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

THE GUPTA PERIOD 235
mortal career that appealed to the Hinayanist
Church. There could be no more appropriate
nor beautiful illustration of the metaphorical
beautiful features of this and other Gupta
Buddhas from Sarnath is the carving of their
haloes. In the present example the ornament of
conception of the cult image and its
separate
the nimbus consists of a wide band of deeply cut
parts than this icon : the line of the brows follows
the tensile curve of the Indian bow; the eyes are
lotiform ; the face has the perfect oval of the egg;
and the body once again is a combination of the
various allegories of great strength and beauty
contained in the laksanas. One of the most
foliate forms framed in a pearl border with
flower-bearing apsaras on either side.
No less aesthetically moving than the Buddha
images of the Sarnath school are the statues of
Bodhisattvas that are the earliest recognizable
personifications of these archangels of the
Mahayana pantheon. A particularly beautiful
173. Avalokitesvara
example is an image of Avalokitesvara clearly
recognizable by the attribute of the small figure
of Buddha Amitabha in the towering diadem
[173]. The radiant face, softly modelled in
gently fusing abstract planes, has that air of
half-sensuous, half-spiritual introspection that
in an exaggerated form appears in the provincial
Indian sculpture of Fondukistan [124]. The
body, which appears almost nude through the
transparent dhoti, reveals the same soft, pliant
rhythm as
the Buddha images of the Sarnath
school and their painted counterparts in the
Gupta murals of Ajanta [183].
These Bodhisattva
images of the Gupta Period are the
artistic ancestors of the later icons of the Pala
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Not the least important aspect of the Sarnath
Period [197].
school of Buddhist sculpture is its great influence
on Buddhist art outside India. The
earliest Buddha images to be carved in Siam
and Cambodia are all provincial variants of the
Sarnath types, and a final and beautiful development
will be seen in the Buddhas ornamenting
the great shrine of Barabudur in Java.
In relief sculpture the Gupta workshops of
Sarnath achieved a synthesis of Gandharan and
Kushan elements paralleling the development
of the Buddha image. A number of steles with
scenes from the life of Buddha very clearly
show the perpetuation of the iconography for
each episode as evolved in Gandhara [174]. The
figures in the reliefs are themselves miniature
replicas of the monumental statues. The style of