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

THE PERIOD OF THE HINDU DYNASTIES 305
and her arms are covered with bracelets like
those of the Dancing-Girl from Mohenjo-daro
[5]. This figure, like all Pallava sculpture,
belongs to the earliest and at the same time
classic phase of Dravidian art. Ultimately it is
an outgrowth of the Later Andhra figure style
in the elongation of the form with long tubular
limbs, but the whole conception is invested
with a peculiarly dynamic quality that is always
characteristic of Dravidian Hindu art. We can
see once more in this single figure the suggestion
of the emergence of the form from the stone -
achieved here by the gradually more salient disengaging
of the successive planes of relief with
the details of the ultimate plane being entirely
merged with the background. Certain aspects of
the figui al canon differ from earlier practice, as
may be discerned in the heart-shaped face
already noted at Mamallapuram. The figure of
the triumphant goddess has a militant energy
conveyed by the moving pose and the deployment
of the arms in a kind of aureole. This is
combined with a suggestion of complete serenity
and feminine softness, as is entirely appropriate
to the conception of the divinity.
The death of the Pallava monarch Narasirhha
in a.d. 674 brought to an end all work on the
five raths and other sculptural undertakings at
Mamallapuram. The dedications of his successor,
Rajasirhha, were all structural buildings.
One of these was the so-called Shore Temple
[238], erected on the beach not far from the great
238. Mamallapuram, Shore temple