History of Orissa from the Earliest Times to the British Period v2.c47.147

v2.c47.147

The plastic art of Orissa possesses such a long history of its own and is so very varied in character that a full treatment of this subject consonant with its dignity and importance would require a separate monograph. It is not possible to deal with its significance in a small chapter appended to a general history of the country from the earliest times to the British period. I have attempted therefore to give a brief outline of the great centres of plastic activity in this province from the 2nd century B. C. to the 16th. Before the time of Khāravela there is only one monument in Orissa, the elephant figure at Dhauli just over the edicts of Aśoka. The figure of the elephant however is not so elegant as those to be found on the capitals of pillars of Aśoka. The sunken panel on which the edicts are carved was originally as well polished as the pillars and capitals of Aśoka discovered in other places of India, but hardly any polish of the well known Mauryan type is to be discerned on the elephant. It can therefore be regarded as a specimen of contemporary local art. The next step is reached in the cave temples like the Ananta, Rāṇi-Nur, Svargapuri and Mañchapuri caves in the Udaygiri-Khaṇḍagiri group. They are closely followed by the minor caves on these hills of the first century B. C. The art of the earlier group of caves has been called stiff and deteriorated by Sir John Marshall. Still less appealing to the student of Indian Plastic Art are the minor cave temples of the 1st century B. C. Then comes the great gap of at least six centuries, during which we do not know anything of Orissan art and architecture. Suddenly at the end of the 7th century A.D. we find a highly developed school of art entirely Buddhist in nature at Udaygiri and Ratnagiri in the Cuttack district. No other group of Orissan sculpture has surpassed or probably will ever surpass the earliest group of art products used by the Buddhist monks of this area in ideal *technique* and execution. The inscriptions on the majority of them prove that this high-tide of plastic excellence can not be earlier than the first half of the 8th century or the second half of the 7th. It is therefore to be admitted that Orissa did not share in the great *renaissance* of art in Northern India in the 5th and the 6th centuries A. D., generally called Gupta art. It is rather dangerous, in the absence of materials, to state that there was no corresponding revival of art in Orissa during the Gupta period. It is also difficult to say for what reasons there was no *renaissance* in Orissa in the 6th-7th centuries when the great Southern Schools of Arts rose at Aihole-Pattadkal-Badami in the Karṇāṭak and at Conjeevaram-Māmallapuram in the Tamil country. Somehow Orissa remained isolated from the earlier northern and southern art impulses till the 8th century.