The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c33.31

Language: English

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On the execution of these sculptures, with their multitudinous figures and elaborate details, many years of labour must have been exhausted and many hands employed. It is not to be expected, therefore, that their style should be uniform; yet there is none of the clumsy, immature workmanship here which we noticed in the inferior carvings of the balustrade round the smaller *stūpa* and at Buddh Gayā. These reliefs are the work of trained and experienced sculptors, and though they exhibit considerable variety in their composition and technical treatment, their style throughout is maintained at a relatively high level. The finest are on the Southern Gateway, the poorest on the Northern; but in the matter of technique, the greatest contrast, perhaps, is afforded by the reliefs of the Southern and Western Gateways. Compare, for example, the scene on the inner face of the middle architrave of the South Gateway, depicting the Chhaddanta Jātaka, and the same scene on the front face of the lowest architrave of the Western Gateway (Pl. XXIII, 61, 62). In the former, the figures are kept strictly in one plane, in order that all may be equally distinct to the observer, and the relief low, that there may be no heavy shadows to obscure the design, with the result that the effect is that of a tapestry rather than of a carving in stone. The elephants, again, are treated in broad flat surfaces with a view to emphasising their contours; the trees sketched in rather than modelled;

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and the lotus pond indicated by conventional lotuses out of all proportion to the size of the beasts wading through it. In the latter, the leaves and flowers are of normal size; the water is portrayed by undulating lines; the banyan tree is realistically true to nature; the modelling of the elephants is more forceful and elaborate; and, though the figures are kept religiously to one plane, strong contrasts of light and shade and a suggestion of depth are obtained by cutting deep into the surface of the stone. Both reliefs are admirable in their own way, but there can be no two opinions as to which of the two is the more masterly. The one on the South Gateway is the work of a creative genius, more expert perhaps with the pencil or brush than with the chisel, but possessed of a delicate sense of line and of decorative and rhythmic composition. That on the West, on the other hand, is technically more advanced, and the individual figures, taken by themselves, are undoubtedly more effective and convincing; but it fails to please, because the detail is too crowded and confusing, and the composition too regular and mechanical. The same remark holds good, if we compare the ‘war of the relics’ on the Southern Gateway, with the somewhat similar scene on the Western (Pl. XXIII, 63, 64). In both there is abundance of fancy and expressive movement, but the movement and fancy are of a different order.

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In the earlier, the scene is living and real, because the artist has conceived it clearly in his own brain and expressed his conception with dramatic simplicity; in the later, the houses and the figures framed in the balconies are stereotyped and lifeless, and the movement and turmoil of the crowd surging towards the city less convincing, because the artist has depended not so much upon his own originality as upon the conventional treatment of such scenes. In the earlier, the depth of the relief and the intervals between the figures are varied, and the shadows diffused or intensified accordingly; in the later, the figures are compressed closely together, with the result that the shadows between them become darker, and a ‘colouristic’ effect is thus imparted to the whole. In the earlier, lastly, the composition is enhanced by varying the directions in which the figures move; in the later, though the attitudes are manifold, the movement taken as a whole is uniform. These differences in style are due in a large measure to the individuality of the artists, but they are due, also, to the changes which were coming over Indian relief consequent on the deepening of extraneous influences, on improved technical skill, and on the growing tendency towards conventionalism.

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The extraneous influences referred to are attested by the presence of exotic motifs, which meet the eye at every point and are readily recognised—by the familiar bell capitals of Persia, by floral designs of Assyria, by winged monsters of Western Asia, all of them part and parcel of the cosmopolitan art of the Seleucid and succeeding empires of the West, in which the heterogeneous elements of so many civilisations were fused and blended together. But it is attested still more forcibly by the striking individuality of many of the figures, as, for instance, of the hill-men riders on the Eastern Gate, by the occasional efforts towards spatial effects, as in the relief of the ivory workers of Vidiçā, by the well-balanced symmetry of some of the groups, and by the ‘colouristic’ treatment with its alternation of light and dark, which was peculiarly characteristic of Graeco-Syrian art at this period. By the side of these mature and elaborate compositions the reliefs of Bhārhut are stiff and awkward, and, as we recall their features to mind, we are conscious of the gulf which separates the two and of the great advance that sculpture must have made during the century or more that elapsed between them. The wonder is that these monuments could ever have been classed together or regarded as products of one and the same epoch.