A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c11.s3.25

c11.s3.25

Fergusson's opinion that the sculptures of the Amarāvatī school mark 'the culmination of the art of sculpture in India', which was generally accepted until recently by English writers, including myself, does not now command such ready assent. I will not presume to say which work marks the 'culminating point', but it is certainly safe to affirm that the pre-eminence claimed for the Amarāvatī reliefs may be effectively challenged by compositions of later date, at least in some respects. All critics, however, can agree with Mr. Havell that the marbles of Amarāvatī offer 'delightful studies of animal life, combined with extremely beautiful conventionalized ornament', and that 'the most varied and difficult movements of the human figure are drawn and modelled with great freedom and skill'. The obvious overcrowding of the compositions unfortunately is a defect common in Indian art. Historically, the sculptures are interesting as an academic development of the style of Sāñchī and Bharhut, with a stronger tinge of Hellenistic influence, perhaps coming by sea from Alexandria and through the ports rather than from Gandhāra. Considering the geographical and political separation of the Kushān and Āndhra empires, I think the presumption is that the sculptors of Amarāvatī had not direct knowledge of the Gandhāra school, although it is possible that they may have had it. Hiuen Tsang, the Chinese pilgrim, in the seventh century, did not really describe the *stūpa* as being 'ornamented with all the magnificence of the palaces of Bactria (Tahia)', as Fergusson and Burgess suppose him to have done. A slight slip of the pen in the Chinese text used by Julien introduced the word mistranslated as 'Bactria'. The pilgrim really praised two monasteries in the Deccan as 'having all the artistic elegance of a great mansion and all the beauty of natural scenery'. The assumption made by Dr. Burgess and other authors that the account of *two monasteries* given by Hiuen Tsang should be applied to the *stūpa* of Amarāvatī is far from being established. Thus disappears the basis for Fergusson's argument that the school of Amarāvatī should be considered the offspring of the marriage of the art of the North—that is to say, Bactria as represented by Gandhāra—with that of interior India as represented by Sāñchī and Bharhut.¹ Mr. Havell may be right in believing that origin-