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

ART UNDER THE KUSHANS: MATHURA 59
represent a
pointed reference on the exterior
of the sacred enclosure to the transitory life of
pleasure, outside the peace of the world of
Buddha ; again, it may be that, like the mithunas
of later Hindu art, they represent an allegory of
the desirability of the soul's union with the
divine in the forms of these beautiful dryads
that so actively suggest the desirability of
sexual union.
Although a certain number of Buddha
images datable in the second and third centuries
a.d. clearly suggest a crude imitation of the
Romanized drapery of Gandhara, there is little
more marked than in such figures as the Indra
at Bodh Gaya. The body is conceived in
thoroughly sculptural terms, with the subtle
curvature of the planes of the muscular anatomy
contributing to the wholly Indian feeling of
fleshly warmth and fullness.
Sculpture in relief under the Kushans at
Mathura is in many respects an outgrowth of
the styles of the archaic period, although at the
103. 'Herakles and the Nemean lion' from Mathura.
Calcutta, Indian Museum
indication of any strong Western influence in
the art of the southern portions of the Kushan
realm. In the early decades of archaeological
investigations there were found in and around
Mathura a number of similar reliefs all representing
a nude fat man being plied with drink
by maidens or supported in a complete state of
intoxication [102]. These were at first identified
as Indian representations of the story of
Silenus; it seems much more reasonable to
suppose, however, that they are intended to
portray the Paradise of the Yaksha Kuvera, in
which eternal inebriation was believed to be
one of the delights of this Buddhist Guardian
and his entourage. Since it had become
Kuvera's function to guard the establishments
of Buddhism, the appropriateness of these
Dionysian representations of his kingdom
becomes apparent.
At least one Kushan pillar relief shows a
positive imitation of a type of Classical divinity,
probably for decorative rather than religious
reasons [103]. This is the so-called Herakles
with the Nemean Lion, in the Indian Museum,
Calcutta. Although the theme and the Praxitelean
dehanchement of the body might be
borrowed from some classical source, the style
of the relief is entirely Indian, distinguished by
the same general traits of modelling employed
in earlier examples of figure sculpture. Here the
organic realization of the form as a whole is even