A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c13.s3: Section IV. North-Western India and Rājputāna

A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c13.s3

Language: English

Section IV. North-Western India and Rājputāna

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In the Panjāb and the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh thousands of Hindu temples and other edifices must have been destroyed by the Muslim conquerors during the seven centuries intervening between the raids of Mahmūd of Ghaznī and Plate XLI. Bronze images of Tibetan deities and saints.

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A. A teacher, gilt bronze, about 4 inches high; Pitt-Rivers Museum. (From a photo., by permission of H. Balfour, Esq., Curator.)

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B. The Bodhisattva Manjuśrī, patinated bronze, about 6 inches high; Pitt-Rivers Museum. (From a photo., by permission of H. Balfour, Esq., Curator.)

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C. The goddess Sarasvatī, Ukhtomskij Collection. (From a photo. supplied by Prof. Grünwedel.)

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the death of Aurangzeb in 1707. The detailed records of the devastation wrought at Kanauj, Mathurā, Benares, and many other notable cities fully justify the assertion that the buildings and monuments destroyed must have been numbered by thousands. Mediaeval sculpture, consequently, is scarce in the territories strongly held by the Musalman powers.¹ The more considerable remains are to be found only in regions lying remote from the track of the Muslim armies, such as Khajurāho in the Chhatarpur State of the Central India Agency, and the more inaccessible parts of Rājputāna and the Central Provinces.

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¹ The case of the Bulandshahr District, U. P. illustrates what happened. ‘As might have been expected from its nearness to Delhi, the Muhammadans have made a clean sweep of the district, and razed to the ground every building, secular or religious, that had been erected by its former Hindu rulers’ (Growse, *J. A. S. B.*, Pt. I, vol. lii (1883), p. 280).

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Plate X (*ante*) gives some slight indication of the sculptured wealth of the greater temples at Khajurāho erected during the tenth and eleventh centuries by the kings of the Chandēl dynasty. I visited the temples many years ago and can testify that the crowd of figures is far more numerous than would appear from the photograph. But this ‘peuple de pierre’, as M. Le Bon calls it, was designed for the purpose of architectural decoration in the mass, not as an assemblage of individual works of fine art; and it is doubtful if any single image or group could be excerpted which would deserve illustration on its own aesthetic merits. Very many of the figures, like those in Orissa (*ante*, p. 190), are disgustingly indecent. Nobody having thought it worth while to photograph the sculptures in detail, it is impossible to reproduce examples, even of the decent ones.

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The group of mediaeval temples at Khajurāho is the largest and most important in Upper India. At minor sites we find the same lack of individual works of artistic distinction and, as a rule, the same absence of detailed record. The temples of Mount Ābū in Rājputāna undoubtedly exhibit masses of sculptured decoration of the most marvellous richness and delicacy, as sufficiently exemplified in Plates VI and VII, *ante*. But there does not seem to be anything deserving of isolation from the mass for study as a separate work of art. I do not know of any detachable mediaeval sculptures of Upper India comparable in artistic interest with the Chola panels at Gangaikondapuram (Figs. 159, 160, 161, *post*), or even with the chlorite statues of Konārak (Figs. 142 and 143, *ante*), except in the less-known parts of Rājputāna, where the researches of Mr. D. R. Bhandarkar have recently disclosed an unexpected wealth of sculpture, especially between Sirōhi and Jodhpur.

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The Tower of Victory, over 120 feet in height, at Chitōr in Rājputāna, built in the fifteenth century to commemorate the military successes of a local chieftain, is covered from top to bottom, inside and out, with an infinite multitude of images, representing, so far as may be, all the denizens of the Hindu pantheon, with their names attached, and constituting an ‘illustrated dictionary of Hindu mythology’. Besides the effigies of the more ordinary deities, there are images representing the seasons, rivers, weapons, and other things as yet unpublished. Whenever this series of sculptures shall be reproduced it will be invaluable as a key to Brahmanical iconography, but is not likely to contribute much to the history of art.¹ The better class of art in Rājputāna dates from an earlier period, ending with the twelfth century.

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¹ Cousens, *Progr. Rep. A. S. W. I.*, 1900–1, p. 9.

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If the description recorded by Mr. Garrick, Sir A. Cunningham's assistant, can be depended on, certain relief sculptures at the Mokaljī temple on the famous rock of Chitōr possess high merit as works of art. The darkness of the chamber in which they are placed unfortunately frustrated attempts to photograph them. The temple, originally erected in the eleventh century, was reconstructed in the fifteenth century during the reign of Mokaljī (a. d. 1428–38). The pillars bearing the reliefs evidently belong to the earlier building.² The bas-reliefs, sixteen in number, are carved on octagonal bands of the eastern pair of pillars supporting the principal chamber of the temple, eight scenes on each pillar. The first scene on the southern column of the pair, according to Mr. Garrick,

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² Ibid., 1903–4, p. 38.

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‘depicts five human figures, of which two are large and three small; one of the former represents a woman carrying a water-jar on her head, and a man standing before her with hands joined in an attitude of adoration. The minor figures are much broken. This sculpture, along with the others of this set, is remarkable for the elaborate detail and technical excellence of its workmanship, the woman's hair being most minutely delineated. . . . The third carving is very well modelled and proportioned, and depicts two standing figures, male and female. . . . The fifth scene is filled with vigorous action, and consists of a musical festival; six male figures play six musical instruments . . . the sixth and last figure of this interesting group is seen full to the front, blowing a flute (*mūralī* or *bansī*) in a very animated position as if he were dancing. . . .’

