A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c21.65

c21.65

Clear traces survive of a carefully-designed system to supply the town with fresh water drawn from the Palar river and distributed to all parts of the port; and it is quite possible that the remarkable open-air sculpture 'The Descent of the Ganges' (Pl. VII), long known as 'Arjuna's Penance', was not unrelated to this system. This vast sculpture, in high relief, is nearly 30 yards long and 23 feet high, covering the sea-face of the cliff. There is a cascade in a natural fissure in the middle of the rock in which a band of nāgas and nāgīs sport and symbolize the sacred waters, and on both sides are sculptured figures of deities, human beings and animals of all kinds approaching or facing the fissure in attitudes of adoration. ‘What we have before us here,’ says Grousset, ‘is a vast picture, a regular fresco in stone. This relief is a masterpiece of classic art in the breadth of its composition, the sincerity of its impulse which draws all creatures together round the beneficent waters, and its deep, fresh love of nature.’¹ A small shrine immediately to the left of the cascade contains the standing figure of Śiva. Before this temple is bowed the emaciated figure of Bhagiratha who is represented also above practising tapas with upraised arms. Among the sculptured animals, the monumental elephants on the right and the ascetic cat imitating the posture of Bhagiratha’s penance with trustful mice playing at its feet are particularly noteworthy, as also the pair of deer which look on the scene ‘from the mouth of a cave opposite, on the left hand side, with the life-like action of the stag scratching his nose with his hind foot’. More amazing still in its masterly realism is the detached family of monkeys sculptured in the round ‘with the male picking vermin off the female while she suckles her two little ones’.