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

THE INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATION 35
The most notable piece of sculpture that the
Indus Valley excavations have brought to light
is a small male torso in limestone found at
Harappa [3]. The view chosen for illustration
reveals its magnificent plastic quality to great
advantage. Although it is impossible to tell the
exact iconographic significance of this nude
image, it seems almost certain that it must have
been intended as a deity of some sort. In its
present damaged condition no recognizable
attributes remain; nor is there any explanation
for the curious circular depressions in the
clavicle region. 9 This statuette appears to us
extraordinarily sophisticated in the degree of
realistic representation, so much so that it has
been compared by some scholars to the work of
the great period in Greece. In the Harappa torso,
however, there is no attempt to suggest the
human body by harping on the muscular structure
that was the particular concern of the naturalistically
minded Greek sculptors of the fourth
century B.C. and later. On the contrary, this
statuette is completely Indian in the sculptor's
realization of the essential image, a symbolic
rather than descriptive representation of anatomy,
in which the articulation of the body is
realized in broad convex planes of modelling.
The one quality which may be discerned here
that is universally peculiar to many later Indian
examples of plastic art is the suggestion of an
inner tension that seems to threaten to push out
and burst the taut outer layer of skin. Actually,
this is a technical device by which the sculptor
revealed the existence of the breath or prdna
filling and expanding the vessel of the body.
3. Limestone torso from Harappa.
New Delhi, National Museum
The fact that the figure appears pot-bellied is,
therefore, iconographically completely right
and truthful. It is not intended as a caricature in
any sense, since this distension resulting from
yogic breath-control was regarded as an outward
sign of both material and spiritual wellbeing.
We have in this statuette, too, what is
certainly the earliest exhibition of the Indian
sculptor's skill not only in producing a sense of