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On the northern column of the pair—

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‘the seventh scene is in all probability the most interesting of the whole series, and in its half a dozen figures gives us both a duel and an execution. The upper pair of men fight with shields and sabres, and their armour, accoutrements, &c., even to the knobs and bosses on their shields, are most carefully delineated, and show that the manufacture of these articles has altered as little during the last eight centuries as that of the musical instruments figured elsewhere. The lower portion of this comprehensive and instructive scene shows a pair of kneeling figures bound hand and foot, while an executioner holds his knife to the neck of the male figure to our left; but the female with him may possibly be a mere witness, though it is pretty clear from the general distribution of action in this trio that she awaits her turn for immolation.’³

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³ Garrick, in Cunningham's *Archaeol. Survey Reports*, vol. xxiii, pp. 120–3. Mr. Garrick's tour took place in 1883–4.

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I cannot attempt to interpret these curious scenes. Perhaps the Archaeological Department may be able to arrange for their reproduction with the help of modern appliances for the use of artificial light.

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Mokaljī's temple, as a whole, is decorated with an extraordinary wealth of sculpture, very effective in the mass, but not of quality sufficiently high to permit of small excerpts appearing to advantage. In order to give some notion of the powers of Rājputāna sculptors in the first half of the fifteenth century, two specimens from the later sculptures of the temple, one in high relief, with the images almost detached, and the other, a frieze in lower relief (Figs. 146, 147), are presented. The elephants

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FIG. 146. Sculptures on a wall of Mokaljī's temple, Chitōr. (Photo. 2278, A. S.)

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FIG. 147. Elephant-fight frieze from same temple. (A. S. photo. 2281.)

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have been set to fight with a barrier between them. The earlier sculptures described by Mr. Garrick seem to be far superior in quality.

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The most artistic object discovered by Mr. D. R. Bhandarkar during his rambles in Rājputāna—so fruitful in additions to historical knowledge—is the face looking out from a stone window in a wall of an old temple of the Sun at Vasantgaṛh in the Sirohī State (Fig. 148). Mr. Bhandarkar supposes it to date from the seventh century,¹ but, whatever its exact age, it is a beautiful work, and unique, to the best of my knowledge. The surrounding ornament is in an excellent style. This sculpture may be accepted with considerable confidence as an example of the work of the

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¹ *Progr. Rep. A. S. W. I.*, 1905–6, pp. 51, 52.

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[Figure: FIG. 148. Face in wall of temple, Vasantgaṛh. (A. S. photo. 2671.)]

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school of the 'Ancient West' founded by Sringadhara of Mārwār (Jodhpur). In Chapter IX, Section I, reasons will be given for believing that Sringadhara lived in the middle of the seventh century.

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An ancient town called Osia in the Jodhpur or Mārwār State possesses no less than twelve old temples, mostly referred by Mr. Bhandarkar to the eighth century. In one of these, No. 9, known as the shrine of Devī, is the image of Kuvera, the god of riches, which may be compared with the effigies of the same deity in Gandhāra and elsewhere (Fig. 149). As a work of art it does not rank high.²

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² Ibid., 1906–7, p. 36.

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A beautifully wrought figure of Vishnu in the Mathurā Museum, about 26 inches in height, and presumably produced in the local workshops (Fig. 150), may be compared with the Konārak Vishnu (*ante*, Fig. 142). The two images, while largely in agreement, differ in a multitude of details.¹ The Mathurā figure, which evidently is ancient, is not likely to be later than the tenth century, the temples of the city having been burnt by Mahmūd of Ghaznī at the close of A.D. 1018.

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¹ At Panthia near Mandhātā, the ancient Māhishmatī, on the Narbadā, there are twenty-four different forms of Vishnu duly labelled and distinguished by variations in the attributes and position of the hands.

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FIG. 149. Kuvera; Temple No. 9, Osia. (Photo. No. 2831.)

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Curious bearded images, seemingly portraits, occur in some of the Rājputāna temples. One of the most remarkable is the bust reproduced in Fig. 151, which adorns a pillar or pilaster of the temple of Undesvara Mahādeva at Bijolia in the Mewār or Udaipur State, supposed to have been erected not later than the middle of the twelfth century. The beard is treated in the Egyptian manner.¹ Portrait statuary is more common in Rājputāna than elsewhere.

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¹ *Progr. Rep. A. S. W. I.*, 1904–5, p. 53.

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FIG. 150. Statuette of Vishnu; Mathurā Museum. (A. S. photo. 48 of 1908–9.)

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The two unrivalled Jain temples on Mount Ābū, the earlier built by Vimala Sāha in A. D. 1031, and the later by Tejpāl in A. D. 1230 (*ante*, p. 32, and Pls. VI and VII), have each at the entrance a chamber known as the 'elephant room'. Each of these rooms contains ten statues of elephants, said to be sculptured in every detail with exquisite care, which formerly carried riders. All the riders in the later building have disappeared, but inscribed slabs still existing record that the figures included portrait images of the founders, Vastupāla with two wives, and Tejpāl with his one wife, Anūpama. Some of the riders in Vimala Sāha’s ‘elephant room’ appear to exist still, but I am not in a position to illustrate them.¹