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

230 THE GOLDEN AGE AND END OF BUDDHIST ART
the prototype has disappeared. We may be
reasonably sure that these figures were carved
according to a fixed set of proportions intended
to guarantee the more than mortal ideality of the
conception; likewise, individual parts of the
body continue to be fashioned in accordance
with the entirely metaphorical description of
the Buddha's person contained in the laksanas.
The head of this typical Gupta Buddha from
Mathura reveals essentially the same coalescence
of the Indian and Gandharan traditions.
The sharp definition of the planes, as, for
example, the razor edge that separates the brow
from the eye-socket, is similar to the hard
precision of the Gandhara Buddhas, with the
difference that the Mathura types avoid the
mask-like coldness of the Gandhara Buddha
head by the swelling roundness of the interlocking
planes which in an almost geometric
fashion combine to impart to the face a feeling
of warmth and fullness. The individual features
are again composed in a metaphorical manner
and still, as in archaic sculpture, combined in an
additive, rather than an organic, manner. The
eyes are lotiform; the lips have the fullness of
the mango ;
the hair is represented by the snailshell
convention which we have seen in the
example from Amaravati. The sculptors are
always at pains to represent the ushnisha as a
definite protuberance growing from the summit
of the skull, and in similarly orthodox fashion
the marks of wheel, fish, trisula, etc., are engraved
on the palms of the hands. Among the
most beautiful features of the Mathura Buddhas
are the carved haloes, the ornament consisting
of concentric rings of floral pattern about a
central lotus. Aesthetically this final evolution
of the Buddhist cult image is extremely moving
in the feeling of tremendous and fully realized
sculptural mass and the awesome spiritual
dignity of form and features that is achieved by
their combination of Late Antique convention
and Indian metaphor and feeling for plastic
volume.
'The figure of their Great Master they
stealthily class with that of Tathagata; it differs
only in the point of clothing; the points of
beauty are absolutely the same.' 5 This accurate
observation by HsiAan-tsang on the dependence
of Jain art on Buddhist prototypes may be
applied to any number of Jain images of all
periods. A sizeable statue of a Tirtharhkara in the
Archaeological Museum at Muttra [168] could
be mistaken at first glance for a Buddha in
dhyana mudrd, were it not for the complete
nudity ofthe figure. The proportions of the body
and the technical aspects of carving are identical
with Buddha images of the Gupta Period, down
1 68. Jain Tirtharhkara.
Muttra, Archaeological Museum
ys
to such details as the lotiform eyes and the representation
of the hair by snail-shell curls. The
impression of hieratic stiffness and austerity in
this and other Jain images is due not only to the
rigid geometrical construction of the body set
like a column on the base of the locked legs, but