The art and architecture of India - Buddhist, Hindu, Jain (Art Ebook)

THE EARLY ANDHRA PERIOD
IOI
46. Sanchi, east gate, The Great Departure
sentation of the Great Departure [46] that, in
contrast to the Bharhut reliefs, in which individual
forms were attached to a shallow background,
here the figures and details of setting
are so deeply cut that they seem to swim against
a dark background of shadow. The resemblance
of this type of colouristic relief to Roman fourthcentury
sculpture is certainly coincidental, and
must be explained by quite different means.
From a technical point of view this method of
deep background carving may be regarded as the
result of the Indian sculptor's desire to have his
compositions tell as a pattern in black and white
completely and instantaneously legible in the
glare of the Indian sun. From the iconographical
point of view the technique provides the same
illusion as the Bhaja panels of the forms emerging
from a kind of universal matter connoted by
the enfolding shadow. The method of presenting
the story, in comparison to the Bharhut medallions,
is
a more elaborate form of the mode of
continuous narration made possible by the
greater and more suitable dimensions of the
long, rectangular panel. In the composition in
question we have both the cause of the Great
Departure and its enactment within the confines
of the same panel. In the centre of the composition
the empty seat beneath the rose apple-tree
typifies the Buddha's first meditation on the
miseries of living creatures that resolved him to
relinquish the pomps of the world and seek the
salvation of humanity. Although this event in
the legend and the actual flight from Kapilavastu
are separated in time by a number of years, the
Indian sculptor finds the topographical and
historical unity of the happenings of greater
consequence than any unity of time. 3 This is
another illustration of how in Indian art time