncertain manner; it is the scene of Chuḍāmaha festival in the Sudharmā Hall of the Vaijayanta palace. The figures of Candrā, Alakanandā and Sudarśanā Yakshiṇīs, treated in relation to surface, nevertheless consist essentially of swaying and gliding curves of rhythmical lines. Even the jewelled drapery swaying vertically is more or less linearised in pattern, and that linear rhythm is imparted to the details of the tree, the ‘vāhanas’, and to the modelling of the body itself. But the discerning eye of Kramrisch, as early as 1924, observed that there was another trend in Śuṅga art which was equally potent, a trend characterised by a disregard of this flowing linear rhythm.