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

INDIA, NEPAL, AND TIBET 265
in the illustration of the Durbar Square in
Patan [201]. Roughly it is a copy with Nepalese
modifications of the Indian sikhara mounted
over a single cell and perpetuating many details
of the Indian prototype, such as the attached
turrets and fluted finial. Nepalese temples were
not meant to accommodate a congregation but,
like the typical Hindu shrine, were intended
only for the housing of images. Also, like its
Indian prototype, the temple was itself an object
of worship. The present example has no
mandapa, but is surrounded on the groundstorey
by an arcade with monolithic octagonal
columns branching into elaborately carved
bracket capitals characteristic of the Nepalese
'order'.
The same illustration also shows another
typical Nepalese monument, a memorial column
of the eighteenth-century ruler, Bhupatindra,
which is a distant descendant from the pillars
of Asoka. The kneeling bronze image of the
king overlooks the Durbar Hall - like a Himalayan
Farnese Palace - with its heavy cornice
overhanging the severe facade. This building is
characteristic of Nepalese secular architecture
in the brick masonry used in combination with
windows of elaborately carved wooden frames
and screens with tooled metal sills.
Among the earliest examples of Nepalese
sculpture are a number of bronze statuettes in
the collection of the Boston Museum of Fine
Arts [202]. These figures very clearly reveal the
derivation of Nepalese sculpture from late
Gupta or Pala models. The Padmapani in the
Boston collection has the svelte elegance of
the carved Bodhisattvas of the Pala Period. The
belt and armlets of this and other early Nepalese
figurines were originally studded with turquoises.
Another interesting characteristic is
the persistent archaism of the swallow-tail convention
of the drapery scarves, a mannerism
ultimately derived from the Gandhara Bodhisattvas,
which, as we have seen, also enjoyed a
great longevity in Central Asia and found its