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

240 THE GOLDEN AGE AND END OF BUDDHIST ART
sculpture in the Gupta Period [180J. Represented
are a gandhdrva and an apsaras supernatural
aerial beings - divinities of fragrance
and music, once the attendants of Indra.
Appropriately, the divinities are shown flying
through the air, and it should be noted that the
effect of weightless, endless, soaring motion is
imparted not, as in Christian angels, by the
unconvincing addition of wings, but by the
direction of the legs and by the upward swirling
lines of the billowing scarf that supports the
divine pair like a celestial parachute. As Stella
Kramrisch has pointed out, the device of the
upturned feet, brushing against, but not supported
by, the steps in the frame at the right
adds to the illusion of the effortless flight of the
angels. 9 Again, the very heaviness of the
massive, intricate coiffures, worthy of Fuseli's
courtesans, seems to add by contrast to the
lightness of the simply modelled bodies. The
beautiful apsaras in this group is the Sanchi
yakshi in Gupta terms, a fully modelled form in
relief, but suggesting the possibility of existence
in the round. Note the wonderful contrast of the
close-pressed roundness of globular breasts and
as examples of rock-cut architecture; some of
the sculptural decoration, notably the fine panel
of a Ndgardja and his queen, outside Cave XIX,
deserve to rank with the great examples of the
period [179]. The figures have the same feeling
of elegance and repose which, as we shall see
presently, distinguishes the Gupta wall-paintings
at the same site. It will be observed that all
the reliefs mentioned have a common classic
quality in being rigidly contained within a boxlike
frame. There is no indication of the baroque
qualities of later Hindu reliefs, in which the
figures are disposed without any confining
enclosure.
A beautiful slab from Sondani near Gwalior
illustrates the mature development of figure
almost abstractly tubular limbs and, as in all
great Indian figure sculpture, the expansive
swelling roundness that makes these beings
appear 'as if breathing'. 10
Gupta Buddhist sculpture in western India
may be illustrated by a panel carved on the
narthex screen of the chaitya-hall at Karli at the
time when this sanctuary was transformed into a
Mahayana temple [181]. This relief could be
described as an apotheosis of Buddha as he
appears transfigured in the Lotus sutra. The
Buddha is enthroned on a lotus in the sky at the
summit of an axis supported in the nether
waters by nagas. To complete the representation
of the old Vedic concept of the division of the
cosmos into air, earth, and nether waters, the
level of the earth and a reference to the Buddha's
preaching may be discerned in the Wheel and
the deer, emblematic of Sarnath. The Buddha is