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

212 THE GOLDEN AGE AND END OF BUDDHIST ART
of Indian sculpture which, in its Baroque
turbulence and depth, directly anticipates the
style oflater centuries in South India.
The excavation of a palace area at Xagarjunakonda
has brought to light what may be described
as secular carving in Later Andhra times
[149]. The pillars of this structure were decorated
with panels representing personages in
Indo-Scythian dress and a singularly Dionysian
figure, nude to the waist and holding a rhyton.
This hauntingly classical youth in a Praxitelean
pose may have been copied from a Roman gem.
This is the most Greco-Roman of all Andhra
sculpture and provides further evidence for the
penetration of Roman influence. 1
This detail.
like so many of the Later Andhra carvings, has a
delicacy and precision of execution in every
crisp detail that suggests the technique of the
Begram ivories. This technical refinement and
the languorous attenuated beaut}- of the figures
make the Later Andhra reliefs 'the most
voluptuous and delicate flower of Indian
sculpture'. 11
Buddhism apparently went into a decline at
the same time that the Andhra Dynasty
collapsed in the early fourth century ; already in
the seventh century, when Hsuan-tsang visited
the region, he describes the Buddhist establishments
as 'mostly deserted and ruined'. 1 -
This
disappearance of Buddhism and its art in South
India is probably to be explained in part by the
149. Figure holding a rhyton
from the palace area. Xagarjunakonda.
gradual rise of Hinduism, 1
always strongly entrenched
in the Deccan. and in part certainly by
the decline of patronage due to the inevitably
diminished prosperity after the ending of the
sea-borne trade with the Roman West.
The Great Stupa at Amaravati is only the
most important monument of a great style;
other sculptural fragments no less distinguished
in execution have been found at Xagarjunakonda
and at Goli Village, both in the
Kistna region. The latter reliefs were carved as
late as a.d. 300. :i The dimensions of the
Buddhist stupas of the Kistna region were so
great that they could not be constructed by the
usual method of simply piling up a mound of
brick and rubble. Some interior support or
binding for these great mountains of earth had
to be supplied. Usually this was accomplished,
as in the stupa of Xagarjunakonda, by having an
interior system of brick walls. The ground plan
[150] of the stupa is that of a wheel with the hub
represented by a solid brick pillar, and with the
cells formed by the intersecting concentric rings
and spokes of brick walls filled with earth. The
stupa at Xagarjunakonda, which takes its name
from the famous Buddhist 'Church Father',
presumably dates from the same period as the
Great Stupa at Amaravati, and its sculpture