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

310 THE HINDU RENAISSANCE
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Iconographically and structurally part of the
Kailasa temple is the sculpture of Saivite themes
and episodes from the Rdmdyana that almost
entirely clothes it [242]. The most dramatic of a
number of reliefs, all monumental in scale, is
one illustrating a famous legend of Mount Kailasa
[243]. On a deeply shadowed stage we see
a block-like representation of the mountain
peak itself and, seated on the summit, the divine
lovers, Siva and Parvati. We have here an illustration
of the moment in the Rdmdyana when
the Singhalese giant, Ravana, attempts to uproot
the sacred mountain in order to use it as a
kind of dynamo of magic spiritual energy in his
war against Rama and his allies. In the upper
part of the composition the figure of Siva, in an
elegant pose of effortless command, is set off by
the plain back wall of the stage. His outstretched
foot, barely touching the ground, imprisons the
demon giant in the bowels of the mountain. The
242. Ellura, Kailasanath temple, Ravana and Jatayu
shrinking Parvati clutches her lord's arm as she
feels the mountain quake. She reclines before
the darkness of the background, into which
rushes the terrified figure of a maidservant.
Below, in a cavern of almost Stygian gloom,
appropriate to his nature and purpose, is the
trapped giant. In writing of this relief Stella
Kramrisch states: 'Depth and darkness are
parcelled out according to the demands of the
psychological suggestiveness with which the
artist invests each single figure.' 28
Space and light and shade have been employed
to heighten the emotional effect in the
same way that these elements were used in a
Baroque tableau, like Bernini's Saint Teresa.
We have here a new type of relief composition,
in which some of the figures are carved completely
in the round, and the whole action takes
place in a deep box. Indeed, the whole effect is
not unlike that of some of the elaborate dramatic
effects achieved in the performance and
setting of the Indian theatre. In this new conception
of relief sculpture there seems to be no
longer any limitation in space. We have the
feeling that we are not looking at a relief in the
usual sense, but as seen taking place in the same
general space or atmosphere which we occupy
and with which the space of the carving is coextensive.
This is a quality vaguely suggested by
the Amaravati reliefs and partially realized by
the great carving of the Descent of the Ganges
**&K*
at Mamallapuram. But the extraordinarily
dynamic conception of the Kailasa relief and the
dramatic emotionalism of the individual forms
are creations of the Dravidian imagination in its
finest hour of artistic expression.
From the stylistic point of view, the figures of
Siva and Parvati, with their long, pointed faces
and attenuated grace of proportions, are closely
related to the shapes of the gods at Mamallapuram.
The communication of emotional tension
through pose and gesture, rather than
through facial expression, was, it will be remembered,
already highly developed in some of the