History of Orissa from the Earliest Times to the British Period v2.c47.52

v2.c47.52

The Buddha in the *Bhumisparśa Mudrā* and the female with the child recovered from the Khandiya Deul are regularly Orissan in features and the latter is the precursor of the decorative figures of the later temples;⁴ some of which found an asylum in the Indian Museum at Calcutta before 1882.⁵ A comparison of this figure with those in the Calcutta Museum shows that the affected pose of the latter figures is absent in Khiching sculpture. The accentuation of the hips, the affected posture of the torso and the impossible position in at least one of the Calcutta Museum figures show that Khiching art of the earliest period is not conventionalized to the extent of the Rājā-Rāṇī group. At the same time attention must be drawn to the peculiarly southern *coiffure*, reminiscent of Ajanta, almost entirely absent in contemporary purely northern plastic art.¹ The difference between the artistic ideal of the “A” period of Khiching and that of the decorative figures of the temple of Kṛittivāsa or Liṅgarāja cannot be better illustrated than by a comparison of the figure of Śiva from the great temple at Khiching² with that of Kārtikeya in one of the side niches of the *Vimāna* of the Liṅgarāja.³ In the latter, art had become stereotyped and had lost the virile equipoise of the best period of Khiching. The regular Orissan type is to be found in the splendid Mahiṣa-Mardinī from Khiching⁴ as well as the two Nāgas of the “B” period from the same place.⁵