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

364 CEYLON AND SOUTH-EAST ASIA
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291. Anuradhapura, Ruvanveli dagaba, Buddha
mark of this south-eastern Indian style is the
voluminous billowing fold at the bottom of the
^_——^^»
robe.
We may further mention a bronze Buddha,
probably made at
Anuradhapura, which was
found in the ruins of Dong Duong in Champa.
This is by far the most perfect example of the
15
style known [292]. A certain attenuation and a
nervous elegance in the hands differentiate the
image from the true Amaravati type and anticipate
later Hindu metal images in Ceylon.
In connexion with these earliest Singhalese
Buddha images it is well to mention the relations
between Ceylon and China in the first centuries
of the Christian era: an embassy bearing a jade
image arrived in China between 405 and 418;
later, in 428, the king of Ceylon dispatched a
Buddha statue from the temple of the Tooth
Relic. 16 Presumably these statues were of the
Anuradhapura type, and it is possible that they
may have exerted some influence on southern
Chinese sculpture during the Six Dynasties
Period. 17
Although no exact precedents exist for it at
Amaravati, the so-called Duttha Gamani statue
[293] is a combination of the fullness of
Mathura sculpture with a certain stiffness that
may be the result of inexperience in the carving
of portrait-statues in Ceylon. 18
The seated Buddha images from this early
period of Singhalese sculpture are, if anything,
more interesting and aesthetically moving than
the examples of the standing type. As in the
statues at the Ruvanveli dagaba already discussed,
the style of the figures of the Buddha in
yoga pose has been to a large extent conditioned
by the nature of the granulitic stone, which
does not permit any special refinements of
carving. The resultant abstraction of form and
surface and the largeness of conception bestows
upon these figures a particularly moving dignity
and serenity.
The massive statue of a Buddha in dhyana
mudra in the Colombo Museum - formerly, as