The University of Nalanda c18.13

c18.13

that have been discovered bear the name of one or the other of the Pāla Kings.¹ But we may as well call it "The Nālandā Art", for its origin was due to a system of religion which flourished at Nālandā. The chief characteristics of this art have been well described by Chatterji thus: "It is an art generally of stately repose and contemplative calm, although the dynamic and the demoniac are not wanting. But the essential tone of the entire school may be said to be stative. Pāla art lacks the vastness and the dynamic quality—the epic imagination and the vigour and nobility of execution—of the Pallava bas-relief art at Mahābalipuram; neither does it possess the super-majesty of the Śiva panels at Elephanta. Not being of the vast proportions of these latter, Pāla sculpture cannot attain to their height. The Pāla sculptors again did not care much for the life around them. The devotee's contemplation of the deity whom he passionately adores:—this evidently was the inspiration of the artist. . . . Then, again, in Pāla art, there was not the frank delight in flesh and in the pleasures of the flesh . . . Woman's beauty evidently did not move the Pāla artists so much, although some exquisitely modelled Lakṣmīs and Tārās² and other female divinities attest the power of the Pāla sculptor in this line; and rarely, very rarely indeed, do we find an erotic scene. . . ."³ Commenting on the iconographic interpretation of the Pāla images, the same writer observes, " His (the artist's) purpose seemed to be to prepare a plastic commentary on the Śāstras (i.e., the Sādhanas); yet it was not wholly so. His hand could transform the conventional image of a god or goddess, into something of a living divinity, with an ineffable smile and an aspect of infinite kindliness, which is characteristic of Indian art at its best; or into an avenging god, who is the embodiment of terror. . . Even when the goddess is slaying the demon, she has a look of pity in her face. And here too there is nothing of the dynamic in the act; the violent action is not suggested, but it is of the deity, appearing at a certain stage in the act of killing the demon and making a pause in it, as if to give a vision of herself to her worshipper. A contemplative repose with the suggestion of infinite grace¹—a figure such as would present itself before the ecstatic vision of a devoted worshipper—this is what shines through Pāla sculpture in its most common form."²