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

CHAPTER I 6 tjl^V
LATE BUDDHIST ART IN INDIA, NEPAL, AND TIBET
I. LATE BUDDHIST ART IN BENGAL:
THE PALA-SENA PERIOD
By the seventh century a.d., as we have already
learned in earlier chapters, Buddhism had
largely disappeared from northern India,
following the invasion of the White Huns. In
the south the rise of Hinduism had gradually
supplanted the religion of Sakyamuni. Only in
Bengal does Buddhism survive as an important
force until the final annihilation of its establishments
by the Mohammedan invasions of the
twelfth century. This final chapter of Buddhist
history in India is at once a prolongation and a
degeneration of the Gupta tradition. Buddhist
art in this last phase of its development in India
was produced under the patronage of the Pala
and Sena Dynasties (730-1197) that were the
heirs of Harsha's Empire in the Ganges Valley. 1
The Buddhism of the Pala Period represents
that outgrowth of Mahayana described as
Tantrism, a syncretic assimilation into Buddhism
of many elements of Hindu origin, such
as the concept of the sakti or female energy of
the Bodhisattva and the reliance on magic spells
and ritual. The worship of the mystical Dhyani
Buddhas of the Four Directions and the creator,
Adi-Buddha, a kind of Buddhist Brahma, completely
replaces any devotion to the person of
the mortal Buddha. It is this phase ofBuddhism,
usually described as the Vajrayana, that, together
with the paraphernalia of its art, finds its
way to Tibet and Nepal in the eighth and ninth
centuries. Progressively until its extinction in
the twelfth century, Buddhism takes on the
aspects of Saivism and Vaishnavism. The
principal site of this last centre of Indian
Buddhism and its art was the great university
city of Nalanda.
Among the inscriptions found at Nalanda is
one recording a dedication by a certain Baladeva,
ruler of Sumatra and Java, in 860, a clear
indication of the intimate relations existing
between this last stronghold of Indian Buddhism
and the Sailendra Empire in Indonesia.
The description of the monasteries of Nalanda
by Hsiian-tsang, who saw them at the height of
their splendour in the seventh century, is worth
quoting in extenso :
The whole establishment is surrounded by a brick
wall, which encloses the entire convent from without.
One gate opens into the great college, from which are
separated eight other halls, standing in the middle of
the Sangharama. The richly adorned towers, and the
fairy-like turrets, like pointed hill-tops, are congregated
together. The observatories seem to be lost in
the vapours of the morning, and the upper rooms
tower above the clouds. ... All the outside courts, in
which are the priests' chambers, are of four stages.
The stages have dragon-projections and coloured
eaves, the pearl-red pillars, carved and ornamented,
the richly adorned balustrades, and the roofs covered
with tiles that reflect the light in a thousand shades,
these things add to the beauty of the scene. 2
The actual monasteries or viharas excavated
at Nalanda are ranged one next to another like
so many adjacent colleges in a university complex.
The plan of the individual viharas is nearly
identical in the structures excavated, and consists
of many small cells grouped around the
four sides of an open courtyard, an arrangement
already found in earlier examples of the type. In
another place Hsiian-tsang observed: 'To the
north ... is a great vihara, in height about three