History of Orissa from the Earliest Times to the British Period v2.c47.113

v2.c47.113

Considered as a renaissance movement, Konarak human figures certainly lack the high ideal in their authors which we find in the figure work of the Liṅgarāja, Ananta Vāsudeva and the Rājā-Rāṇī, not to speak of the higher standard of similar work of Khiching and the Lalitagiri-Ratnagiri-Udaygiri group. It is certainly much more vigorous than the figure work of the Liṅgarāja, but it lacks the refinement of the ideal of the latter. It is this forceful and virile expression which appeals immediately to those, specially artists, who judge the art of Konarak by itself and do not attempt a comparative study of the sculpture of Orissa as a whole. So far as I know no comparative study of Orissan sculpture, beginning with the early mediaeval Buddhist art of the Cuttack district and ending with the much cruder art of the eastern gate of the inner enclosure of the temple of Jagannātha, has ever been instituted. Compared with the “A” period of Buddhist Art the virile art of Konarak is decidedly coarse and barbaric. After the end of the 12th century Orissa was practically isolated from the rest of Northern India after the Musalman conquest of Bengal at the end of the 12th century. The Haihaya kingdom of Tripuri had already followed and that of Ratnapura had become a small and unimportant principality. In the south Varangal and the Chālukya-Choḷa kingdom of the Telugu country had lapsed into aboriginal barbarism. What it had gained in vigour of expression, it had certainly lost in the exquisite delicacy of touch of the Rājā-Rāṇī period. The best examples of survival of the influence on ideals of the earlier periods are to be found in the dancing female figures on the medallions of the wheels of the Ratha on the base of the entire structure.¹ On the other hand other human figures, both decent and indecent, in the plinth as well as in bas reliefs, bring in the virility of expression and general loss of refinement. If we compare the style, proportion and the expression of the face of the indecent figures in the body of the temple² with that of the bas reliefs with the exquisite and chaste figure work of the Rājā-Rāṇī we can not but come to any other conclusion.³ Even the execution of the 12th century figures of Bhuvaneśvara are infinitely superior to the majority of figures discovered at Konarak, that we have got either on the body of the temple or in the sculpture shed. The best female figure selected by Cohn is infinitely inferior to all female figures of the Buddhist centre of Udaygiri-Lalitagiri-Ratnagiri. All the Nāga figures discovered at Konarak are coarse and disproportionate compared to those of Gandharāḍi, Khiching and the Rājā-Rāṇī temples.⁵ The great door jamb overcrowded with its nine bands of carving lack the natural poise or the exquisite charm of the less-ornamented jambs discovered after the dismantling of the Khandiya Deul at Khiching. The Konarak architect and artist had forgotten the grander effect of simplicity and overcrowded as much ornament as he could within a little space.¹ The bas reliefs in Chlorite which decorated the niches on the exterior are extremely unnatural in proportion of the human body and in the majority of cases the attitude. Let us compare the posture of the horse in one and the position of the seated figure at the foot of Kṛṣṇa seated on a throne on the other. The worst example is the proportion between the rider and the driver of the elephant in the first bas relief on Pl. 75.² These bas reliefs of Konarak remind one very forcibly of the very barbaric but extremely forceful terra cotta plaques discovered by Messrs. Th. Bloch and K. N. Dikshit of the Archaeological Survey of India at Tāmriśvari in the North-Eastern Frontier Tract, to the east of Sadiya, in Northeastern Assam.³