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

ART UNDER THE KUSHANS: MATHURA 153
the front of the skirt, and the sole suggestion of
Indian workmanship might be discerned in the
careful rendering of the makara head of the
sovereign's mace. One is left with the feeling
that the primitive and crude quality of these
portrait statues is perhaps partly due to the
Indian workman's complete unfamiliarity and
lack of sympathy with this form of art: without
the systems of proportion and tradition that
determined his operations in carving Buddha
images, he could produce only the crudest
ideograph of a portrait.
The sculptors of Mathura undoubtedly
deserve credit for creating the earliest, entirely
Indian representations of the Buddha. Whether
these statues are earlier, or later, or exactly
contemporary with the first Gandhara Buddhas
is a question that has been discussed a great deal
but is of little real interest, except for those
determined to establish a chauvinistic priority
for the entirely Indian type evolved at Mathura.
What was presumably one of the very first
images of Buddha to be carved at Mathura is
more than life-sized standing figure found at
Sarnath [97]. It bears an inscription noting its
dedication by a certain Friar Bala and a date in
the third year of Kanishka, corresponding to
either a.d. 131 or 147. 4 The statue represents
Sakyamuni standing erect, his feet firmly
planted, the right hand raised in the gesture of
reassurance, the left on the hip supporting the
folds of his robe. It has been suggested that he
is shown as a Bodhisattva, rather than Buddha,
since the figure is nude to the waist and wears
the characteristic Indian dhoti. The massive
proportions of this and related figures of the
same type, its connotation of weight and
expansive volume, as well as the dress, clearly
link it to the colossal yaksha statues of the
Maurya Period. The carving of both flesh and
drapery is much more subtle ; although greatly
simplified and still represented by the archaic
technique of incised lines, the carving of the
drapery suggests not only texture but the
a
existence of the stuff as a volume separate from
the form it clothes. The subtle rounding and
interlocking of the planes of the torso contrive
to give a suggestion of the warmth and firmness
of flesh and, as in the Harappa torso, a powerful
feeling for the presence of the inner breath or
prana.
When it came to the carving of the Buddha
image, Indian sculptors were no longer able to
depend on the kind of loving reporting of
surrounding nature that gives the early Indian
sculptures such an extraordinary vitality; the
nature of the subject - the Buddha already conceived
of as a transcendant personage, one who
had passed beyond Nirvana - almost forced a
reliance on preconceived ideals of divine beauty
and a dependence on certain superhuman
proportions and attributes which would properly
assure the image's assuming an appropriately
iconic aspect of divine perfection. It is this
enforced method of visualization that bestows
such an awe-inspiring and hieratic character on
the representations of the Great Teacher.
The making of an image of the Buddha
involved much more than the mere carving of a
human effigy and designation of it as Sakyamuni.
While Western art sought to make an
aesthetically beautiful form by portraying
human figures which were models of physical
perfection and athletic vigour, Indian art
started with abstract spiritual concepts which
had to be translated into physical shape. A
proper likeness of the Buddha had to show his
achievement of the final yoga state of serenity
and complete mental equilibrium, and in addition
it had to incorporate all the laksana or
thirty-two major signs of superhuman perfection
distinguishing the body of a Buddha
from those of ordinary mortals. As ruler of the
universe, Buddha assumes the physical emblems
or signs, perhaps originally of astrological
origin, which characterize the body of a
Mahapurusa or Great Being and a Cakravartin
or World Ruler. These signs of physical and