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

154 ROMANO-INDIAN ART
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spiritual perfection include the protuberance,
or ushnisha, on the skull and the urna or tuft of
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98. Seated Buddha from Katra. C
M ultra, Archaeological Museum
hair between the eyebrows; in addition, the
body of Buddha is like that of a lion, the legs are
like those of a gazelle, and on the soles of his
feet appear two shining wheels with a thousand
spokes. The carving of images on the basis of
such descriptions was almost literally metaphorical,
and imposed certain inevitable
abstractions on the conception of the form.
The Indian maker of images had also to
reproduce the mudras or hand gestures that
very early came to be associated with various
actions and events in the career of Sakyamuni.
The earth-touching mudra came to be identified
specifically with the Enlightenment; and the
so-called wheel-turning gesture stood for the
First Preaching at Sarnath. The most common
of all is the abhaya mudra, the gesture of
reassurance. This might be described as a
gesture of blessing. Although in early Buddhist
art the number of these mudras is very limited,
the iconography of later esoteric Buddhism
enlarged the repertory to include an enormous
number of these hand positions to designate the
mystic powers of the countless members of the
Mahayana pantheon.
In the rendering of sacred figures certain
fixed canons of proportion made their appearance
at a relatively early period. The unit of
measurement, which has no reference to any
actual physical anatomy, is an entirely arbitrary
one designed to produce an ideal rather than a
human proportion. This modulus is the thalam,
roughly a palm or the distance between the top
of the forehead and the chin, which is divided
nine times into the total height of the figure.
These canons of measurement were specifically
designed to ensure an appropriately heroic
stature for the representation of the divinity.
Both the system and the result of its use are
comparable to the invention of a superhuman
physical anatomy for figures of gods in Egypt
and Greece of the Archaic Period.
The Indian type of seated Buddha may be
found in numerous early examples from
Mathura, such as a specimen from Katra in the
Archaeological Museum at Muttra [98]. The
carving is of the same rather vigorous, often
crude type that distinguishes the group of Friar
Bala statues. The treatment of the body in
broadly conceived planes, with the suggestion
of the pneumatic distension through prana, is at
once apparent. The face is characterized by its
warm, 'friendly' expression. Again, as in the
standing images, it is evident that the sculptor
has translated into stone the various metaphors
or laksanas : he is very careful to represent the
distinctive magic-marks on the hands and feet.
Another interesting feature of this relief is that it
appears to be an early example of the trinity in
Indian art; the attendants presumably may be
identified as Indra and Brahma, who later are
replaced by Bodhisattvas. It seems likely that in
origin the trinity motif stems from a literal
representation of the Descent from the Tushita
Heaven, with the Buddha accompanied by the
great gods of the Brahmanic pantheon; it
needed only a hieratic isolation of the three
figures to produce the first conception of the
trinity. 5 It will be noted that, just as in the standing
figures of the second century, so in the
seated examples, the Buddha is represented
clad only in a dhoti; it is only in the Kushan
reliefs, apparently under Gandharan influence,
that Sakyamuni is depicted with the monastic
robe covering the body; in these the drapery,
conceived as a series of string-like ridges or in
overlapping shingle-like pleats, is an evident
imitation of the classical drapery of the
Gandhara school.