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

THE GUPTA PERIOD 243
great painted forms of Ajanta and invests them
with a kind of swaying, flower-like grace and
movement. Painting in the Gupta Period came
to be a social accomplishment no longer limited
to ecclesiastical use but practised by amateurs
as well as professional craftsmen. 13
Remains of Gupta and post-Gupta or Early
Chalukya wall-paintings exist at Ajanta (Caves
I, II, XVI, XVII, and XIX), at Bagh, in the
Gupta caves at BadamI, and in a Jain sanctuary
at Sittanavasal near Tanjore.
Nowhere else in Indian art but at Ajanta do
we find such a complete statement of indivisible
union of what in the West is referred to as
sacred and secular art. Like the poetry, the
music, and the drama of Gupta India, this is an
art of 'great courts charming the mind by their
noble routine' - all different yet united reflexions
of a luxurious aristocratic culture. As
Coomaraswamy so admirably phrased it, in the
splendid settings of the Ajanta wall-paintings
the 'Bodhisattva is born by divine right as a
prince in a world luxuriously refined. The
not markedly different from that described in
the paintings at Bamiyan. The rough surface
of the wall or vault is first covered with a layer of
clay or cow dung mixed with chopped straw or
animal hair. When this has been smoothed and
levelled, it is given a coating of gesso (fine white
clay or gypsum), and it is on this ground that
the actual painting is done. Although Indian
wall-paintings can never be described as fresco
in the true sense of the word, it is notable that
the plaster ground was kept moist during the
application of the pigment. The composition
was first entirely outlined in cinnabar red; next
came an under-painting corresponding to the
terra verde of medieval Italian practice. The
various local tints were then applied and the
painting was finished by a general strengthening
of outlines and accents. A burnishing process
gave a lustrous finish to the whole surface.
The most famous paintings at Ajanta are in
Cave I, and date from the late Gupta to early
Chalukya Period; roughly, that is, the late fifth
sorrow of transience no longer poisons life
itself; life has become an art, in which . . . the
ultimate meaning of life is not forgotten . . . but
a culmination and a perfection have been
attained in which the inner and outer life are
indivisible; it is this psycho-physical identity
that determines the universal quality of Gupta
painting'. 14
In the Ajanta wall-paintings we feel a definite
change from the art of early Buddhism, with its
emphasis on the symbolic quite apart from the
world of reality. Here is a turn to a sort of
religious romanticism of a really lyric quality, a
reflexion of the view that every aspect of life has
an equal value in the spiritual sense and as an
aspect of the divine. Sensuous physical beauty
is as an emblem of spiritual beauty. One is
reminded of the Hindu god Krishna and his
scriptures, in which it is written: all men and
women are his forms.
The technique of the Ajanta wall-paintings is
182. Ajanta, Cave I
to early seventh century. The cave has the form
of a square hall with the roof supported by rows
of pillars [182]. At the back of the shrine is a
deep niche containing a rock-cut image of a
seated Buddha. Originally, of course, the entire
interior surface of the cave, even the pillars, was