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

THE GUPTA PERIOD 25]
news of his banishment from his father's kingdom.
At the right of the composition, in a
pavilion with orange walls and red pillars, a
swarthy lord clasps his swooning consort; her
drooping pose is accented by the bend of her
head, and the relaxation of every limb emphasizes
her distress. This detail of the fresco is an
illustration of how in Indian painting states of
mind or moods are, as in a play, precisely indicated
by pose and gesture and glances. This is
exactly what is implied in the Six Limbs of
Painting mentioned above and in all later
treatises on the art of painting. The anxiety of
the princess is revealed by the way in which she
clings to her lord for support; the prince's
solicitude, by his offering of the cup of wine.
The atmosphere of concern is further heightened
by the figure of the dwarf glancing upward
at the couch and the maid servant with the
carafe who hovers behind the couple. It will be
noted how the directions of the glances of the
principal actors are fixed on the figure of the
hapless prince. He and the princess appear
again with umbrella-bearing attendants in the
part to the left of this detail, where one should
also notice the wonderfully characterized figure
of a beggar with bowl and crooked staff. Behind
this group is a boldly patterned background of
exotic foliage, in the rich variety of its greens
suggesting European tapestry design.
The effect of the whole composition in its
employment ofdramatic and emotional gestures,
the device of continuous narration, and the feeling
of stirring movement that leads across the
shallow stage and animates the individual
figures, is like a translation of the technique of
the AmaravatI reliefs into terms of painting. It
should be noted further in connexion with this
wall-painting that the representation of the
palace with its heavy cornice supported by
slender colonnettes is probably a reasonable
approximation of the domestic architecture of
the period.
Among the most important surviving examples
of Gupta wall-painting are the damaged
fragments of decoration in the verandah of
Cave IV at Bagh. In so far as one can tell from
their present condition, the style is identical
with the work at Ajanta. Represented are an
elephant procession and what appears to be a
dancing scene with beautifully rhythmic figures
of young girls moving in a circle around a
personage in Kushan or Iranian dress.
Hindu wall-paintings with a date corresponding
to 578 decorate the porch of Cave III at
Badami. The style is closely related to the later
J^j ^-r^ryx^^iAJi
In its relation to the Buddhist art of all o^
Ajanta paintings and to a cycle of Jain wallpaintings
at Sittanavasal. 19
south-eastern and eastern Asia, the importance
of the Gupta Period can scarcely be overestimated.
In the iconography and style of painting
and sculpture we find the establishment of a
norm that lent itself to adaptation in the hands
of all
the peoples who followed the Buddhist
religion. The paintings and sculptures of Gupta
India are more than prototypes for the religious
art of Asia; they occupy a position corresponding
to that of Greek and Roman art in the West.
The perfection and balance achieved in India of
the fourth and fifth centuries recommended
themselves as the final solution of problems of
form and content in religious art that could not
be improved on, just as the perfection and
authority of Classic art persisted as a norm in
the European tradition. Wherever it was introduced,
Gupta art provided a firm basis for the
evolution of original artistic expression. Exact
imitation of Gupta models of the school of
Sarnath marked the beginnings of Buddhist art
in the jungles of Siam and Cambodia, but the
quick realization and assimilation by native
sculptors of the essential plastic qualities of the
Indian originals produced some of the greatest
works of sculpture in Further India. The
wonderful conjunction of serenity of expression
and plastic majesty survives in Singhalese art to
the end of the Buddhist tradition. Javanese